![[projects/pantry build log/Index]] # Milestone 2: A collection of mistakes Okay, so once again, things start to fall apart here. You see I had a pretty good idea of how to complete the shelves, the design was simple and overall, not to complicated. The hardest part was cutting the corners off with a circular saw. But the cabinet, I had no clue how the drawers would act like, depth and look. What I did know is that I wanted was a garbage and recycling hidden pull out drawer, so started their, determined the size and looked at what I had left over space wise. After going to Home Depot and grabbing some MDF project panels, this is what I ended up with.  This looks okay, but my god was it a mess. The whole thing was cut with a circular saw, and as I've said, I'm not very skilled with a circular saw. Every panel ended up being slightly off of each other, and the tops not entirely flat. You can even see that's not perfectly flat as the counter-top is slopping oddly. Despite this, I decided to forge ahead, because next I was onto the pieces that were fascinating to me, the faces for the drawer boxes. I had decided to continue using the same Douglas Fir wood that I had used for the shelves, at this point the only tools I had was the circular saw, clamps, wood glue and the biscuit joiner. I also got a router for edge board work that I hadn't used yet, but planned to use. So, using the same techniques for joining the shelves, (and all the same mistakes) I started building some drawer panels, these panels ranged from 26" to 16" long, and about 30" tall. Starting with building the single panel for the garbage drawer, I cut some Douglas fir boards down to size, cut the biscuit holes, applied the glue and clamped. Previously, the mistakes I made with the shelves didn't have much impact, the precession required wasn't as high as what was needed here, and honestly I was still kinda flying by the seat of my pants. I also wasn't picky enough with my choice of wood, I ended up a couple of times with wood that was cracked in places I didn't notice, or bowed slightly. These issue would have me redoing the piece in its entirety. Here is an example of one of my worst tragedies, ignore the foot and dust, we'll talk about that later, the dust, not the foot. Oh, but also flip-flops are not a good woodworking footwear, only decided to wear closed toe shoes after dropping a particularly heavy piece of wood corner first onto my foot. Ouch. You can see that the wood is pretty warped, it didn't look to bad, but once glued together, the pressure of the clamps plus the already warped bits really showed off how much I fucked up here, oh well.  Now, during this Milestone, I would take multiple weeks off of this project, even months before coming back. This was due to many reasons, but the main reasons was depression and lack of motivation, real killer those two. As I would plan and build these pieces, I would keep finding that I messed up on a prior part that was now causing pains, or find that what I had made was shit. I quickly become disheartened at my progress, and started loosing steam. After numerous mistakes, I revisited my plan to build this with only a circular saw, while it was definitely possible, I'm not nearly good enough woodworker to get it done without something like a table saw. I was pretty reluctant to spend more money on tools for wood working, not because I didn't have the means to do so. Because I tend to pick up hobbies, spend money on supplies and then never touch them again. You could say, that's very ADHD of you Ben, and I would say, well yes, I am a diagnosed combined ADHD, not Social media or self diagnosed, but like, I have prescriptions drugs from a real doctor, diagnosed. <details> <summary>ADHD Tangent</summary> <p> This was a pretty recent diagnosis late in the year of 2024, but I had started to suspect in like 2022 after starting on a bit of a self discovery journey during a particularly low point of my life during the deep COVID years. Funnily enough, it was TikTok that made this really click for me, you see their algorithm is wild. After a while, maybe due to the content I enjoy or the way I browse, it diagnosed me with ADHD. Soon enough TikTok started shoving people talking about what it's like living with ADHD to my feed[^2]. Some of those post made me feel very seen, it helped me put into perspective the moments of my life where I felt out of place. I was at first a bit cautious to confirm that I wasn't just agreeing with very superficial common things that can be seen as ADHD but can also have other causes, like Anxiety and depression. Things like, forgetfulness, inattention, hyperactivity are all symptoms are pretty common, in those with and without ADHD. I'll probably write more about this and how being Dyslexic affects the diagnosis and other ADHD things, and maybe I'll make