It's been cold, damn cold. R2-D2, my poor little kerosene shop furnace just can't keep up when it's this cold. I'm jonesing for some shop time and some sawdust in my nose and if old man winter would climb down off my back, I might get a few minutes to feed my addiction.
Insulating the shop walls will be high on my priority list this summer.
That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking and planning things for the shop. In the next few days I'm going to be posting about a Victorian furniture form I've found that I've fallen in love with and intend to place squarely onto my Shop Bucket List.
I have been thinking about how to make improvements here on the blog as well. Just the other day I went out and picked up a small point of view video camera. Sometimes, when writing or editing video, it's frustrating to me to not be able to show things, as they happen, how they happen, from my POV. At first I was thinking the camera would be a cool, and maybe better way to demonstrate some woodworking techniques.
This morning, I saw some video of a man on a surfboard. Instead of being taken from his point of view, the camera was mounted on the point of the board. I thought it was brilliant and it sparked a little idea. What if I were to attach the POV camera to the tool. It would even give me a chance to see my work from a new point of view.
This afternoon I bundled up and took to the shop for a quick experiment strapping the camera to the handle of a saw. I can do better, a better attachment to the tool, some modifications to cut out the vibration, turn the picture right side up.
I only played a little before I couldn't take the cold in my hands anymore. I quickly packed it up and ran inside to have a look and some of the video. Like I said, it's rough and thankfully quick (about one minute twelve seconds) but with some tweaking, this could be fun.
It's a unique perspective to be sure, but it made me a little queazy watching it.
A few years ago I attended a session by Roy Underhill at WIA. He was experimenting with this wearable camera that he strapped to his head. The camera was then projected to a large screen behind him. The idea was that you could see what was seeing. Nice idea in concept, but after a few minutes everyone in the audience started to get a little motion sickness. You don't realize how much your head and hands bop around while you're working.
Of course, I watched the video before reading the text. I thought you'd turned on a blue laser and were burning (smokelessly) cuts into a piece of wood. I was concerned you would damage your thumb. Then I read the text................
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