I took my Townsend Goddard out of storage

[Paul K. Murphy]

My Townsend Goddard blockfront has been in blanket storage in my shop for a long time. Yesterday, at last, I took it out. I'm moving it. It's in the way of my shop remodel, and it can't stay like that anymore.
I haven't figured out how to post photos with the new software, so this might just be a link, and with luck it might work.
A photo of a man posing with a project he made as a boy.

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This was my High School Woodshop project. I constructed the desk between December 1980 and July 1981. I was seventeen years old. As I wrapped up most of the construction of the desk, I decided to build the upper bookcase. I decided to make the complete secretary.
I completed the entire project years later at age twenty one.
People marvel at the shells, but the bonnet is, without doubt, the hardest part of the project. I agonized for months over the construction of the bonnet. I will never forget how difficult that part was. I didn't have anybody to ask either. I didn't have any way of learning from some old salt or anyone else to guide me. I had to figure it out myself. I got good at mapping out mental pictures while taking walks. I could plan procedures in sequence, try them out to determine feasibility, and accept or reject them, based on visualizing them. I was just a kid. I don't think I'd have liked to be called that, but I was.

[highpi]

Beautiful work.
I wouldn't even begin to show what I was building at that age. You are a true craftsman.

On a related note, I will be selling all my tools and putting my efforts into making cheese. 

[fredhargis]

That really is a work of art. If that's your starting point, the subsequent pieces must be in a museum somewhere.

[Paul K. Murphy]

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Until recently, I've only had pictures of pictures. This is an early one from 1981. The shells can be seen in an incomplete form. Roughing out the contours of the shell is how one begins. The rays are ignored until last.

[MsNomer]

Not just a kid. A child prodigy.

[Paul K. Murphy]

[BobW]

So, did you pass woodshop?