Jointers are Like Epsom Salts

I was raised to be a person of action. This was then reinforced by a career where you were either entirely responsible for motivating your own training or needed to be on top of and on time for rehearsals, shows, set ups, tear downs, planes, trains, and automobiles… so I’m pretty ready to get my hands dirty whenever needed/ appropriate. Fast forward to this new beginning where I need to take my clunky old tool set and get it tuned in and tuned up to produce art that is both beautiful and functional. This is no small feat and there’s no question that many dirty jobs stand between myself and getting to put blade to hardwood once more. But before I can do any of it… computers. Website. Research. Books. Budget. What tools do I have and what do I need? What can I get by with and what can’t I live without? Can I even get these things in Nova Scotia? Funny thing that I’ve found in my years of living between countries is that everything is possible but sometimes the things you take for granted are not as obvious as you would have thought. I held off on buying some tools which I favoured while still stateside because traveling around with 180kg of jointer seemed unnecessary if I planned to buy it new anyways. Not that you cannot buy jointers in Canada but many of the machines I have known and am familiar with are simply not available up here. Powermatic doesn’t exist. I got a nice fellow on the phone at Powermatic in Halifax asking about where I could purchase a helical head jointer and he asked me sweetly what that was… turns out “Powrmatic” up here is a company that sells HVAC systems. Now I know.

This funnily takes me back to living in Paris. I wasn’t trying to buy a jointer at the time but, rather, Epsom salts. We were running our show at Theatre Bobino in the 14th Arrondisement and were often sharing the stage with 3 other shows. This meant that we had some pretty high pressure set changes, especially on Saturdays where the day would begin with a rather full-on production of Peter Pan. We would stand at the ready as Fée Clochette (Tinkerbell) and Capitaine Crochet were singing their hearts out until the curtain was dropped and everything upstage became a beehive of technicians and acrobats readying the next show. We had 30 minutes before the curtain went up on our own show and once it was done we had to immediately strike it to allow the Polish MozART string quartet to take the stage and once they were done? We set up for our second run of the day. Each set up and strike required me to rig the Chinese Pole (an acrobatic act you should check out sometime if you’re unfamiliar) and attach/ detach it from the truss it was connected to. I could climb the pole no problem but to actually manipulate tools I needed to be in harness. The only way to pull this off quickly was for me to be suspended from a lighting bar and lifted to the top of the truss. Any individual go round wasn’t the end of the world but several times a day for months on end in harness with the weight of my legs just hanging unsupported on top of everything else I was asking of my body was making for some very unhappy hips. Thus begins the seemingly innocent quest for epsom salts. Innocuous and ordinary in North America we’re accustomed to filling our baths with epsom salts to ease strained muscles but in France this was completely unheard of. I enjoyed a tour of several districts worth of Parisian Pharmacies, groceries, and cosmetic shops until I had to admit defeat. The solution was, of course, that I had to just take up a few kilos of a friend’s suitcase when she came to visit me from America with bags of Epsom Salts. I’m certain that customs would have raised an eyebrow but there’s nothing explicitly wrong with carrying kilos of magnesium salts around… it just looks kindof weird.

So here I am. See previous comment regarding the weight of a jointer to remind yourself why none of my friends are going to be bringing me one in their luggage (although I have pretty epic folks in my life so it’s not entirely out of the question). In the meantime, reality says I must revise my searches and my mindset to unfamiliar products. Stay tuned for a review of my Canadian jointer as this all comes down the pipeline! We’ll see what I end up with and certainly it never hurts to open one’s mind to new options.