PB Cohen Creations

I will not show a photo of my bench, in part because I do a lot of work away from home, and in part because my personal space is way too messy to even work on right now. So sad. Part of that I can blame on photography, as I am ONCE AGAIN trying to solve that puzzle. Siiiiiiiiigh. But I can't blame all of it on the collection of five (5) lamps currently gathered around the light box (with one more about to be corralled into the fight). Mostly, I just can't seem to get myself organized these days. Too bad I'm the kind of person who appreciates a relatively clean surface on which to work.

Still, I take pretty good care of tools, and tend to put them away when I'm finished using them. Except for four general types of tools, which I use often enough (and because I'm a lazy slug) to just leave out all the time:

1) A ruler, obviously. I have a six-inch (15.24 centimeter) steel ruler that makes me very happy. Don't laugh at me.

2) Sawing tools, obviously, even though I bonk my head on the bench pin almost every time I add a new lamp to my Photography Command And Control Center. (Um, the power strip is under the bench.) Bench pin, saw frame, saw blades.

3) Files, obviously. Very course flat, course half round, and a half round needle file. Usually.

4) A sheet metal gauge (pictured). Yeah. This one doesn't seem obvious to me at all.

Unless, maybe, you keep watching the price of silver. Have you seen the price of silver lately? Siiiiigh. Truly, I love thick metal, but that doesn't always make sense for the piece you're working on — either the size or the technique. And I also try to use thinner metal when possible, since that makes the finished piece a little less expensive. How thick did I make that one? How thick is this one? How thick is it now? (Notice how you don't say "thin" in this context?) (Well, I don't, anyway.)

I guess I'm also a bit of a measurement geek. Our names for measurements are so arbitrary, and so interesting. (For example, the "common cubit," one of the earliest measures, was the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. Whose elbow? Whose middle finger?) Perhaps the more I measure the thickness of my metal, the neater my desk will appear?

The next few items on the list of tools that get left on the bench are just as likely to be put away, so I'll keep the official list at four. But they include, in no particular order, drafting templates with different shapes (circles, ovals, etc.), dividers, a drafting compass, and pliers of various types. I suppose pencil and paper could be included, but they're in a category I usually consider "so likely to be left out on the bench that they're invisible." Don't laugh at me.

* NOTE: Although I briefly considered trying to photograph my own gauge, I decided against it as a small step towards preserving my sanity. I'm afraid I don't remember where I found this photo, which shows what I consider to be the "back" of the gauge, since it depicts an equivalent to the B&S numbers, um, probably in inches. Hey, I don't care about inches (or millimeters, or whatever it is) when it comes to sheet metal, I care about the B&S number, which is one of three major internationally-agreed-upon standards for measuring the thickness of wire and sheet metal. Click on the image for a bigger version. And then convert 24 gauge to points — a unit for measuring type — which, since 1886, has been exactly 0.3514598 millimeters, or 1/72.27 inch. Exactly!