Years ago I was working with a very successful writer on a play he had written that was being workshopped in Westchester County somewhere. He had been one of the writers on All in the Family and . . . I don’t know what. I think, actually, he wrote for the Dick Van Dyke Show. And truly I would name drop here if I could remember his name. I can’t. Anyway, he had this amazing gigantic garden apartment in the West Village. I lived in Little Dominica, which may or may not be what it was or is actually called, in a roach and rat infested hovel somewhere between Harlem and some nice place farther north. On occasion, you know a clear day, I had a view of the guy across the alley getting out of the shower. It wasn’t really a selling point.
It was a nightmarish trek to get from the workshop space in Westchester to my apartment in the upper reaches of Manhattan. It took anywhere from two to three and a half hours depending on the trains, planes, buses and my feet. Oh and the time of day and perhaps even the time of year. Consequently one night when we had worked very late the playwright offered me a ride home. Successful sitcom writers do not ride public transportation. He drove a BMW. I naturally accepted his generous offer because turning my three hour commute, at that time of night, into a 20 minute car ride was a no brainer as they say. I discovered very quickly though that he didn’t take direction well. So naturally we got completely turned around in my neighborhood after getting off the highway and while I was trying to get him pointed in the right direction he ended up going the wrong way on a one way street. And again no surprise this happened in front of a policeman. I know that you somehow knew that was coming. Of course he got pulled over and the officer, as if following a sitcom script, said “sir, are you aware that this is a one way street?”. Remember this is a sitcom and he was a sitcom writer so his response was naturally “I'm only going one way”. Apparently someone forgot to point out to him along the way that NYC policemen carry guns. I guess you can get away with that if you are driving a BMW in a crappy neighborhood in upper Manhattan at 1:00 in the morning and you look terrified. So he didn’t get a ticket and I got home. He also made it home which I know because I saw him the next day.
But I learned from this experience that the one way to do something depends on your situation and perspective. And yes there is usually a best way but sometimes that is just not possible. I also learned that terror is not always useful. Panic can definitely get you turned around. So the other day I got an order for some brackets that are probably a variation on a design from some major European drapery hardware manufacturer. Only there is no way for me to confirm or refute this because, as with most of the orders I get, it came in the form of a napkin drawing. And don’t pretend that you don’t know what that is. Every designer and workroom I have ever worked with does it. It’s usually a crude pencil sketch of a complex part with some dimensions. They are actually a remarkably efficient way of communicating in my opinion. They just look rediculous.
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| How could I have questions? |
The thing about purchase orders from designers is that they are a little bit like sheet music if you aren't a musician. They make no sense and somehow they can be translated into something beautiful by people who have spent years alone working on their craft and therefore can understand them. This napkins sketch was of a bracket that looked to be entirely machined. How can I tell? Trust me. Ahhh, I love saying that. Anyway, this would be tricky because, although I do have a lathe and grinders and a drill press, I do not have a milling machine which would have been the best way to do this. Not the only way, however. The brackets consisted of a ¾” round solid bar about 11” long with a 1 1/8” dia. cope cut out of one end for a rod to sit in. They mounted on a hidden stem that was attached to a covered back plate. Very slick. I'm sure you can see all of this in the napkin sketch.
After looking at the sketch for about a week I concluded that getting the cope was the trick without a milling machine. The rest of it was cake. I finally decided that my best choice was to use a drum sander in a die grinder. My only question was how ugly would this be. Okay, not my only question. I did wonder if it would work at all.
Turns out it was noisy and it was dirty and it was probably a little slower than a mill would have been but in the end the brackets came out looking just the way the designer wanted them to look. So, although I went the wrong way down the one way street, I still managed to get to my destination.
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| Coped round bar |
There is probably no lesson here, there almost never is, but feel free to take what you want from it. I enjoyed making the tools I had do the work that needed to be done.
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| The unfinished completed brackets |
Now back to work.
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