SHOP PROJECTS
” Jigs, fixtures, Band-Aids, and the forgotten brilliance of a working shop.”
A real shop runs on jigs, fixtures, and Band-Aids, the mundane, the forgotten, the remade, the lost, and the rediscovered. The best secrets hide under a layer of dust until the day you need them, and by then you’ve already built three new ones and misplaced those too. Some jigs are pure genius, little works of physics and art that make the impossible possible and the dangerous safe. They’re custom, precise, and part of the cost equation nobody ever sees. And the funny thing? They’re often one‑hit wonders. Built for a single moment of brilliance, used once, then shelved forever. That’s an expensive secret sitting in the dust. Then comes that special kind of frustration, the *Screw this* moment. You spend a whole day building a jig to end all jigs. A masterpiece. A tool so perfect it deserves a spotlight. You use it once, feel like a genius, then proudly place it on a high shelf where the world ignores it and the dust claims it like treasure. Months pass. Maybe years. Then one wonderful day in the Knotty Dave workshop, you hit a problem and think, “didn’t I make something for this?” I look up. There it is. I climb the ladder, brush off the bug trails, and hold it like a relic. And damn, it’s perfect. Straight into action like it never left. A lot of pride goes into these overly special jigs. Real pride. Genius‑level problem‑solving that nobody ever witnesses. It’s a private satisfaction, the kind only a craftsman understands. And on the rare occasion I show (my wife) Marie, full of energy, holding up this jig of wonders like I’ve just solved physics itself… she looks at me, we share a moment of silence, and she says: “Yup.”
The end.
Taken in the shop, Hand plane
