This week, true to form, I have maintained the process of constant trial and error. The art of making hand crafted furniture resides in the fact that you are in a constant dance with the materials. You can craft a mold to exacting specifications but the fact of the matter is that you are human and as such cannot be exact. The material finds these imperfections and does what it is supposed to do. So if you have a bump in your mold, you will have a bump in your chair.
I have been doing this dance all week.
So as you remember I was starting on my second molding of the legs and arms. I had to shave some of the bottom mold piece (about 4.5 cm) in order to get the legs to have the proper angle.Here is the piece fresh from the kiln.
The next step was to cut the armature into the two properly sized halves. I was struggling a bit with just measuring and lining it so I found a piece of wood, drilled a pencil size hole in it with a center point 9 cm up and voila! Made life much easier.
So here are the two legs, unfinished as of yet, but ready for the trimming.
Unfortunately, the chair still wanted to dance a little and apparently my mold was not tight enough. Here you can see a little split. This is not a big deal. It just takes a little glue, some clamps and an hour in the oven. And I did this. The problem arose, however, that instead of mixing the glue at a ratio of 1:5 I went ahead and mixed it at 5:1. I stopped working on the legs after that.
So onto something else. I needed the break. Here is the metal sheet that I bent a lifetime ago. The next step is to cut OSB board to match the legs so that I can brace the metal sheet in the right shape for the vacuum bag.
Here is one of the OSB struts.
And here is the vacuum mold assembled. It was at this point that I went upstairs to cut veneer. The last time (knock on wood) that I have to cut veneer. The good news is that I am done cutting veneer now.
The bad news is that on the final slice, literally, the last cut I had to make, the x-acto knife jumped my metal guide and I dug into my thumb with full force. (I am debating to tell the whole gruesome story...ok I will :)So I swear loudly (sorry Glenda) and immediately grab the base of my thumb thinking that where I am squeezing has to be near where the blood comes from and this will help. I am not sure now if I was correct or even accurate but I think it helped. My mind went into a kind of auto-pilot and I started out of the veneer room into the metal shop. I don't know why I headed that way, I think I was looking for an adult. It is amazing how in those situations, you pretty much revert back to your bassist instincts. Thankfully an adult found me and Nils, ever the hero, says "Follow me Tom."
I almost asked him to carry me.
We ran through the metal shop, my mind happy to have the reprieve from thinking, and hustled up the stairs into the office next to the wood shop. By this point, the under toe created by my wake had attracted three more professors who, for lack of being able to assist, just wanted to see it. Everyone is a doctor in a wood shop. The shop tech, Henrik brings me to the sink. At this point, I have enough adrenaline running through me that all I can think of is that it doesn't hurt and bandage it so I can get back to work.
"Just bandage it and I'll get back to work." I tell Henrik who then pulls my finger apart.
"Oh no. You are going to the hospital Tom."
I go over to the sink and rinse the wound off, as well as my hand, when my phone starts ringing in my pocket. My professors laugh because they know that my phone only rings as a result of one person. Megan is calling. "She knows you've hurt yourself." Says Nils.
"Sit down Tom. You want some water?" This is Henrik.
Sit down? Water? I'm sorry did I have a fainting spell at Mr. Beauregard's promenade? I seriously just wanted to hurry this up. I have material to attend to.
Henrik pulled a tourniquet (wow spelled that right the first try!) from the first aid kit and making sure my thumb was aligned with its, until recently fully attached, tip he proceeded to wrap the wound with the tension usually reserved for tuning a piano. After the third time around with the tourniquet, I knew he was cutting off the circulation. He kept wrapping and I appreciated the fact that my finger was no longer bleeding but it was also turning a very deep shade of red. He wrapped it a few more times, tied it off with a square knot, and then just to be sure wrapped it again and tied another square knot.
"Ok Tom, Erling will drive you to the hospital."
I got into Erling's car and we chatted congenially on the way to the medic. I was trying to maintain my toughness and show that wounds don't bother me. I must have said "I've done worse" about 15 times. It became a mantra. Erling talked to me about the area we were driving through. He apparently had grown up on this Island. Lorteøen, which literally translated means Shit Island. It was originally a massive pile of sewage that was cast off from Copenhagen. Eventually, and I am not sure of how it became solid enough or tolerable enough to build on, people colonized it. He went on to describe his youth there and the details of where he lived but I was having trouble focusing since I was paying more attention to the deep mauve my thumb had become and poking at it, trying to revive any sensation at all.
"Uh Erling, my finger is turning purple."
Erling helped undo one of the knots at a stop light. It was enough to at least relax me until we got to the hospital. At one point, when my bravado had slipped, I voiced a concern about losing the thumb. I think Erling thought I was referring to the injury but I was in fact talking of the now blue-black scion attached to the side of my hand.
We arrived at the hospital on Shit Island and Erling helped me check in. Now I am no stranger to emergency rooms but Denmark has socialized medicine and I was praying that there would not be too long of a wait for me. Not because I was in pain, but more out of concern for the total lack of sensation all together. I walked into the waiting room after giving the nurse my drivers license, and my heart sank a bit. Sprawled out in a chair, in full soccer uniform complete with cleats and shin guards, was a man with a bloody bandage wrapped around his head and streams of gore running down his face.
"I think you are after him." Erling laughed.
I sat down on the chair, and Erling made his exit after giving me his number and telling me to call when I need a ride.
