In Maya Alvarado’s second weekly column for confessions of a design geek, she shares another day in the life of the Fixperts Resident – this time she develops her own Fixperts project, creates some more storage for Benchmark, and a chance encounter on a bridge leads to a potential FixPartnership…
05:45: My phone alarm goes off. I realise how quickly I have adjusted to my new hours.
06:15: I prepare cereal for breakfast with a lemon and ginger tea.
06:30: I leave my bag packed with my laptop and work items every evening, so I am good to go. I walk to the station to catch a train to Kintbury. This gets me there in good time for early workshop hours.
07:05: I drop my bag off in the office and make my way to the workshop. By this time the team are an hour in and working hard – feels like fantastic motivation to begin working on a project. I collect lovely walnut offcuts from the mill to make some needle threader bases. They need measuring and cutting, so I begin with this.
08:30: I start to join the offcuts to make large enough blocks. I drill into both pieces, having marked out space for pegs. These will sit half and half inside the holes in each block to strengthen the connection between them. I use Titebond wood glue to secure the parts and place them in a table vice, which compresses them together.
09.30: After chatting with Daniel from Fixperts, I realise that having the hook exposed means it can get caught and damaged in transportation. I test two different drill bits – a spade bit and a countersink, to create a recess to enclose the hook part of the needle threader. Both drilling methods leave an unwanted centre hole in the wood. Either I can change drill bit to avoid such a large hole or consider a method of filling it and at the same time securing the hook. I have a think about how this would be made on a larger scale. If it is for my own small batch production here at Benchmark these methods are feasible. However, if producing it on a larger scale, I would want to reduce any fiddly making steps to save time and costs.
10:00: Break time – tea and toast is usually on the menu, but it is a team member’s birthday, which means bacon rolls!
10:15: I am on a search for small fixes that together will make working life even better. In the workshop, Simon tells me about the large stack of abrasive pads which come in very often and take up a lot of room in their materials storage cupboard. These are used regularly for sanding so they need an easy to access solution. I have a look at the space and think of some ideas.
11:00: Having cut lengths of 9mm plywood board, I begin assembling some storage boxes for the abrasive pads. I use glue and a pin gun to join them, so the edges sit flush. I use a hole saw bit (a cookie cutter for a drill) positioned as a semicircle, half on half off, to make a lip in the front panel of each box. This acts as both a window for the contents inside and an opening for the hand to reach in. The abrasive pads are coloured differently to the level of coarseness, so it is easy to identify which one is needed by a quick glance.
13:00: Lunchtime – the best five salads ever! There’s quinoa, beetroot, feta, potato salad, halloumi with pearl barley, and crunchy broccoli with a nutty pesto couscous. This feels like too much of a treat!
13:30: For the afternoon I observe and map ideas. The process chain at Benchmark is very thorough and it is interesting to see where I could place an improvement. I am keen to continue to make the working life at Benchmark even better.
16:45: I receive back a piece of oak which had been hand carved with #fixingattitudes for a talk Daniel and Sean are doing at the London Design Festival. It looks fantastic and just needs sanding and finishing. I use a sanding block to get the surface smooth and arris (remove) the edge where two sides meet. Using a paintbrush and cloth, I oil the board with ‘Benchmark White’. It really brings out the grain of the wood and looks fantastic.
18:00: I met a lovely Venezuelan woman named Mireya yesterday on the bridge close to Benchmark. She stopped me to ask where I got my new work boots and we got chatting about Fixperts. After hearing that Mireya is a carer for 89-year old Mrs Ellis, we decided that it would be wonderful to arrange a meeting. So I join with them for dinner and we spend the evening talking about design, her amazing marquetry inlaid furniture and the opportunities for Mrs Ellis to be a FixPartner!
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- Benchmark selects first Fixperts resident
- A day in the life of a the Fixperts Resident – week 01
- interview :: nordvink
- interview :: james molkenthin
