The Barefoot SCAdian

It first occurred to me to record the time I spend on some A&S projects when doing research on Irish logboat construction. I read an article, a brief description of an experimental archeology project where several scholars and their students attempted to build a logboat. The article mentioned the number of “man hours” that they had invested. My first reaction was to shake my head and think that was a ridiculous amount of time and there could not have been an experienced woodworker in the bunch. My second reaction was if and when I attempted to build a logboat myself, I should keep track of the time I put in and see if I could do any better.

I have in fact begun building a small logboat, and started to record my time on the project. Not only the time, but also making some effort to track the time spent on various phases of the project. But the time tracking was not as easy, nor as well organized as it could have been. I’d get the urge to step into the yard and do a little work on the boat and it would be several minutes into it before I’d remember that I should track it. I’d scribble a start time down on whatever scrap of paper I had in my pocket and hope I’d remember to note the finish time when I was done. I ended up with a bunch of these scribbled notes scattered around the house and occasionally I’d think to gather them up and transfer the “entries” onto a single sheet of paper. That was until today.

I can be dumb. All the while I’ve been working on my logboat I’ve had my phone in my pocket. I’ve frequently paused to take photos of the progress. I also use my phone in my work as a carpenter and handy-man. On it I have an app that I use to keep track of the hours I work on each project so I can accurately bill my customers for my labor. I just open a “New Job” for each customer, give the job a name and then “punch in” when I start and “punch out” when I’m done. It even has a notes field for each time record. Facepalm! It’s only taken me four and a half months to think of using it to track my logboat labor.

I use the HoursTracker app on my iPhone, available in Apples’ App Store. It’s free or you can subscribe to cloud storage and backup service. There are a number of similar apps available. If documenting the time you spent on a project could be a useful part of your research then you may want to try one of these time tracking apps.