I even did a little woodworking.  Just a little.  I made a couple more clamp racks and attached them to the wall.  Many of my clamps have been laying on bench tops or just clamped to the sides of a bench, so the additional racks will really help in staying organized.  I did not get back to the mission style lamps that I wanted to work on, but hopefully I will soon.

I live in Michigan, and the winters tend to make the shop (currently my garage) a bit colder than I would like.  I have a portable kerosene heater, but the garage is not insulated, and most of the heat goes up through the rafters and out the ridge vent.  On a really cold day I can only get the temperature up to about 45 degrees (Fahrenheit).

This is not to say that I don’t work in the wintertime, because I do, it is just that I don’t get out there as often, and it is for shorter time periods.  This situation will be rectified once I start building my new workshop….someday.

This winter has been extra crazy.  My time in the shop has been very limited, and every time I have been out there it has been for just a “quick a minute” project.  There have been a lot of these types of projects and to save time I have been very lax in cleaning up after myself.  This has gotten to the point where I can’t find any of my tools, my bench and worktables are literally covered with tools and lumber cutoffs.  I ran out there to grab a tape measure the other day, and it took me 10 minutes to find it.  It was very frustrating.

This weekend the weather is going to warm up a bit, above freezing anyway, and I think I am going to go do my spring cleaning a little early this year.  Once everything is cleaned up I might actually do some real woodworking.  I have a couple of projects that are about 1/2 complete that I would like to finish up.

As I was writing this, I recalled that I blogged about this very thing back in November.  Could this just be a bad habit I have gotten into?  I hope not.  If it is, I am resolving to break it.  No more leaving my shop in disarray. There, now that I have blogged it, it won’t happen again….Right?… 

Why use a template?  Templates are especially handy when you need to create multiple items repeatedly.  I will admit that I get a little template crazy.  I sometimes create a template just to create another template.  For instance, recently I decided to make some racks for my pipe clamps so I could hang them up neatly on the wall.  It wasn’t really necessary that all of the U shaped slots on the rack be identical, but I am a bit of a stickler for such things.

I first made a template for a single slot.  I then used this template to create another template with multiple slots.  I accomplished this by using double stick tape to attach the single slot to longer workpiece of the final template.  I then routed the slot by following the single slot template with a flush trim bit mounted in my router table.  Once this was done, I then moved the single slot template the desired distance and reattached it.  I then routed out the second slot on the final template.

I repeated this process until my final template had the right number of slots.  In this case, I only had to put a little effort into making one slot, which translated into several identical slots.  This was a real time saver on something that could have become very mundane.

I did something similar on my Marquetry Mirror project.  I wanted to make sure that the mirror frame was completely symmetrical.  I started by making a template for half of the mirror frame.  I then used this template to create the other half of the frame.  By book-matching the templates together, I had a perfectly symmetrical mirror frame template.

Other times, however, there are “gaps” in the image I want and I can’t quite seem to fill them in.  My brain gets locked into an “it must be this way” attitude where I refuse to come up with a better solution to fill in the gaps.  My creativity at this point gets blocked by my own gray matter.

At times like these, there are several solutions that I have tried in the past.  some of them seem straight forward and others seem kind of crazy, but at least one of them usually helps to get the creative design juices flowing again.

1 – Start over

No, seriously, get a clean piece of paper and start over.  I was once having a hard time designing the legs that I wanted for a coffee table.  I had the top figured out the way that I wanted it, but I couldn’t get the legs to look right with the top.  It was at this point that I grabbed several clean pieces of 8 1/2 by 11 sheets of paper and taped them together.  I did this so that I could create a sketch of a leg in full scale.  I then proceeded to draw some free hand curves of a leg.  I made a few modifications here and there and eventually wound up with a shapely leg that was pleasing to the eye.  Next, I redesigned the tabletop to match.

2 – Look for inspiration outside of your brain

Sometimes you need to look elsewhere for inspiration.  Start looking through woodworking magazines, or furniture catalogs, or look for images online that might stimulate your creativity.  I am not saying that you should copy what you find, but you might see something that sparks your interest and gets you going again.

