Saint Bartholomew’s Shin
opening excerpt
Randy always unplugs the table saw before he adjusts the blade angle. Dad had started drumming workshop safety into both boys one summer morning before Randy could even talk, after Bill had puzzled out the catch on the ratchet set and spent a half hour toddling around the house in his footie pyjamas hiding the metric sockets like Easter eggs. The last two to surface had come clattering out of the plastic Santa face when Dad hauled it from under the stairs in December. The sixteen millimetre had never turned up.
Randy tilts the blade to 45 degrees and tightens the set screw to hold it there. Before he plugs the saw back in he makes sure the power is switched off, the guard properly in place, and his safety goggles secure. His workshop mythology is filled with images of spurting wrist-stumps, of eyeballs pierced by six-inch splinters, of severed fingers flipping end-over-end into the sawdust. Images lovingly placed there by Dad. The oral tradition.
With his hands safely in his leather-and-canvas gloves Randy starts the saw, squinting from a prudent angle to ensure that the blade is spinning evenly, that it isn’t wobbling. Which would not only be unsafe, but could throw his measurements off by as much as three sixteenths of an inch. After checking the pencil markings on the three-quarter-inch cedar one more time he aligns the board against the cutting guide and eases it into the whine of the blade. He moves smoothly and at an even tempo, breathing the aromatic dust, judging his speed by the vibration through his leather-clad fingertips. When the board clears the blade he lifts it away and switches off the saw. He hand-sands the angled edge with coarse grit paper and sets the panel aside.
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