I’ve been making quite a few wig stands lately and to be honest, it’s getting pretty boring.  Yeah, the idea of making a cancer patient smile is a great things, but come on!  How many ways are there to make two circles and a stick?  Like anything, after awhile they stop being fun to make and start being drudgery.

As I was turning one out of cherry wood, Bob Seger’s greatest hits was playing and my mind started to wander.  I was remembering ping pong before school, lunch table conversations, school dances, musical rehearsals, band rehearsals, concerts, contests, old friends, lost friends, homecoming floats, teachers…  That’s when my old shop teacher paid the rent for my head and stayed around for awhile.  I remembered watching as he showed Ted how to make stacking salad bowls out of a single board of teak.  I remembered him telling me what each of the three lathe tools we had in the shop were for and then saying, “you’re ready to begin”, and walking away.  That I made anything other than a blood trail is a miracle.  I also remembered him making a shelf out of cherry.  As he ran the router around the edge, the bit was dull and it blackened the whole side.  he was pissed, but I thought the color difference looked pretty cool, or would have it was more consistent.  “Against the Wind” was done, so I snapped back to the present, finished up sanding the wig stand, and decided to try my hand a pyrography, aka wood burning.

Here’s the final projects, one from cherry and one from oak.  Still have a long way to go to achieve the result I have in my head, but for now, it’s at least a way to incent myself to turn out more wig stands…