Some Skil required

My new Skil jig saw

For the last few weeks I've been working on making a platform for my photography. To be more specific, a surface to photograph stuff on. It all started a few weeks ago when shooting a pair of shoes for FAB.

Max, the fashion editor gave me some really great looking green shoes to photograph. I shot them on white and on the outside driveway. In the end I submitted photos taken on the porch stairs. The color of the stairs and the shoes worked together.

While all that was happening I also wanted to create a surface kind of like something you'd see in an Apple commercial. That glossy, semi-reflective kind of look of a white surface. I started off by getting a large 4x4 sheet of that stuff they make clip boards out of.

This was no easy task as I managed to volunteer Marc to come out with his car. Once we picked up the 4x4 sheets and brought it to the car we found that we couldn't fit it in. I then had to call James with his truck to drive all the way to Rona and help pick it up. I still owe Marc a meal for the effort.

The next obstacle was that the board was way too large for handling. I didn't have any supports big enough to hold it up. 3x3, maybe. 4x4? no. So I bought a hand saw. A thing to know about most hand saws is that once you start cutting, if you're on a bad angle you can't turn the saw while cutting. Not easily anyway. I managed to cut off a diagonal foot off one end but it looked pretty bad. Nowhere close to being a 90 degree corner and the cuts with the large saw teeth were rough. Agh.

To solve that problem, today, I bought the jig saw. My first power tool. It's great. Cuts through the 4x3 board almost like butter and because the blade is so short in width you can adjust the cut as you go.