Christmas Manufacture

Yes, she did it.. She did was I was aiming to do for a long time.. She actually created and finished a physical creation.

What is it?

Let's just say that my wife and her friend wanted to create something they can sell for some quick small financial injection. They looked and pondered about all kinds of stuff, finally settling on a simple decorated slab of wood. That sold online relatively well - or so they thought.

The process has begun, they started to look for things they would need to build this one. While at it, they decided they would build at least 10 variations to sell. They found most of the things they'd like to put on the wood, but the biggest problem was to actually get the wood itself. While you could be baffled yourself right now, why would wood out of everything be the biggest problem to solve? Let me tell you - I tried, I contacted a lot of local sawmills, lot of people dealing wood, anyone wood affiliated - no one sells circular wooden slabs few centimeters thick with a radius bigger than 10cm. Well, maybe it would be easier for you to find someone willing to sell you 30cm wide wooden disks, but here in north-west Czechia, apparently, it is a problem.

So after receiving multiple offers from all different sources - but for wood to burn (wood fuel) - believe me, I could find you the best deal to get your through the winter just by snapping my fingers. We thought that we would have to go to the forest ourselves and cut some trees down on the spot. But no! A random anonymous saviour stepped down from heaven and sent us exactly what we was looking for, even free of charge! Turns out a family friend of my wife's friend was able to provide just the wood the girls were looking for. The only thing was to clean them up, as they were cut by a chainsaw - forming sharp and ugly ridges along the cutline.

My part in the story

Here comes I to the rescue! Not really, but I silently waited for my chance to be part of this aswell. And boy did I mine this opportunity out like a hungry old grandpa seeing young pussy again. First of all, I wanted to buy a vibrating sander for quite some time, not having any opportunity to just throw money around out for nothing, now I had a proper reason! So first stop was the Unihobby market, looking for my new darling to hoard and enthrall for myself - muhehehe. As always, I took my time - like a woman, checking on everything else before actually going into the section with grinders and sanders. Have you ever seen a man just casually entering a hobby shop without a goal, just to look around? We make this kind of facial expression - closely similar to kid's expression when you first take them to Disney Land - and we make it every time. Imagine a man that does just that, but already knows he will leave with a new tool afterwards - multiply that expression by 3.

Next stop, our garden - I did not want to have to deal with all the mess this thing is about to make. I had the wood, I had the tool, I had my green Big Shock, I left the car playing music in the background and set up a workspace for myself

I started making noise - I did not even expect this thing to be so loud.. But I bought a powerful machine, as I do most of the time - sometimes out of lack of knowledge, other times out of curiosity but most of the time I just buy overdimensionated things to be sure I don't get angry that it wouldn't work afterwards (as that tends to happen when I buy cheap shit). 

The task was rather easy and relaxing, just polishing the wooden discs smoothing the surface so it feels nice to touch them. Nothing else there for me to do, really. I was happy I could by my grinder and use it for the first time. I wanted to buy that thing for a long time and I finally had a proper reason to do it! After finishing my first batch I called it a day (after like two hours of work) and packed everything to go home have a lunch. I completed the rest of discs the next day.

Physical creativity

I often think about creating something interesting myself. Well, I am trying to come up with something interesting to create, but I am unable to come up with anything truly enjoyable that would make me proud. I am toying with thoughts of some kind of electronical toy that I would 3D print and build from Arduino - with buttons, LEDs and a screen, programming some kind of funny interactivity into it myself. But then I try to create a concept that would expand this idea more descriptively and I just cannot pinpoint anything solid that would be worth making.

So yeah, my wife beat me to it. She created a nice decoration worth of money, that actually serves a meaningful purpose. Now I have to rev up my own game and kick myself into producing aswell!