Today’s epistle deals with the foibles of wood working in MX (at least as practiced by me). In a land of concrete and steel, asking for wood is much like my lifetime of ordering steaks in upscale fish restaurants (I don’t like fish) and graciously accepting whatever the chef can burn up and punish me with.

This little endeavor became necessary about 6 hours after I arrived here at the new casa some 11 months ago (wow?) when I went to bed the fist night and had to put on my crampon’s and get out my climbing pick to climb UP into the bed.

You see, I’ve been building my own waterbeds for over 30 years and they’re low so you roll into and out of them. I didn’t bring the waterbed because even after repeated attempts to drain it, it still weighed about 200 soggy pounds and was all George and I could do to get it into his truck and to storage and the need for a heater and the cost of electricity in MX all added up to nix the endeavor.

So, enter the new bed in the casa, a frame with drawers under it added 14”, then two mattress’s on top added whatever more and I about got a nose bleed climbing up into it and the fear of suddenly jumping up groggily from a dead sleep to check a noise of a bumbling possum in the middle of the night terrified me, I could see me trying to explain to the hospital how I broke my leg jumping out of bed. I tolerated it until about a month ago when I dragged the mattresses off the two drawer units, hauled them out to the trailer and have been sleeping on the floor since. After extensive planning and thought; today became the day to acquire materials for a new bed frame, or more correctly a platform.

I had gone to the madera (lumber) place (it ain’t a yard by any stretch of the imagination) once before and looked but wasn’t excited and when I came out my battery was dead and that instantly ate the budget until now. I’ve also priced lumber in Guadalajara at Home Depot so had some idea of what to expect.

Basically buying lumber in MX is somewhat like creating a diamond, first you have to find it, when you do it won’t look much like a diamond until you start cutting and polishing it. So it is with MX lumber, as I said earlier there isn’t much demand and what there is tends to be unlike what we’re used to NOB. First of all a “2 X 4” NOB is actually 1 ½” thick and 3 ½” wide and nicely smoothed. It started as a “2 X 4” but after planing and rounding of edges etc. it’s smaller, but nice smooth and workable unless you specifically buy rough cedar etc.

In MX our maderaria is a building with associated furniture making business and a storage area containing generally large rough planks of wood – this is the diamond in the rough. When you ask for a 2 X 4 they grab a 4 X 4 and rip it down the middle and even at Home Depot the wood is somewhat smoothed, but full dimension, so a 1 X 3 is a full 1” by 3”. With that little gem of information in mind the need for 2 x 4’s in the bed frame immediately downsized to 1 X 3’s as being completely adequate

Today I told the guy I wanted 1 x 3’s and he reached over to a stack of 1 x 6’s and said we’ll “make” them. I said ok, but could they run them through a planer so at least one side was smooth? – yes, no charge and the resultant boards would be $51p each, I quickly ciphered up 8 times 51 and came up with $408p which was fine as that was comparable with Home Depot, 35 miles closer and I had $500p in my pocket at the time.

Instructions were given and a young fellow selected out 4 good rough boards (only one generation from the trees they once were) and went to work. First he ran each through a joiner which planes edges to make them smooth and he did this repeatedly to all edges of all 4 boards. Then he took them to the saw and ripped each into exactly 3” widths and then to the planer to plane one side of each of the now 8 boards. By this time they were starting to look like the diamonds I knew were in there and they were cut and polished and looking like something I could use.

The problem here for me is that I have very very limited tools, all my major power tools are in storage in TX and so I have to plan projects that will have very minimal cutting etc. required.

The guy hauled them out to the Jeep and we loaded them and returned to the office to settle up. After a time he wrote out a ticket for $226p? I looked at it and said “that’s not enough”? – of course this fellow didn’t understand and thought I was complaining about a minor charge for planing. He had a calculator there (the universal translator) and punched in 226 – I cleared it and punched in 408 and he looked puzzled and repeated 226 – I held firm, there was no way I was only going to pay $226p!

He went to find the patron who had quoted me the price and spoke good English and they talked and he said 226p and apologized for charging me for the planing. Again I stood my ground and insisted on paying quarto (4) and he finally realized what I was trying to say and agreed to let me force the money on him – hey, don’t fool with me, this gringo may be old, but still drives a hard bargain.

Actually I figure it’s karma and besides I have to go back and get two sheets of plywood and if they realized they had allowed themselves to be cheated, the plywood might cost $500p a sheet rather than $280p, but we had a good laugh and I headed home to make sawdust.

So, now I know how the lumber thing works and I can add that to my list of “accomplishments” and the bed frame is taking shape as we speak.