Having passed the age of 40 for some time and my life is already under attack, I decided to take the plunge. Ten years after an awareness and careful reflection, I took the plunge: trying to make a living from what I create and taking up the torch of the family workshop! But how did I get here?
2012: scraps of wood and a little glue
It is October 5, 2012, a TV report introduces me to electronic cigarettes. That day, I put an end to 19 years of very active smoking and here I am freed from the shackles of cancer, FINALLY! I had registered on a specialized forum to find the ideal equipment and I came across a particular section: MODS. “High-end” vape objects, magnificent and classy, handcrafted and sold at high prices on a waiting list. Pioneers. At the time only the "box" format was made of wood, but I would have liked to find a "tube" format, more discreet, less imposing.
A problem, an opportunity
The idea then came to me to make it myself because I too wanted to have beautiful, unique equipment, and the few who had tried it quickly gave up: the technical constraints of an electrical circuit in a wooden tube!
I had at my disposal in my mother's garage the relics of my grandfather and my father's workshop, it had been a long time since the machines had been scrapped - heartbreaking -, that the The workshop itself no longer existed and following the death of my father I was the only potential person who could use it.
So I got started after a few drawings, I fixed my father's makeshift wood lathe on the workbench, installed the drill which served as the drive motor, an oak blank lying around, some plumbing fittings and rolled! well I mean... Turn!
[this should be banned, it's a clamp that holds the switch...]
The first attempts were successful, I moved on by carrying out various more or less successful montages despite years of abstinence from using tools, but the gestures returned. Little by little I obtained very good results interspersed with numerous failures. We had to go further: in my garage there were a lot of scraps of various wood and a little firewood, I went back to gluing, and bought a small band saw for some precision pifometric cuts. I didn't dare touch the trays and other beautiful saved pieces yet, that will be for later.
The first nice pieces will arrive in 2013:
In the long run, I created a small collection of which here are a few pieces:
I published the results of my experiments on this famous forum and to my great surprise, the success was there: messages, support, fans, marketing requests... All that was needed to flatter my ego. That was the trigger: I am capable!
Inception
I took immense pleasure in bringing out these tools, this heritage, I felt at home again surrounded by kind souls and with this small success, the idea of making a living from what I create germinated with this desire visceral to take up the torch. But it doesn't happen like that, not without a net. Ten years.
Ten years to think, build, invest, imagine, practice, recover what was taught to me, strengthen my knowledge, improve myself and confront new techniques in a workshop worthy of the name built by my hands, and finally put together a complete creation file while continuing my salaried activity: this is what sums up the project.
Today the step has been taken, the tools of my childhood come back to life, the workshop is a concentrate of past, present and turned towards the future. The smell of wood reigns, the shavings fly and the pleasure is intense. I no longer use electronic cigarettes and I don't regret the cigarette!
"nothing ventured, nothing gained"