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So I built this plant-stand

Discussion in 'LGBT Later in Life' started by greatwhale, Dec 5, 2013.

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  1. greatwhale

    greatwhale
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    Greeting folks!

    I have this small olive tree that I have taken care of for the past 5 years, eventually I want to transform it into a bonsai tree (it still has some growing to do first), call this a long, long-term project…

    This is a tree that requires a lot of light, and putting it on the floor does not give it sufficient exposure. As a consequence of being in a light-poor environment, there is leaf die-off and the intervals between the leaves become longer, turning the tree into a spindly mess that I have to fix in the spring. The ideal solution is to have a plant stand so that I can place it close to the window. I couldn’t find anything I liked in the stores, so I spent the free time that I had in the last 10 days building this plant holder from plans I found on the interweb. Turned out pretty nice if I do say so myself!

    [​IMG]

    But the reason I’m mentioning this here is not only because I want to show how I love building things, or working with wood, but because it was a good and therapeutic dose of reality, the kind that mechanics (like our “Boyfriend” here at EC) can appreciate.

    At work (and often at home) I spend all day in front of a computer, manipulating symbols and images. Ultimately there are physical implications to my work: mice will be treated with medications and sacrificed for science, but this will be done by others, elsewhere; I myself am quite removed from all of that. So it was nice to get my hands dirty (and my floor too!), doing something tangible for once.

    It’s in the muck of real things that one learns humility and the inadequacy of the platonic ideal. This hit home when I thought I could save money by reducing the amount of cuts ordered at the hardware store (a dollar per cut). I needed eight 8.25-inch pieces of 2x3, so I thought I would be clever and order two 33-inch pieces (each 33-inch piece can make 4 8.25-inch pieces-theoretically).

    The wood-workers among you probably realize my mistake. If you try cutting a 33-inch piece into four 8.25-inch pieces, you’d better compensate for the one-thirty-second of an inch that is removed by the saw (I didn’t). I had two perfect 8.25-inch pieces but when I overlaid them on top of the uncut remainder, instead of a flush fit, the remaining piece was one-16th of an inch too short!

    Some quick recalculation made me realize that if I wanted to keep the wood I had, two sides of this piece will need to be one-16th shorter. So, seen from the top, this piece is not “square”, but it’s not noticeable.

    Several lessons here:

    Mathematics applied to wood or anything else, like the fancy finance guys on Wall Street use, will lead to disaster. The nature of the wood, the saw, and the process are just as important.

    Because of this error, a lot of my time and effort went into correction mode. The thing about any piece of work is that one change leads to the adjustment of many others.

    Despite the flaws (and as the builder, I know each one) perfection isn’t necessary: good enough, is good enough!

    Caring for something and loving it (my tree!) makes you do crazy things (like building a plant stand) instead of sleeping in on a Sunday morning.

    Accepting reality is something we should all be striving to do here at EC…
     
    #1 greatwhale, Dec 5, 2013
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2013
  2. Rose27

    Rose27 Guest

    Its lovely greatwhale!
     
    #2 Rose27, Dec 5, 2013
  3. Richie.

    Richie.
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    Fantastic! Lovely work, I love bonsai trees too :slight_smile:
     
    #3 Richie., Dec 5, 2013
  4. Pete1970

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    Nice job !! Looks great

    And nice life lesson
     
    #4 Pete1970, Dec 5, 2013
  5. Ticklish Fish

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    bahaha, this reminds me to water my indoor plants since I can't remember and I don't even know if they have enough light, I think some of my plants are dying from the base with brown color lol

    but nice job whale
     
    #5 Ticklish Fish, Dec 5, 2013
  6. Tightrope

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    Impressive!!! And where do you find the time and where did you acquire the skills to do such quality work?
     
    #6 Tightrope, Dec 5, 2013
  7. BMC77

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    Nice looking plant stand!

    I'm sort of envious about people who can build things like that. I keep thinking I wish I could build bookcases so I could be liberated from Particle Board Hell. (Plus I'd like to escape the always lovely decision: do I buy new, and go through the pain of assembly? Or do I buy at Goodwill, get something already assembled, but something that already has lots of wear, possibly sagging shelves, and may not be a whole lot cheaper than new at Target?)

    Has your tree ever coughed up an olive? I assume not since it's not really the right climate, but one never knows. On a neighboring property there is actually a fig tree in an orchard area that--I guess--should not be happy with this climate, but has survived decades, and produces figs at least most summers.
     
    #7 BMC77, Dec 5, 2013
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2013
  8. greatwhale

    greatwhale
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    Thank you for the compliments!

    Tightrope: I used to be a professional draftsman in a former life, so dimensions and thinking in all three of them comes easy, as for how to do it: the interweb, of course (all hail Google the source of everything!) :grin:

    BMC77: I really tried to find something cheap, but to no avail. Seems that plant-stands are just not a sought-after item...I already built a storage shed about 3 years ago, so this was relatively easier! The plans called for oak, but I chose knot-free pine instead as it is easier to work with and way cheaper.

    Nope, no olives :icon_sad:, the climate and the light just don't allow it. It's such a slow-grower, but every now and then it gets the gumption going and a whole bunch of branches appear. I leave it outside as soon as there is no danger of frost and bring it back in for the winter.
     
