Top Yourself

Man, what a super crazy couple of days. It was the epitome of crunch time this past Thursday and Friday. I knocked out my bench hook dovetails, my scrapers AND I spent around 9 hours on Thursday alone sanding and shaping and sanding some more to get my scarf joint from looking like this:

to this:

completed bench hook

I sweat through my work gloves, hence the finger tape.

finished product

golly, that sure is smooth

curved scrapers are a godsend.

Good enough for a 90%

I thought I was going to have Friday to be mostly a free work day; put a few finishing details on some already graded projects or do some non-essential projects that weren't going to be graded but would still be beneficial to have in the future; like the sanding stick or rounding off the sharp edges on my push-sticks (The Ripper and Pushy McPusherton)

But that is never how anything works around here. It turns out that there was to be one final project due on Friday that the instructors decided would be included in the grading of this class...shaping a guitar heel for a neck reset mock up:

My understanding of the purpose of this assignment was to be used to weed out those last few people in class based on time management and prioritizing their work. I was in a bit of a crunch on this project because I didn't realize it was going to be due at the end of the Friday workday when I started it late morning. I wanted to complete my sanding stick project first because my instructor said it would be really helpful to have when doing the shaping of that neck heel (he was absolutely correct). I put some undue stress on myself because I ended up finishing that neck heel with about an hour and a half left in class to spare. I used that extra time to do all of those finishing touches I mentioned earlier like making my push sticks ergonomic and sanding down my chisel ledge to the correct height.
Funny story when I was sanding down that chisel ledge. I accidentally sanded down too far on one end because pencil lines are really difficult to see on mahogany, and I needed to do a bit of chiseling to get it to the correct depth again...oh karma.
A minor annoyance, yes, but I don't worry about it because I'm finally done with the class and I'm 95% positive I will be continuing in the program, unlike some unfortunate members of my class whose fate still hangs in the balance...

As a means of celebration, a couple of my classmates and I went out with the intention of seeing "Judge Dredd" at the local movie theater, except when we arrived, "Judge Dredd" wasn't showing...so we saw "House at the End of the Street" instead. Not a classic, or even a good movie, by any stretch, but it was an excuse to watch Jennifer Lawrence be hot for an hour and a half. I'm not going to complain.

yep.