it public. </p> </details> Anyway, all of this was to say that I now know I need to kinda watch myself before spending good money on a hobby. I've found that the key for me is to work through the honeymoon phase, this is when I'm just picking something new up and getting a flood of dopamine. Past this point I'll ask myself, “do I want to continue, and why?”, I do this so that I can take time and really think about what I enjoy about the hobby. Was it just the initial dopamine release and now it's over? Was this a pure curiosity driven interest and now that I've experienced it, is it worth continuing? Or is there something there that I truly enjoy and get something of value in return. ### What's so great about woodworking Okay, so what is so fun about woodworking, what are my reasons to continue? **The breath of projects and uses is vast**, you can go from building chairs and cabinets, to sculptures, bowels and truly anything you can manage. There is always a new skill to learn and even those that work for their whole loves can still learn more. A hobby with great depth is something I really enjoy. I already have thoughts for more than a couple projects, a linear clock, module cat climbing wall, etc. **Building something with your hands is very rewarding**, while I work with my hands all day writing software, it's not really the same. Yes, being able to build software and interact with computers can be very rewarding and a very, very powerful tool in today's society. However, there is something about being able to not only see, but feel and physically interact with your own progress. The ability to not view your results in a quantitative, but also qualitative measurements is very satisfying. Not saying you can't do the same with code, you definitely can, for example programmers often say that bad code has a smell to it. **An artistic outlet**, there aren't many outlets I have for artist expression, it used to be websites. But lots of the time the last thing I want to do after working at my programming job for 8hrs is to read and write more code. What I find I really enjoy, is to modify the surrounding environment, this being my house, started with painting, removing a partial closet wall to open it up, etc. Wood working really opens up these opportunities. **Working with really cool tools**, this is also something I experience with my job. There are tools out there that can be such a pleasure to work with! Truly, the best tools are those you can ***feel*** the effort that went into making, just by holding or finding that the effort to use is it, is effortless. The best tools should never stand in your way, only enhance your existing skills, the best of the best tools are designed to fix problems you wouldn't have even thought about, and maybe never will. But above all, specifically for woodworking tools, you must learn how to respect their sheer power to cut you down to the bone in milliseconds, be wary and think every action through before putting them in use. Sick. **I can save lots of money**, is a lie I told myself, furniture is expensive, especially the stuff that looks and feels nice. Yeah, wood can be expensive, but a couple of hundred dollars of good wood is still cheaper them thousands of dollars on good furniture. So after slamming my head against a curved piece of wood with large gaps and uneven edges, I bit the bullet and got a Table saw… and a table router… and some better dust collection gear. My garage was starting to become real dusty, and my shot-vac with its shitty little broken dust collector wasn't cutting it.  The new table saw, powerful thing, along with it, I bought a tourniquet and some blood clotting packets. I know these wires and cords may look a little odd, but it's pretty awesome. My shot vac is set up in a way so that whenever I turn on a power tool connected to the power strip, the shot-vac also turns on. This allows me to retain my sanity, no longer will I have to either run back and forth between the tool and shot-vac turning it on or off. Or endure the insanely annoying high pitch sucking noise it produces while setting up the next piece to cut.  I also turned the old fucked up cabinet into a table for my router table, it's even got some wheels and a handle, so I can move it around. Don't mind the mess, during this time I was reorganizing and cleaning. On the left, you can also see a planer that I got from some guy in Salem. Funny story, he plugged it in, then ran a board through to show me it worked. Oh my god, it's the loudest fucking thing in existence, I wish I had ear protection at that moment so bad. After he was done feeding it through, he turned to me and said “that's why my hearing is so bad”, like what man? Why do this to me? 😭 At least I got it for a good price, but felt like I also paid in lost decibels.  You died, [[4. Goto 3|try again]]