Remind me to. . .

I often ask Cara, "remind me to . . ." The ellipses could be replaced with anything from "pick up The Half Blood Prince from the library" to "close the garage door."  

She does. Right then. It's our joke. Then I forget to do the task.
  

Why do I mention it? I'm making a new 11-inch yoke from laminated yellow pine.  And I wonder how long it takes to make a yoke, start-to-finish.

I know a couple of things: 1. Dave Kramer demonstrated yoke-making last summer when I helped teach Oxen Basics and, man, is he fast. Jimmy Johns fast. 2. Most people estimate that tasks will take half as long as they do. Really. We'd never start them otherwise.

So far, I took about 45 minutes to lay out the pattern on the first

section. I was working slowly and adjusting the template dimensions and shape a bit as I went. 

Next, each of the center three sections took 10 minutes to cut out with my very sweet Festool jigsaw. (standard MODA Blog disclaimer: I bought it at retail and get no kickback. And it's still sweet).  Add 10 more minutes to move sawhorses, etc. and I have less than 1.5 hours so far.

Remind me to keep a running total of the time.

But don't do it right now. I'll forget.

The jigsaw leaves a smoooooth finish.