Spring in my step

Having the unwanted kitchen base unit sitting in the middle of the workshop finally got to me. It's been waiting for me to do something for weeks, and weeks before that ever since the boiler-induced kitchen tweak was finished, but I knew darn well what I wanted to do with it, and the large quantity of barely soiled worktop, would be hellish in the extreme. Viz: Moving the sliding compound mitre saw to the end wall flanked by worktop, and most importantly of all, lose the glory holes where everything gets lost. The latter heard their final death knell when my tapered plug cutters fell down there never to be seen again. Or rather never to be seen again until now, when they emerged blinking in the sunlight. Cursed with rust.

I can't tell you how thoroughly annoying it is to spend so much time removing rust from other tools only to see your own-from-new ones exhibit the dreaded lurgy. So I won't.

Anyway, I've been up to my ears in dust and spiders, clearing stuff out in order to move other stuff round while still retaining enough space to use the saw horses to cut the worktops. I've banged my shins on something hard and painful too many times to count and moved too many drawers from A to B and back to A to wish to remember. And I'm still not done. The drill press is hors de combat until I can decide where exactly I'm moving it to and bore the holes in the floor for the anchor bolts, I need to build two drawers to finish the base unit because (naturally) it happened to be one with false drawer fronts and I'm damned if I'm letting that space go to waste. Somehow all the bits and bobs that were in the glory holes now have to find storage elsewhere - that's why I hate jigs I think; how d'you store the blasted things? A decision has to be made as to whether I beef-up the power tool cupboard I've been moving from place to place in the workshop for about 10 years and put the lathe on it (which will dictate where the drill press goes to some extent) or finally part with it after all this time and see if there's room for it under the tender mercies of my father's care... In short it is hellish in the extreme as I thought.

Sigh. I keep telling myself it'll be worth it in the end, but I dunno...

So after all that I don't exactly have a spring in my step. But I do have two springs in my spokeshave...! Yes, got some functional replacements in the Preston adjustable mouth shave - and about 200 others to see me through my spring requirements for a lifetime. And then some lucky person in the future will probably dig out the plastic box with "Assorted Springs" written on it from some car boot sale box and have enough for their lifetime, and so on... Trouble is, looking again at the iron, well really it would benefit from a new one, and I think I'd have no trouble accommodating the thicker Hock one. But. Yeah, a but; no-one seems to stock the bally things. I may be moved to speak nicely to Mike Hancock at Classic Handtools once I double-check my measurements. Might also ask him who won the competition.

Finally, the mystery saw is, as I understand it from the Buck & Hickman catalogue, a "Shetack" saw frame, for sawing corrugated sheeting.