A Couple of Things I Learned Today

I was off today. Well, not really off, but off of work. It's kinda funny that I/We think that way. To someone without kids, being off simply means being off. Once you throw young kids into the equation, being off is something of a rarity. Getting back to my original lessons. I decided to go meet up with a friend in Oceanside for a little exercise. I brought my work with me. Well, she's not really my work, but, well you know what I mean. My 16 month old actually likes these little exercise walks that we do. She get to check out all the available 16 month old dudes along the strand. These walks aren't really a lesson, but more of a reinforcement. You see, the reinforcement is that when your walking along the beach with your youngin, and the surf is going off, well, you know, you can't just drop everything and paddle out. I reckon it's a good time to do some mental surfing, which in the long run, may just help when she's in school and I'm pigdogging that left out front. After our walk, we said our goodbyes to our friend and headed up the street. We stopped into Real Surf, where Mr. Ambrose was manning the floor. Bought about 10 bars of wax, then Shawn went into the back and brought out a planer that he'd been saving for me. This is one of the lessons of the day. Shawn Ambrose is nicer than you. Yea, his "Rough around the edges" image might scare off a few, but he's one of the most down to earth guys you will ever meet. He put the planer on permanent loan to me, I only have to return it when he needs it for special projects. That's pretty incredible if you ask me. It saved me a lot of money, which is I'm super stoked about.



So, I pick up my daughter, who, by the way absolutely loves the ramp at Shawn's shop, and head out the door and back to the hood. I'VE GOT A NEW POWER TOOL and I'm excited to give it a go. We stop by school and pick up my 5 y/o son and his buddy, then head for home. Make some PB&J's for the boys, make sure they've got plenty to entertain themselves with (which they always do), put my daughter down for nap, then I've got 2 hours that I'm truly off. Yes, OFF. So I Break out one of the blanks I've got stored for this very day and set up the shaping stands in the back driveway. Plug in the planer and fire her up. It's pretty amazing how quiet a planer is when you turn it on, then how much noise it makes when you put it to foam. You see, I've never actually used a planer, the two boards up to now have pretty much been shaped all by hand. So my second lesson of the day, I learned how to rip and tear foam.









Yea, I've heard others talking about foam tearing, but never quite understood it until I did it repeatedly myself. Another lesson, no matter how much noise that thing is making, and no matter how much your worried about it waking up your daughter from her nap, it's kinda important to go slow, or not too fast. My goal for the day was to skin both sides of a blank. Well, I think I did a pretty decent job. Sure I've got some pretty deep divots. They should sand out as I widdle the board down to my desired thickness.










I'm just stoked that I finally used a planer and did a reasonable job. This without any true guidance or supervision. Who knows how this one will turn out. I still haven't even drawn out the outline, and I'm not sure which outline or type of board I'm going to shape. The neat thing is that it will be a true shape, using most of the important tools that have been improvised for shaping by the masters of the trade. No more skipping steps or tools cause I'm afraid.

Oh yea, as you can see from the pictures above, the last lesson is, planers make a big mess. Even the plants didn't feel left out on this one.