The Treasure Box

top: the one I fixed

            My mum has gotten a fair amount of airtime in these posts. I think I’ve mentioned more than once when I have a problem in the shop, I often go to her toolbox and find exactly the right tool to get me out of a spot. Well, today it’s my dad’s turn. Although I have a number of his tools that I use on an almost daily basis, it’s not a tool that enabled me to solve a problem today but a habit he had.

            My dad was what we called, sometimes fondly and sometimes not, a packrat. I don’t think he crossed the line into hoarding, but he certainly skated near it and when he died it took my mum twenty years to clean out all of his treasures. Because of that, Mum was determined not to leave a mess for me to clean up, but that’s another story.

            Dad and Mum both grew up during The Great Depression. Mum told stories of young men riding the rails from one end of the country to the other trying to find work. Nobody had much money so instead of buying something new when a tool or a garment wore out, you fixed it with whatever was around. It stands to reason that the more stuff you had around, the more you had to choose from when a fix was needed. I remember Dad straightening nails and putting them back in cans for future use. He had all sorts collections of things that might come in handy someday. I confess that I also have packrat tendencies although I occasionally get fed up and go on a purge. More often than not a few weeks later I find myself asking ‘why did I throw that out? It would have solved this problem perfectly.’ Luckily, most problems have more than one solution and I usually manage to find an alternative even if the tossed object would have worked better.

         I was clamping something up the other day and happened to use one of my favourite small clamps.  One of the ones I picked up had lost the bolt and nut that holds one of the jaws in place. I’d taken it back to the store where I bought it and asked if they had replacement parts. They told me they didn’t and that I should buy a new clamp. I rejected that option since they are close to $20 a piece and I didn’t think a nut and bolt was worth that much. I set that clamp aside on the bench and when I had the glued object securely clamped, I decided it was time to either fix the clamp or toss it.

            I went to my moderately-sized ‘miscellaneous hardware’ box and started sorting through hinge parts, springs, bits of chain, nuts and bolts. I found a short bolt that fit in the hole and after some more searching I found a nut to match it. Problem solved. Sometimes my packrat tendencies drive me crazy but when I find exactly what I need to fix something, I feel just as delighted as I did when I was a kid  and found a present under the Christmas tree. Thanks, Dad.

Nails

I know this Covid 19 virus is driving us all a little nuts. I’ve found myself thinking about things I never considered before the beginning of March. Some of these thoughts are leading in productive directions and others range from frivolous to just plain weird.  I can’t say I haven’t thought about today’s topic, but I can say that I never considered writing about it until now. 

            I assume that most of you who read this know me. You will recognize that I’m hardly a fashion maven. If the clothes are comfy, I love them. If they’re not, I don’t. I always have resisted getting dressed up. I know that a lot of people feel special when they get dressed up. I don’t. Along with that goes a general lack of interest in make-up and fingernails. I probably had nail polish put on my fingers once or twice when I was a kid, but I’ve never bought any except to paint over the scratches on our tandem bike. On my most recent “BIG” birthday, I decided to step out of my comfort zone. I rode on the Mountain Coaster in Revelstoke BC and I had a pedicure and got my toenails painted blue. I thought that was pretty adventurous and while, blue toenails amused me, I don’t think I’ll bother doing that again.  Fingernails, however, are a different story.

            For a number of years, I took classical guitar lessons and many classical players grow the nails on the thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers of their right hands. I don’t think I ever talked to my teacher about it.  I just grew four nails. I didn’t quite know what I was trying to accomplish by growing the nails but the big kids in the classical guitar world had nails, so I was going to have nails. The problem was that my nails tended to peel, split and break. When I quit playing classical guitar, I was happy to clip the nails and be done with it.

            Fast forward to the re-entrance of the ukulele in my life. I played ukulele before I learned to play guitar. It was a cheaper instrument but as soon as I could, I ditched the uke and bought a guitar. In 2015 I became interested in the uke again and bought myself one for my birthday. I played chords and then enrolled in an online course that involved some finger picking (plucking the strings with the thumb and three fingers of the right hand rather than using only the thumb or a pick). For me finger picking goes better with nails, so I started to grow the four of them again. They still split and peeled and broke but this time I paid more attention.

            With my increased diet of YouTube these last months I decided one day to look up guitarist’s fingernails. Classical guitar technique can, I’m pretty sure, be transferred to ukulele so why not take a look at what the guitarists do with their nails? I found out all sorts of interesting things. One guy, whose playing I really admire, has a video on how to reshape a nail by using a spoon and a cigarette lighter. No, he’s not snorting or preparing to inject anything. He also warns to use the technique at your own risk. Since I’m not going to be giving concerts anytime soon, I don’t feel the need to experiment with that one. One other guy goes to a salon to have acrylic nails applied. He’s been doing it for long enough that the person he goes to knows exactly what he wants. No muss, no fuss, and no broken nails. If you depend on your nails to leave the string in a particular way, a broken nail has the sonic effect of someone limping.

