Well, well! I finally signed my lease and unloaded my poor little truck; I’m now a proud resident of Hager City, Wisconsin.  Just over the border from Red Wing, my cottage is bordered on two sides by cornfield, and nestled on a serene and purty bit of land. There are bee hives and apple trees! I now have a cottage to call my own.

The view westerly from my front door

In class, we worked on establishing flat backs and grinding bevels on plane irons and chisels. At least, that’s what my classmates did. As for myself, I spent an inordinate amount of time flattening one of my poor, sad old Craftsman socket chisels. They’ve served me well for the past year or so, and I foolishly thought I had lapped the backs flat already. Ultimately, the Starrett square tells no lies. I had plenty of work to do. I was mentally ordering a set of lie-nielsen chisels as I obsessively passed the chisel back and forth across 180 grit paper, spot sanding the humped chisel back. Then, hone on the 1000 grit wetstone over and over again. I probably spent two hours of valuable lab time, after already having considerable time on same task a couple of weeks ago. Meanwhile, my companions were busy doing same, and learning the wonders of the “hollow grind”. Tomorrow, my turn.