Old Before My Time...

Well, here I am, entering my 24th year on this earth...seriously, where did all of the time go? The depressing part is that this is the first time I am spending my birthday completely alone (no family or really close friends around to celebrate with me), and it is too soon in the school year to expect my classmates to really care or whatnot. So my birthday celebrations this year consisted of a nap, a trip to target, and Arby's/DQ for dinner/dessert.
All is not lost, necessarily, because next weekend I have plans to meet up with one of my best friends (and former best roommate ever) Zach. Zach is currently living about an hour's drive away from me and we intend to have a Mall of America man-date. We're awesome like that...

Enough about my birthday and more about my school learnings.

Things have been coming along really well. We have enough projects now as a class that we don't really have to fight each other for the same tools as much. I have my 2 graded chisels done. That was a trip; especially my first chisel. If you grind the tip of the chisel a certain way, you run a much higher risk of scorching the metal, and the only way to fix this is to grind the bevel flat until you get past the charred part and then re-grind your bevel to the proper angle. That takes a LOOOONG time. Guess what I did on my second to last grinding pass? Yep, I scorched my chisel and had to start all over again. Bummer.
Besides working on grinding my chisels, I was working on getting that block of Mahogany flat and square on all four sides. Here is a in-progress shot from before I finished that today:
  
That block was a pain in the ass. You think its flat, but its not square; you finally get it so that you think its right, the instructor says it isn't quite there yet. You take a few light shavings off, still not there yet. You take a few more light shavings off, still not there. You take more light shavings off, Too much...throw block against the wall in frustration. (that's when you go grind a chisel)

In power tools, I'm preparing stock for the various projects I will be doing later in the year. At this point, it is primarily just getting boards square and familiarizing yourself with the tools (which aren't so scary anymore). Since I am not allowed to take pictures in the power tool room, I can only show you the finished boards at my workbench.

 

Super-exciting, right?

The awesome part is that when I am being graded on the requirements for these assignments, I am getting close to, if not full points (4.5 out of 5).

Probably the most tense part of the day today was working on the band saw. I figured it wouldn't be too bad because I've spent a whole mess of time with band saws during my stint as a butcher, but the stakes (no pun intended) are certainly higher when woodworking. You are working with a much thinner blade (so that you can make the tight curves) and your mistakes cutting out a shape are much more detrimental.

 It still needs some work and I came really close to messing up my lines, but I'm determined to have it come out right.

Other than that, the Kids in the entire guitar building program are developing a plan to not shave their facial hair for the entirety of the school year. I called dibs on "the Lemmy"