Woodworking eccentricities/idiosyncrasies

[Hasin Haroon]

I was chopping some dovetails yesterday when the tip of my chisel just brushed my finger...I found myself a little disappointed to see there was no blood, until about a minute later my finger started bleeding and I was actually relieved that my sharpening wasn't failing me.

Any other weird woodworking eccentricities you guys find yourself going through?

[steven c newman]

Walking past a vendors table, the nose starts to twitch from the aroma of Rust!.....u-turn to find the culprit usually .......

[David Eisenhauer]

Hasin, Hasin, Hasin. You are in need of professional, industrial grade help. Soon. Steven C - a fully understood condition that is actually a plus for the continuation of mankind.

[Patrick Chase]

Some (not me) would argue that neander woodworking in this day and age is inherently eccentric and/or idiosyncratic.

I think that some of us (like, err, me) have "sharpening fetishes" of one sort or another. I freely admit to being proud of the "surgical potential" of my edges, though I would note that a clean edge often isn't as bad in that respect as one with a bit of a burr.

[Jim Koepke]

I was chopping some dovetails yesterday when the tip of my chisel just brushed my finger...

Unless a corner of a blade gets me with a sting, most of the time my cuts go unnoticed until blood shows up on the work. This doesn't happen often since great care is taken not to get parts of my body and an edge tool in to an improper orientation to each other.

But what the heck, when my fingernails get long one of my larger gouges trims them fast and neat.

jtk

[Brent Cutshall]

Walking past a vendors table, the nose starts to twitch from the aroma of Rust!.....u-turn to find the culprit usually .......

Finally, someone who admits to it too. Whenever I'm out tool hunting with friends, we'll walk into an antique shop. I'll be like, "NOBODY MOVE, there are tools in the area." They'll just look at me and say something like,"We're here to look for a Danish butter dish, not tools." I need to think about my choice of friends. Folks tell me it's not normal to be able to smell stuff like that. Blood, I can smell (fresh) blood for up to fifteen feet. Smells like an ironish rusty smell, and no two people's blood smells exactly the smells the same. I can walk into a familiar room and normally tell if someone's there or not. My brother hides and trys to scare me, he never does. It makes him mad when I sniff him out. "That's not fair!", he says. Anyone else like this?

[Stanley Covington]

I was chopping some dovetails yesterday when the tip of my chisel just brushed my finger...I found myself a little disappointed to see there was no blood, until about a minute later my finger started bleeding and I was actually relieved that my sharpening wasn't failing me.

Any other weird woodworking eccentricities you guys find yourself going through?

I am superstitious when it comes to chisels and knives, and do not trust one until it has tasted a bit of blood. So whenever I knick my finger, I dab a bit on all my new blades. A single sip does the job.

[Stew Denton]

Hi all,

For me it's restoring old rust.

I spend WAY too much time trying to restore old tools, to make them look as nice as possible.

Some of you get your rust buys in great working shape, and extremely sharp in 1/5th to 1/10th the time it takes me, and when you get done your tools work as well as mine do after I clean them up....... no, probably better than mine do, that I spent hours working on.

I know I am not the only one to do this, because of the posts, but it it isn't necessary to do such to get great results from old rust finds. Highly cleaned up and polished up planes don't work one whit better than ones that are not spent hours and hours on, and mine don't even look all that much better anyway.

Anyway, it may be a sickness.

Hasin, add one more who just nicked a finger with a newly sharpened plane iron, and drew blood after a bit of time had passed. Stropping success, I will post a new note on that though.

Regards,

Stew

[Malcolm Schweizer]

I smell wood. I was recently caught at Home Depot smelling the pine.
Stranger: Why did you just smell that board?
Me: The real question is why did you NOT smell it? Are you some sort of weirdo?

[Jim Koepke]

Stranger: Why did you just smell that board?

To see if it was a long leaf variety.

jtk

[steven c newman]

Of course, there is that "funny" rule about NEVER work in the Shop on Mondays........

BTW: A LARGE Pantry Cupboard I made out of Pine? STILL smells like ..Pine...

[Hasin Haroon]

You guys are not alone in enjoying cleaning up rusted old tools. I used to enjoy doing that a lot the last couple years, to the point where I spent 80% of my 'woodworking' time cleaning up old tools and only about 20% actually woodworking. Since then I've stopped purchasing old tools, unless its something quite special. Now I just spend most of my time reading about woodworking (jks, I've gotten a bit better with actually making stuff).

Brent, can't say I've ever been able to smell people beyond a couple feet...old tools, maybe, wood, yes, but people or blood, no. Maybe you're an advanced version of human, a more highly evolved version than me!