At six in the morning I poured the last of the kerosene into the heater and set it afire. The shop in the woods was cool and slow to heat, as it always is, and a dark monolith standing in the only clear island amidst a small ocean of sawdust was cold to the touch.
Today, the day the monolith Diorama sets sail to the north. This Sunday today. Up until 15 hours ago we didn’t know if today would happen, whether the delivery was a go or not, what small miracle would need to happen for all of this to fall into place, this cabinet made into something that will touch and affect so many and so much.
Maybe I’m making more of it than is really necessary. Then again, maybe not enough. I spoke a few days back about things taking on a life of their own out in this shop and boy, has it ever happened this time.
A few practical matters first.
I commented to JK on the phone last night “My God, I’m six feet tall and I can’t see over top of the darn thing.” Shown here without the front door, which is ten feet away in the prone position getting a stain bath.
It is, by all standards, a monolith. Dark indeed. Remember the sidewalls of this shop are 12 feet tall, so it may not look as imposing as it would in your living room (not that you’d want it there). I’ve got it sitting on some of those sliding coasters that have been hanging around the shop on a dusty shelf since Pterodactyls flew and might just send them along with the unit. Either because I don’t want them or they might just be needed to keep it from depressing somebody else’s concrete floor (I kid, it’s impressively heavy but not that much.)
The aforementioned door, just stained. Hoping that this stain will blend with everything else. Wood being weird and especially since it’s oak, the stain tends to do weird tricks in the light, different shades appear then change as you walk around it.
Like here. In bright light it looks like almost a natural finish, but it ain’t, not by a long shot. I nicknamed this hinge “Old Stiffy” since it came from the maker without the natural floppy action of its mates. Happens to work quite well with the door that will go on it, so all the better. The door needs to drop open and remain somewhat stationary.
All the mundane details. The screws I found to fit these hinges, for example. Only available in stainless steel. Chrome stainless, to be exact. Not exactly a match for bronzed metal. But a shot of black enamel paint and they blend in pretty well.
Or the turntable, which I dare not photograph less the natural order of the universe be disturbed. 26” in diameter, it sits atop a spinner mechanism that is 12” round. It’s heavy since it’s all hardwood, glued up from 3” strips. And since it’s hardwood it has a mind of its own and wants to warp and move and the whole apparatus has to be balanced and screwed and shimmed and bolted so that it spins (through two narrow as hell slots!) naturally, and smoothly. Delicate is not the word. Exasperating might be.
But spin it does, and slowly, as it should be for a display unit. Can’t really make it spin fast and you wouldn’t want to, since the pictures that will set upon it should be viewed slowly I should think. Deliberately. With critical eye. The point of this whole cabinet is to display the Diorama and make the unit fade into the background. I had to keep that in mind the whole time and it wasn’t easy.
The bottom drawer again.
JK asked about the costs involved in this thing, and I have a rough idea.The hardwood and plywood and stain and all the little stuff is probably in the range of $700 American. That’s materials. Easy.
The labor? Good lord. Look, I know how much my labor is worth (some of my colleagues would say “not a speckled damn”) and about how many hours are in this thing. It’s part and parcel of what I do, or should know how to do.
Usually pricing labor for a customer is a matter of figuring how many hours and hoping you’re correct about the time involved, multiplying by an ever variable labor rate per hour, gasping at the total and then wondering just how much this poor soul can afford to pay. That’s the way I do it, anyway. A better business practice would be to get the labor and be hard hearted no matter how much it is, probably throw a fat markup and profit factor on it as well. Such a practice on 60 hours of labor would put this thing at well over $5,000.00 for the total. Possibly more than that.
It’s a prototype, as JK keeps reminding me. It’s also a necessary part of her Masters Thesis.
I‘m not charging for labor. Have no desire to, because it’s my way of helping this project along. I haven’t the funds to contribute to her project in any other way. You charge meagerly for prototypes in this business in any case, and hope for repeats on final design (and I can assure you, there needs to be many design improvements from my plain offerings on this one).
And practical things again, it still needs to ship north. All the way to New York City, where it will be shipped again and reside in a museum. Can you imagine? Still haven’t wrapped my mind around that concept.
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The shipping. There’s no way to make a long story any shorter than to speak of something so ordinary as shipping a cabinet from the Carolina woods to the bright lights of NYC, and all the whys and all the soul that will go with it. Out of mind. Out of heart.
We will speak of this later today.
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