I have a box full of pages that I have ripped out of old catalogs.  Whenever I am looking through a catalog and I find something unique, or just something I like, then I rip the page out and put it in the box.  Sometimes when I am stuck on a design, I will flip through these pages and find something that will work in my particular situation.

3 – Forget about the “how” and focus on the “what”

Sometimes I get too focused on how I am going to make something, and it stifles my imagination.  It is at this point that I need to forget about “how” to build it, and figure out “what” I want to build first.  Once I figure out the “what” then I can focus on the “how”.

Of course, at this point the “how” can take on some creativity of its own.  For instance, look at the rocking chairs that Sam Maloof built.  If he had tried to figure out the “how” before the”what” he may never have come up with such a creative design.

4 – Forget about tradition – add a fifth leg!

Get a little crazy.  Throw something completely crazy and off the wall at your design.  If your trying to design a chair, add a 5th leg to it, or something equally crazy.   Your design may or may not end up with a 5th, but adding it in may kickstart your creativity.

5 – Forget about it – go have some fun

Sometimes you just need to step away from the design.  Go outside and throw a ball around with your kids, or take your spouse on a date, or go jogging.  Leave the design behind and think about something different for a while.

I am sure there are other ways to get your creativity kick started, and I would love to hear about them.  Go to my contact page and let me know how you get past your Design Block.

Actually, my love of woodworking goes back a bit further than that, at least two generations, you might say.  My father was once a carpenter and is still a woodworker.  When I was a kid, during November and December he would always be busy in the garage building projects to give away at Christmas.  I was always amazed at the things that he built.  I still use the desk he built for me when I was a teenager.

Although I have never seen anything that my grandfather has made, I do have a couple of his old wooden planes.  They are in pretty rough shape and someday I might try to restore them.  One of them may not be restore-able, so I may just make a replica of it.

Eventually, new woodworking shows became popular as well.  “Doing It Yourself” became the “in” thing and a larger variety of shows became available.  Among those was “Woodworks” with David Marks as the host.  His work on that show inspired me to a whole new level of woodworking.  Terms like “bentwood lamination” and “inlay” became a part of my vocabulary.  On the show, David also inspired me to look at the work of the woodworkers who inspired him, such as Sam Maloof and James Krenov.

All these people have inspired me throughout the years.  Even though Maloof and Krenov have passed on now, and the New Yankee Workshop has closed its television doors, their work is still around and will continue to inspire for years to come.  My father still makes things that amaze me as well and I thank him for the love of woodworking that he passed on to me.

Sam Maloof has a quote on his web site that pretty much sums it up for me:

“The reverence that the object maker has for the materials, for the shape, and for the miracle of his skill transcends to God, the Master Craftsman, the Creator of all things, who uses us, our hands, as His tools to make these beautiful things.”

Generally when I am working on things like this I am trying to work quickly because I just want to be done with it.  It is not the kind of work I really enjoy.  Because of this, I rarely clean up after myself and I eventually end up with a very cluttered workshop that is impossible to work in because I can’t find anything.  It almost begins to feel claustrophobic.

After putting everything back in place, I began trying to reorganize a few things.  When doing so, I came across several unfinished projects.  They are all personal projects that I was working on at one time or another, when something more important would come along that I needed to make.  My project would get set aside in a corner or on a shelf, while I finished the “important” project.  Then… it was forgotten.

I found two partially made mission style lamps that were to be for our living room.  They were about half completed.

I found three marquetry mirrors that are about 80% complete.  At one time I had made several of these mirrors, either for clients or friends, but apparently I had started a few more and did not complete them.

I found a business card holder that was only about 25% complete.  There were some small intricate parts that, at the time, I did not have the proper tools to make safely.

I found the parts of a chisel mallet that is about 75% complete.  I just need to finish gluing the handle to the head and then sand it and it will be completed.

Actually, come to think of it, my router table has never really been completed.  When I first started woodworking, I had ordered the plans for Norm Abram’s router table.  It is about 95% complete, but I never finished the large bottom drawer.  All of the wood is cut, and the drawer slides are sitting where the drawer would be.

Maybe my new years resolution this year should be to finish up the unfinished projects.  The next time I am bored, (which rarely happens these days), I can’t blame it on not having anything to do.