Set Yourself Up for Success

Chiseling a mortise under the overhead light.

My partner and I have been learning timber framing from a master eco-builder the past four days. When we arrived the cold and rainy morning of the second workshop day, we found him setting up a ladder, preparing to hang temporary lights inside the partially built structure we were using as our wood shop. We had  a lot of work to get to and we were already a little behind schedule but instead of doing our daily morning check-in or beginning to saw the timber, he had decided to hang the lights he had purchased just before arriving. He said it was so cloudy and rainy that he knew the lighting in the building would be poor and so by taking the time now to set up the overhead lights, he was setting us up for success.