For the past couple weeks, I’ve been hunkered in the bunker out here in the Virginia Highlands, only partly because a) it was Thanksgiving week and b) we got a foot-and-a-half of snow earlier in the week. No, the culprit behind the current spate of sedentary-ness has been the tasks of c) reviewing and revising the completed text, and d) selecting, editing and captioning the approximately 450 images that will impart great richness to “Virtuoso: The Tool Cabinet and Workbench of Henry O. Studley.”
The chapter inventorying the tool cabinet and its contents is slated for – at this point – more than 275 photographs! Because I will be sending the FINAL version to Chris a week from Monday I will be “nose to the grindstone” until that occurrence.
Some weeks ago, as I had the written manuscript in its final stages, I confessed to Chris that my enthusiasm for the project was flagging a bit and I was frankly pretty tired. His reply took me by surprise. Paraphrased, he exhorted me with the dictum that no book project is really finished until some time after the point where its contributors want to put it on the table, pile manure on it, whip out the butane lighter and set it on fire.
Given the current usage of the wood stove here in the cabin, I don’t need no stinking lighter.
— Don Williams, www.donsbarn.com & www.studleytoolchest.com
To scrape up that schnoz of your’s too much.
*Don’t scrape up…
For what it’s worth, Don, I heartily thank you again for the work you are doing in writing this book. The tool chest has been a major inspiration to many more woodworkers than I, and I cannot encourage you enough in your efforts. I have often found the last 10% of a project harder to complete than the first 90%, but it is that final push that separates top quality from mediocrity. When you need inspiration, put your hands on “the bench” (yours) and appreciate the effort studley put in his own work. I wish you the best in yours. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Graham T. Burbank
Keep the faith, Don, we’re all pulling for you. I am sure I am not the only one looking forward to buying this book. We appreciate your hard work and dedication.
I am so feeling you! It is 5.30am here in Heidelberg and I have been up for an hour putting the “finishing touches” on my dissertation which seems to have taken the best of the last two, three weeks. I have been at the “pile of manure”-stage about six times in the last three months, so I guess it can go right to the printer. Thanks for the great blogging everyone at the Lost Art Press which has kept me going through the last couple years with “proxy woodworking” when I didn’t have the time to go to my basement shop to make shavings and had to chew my way through piles of Indonesian documents about military reform!
I am expecting a great book. Take your time and make it what you want.
Any chance for a pop-out book version? 🙂