Every spring I do a shop reset. April, usually. Before the humidity comes in and before the calendar fills up. Annie calls it "the day Tom moves things from one corner to a different corner." She says it like that's not the same thing as productive. Tell you what — it's not, exactly. But it isn't nothing.
What it actually is: a slow walk through the shop, tool by tool. Same questions every year. Is it earning its space. Did I use it last year. Can I sharpen it, or is it time it went somewhere else.
What gets cleaned
Most things. The bench top gets a coat of paste wax — not a finish, just enough to let parts slide. The table saw gets fresh wax on the cast-iron, fence rails wiped down, blade pulled and checked. Window over the bench gets cleaned, even though it'll be dusty by Wednesday. There's a satisfaction to it that's hard to argue against.
Riggs gets a bath, which he hates and Annie has opinions about. He spends the rest of the day sulking under the bench, staring at me, making his point clearly. He gets over it by supper.
What gets sorted
Hardware drawers, mostly. Small drawers for screws, dowels, biscuits, hinges, drawer slides. By spring there's always one drawer that's gotten thirty different kinds of screw mixed in, and that one gets dumped onto a tray and re-sorted. Slow work. Good for a Friday with the doors open and the radio on.
Clamp wall gets put back in order. I run my clamps by length: short on top, long on bottom. By April they're always wrong. That's because by April they've been used. Which I'd rather have than perfect order, if I had to pick.
What gets retired
Some tools don't make it through the spring. Last year it was a pair of squares that had drifted out of true. Couple of chisels sharpened down too far to keep. A circular saw I was never going to use again because the cordless one I bought in '22 actually does the job better. Took me twenty years to admit that cordless was real. I gave the old one to my nephew. He's fifteen. Hasn't broken anything important yet.
Tools that get retired aren't the broken ones. The broken ones get fixed or thrown out as soon as they break. The retired ones are the ones I just stopped reaching for. The ones I'd kept around because I'd had them a long time. Long time isn't a reason on its own.
What stays untouched
The block plane stays where it is. It's older than I am. Came with the shop when I bought it from Earl. Not the prettiest one I own. Doesn't owe me anything.
The bench itself doesn't get moved. I rebuilt the top in '14, the base is original to the shop. If I move the bench I have to re-square it to the rest of the shop, and I'd rather not. The light over it is the same light Earl had. Funny how those things stay.
Riggs's bed stays where it is too. Under the bench, off-center, in his preferred spot. He'd just move it back if I touched it. There's no point in fighting a dog about furniture.
Why I bother
Some of it's practical — clean shop is a faster shop, sharp tool is a safer one, sorted hardware means I'm not at Vernon's buying brass screws every other day. Some of it isn't practical at all. Some of it's that the work I do is careful work, and the place I do it ought to be set up the way the work asks. A shop you can trust is a shop you don't have to fight to find things in.
A shop you can trust is a shop you don't have to fight to find things in.
The other part is, April in northwestern Connecticut is one of the better months to spend a Saturday in the shop with the doors open. Riggs disagrees about the doors-open part — the cold hasn't fully left yet — but he gets over it. He always does.