Back in the shop

Do you find it difficult getting started again after time away from the shop? It’s great to be back out there, but it’s hard to get back into the groove.

I spent a few hours in the shop this morning before sitting down to write this. Still have the stitches I wrote about last time, but the healing has progressed enough that I can work with my hand again as long as I take things easy. But it’s like trying to learn something all over again.

I feel rusty, stiff, and everything in the shop seems odd and out of place even though nothing in there has been touched for more than a week now. Tools are right where I left them, my work-in-progress is exactly as it was, there’s even a glue bottle out and ready for the glueup I was about to do before cutting my hand – but I feel so out of practice that it’s difficult getting back up to speed.

Something tells me you may have experienced this feeling, too, so what do you do to get going again? For me, I did some cleaning – as regular readers know I tend to scatter tools as I work so there were plenty to put away – and tackled a simple honey-do job I’d been meaning to get around to for months.

Remember that laminate floor I had to install when my water heater self-destructed last November? I never did create a doorway threshold to mate the new laminate to the slightly higher existing floor. So I limbered up this morning by ripping a piece of oak to width, cutting it to length, rabbeting one side to mate the two floors, then routing a nice roundover on both sides. I gave it a coat of poly and it’s downstairs drying right now, awaiting installation.

I’m still somewhat rusty – and I still have to go slow because of my hand – but things are starting to feel closer to normal out there again. I guess I just needed a bit of a warm-up to get the muscle memory working again.