            I found videos on how to shape ‘the ramp’: that part of the nail that actually drags along the string before letting it go. I didn’t know there was such a thing and seeing the diagrams helped me to understand a bit more of what I wanted to do with my nails and why it works. I find it more than a little ironic that I’ve not only spent hours looking at info on fingernails but that I now have a whole kit to take care of the Fracture-less Four.  I’ve discovered that if I file or sand them a little each day, I can pretty much manage to keep them from breaking. Also, I can feel the nails catch the strings in a way I don’t like if I don’t keep them to a comfortable length and keep the edges smooth. So, most days I spend some time filing and buffing and I’ve accumulated more tools than I thought possible for the job.      

         At first, I used a diamond nail file and that seemed to work well enough. Then I came across a ceramic file that I could take on airplanes without having it confiscated. I started reading what the uke pros had to say about nail care and some of them used a beam-like contraption that has two rough surfaces for shaping nails and 4 other surfaces of decreasing coarseness to refine and polish the nails. I don’t mind that beam-like implement too much, but I feel like it’s hard to get at the underside where the string actually leaves the nail when you pluck it. I like the thinner files for that.

To complete the kit, I raided the shop for various grits of sandpaper.  I don’t bother with the really coarse stuff. The metal files and the coarse side of the beam take care of that. I start with 220 grit to remove any nicks; then I go to either the ceramic file or 320 grit paper. To take the burrs off the underside I use the polishing surfaces on the beam (I should really call it the Buff Pro because that’s what it says on it.) Or, I can use 400, 600, and 1200 grit sandpaper folded over one of the metal files. There are a number of permutations and combinations. To clean out any dust from under the nails I lightly scrape the underside with the point of the ceramic file. I don’t like the feel of dust trapped under my nails. So, with the ramps carefully shaped and the under-edges of the nails nice and smooth I’m ready to pick up the ukulele.

            You might be wondering how babying fingernails exists along with working in a wood shop. There have been nail casualties in the shop but luckily, I’m right-handed so, most of the time, I have the sharp, pointy tools held in my right hand. If fingernails are going to get hit with sharp, pointy objects it’s usually left-hand ones that get it. I have sanded down a fingernail or two on the belt sander, but the left-hand nails need to be short anyway so as not to get in the way when pressing down strings on the fretboard. If a right fingernail gets sanded I either cut the rest and begin shaping again when they grow out, or I limp along with uneven nails for a while until the short guy catches up. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter because Richard and Odie are about the only ones who have to listen to me play anyway.

            I’m anticipating another question ‘Why don’t you grow the nail on the pinky finger the same length as the others on the right hand?’ I don’t know if real guitarists do that or not. Maybe I should look that up too. I don’t do it because I find it fussy enough to pay attention to four fingernails. I don’t want to take on another one I can clip and forget.

            There now, if you’ve come this far, good for you. You can say, along with me, that Covid 19 have caused you to think about things that never would have crossed your mind two months ago. Productive? Frivolous? Weird? Your call.

P is for projects and procrastination

So, this is procrastination at its finest. My study is in a mess; the shop is in a mess; and I have a deadline to get some kitchen tools made and send photos of them to a magazine.  I don’t know if the magazine will use them or not. Rather than tackle any of these things, I think I’ll write a blog post. Little did I know when I retired from teaching that there would be things to put off other than marking!

            I successfully avoided making any headway on these projects yesterday, but I had an interesting day. I read a book. I listen to lots of books these days, although I very seldom actually process one through my eyeballs. When it comes to books, I’m the ‘instant gratification’ sort. Nothing will do but that I get and read the book right now. With one handy click I got an E-book on how to write a book.

Besides the projects mentioned above I have another huge one on the go. I’m writing a book with Jake, luthier, musician, teacher, and composer to name a few of his various hats. I’ve never written a book, far less a book telling someone else’s story. Nothing like starting at the top. Jake is used to telling his stories under stage lights between songs.  I’m used to writing mine down in the quiet of early mornings or late nights. These are very different spaces but they both acknowledge the importance of story. The book I read yesterday was on how to write memoir, a bit of a tangent but it might be helpful to the current project. It was written first as a series of blog posts by Marion Roach Smith who has an impressive list of credentials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Roach

Reading too many ‘how to’ books is a trap. You can read forever and never do anything. On the other hand, if I get one thing out of a book that gives me a different perspective, it’s worth the read. Roach has clearly thought a lot about how she does what she does, and she has distilled this into a process with a series of steps. I’m not sure I understand exactly how she sees it and I’m not going to spend time trying to slavishly follow her steps. She illustrates her points by telling great stories and that will always garner my interest and respect. I’m not sure, at this point, how her advice is important. I need to put that on the back burner and let it sit for a while. That is so much of how I write: letting things sit on pause in my mind and returning to them, every once in a while, until I find I can take the next step.

Speaking of next steps, perhaps while all this is settling, I can actually tidy up my desk. It’s a small step and ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ Stay tuned.