The wait was not so bad. I was thankful when the murse (male nurse for the uninitiated) took off the wrapping. He laughed and commented about how my thumb was black. Now, we have all had an appendage fall asleep before. And we all know how sometimes, if left long enough it can be painful as the limb comes back to life. Take that feeling and add to it the now realized pain of a deep gash. It throbbed a little. Then it throbbed a lot.
"When was your last tetanus shot?" the Murse
Awesome.
It was over ten years ago. And socialized medicine or not, I don't want lock jaw. And yes, I had forgotten how long those needles are. The murse injected me, cleaned the thumb a bit, rebandaged it, loosely, and sent me back to the waiting room to wait for a doctor.
In about an hour, a nurse took me back into a room. She was a gentle lady who turned the faucet on gently and gently asked me if I would wash out the wound. I held the backside of my hand under the flow hoping that the runoff would be enough to clean out the gash.
"Would you like me to do it?" she asked grabbing a plastic cup. Now I don't know what she had intended for that little plastic cup but I could not come up with an answer that didn't involve her somehow hurting me worse than if I did it. Nurse philosophy tends to be that no matter how painful it is, if it is done quickly it is better.
"No thanks...I'll do it properly."
I grabbed hold of a sturdy metal bar with my right hand and closed my eyes. I fed my hand into the water and focused all my conscious mind on that little stream. I pulled my hand back until I could feel the steady trickle pulling the flaps of skin apart and irrigating the wound. I gritted my teeth and held back the gasp as long as I could. When I finally felt like I had been in the water for an hour I pulled my hand back and looked at the nurse with my very best wounded puppy face.
"I'm sorry but you'll need to do that again."
In fact I did it two more times. Joy.
The nurse then brought me to the bed and I laid back into it. She had placed a giant gauze or something under my hand to catch the blood/water etc...you know it looked a lot like those pee pads you buy when you are house training your dogs. Blue underneath. Absorbent. Within a few moments the doctor came in. The nurse had already made the statement that I was going to need stitches prior to his entrance but the doctor wanted to try to glue it shut. He was a nice enough guy. About my age, maybe a little older. He was Kurdish and had fled to Denmark after the Iraqis came. What threw me was he was the first doctor I have ever seen in a mesh t-shirt. I mean it was not a full on fishnet, but it was gauzy and waffle print so it seemed to be mesh. I am not sure as to whether or not I could see flesh beneath. I would have inspected more, but the doctor began to try to stop the blood flow. He did this by squeezing the wound with incredible force.
Explosions went off in my mind. Bright red nuclear explosions that burned away all thought. As the flames dissipated, my mind, wonderful savior that it is, created the image of my thumb as the doctor forced the two halves in such a way as to shear them apart from one another. This, of course, was not happening but my lovely imagination told me it was imminent.
He held on for about 5 minutes, squeezing and squeezing. The balls of his thumbs pushing into the ball of mine. His pointer and middle fingers pushing against the nail (which I had also cut about 3/4 of the way across.) After this medieval form of torture had ended, he unwrapped the finger and readied the "human glue" the nurse had put beside him and stopped.
"It doesn't want to stop bleeding." Said Dr. Waffleshirt, a little confused.
"See. Always listen to the nurse." Said the nurse, gently.
"I think I am going to have to use stitches." said the doctor.
The doctor rolled his chair across to the medicine chest, a move I always thought Dentists had a patent on, and gathered the local anesthetic from the Nurse. I asked for a general but they thought a local would do.
The first shot was excruciating. The needle went in just to the right of the thumb's metacarpal and he dug it around as he pumped in the numbing agent. I'm pretty sure he scratched bone. The second shot was not as bad, but the memory of the first shot was still fresh so there was amplification. The doctor leaned back and let the drug do it's job.
He threaded a curved needle that looked like a heavy duty false eyelash. On the first stitch, I could feel pretty much everything. I could feel the needle puncture the flesh on the side of my thumb, and I could feel the release as it punched through the interior wall of the wound. I could then feel it pierce through the opposite wall and burrow its way to freedom on the opposite side of the wound. I also felt the doctor tie the knot. And this was all, once again, aided by my wonderful imagination which, despite my eyes being closed, gave me a complete movie of the whole experience. Including the newly invented first person experience of the needle-cam.
"Um Doctor. I could feel everything."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. I mean I can handle it and all but yeah, I could feel that." I was lying...I couldn't handle the needle-cam again.
The doctor kicked over to the medicine chest again and rolled back with a deftness that comes from total familiarity. He came back with another ampule of stuff and a needle. I didn't watch as he shot me up again but it was no where near as bad as the first time. And the fourth shot, well that was nothing. After a few seconds I had to look down because I thought that I had a bandage on my thumb but there was nothing there. The drugs were working. My thumb had, however, swollen to a squash like shape as a result from all the fluid introduced subdermally.
"Ok doc. Have at it. Can't feel a thing." I gave my first real smile since the knife jumped the guide.
The last two stitches went off without a problem.
The doctor gave me some information on keeping it clean (in Danish) and I called Erling for my ride.
"Is that it?" I asked the nurse.
"Yup you're all done."
I walked out the doors marveling at free health care. What should have been a nightmare of insurance forms and international phone calls was as easy as going to a movie; and cheaper. I walked out into the cool night, past the doctors and nurses smoking on their breaks and laughed at how they maintained job security. I sat on a bench and waited in front of the hospital on Shit Island for Erling to come take me back to school.
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