With the help of some friends.....

Once again, I am so fortunate to have people in my life willing to help me when it's time for heavy lifting! The school is expanding, and I've spread out into the bay next-door. 

Humble beginnings; there is a TON of work to be done!

 Eric, Lupe and Denny volunteered to help move the heavy stuff - and wow, they knocked everything out in half the time I thought it would take.

Meanwhile, Denny and I have started making workbenches - the new side of the shop will have some individual benches, set up in a classroom-like lay-out. Here's the first one I built, to test it out. 

Dennis, the instructor in the current router class, thinks it's a sweet bench, and he's pretty much a woodworking genius, so - once it passed his approval - we started making the rest. 

 These benches will get a lot of use (and abuse!) so we wedged all of the mortise and tenon joints...

 a lot of work, but it's worth it!

These benches will last a lifetime!

The tops go on the benches today, and although it feels like it took forever to build these, we really only spent about 35 hours building 8 benches. I'm all about the effeciency  of building things - we knocked these out with the help of jigs and tool set-ups that allowed us to cut mortise and tenons very quickly.

Here's how I felt at the end of the day, when all eight benches were assembled:

Speaking of friends - check out this video of some very helpful friends, helping with a barn raising in Ohio.

Now THAT is team work!

A big thank-you to Eric, Lupe and Denny for helping me move - I can't tell you how much I appreciate your hard work!