The workshop is coldest first thing Monday. I get in around 7:15, boil water for tea, and read the weekend's orders on paper before I turn on any machine. There's usually eight to twelve new orders queued from Saturday and Sunday. I sit with them for maybe ten minutes.
The first thing I make
The oldest order always goes on the bench first. If someone ordered on a Friday and got a "3 to 5 business days" note, then Monday morning is their day. This one rule has never been broken. I've missed a lot of things in seven years running this, but not the queue order.
This morning it was a Custom Walnut Love Birds Sculpture for a couple in Portland — MICHAEL & SARAH, EST. 2024. A first anniversary. The wife is buying it as the "wood" gift for the traditional first-year exchange. She wrote in the notes: "he doesn't know it's coming, please don't put a return address that gives it away." I love this note. I get one of these every week.
The tools that are always on
Compressor for dust extraction. CNC control PC. Two Anglepoise lamps over the bench. Kettle. Nothing else needs power. The router doesn't come on until 10 a.m. because our neighbour above works nights.
The rest of the morning is the roughing pass on the two birds — the CNC does the ball heads, the wing indentations, and the tree-branch perch as one continuous piece. Twenty-two minutes. Then I stop the machine, hand-carve the beak triangles myself with a small chisel, because the machined ones look too geometric.
Lunch, and the afternoon queue
Lunch is usually a bowl of noodles from downstairs and I eat it standing near the window. The afternoon is engraving day — the names, the dates, the tiny heart at the base of every pedestal. The burn-engraving tool leaves a real char, not a printed mark, so each name takes seven or eight minutes of focused work. That's when the day slows down and starts to feel meditative.
By six o'clock, if it's been a normal Monday, five pieces will be finished and drying on the oil rack overnight. Boxing happens Tuesday morning. That's how a workshop of one person keeps up.