Diapers for my table saw

At first I didn't know whether to call it a diaper or a skirt, but then as I pondered the purpose of the garment, I said diaper, definitely diaper.  Skirts are never used to catch waste products, diapers definitely are.  Having settled the name issue first, I went on to design this nappy contraption in my head while sawdust was flying all over the garage which means all over the weightlifting and fitness equipment, all over the extra food supplies,  all over the camping equipment, all over everything.  And that's the trouble with my newest, latest and greatest plarking projects ("plark" is focused play, as in 3/4 play and 1/4 work without any of the negative thoughts associated with work).  One of the side effects of this particular form of plarking is sawdust.

When you use a table saw, you get lots of sawdust.  I love working with wood, and I never knew that until about two years ago.   Since then, in addition to piles of sawdust, I've created a chicken tractor,  a chicken coop, chicken roosts and ramps--anything and everything to do with chickens--nest boxes, boxes for treats, a food buffet to feed the hens but not the rats.  And gates.  I've made lots of gates to keep the chickens and the yard and the garden separate.

But then last spring this amazing book called Vertical Gardening by Derek Fell (Rodale Press) fell into my hands, and I began building things for the garden.  A vertical garden involves a structure that will support the plants as they grow up, freeing the soil space for the stem and roots of the plants and therefore making really good use of the garden space one has.  So I built seven of these structures for my garden beds and spent all of a rainy Mother's Day in the garage with the table saw creating the cross members and support pieces.  In other words--making lots more sawdust!

And today I was making a huge ring of sawdust on the garage floor while the finer particles were drifting on to absolutely everything else as I fine tuned the metamorphous of my vertical garden structure into a protected area and greenhouse for winter and a seedling nursery for spring.  And that's when I had had enough!  Enough of the sawdust stuck to the bottom of my shoes and tracked onto areas of the floor not already thick with the fragrant fibers, enough of the fairy ring of sawdust creeping wider and wider onto the yet-bare floor.  This was one of the Things I get to do today!

With the design in my head and not even taking off my gloves, I found some discarded garden blanket and measured the waist  and "crotch" distance of the Rockwell/Delta 10" contractor's table saw.  Armed with this information, I quickly cut the fabric, found snap tape for holding it together in the front, found cord for the drawstring waist and the drawstring tuck-under-the-buns at the bottom.  Shortly thereafter this Rockwell/Delta table saw sat proudly outfitted in its own fresh, clean dust-diaper.