I Saw Horse

I finally completed my first sawhorse last Thursday! I say finally because it feels like it's taken me three weeks to finish it, but really I've only been able to work on it for about 3 days in those three weeks, so for a first project, it really didn't take me all that long to complete. I was given a set of plans and was basically told to figure it out. I made plenty of mistakes along the way, but of course they were all valuable learning experiences. Most of this was cut by hand (the pegs were pre-made). And yea, it turned out pretty awesome, if I do say so myself:

It is a beefy little fella, but that's part of what makes it so cool in my opinion. It weighs about 35 pounds (I think, but I didn't actually weigh it) and can support the weight of at least 5 grown adults. Don't ask me how I know that.

Here's some joint detail. Drilling through that knot was a pain in the ass and generally not advised, but I think it makes the peg look almost like it's part of the actual wood, which is kinda cool. When I pegged this thing together and saw how tightly the joints fit, it was an indescribable good feeling. Take a closer look:

I had so much fun building it that I kinda want to build another one (which you normally would anyway), but it's unnecessary, as there was already a pre-existing saw horse without a mate, part of the reason I chose this project. I like to make things feel more complete:

One of the cool things about building is that when you're finished, you get the chance to stand back and really admire what you've done with your time and effort. I guess that can be true of a lot of things. I'm going to finish up here with an aside on my growing appreciation for the effort it takes to grow and process delicious food, an appreciation I feel a lot of people don't have these days. I've been living and working alongside some very talented gardeners over the past 3 months, as well as eating the food they have helped grow. They put their effort into that much in the same way I do building. I've sadly almost taken it for granted. What really drove this point home was this bowl of almonds:

The almond tree on this property has been growing for years, and the almonds on it grew over a summer. I spent the better part of a morning harvesting those almonds with 3 others, and the better part of that afternoon removing the hulls. The pits found inside the hulls were then dried for about a month and those pits were then cracked open with a hammer to reveal the almonds inside. Harvesting almost an entire tree (you can't really get the ones on top that easily) yielded the contents of the bowl you see above. All of that effort for just that much food, and though delicious, it really did make me think... It was still worth the effort. The experience of harvesting was fun, working together with some friends to process them was fun too, and yea, I like almonds, so of course eating them was the most rewarding part.

But I digress...have a wonderful week and happy non-daylight savings time (is it standard time?) to everyone. Cheers!