Might be time to pivot

It’s been an interesting late winter and early spring here. In the month of January I made a lot of mini-grinders. By a lot I mean that I made over 75 sets of them, so 150 plus individual mini’s. I’m not complaining about the work, I don’t want people to think that at all. I was more than happy to make them all. My only problem was that I hurt my wrist early on in the process. My best guess is that I strained my ulnar tendon which is on the outside of your wrist on the pinky side. The pain got to be so bad that I would ice my wrist and put on a homemade compression sleeve of sorts to be able to work. I could do some drilling and then would have to stop, ice my wrist and reapply my compression sleeve. This made the whole process very slow but I persevered and got them done. Thankfully my clients were very understandable.

After finishing those orders, I actually stopped turning anything that required drilling, from February until mid-March just to rest my wrist. My wrist was okay but there was still some pain until last week. As many of you know we make maple syrup in the spring. All of the activities associated with making maple syrup didn’t bother my hand at all. Last week I was twisting a cover back onto a full tote of sap and something happened. I heard a loud pop and had excruciating pain in my wrist and I was having problems making a fist with my hand. It took about a half hour for the pain to stop. Once the pain stopped I could move my fingers like nothing had happened. I have no idea what popped but it seemed to reset everything back to normal. I can now drill on the lathe again with far less pain. Like I said earlier, it’s been interesting.

Pivoting. For the 6-7 weeks that I wasn’t working much on the lathe I was trying to formulate my next steps. I’ve been in business for 25 years primarily as a woodturner and now I was facing my first real injury other than the broken bones from a car accident in 2005. Without the use of my right hand it would mean the end of my turning. That was a terrifying thought. One of the words that I couldn’t stand during the covid outbreak was “pivoting”. However that seems like a very apt word to use here because it now seemed like I was going to have to pivot in a major way if I wished to still be self-employed. So pivot I did or am in the process of doing. We’ve been adding to our lines over the years and I decided to move more into those areas. So I’ve been developing more tumblers, hats, totes and especially shirts. Hopefully I’ve come up with some winners. I’ll be showing them to you over the next few weeks. I’ve put one of my designs below. I have found that I like the creation process, whether it be in embroidery, laser work, or shirts, as much as I do for the lathe. I’m still able to see the design in my mind and then create it. It’s just in a different form.