Today's #woodworking project is either a serving board for 12-inch subs or a "Greek paddle," that name owing to it's traditional use for fraternity hazing. This is a commissioned work and I don't know anyone in college at the moment so you do the math.

I was given rough dimensions and told to "make it heavy duty". Purple heart is quite dense and at 1 lb 4 oz, I think this qualifies as both heavy and sturdy.

If my patron is happy there's a possible matching furniture build. Fingers crossed.

@Brisse Woodturning on a ship? While underway? So that whole "your lathe must be rock solid stable while turning" thing was bullshit all along, I guess. 😃

A beloved local clown died. The obituary said whoever replaces him will have some big shoes to fill.

@thereal_renaissance_man Agreed. Good example is redirecting into a loop rather than piping into it to avoid the subshell and preserve variable inheritance.

Also agreed about 'even on our best days'. I tell clients that anything depending on human vigilance as a primary control will fail.

My quibble is if wrapping tr in a function named tolower requires comments, what is the lowest common denominator below which comments are superfluous? Is there ANY base competence that's safe to assume?

@thereal_renaissance_man I am imagining a script that analyzes the code and inserts snippits as required to meet the threshold. ;-)

@thereal_renaissance_man All good points, but offer that they apply only to practitioners operating above what I called the "fluency floor" earlier. Someone updating a bash script who doesn't know what tr does won't grok the pathological case you mentioned.

I also note you said 'documentation' not 'comments'. If the shop has good doc discipline I link to reqs/specs in a comment. Hopefully they explain the things you mention in greater detail then the code. If not, comments to the rescue.

I always tell prospective consulting clients a few jokes during the interview to test company culture.

Example: When a certain cable company asked what time I would be on-site that Monday, I told them "Between 8am and noon, or between noon and 5pm."

They were not amused.
Predictably, it didn't work out.

Going forward I'm giving prospects a list of code comments I've written and ask if they object to any of them.

OK, now I'm being lectured on the purpose of comments in code.

Thing is, above a certain level of fluency, all code is self-documenting. Bottom line is that comments are to help people who haven't reached that level of fluency in that language.

But there's a fluency floor below which unsupervised work is an operational risk. Someone who doesn't get that 1-line of basic code and for whom the function name 'tolower' isn't a big enough clue shouldn't be mucking about in code the team uses daily.

Long time ago I wrote...

# If you require a comment for this function you should not be updating this code

...followed by a simple 1-line function

Took 5 years but today someone finally called me out on my snark. My defense was "But it's true. Anyone who doesn't understand that on sight shouldn't be updating that code unsupervised."

Can't wait for this person to find the comment "# This next part is pure, 100% security theater but mandatory per policy"

We had a visitor today. Pretty sure the one last week was a Cooper's Hawk and this one looks like a Red Shouldered Hawk. Our neighborhood has a lot of tree cover and seeing 2 or 3 hawks hunting is a daily occurrence. Having them sit long enough to pose for pix is a treasured rarity.

Wife claims to love the bowl, and the choice of glossy finish improved it some, but I can't bring myself to like it. Filling in the carvings with putty renders them flat and 2-dimensional. And even if I'd painted like the cedar bowl, I see now the pores are so large they would have retained the paint. Next time I might carve or texture the bowl and leave it at that.

I try to reuse vinyl gloves so between coats of poly today I hung them on my lathe tool rest.

Right next to the dust pickup.

When I turned on the dust collector, the nearest glove was sucked in. Somehow it got past the cyclone separator and proceeded to wrap itself around the impeller. Took about 1/2 hour to pick the pieces out.

Grandpa always said if I played around with power tools long enough I'd get my mitt caught in the wringer. I'm paraphrasing here but he said something like that.

@Brisse I'm using poly this time because I am unhappy with the brick color I chose to fill in the carving and am hoping that a glossier finish will bring out some contrast. I use a variety of finishes depending mostly on whether the item is decorative or utility, then among the utility items sometimes it needs to be food safe. Oil and wax is among my regulars.

Breaking: US breathes collective sigh of relief when China explains that spy balloons will result in more relevant ads and issues "sunbathe naked" TikTok challenge

I wasn't planning to get wood today but one look at this fine piece of ash and my brain was no longer the boss.

The most boring part of #woodturning is waiting for finishes to dry. I'm up to 3 coats of sanding sealer and 1 coat of wipe-on poly. It's 4 hours between coats of poly and there's 2 more to go.

(As an aside, to me the name "wipe-on poly" sounds like the method by which parrot foie gras is applied to a cracker.)

(OK, technically, boring holes is the most boring part of the art and waiting on finish to dry is the second most boring part.)

A total stranger posted a while back about adding 3D printing to their art studio and I offered to donate a piece of equipment to the cause. I forgot to ask first where in the world they live and was worried I'd have to reneg over cost of international shipping.

Turns out they are less than an hour away from me and I was able to deliver in person. The internet may be a series of tubes but they have a way of turning back on themselves when you least expect it.

@NMWoman Thx for the follow, I hope it is worth it. ;-) The bowl's got one coat of sanding sealer so far and I'm hoping to finish it off today. I was thinking a gloss finish might bring out the contrast a bit. Fingers crossed.

@NMWoman Thanks for the feedback. Glad to know the wife isn't the only one. I'll keep an open mind and post pix tomorrow of the finished bowl. That'll be the real test.