The Simple Things
My 7-year old, Alex, was really proud of the picture he drew for Mom. It had little animals made from a rubber stamp. It had an ocean made with blue crayon. You could tell he put a lot of effort into it. After Mom gushed all over it, he turns to me and says, “Dad, can we make a frame for my picture?”
That was about a month ago. We were getting ready for a vacation trip at the time and my time in the shop was pretty limited. I kept putting him off, knowing in my heart of hearts that I’d better work with him on this as soon as possible or it would be another “lost opportunity.”
Last night I was in the shop working on a small project (photo props for an 
article I’m working on for ShopNotes) when I recalled my son’s request. I spotted a nice poplar board leaning against my drill press cabinet. It was ½” thick. “Perfect,” I thought. So I ripped it into strips about 1½” wide, cut the strips to length, and formed half lap joints on the ends. (Download the article “Cut Perfect Half Lap Joints” here.) I don’t have a good dado stack and I only had eight cuts to make, so I just nibbled the joints away on the table saw. Then I used my shoulder plane to clean up the joints. Actually, my 13-year old was more than happy to help with that.
At this point, I called my 7-year old out to the shop and told him to bring his little wooden stool. So he promptly lugs his stool into the shop and sets it up by my workbench. I told my 13-year old to show Alex how to use the shoulder plane. Their eyes lit up. I called my wife out to the shop so share in this magical father/son moment. She crosses her arms, watches Alex’s little hands as he works the plane back and forth and says something like, “Well, I see you’ve got another one sucked in.” I don’t remember the exact words, but it was something like that. “Yep,” I said.
We stuck a glob of glue on the joints and he used his index finger to spread it around. He thought that was cool. Then we used some spring clamps to hold it together until the glue dries.
Tonight we get to plane the joints smooth, sand it, and paint it. I mean, HE gets to plane…