    #8 greatwhale, Dec 5, 2013
  9. ormanout

    ormanout
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    You are incredible. There can be insight in just about everything we do, see or experience, if we simply take time to analyze it. And....you do that very well.
     
    #9 ormanout, Dec 5, 2013
  10. arturoenrico

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    Great work! I too need to busy doing something with my hands but my talents lie elsewhere; right now I've been baking awesome bread; mostly for my son and lesbian landladies.
     
    #10 arturoenrico, Dec 5, 2013
  11. greatwhale

    greatwhale
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    That's fantastic, you'll have to take a picture and show us! It's been years since I've done that: the smell of freshly baking bread that permeates the house is beyond belief!

    It's so important to keep yourself busy in this transition period; keeps one relatively sane and, as above, grounded in reality (that dough will either rise or it won't, there's no fooling the yeasty beasties)!
     
    #11 greatwhale, Dec 5, 2013
  12. Ruprect

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    Very nicely done. Bonsai is a neat hobby if you have the patience.
     
    #12 Ruprect, Dec 5, 2013
  13. BMC77

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    The only problem is how fast freshly baked bread vanishes...

    When I first baked bread (when I was about 20) it was sobering how much work one put in only to have one of the two loaves vanish seemingly within seconds of coming out of the oven. I remember more than once the baking taking place in the later evening, and at the finish time my mother was technically in bed. But she'd suddenly appear after the bread came out...

    I still sometimes bake bread, although I haven't done it much recently. Probably won't do it at all in the near future--the oven is kaput.
     
    #13 BMC77, Dec 5, 2013
  14. Choirboy

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    Beautiful! My efforts to do that sort of thing end up very useful but sadly unattractive. I seem to have inherited my maternal grandparents' drive towards all things "utilitarian". Grandpa was the kind of guy whose fireplace mantle shrine to the Blessed Virgin (ah, those old-school Catholics) was graced by candles that he made himself by melting down all the old candle stubs and pouring the wax into beer cans with the tops sliced off (because the ridges in soup cans made the candles harder to remove, in case you're wondering). The results were varying awful colors, but cast the same glow as something from Partylite, so they didn't care.

    I also remember him wallpapering the kitchen with some cheap striped wallpaper, and my mother showed up as he was preparing to use some scrap or other over the archway, with the stripes going horizontal instead of vertical, as the rest of the room was. She had a hell of a time convincing him that it was a problem, because he kept saying "But this piece fits perfectly, and then I don't have to waste anything!" The one time that fell on its face was when he went to Germany to visit his family, and Grandma decided to paint the hallway by pouring together all the leftover paint so there was enough to cover the walls. The resulting army green color was even too much for him to bear, and he repainted it as soon as he saw it!
     
    #14 Choirboy, Dec 6, 2013
  15. biAnnika

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    Well firstly, Mr. Whale, it is a beautiful plant stand. Would you care to try your hand at a liquor cabinet me and my partner? :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

    I completely agree with the notion of the importance of getting your hands dirty with something real. I too work in the abstract realm of computers most of my day. But it's when I take a walk, build a swing, or cook a meal (real food...I never used pre-packaged crap) that I connect with the real world. And that is such an important stabilizer for me: it grounds, it relaxes, it ties me to the things that really matter.

    But I must correct you on one point. A cook is only as good as her ingredients...and a mathematical solution is only as good as its inputs. So I would correct your statement disparaging mathematics to: "Mathematics applied to anything, without sufficient knowledge and full consideration of the application domain, will lead to disaster."
     
    #15 biAnnika, Dec 6, 2013
  16. Lindsay11

    Lindsay11
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    I admire your skill and your character. I couldn't build something like that if my life depended on it.
     
    #16 Lindsay11, Dec 6, 2013
  17. greatwhale

    greatwhale
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    Thank you for the compliment, bA, a liquor cabinet, however, would be way above my pay-scale I'm afraid. :dry:

    Your correction to my mathematical statement is duly noted and accepted, the point I intended was that mathematics, on its own, without due regard to the reality of things can lead us astray...(*hug*)

    Lindsay11, you would be surprised what you could in fact do...if your life depended on it! :icon_wink
     
    #17 greatwhale, Dec 6, 2013
  18. biAnnika

    biAnnika
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    Silly Whale! I wasn't looking for a gift. Of course we would *pay* you for the cabinet! Materials + n%...something like that? *hugs*
     
    #18 biAnnika, Dec 6, 2013
  19. greatwhale

    greatwhale
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    LOL, I meant more than beyond plant-stands, my competence level drops to zero! :grin:
     
    #19 greatwhale, Dec 7, 2013
  20. mnguy

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    Very nice, man! It's cool to make something like that to get just the size, color, etc that you want for your purpose and space. I've done the same thing not accounting for saw kerf and know how annoying that is, but we always find a way to make it work. I hope the plant likes its new home and additional light.

    I have power tools for most of the work I do, but I still use a basic saw and miter box (link below) for so many cuts on trim and soft woods and it goes pretty quick with smooth cuts. At a dollar per cut it will pay for itself pretty quickly and you could bring it to the store and cut the wood in the parking lot to fit in your vehicle if needed and then make the final cuts at home. Happy woodworking! :thumbsup:
    Stanley Deluxe Miter Box with Saw-20-600D at The Home Depot
     
    #20 mnguy, Dec 7, 2013
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