Pride

I wanted a couple of broad, kind of oldish looking shelves to put on my kitchen wall and found some perfect ones at a carpentry on the island. But I lacked consoles to put them up with. I wanted some old-looking iron ones, tanned black with linseed oil. There is a blacksmith close by and I asked if he could make them for me. He said he could so I made a drawing of what I wanted them to look like and left it to him to forge them. When he asked me to pick them up, they still had a metal look because he'd never used linseed oil to make things black and didn't know how to do it. I sort of knew and asked if I could borrow his tools and space the next day to do it myself and then went home to watch some videos on youtube, I've only seen it done once, a long time ago but after watching the video, I felt confident I could do it.

This morning I showed up with my consoles, some linseed oil, rags and gloves and went to work. He let me use his gas-burner to heat the consoles up with and left me on my own. I followed the steps from the video and managed quite well I thought, for being the first time I ever tried it. Great fun and I'm very proud of the result and of myself. The main shows my start-kit, first extra shows the before and after difference. Second extra shows the finished result. 
I was a bit surprised that none of the three guys working there were interested in watching what I was doing but afterwards, the boss came by and said "that looks pretty ok". I take it as a huge compliment from someone in this super macho environment. And he said, while walking away; "now we know who to call the next time someone wants anything like that".