He's teaching me to use massively dangerous power tools. I'm covered in dust I probably shouldn't inhale. I'm wearing clothes I'd be embarrassed to donate to a shelter for the unhoused. I'm having a fabulously terrific time.
He's exacting about angles, drawing very straight lines for cutting on what is, essentially, a rather imprecise tool, and the lines, once cut, will need to be sanded anyway.
I wouldn't sand them, myself, except I have a very real and deep-seated terror of splinters.
Some of the stuff we're working with will never splinter.
I end up with a splinter in my hand from the backing on a disc of sandpaper designed to be used with a mechanical tool, not held in my wee paw like a coffee mug, making largely masturbatory motions on a meter-long cuboid in an unnatural shade of pink. After painstakingly plucking with my fingernails the nearly invisible fleck of fiberglass (or something like it), I return to the task of rounding corners, up and down, with a twisting spin to keep things even.
I'm learning about materials I never heard of, discovering the difference between five-minute two-part epoxy and thin epoxy resin, which has another purpose. He teaches me a lovely technique for cutting a curve on plywood with a bandsaw, which is largely unlike a table saw, a jigsaw and a hacksaw. When I use the bandsaw, I find it enough like operating a sewing machine to feel familiar, and even soothing. Except for the real possibility of losing digits to the teeth of the blade, it IS soothing- the vibration is regular and smooth, and the saw makes a noise in a key that doesn't raise my hackles. This is different from most common tools that I've banned from my life- hair dryers, vacuums, lawn mowers- in fact, I purchased a battery-powered lawn mower that looks like a toy because its vibration and pitch are tolerable to me. Previously, I purchased a rotary mower, because it had neither vibration or noise unless I actively pushed it. I enjoyed using it, listening to ball games in my earbuds, until the blades dulled and it became ineffective. If I figure out how to sharpen the blades, I may use it again. I certainly did not get rid of it.
My tasks feel inconsequential: remembering where the safety glasses and pencils are located, reminding him what he went into the basement to fetch, holding open the door while he carries the table saw outside or the giant sander inside, moving things back to their proper places, vacuuming with the enormous ugly shop vac with the condescendingly huge ON/OFF button that I still have difficulty locating, and keeping the parts we're using separate from the scraps that look alarmingly like the parts we're using.
When he tells me this is a good stopping point and offers Jinnintonnix, there's only one possible answer. I watch him measure carefully, then empty the bottle into the measuring tool and divide the remainder between the two glasses.
The surprise happens fifty or so minutes later, when I find myself in the parking lot of a McDonalds, trying to absorb alcohol with cheap greasy edible substances. Given my sudden mood swing to maudlin, it's absurd that it's called a Happy Meal.
Power Tools; The Tubes, 1981
