Set the fence before leftover hours
The pin cannot scribe a true parallel until the fence is seated on the day-job edge.
A marking gauge does not start with the pin. It starts with a beech fence pressed to a true edge. Until that fence is seated, any line the steel pin draws is a guess that wanders as the block rocks. Leftover hours have the same order. The day job, the commute, sleep and care hours are the edge. Side work is an offset from that edge, not a leftover pile discovered after the week is spent.
Many weeks reverse the order. An evening job is accepted, then the hours are hunted for. The pin moves first. The fence floats. Sleep shortens. The day job absorbs the overflow on Thursday. The week no longer has a parallel line; it has a wandering scratch that costs the rest of the board.
Setting the fence is a written list of hours that cannot move. It is not a mood and it is not a hope that the day job will shrink. It includes the unpaid edges of employment: login, commute, the meeting that always overruns. It includes the hours that keep a person employable tomorrow. Only after that list is seated can leftover hours be marked as a fixed offset.
The offset can be small. Two evenings. A Saturday morning. The gauge does not argue for more wood; it argues for a line that stays parallel. A week that keeps its fence can take side work without pretending the day job will give way. A week that skips the fence will pay the difference in sleep, and the pin will have nothing true to ride.
How to set the fence
- Write start and end of the day job, including commute and unpaid login.
- Mark sleep as a block the pin cannot cross.
- Name the evenings already spoken for by care, rest or existing commitments.
- Only then write leftover hours as an offset from that edge, not as leftover hope.