Goodbye Old Friend

This was my first big project.  At the time it was the most ambitious, complex thing I had ever tried to build, and it pushed my skills and design abilities to new limits.

There was enough storage to hold just about every tool and accessory that I used regularly, and a bunch that I didn't.

The strength of the whole thing was the fence, which I built from scratch.  I even did the welding myself.  It lasted anyway.

The weakness, however, was the saw itself.  Eventually I found myself avoiding using it because it didn't have the precision I needed for some of the things I wanted to do.  That needed to change, so after 15 plus years I replaced it.

Of course there isn't enough room in my shop to keep it around just for sentimental reasons, so I sold it to someone who is just starting out in woodworking.  I hope it serves him as well as it did me, and I hope that he feels the same pride and satisfaction in what he builds that I do.

This is Why I Will Never Turn Pro

Okay, maybe not because of this box exactly, but it is one good example of why it would be a bad idea.

A lot of people dream about making a living their hobby.  Some, like my wife, actually give it a shot. Most do not.  Few really try, and few of those that do succeed.  I am not one of those.  Not that I have never thought about it.  There is a certain allure to the idea that I could make money doing what I love.  It would also be untrue to say that I have never sold any of my work.  So why am I so sure I will never make the leap?

Part of it is knowing my own limitations.  I do not work quickly.  That box above, along with a pen & pencil set I turned, was a thank you gift for a friend who did me a very generous favor.  It took me almost 2 years to get it done.  Paying customers would never be so patient.

Another reason is that I believe that working for yourself is really just an illusion.  If you want to make money you have to make what people will buy.  This means that you are making what they want, not necessarily what you want.  Right now I have made 3 of these pen boxes, although none of them are exactly the same.  If I had to make 10 the same it would become work.  If I had to make 50 the same it would be drudgery.

Freedom, to me, means being able to do what you want when you want.  Right now I don't have total control over the when, but I do control the what.  I am free to follow wherever my curiosity leads me and test my skills in whatever way I see fit.  If the price of that is that I don't get to spend all day every day in the shop, it is balanced by being able to enjoy the time that I do spend there.

What Am I?... And What Are You?

When I started this blog I did it for two reasons.  The first reason was to have a record of how I did things that I could go back to so I could remember how I did things and hopefully prevent repeating the mistakes.  The other reason was the hope that by writing about it I could start to understand why I do what I do, and that this clarity would help me to improve my woodworking.  This post is all about reason  two.

A while ago I was reading the Lost Art Press Blog and came across this essay attempting to define the difference between the terms artist, artisan, and craftsperson.  It really made me think about these labels and how I felt about them.  You should read it now, and then come back to this, as it will help to make sense of what I have to say. It is neither a long or nor difficult read.  Go ahead... I'll wait...

Done? OK, here they are, my definitions of the terms artist, artisan, and craftsperson:

Artist - One who creates original works for the purpose of self expression.

Artisan - One who creates original works for practical purposes.

Craftsperson - One who creates works based on the designs of others.

I want to point out that to me these distinctions have nothing to do with skill.  I think that if you asked each of these types of people to build a chair, the craftsperson would be the most likely to succeed, the artist the least likely.  The craftsperson would draw on previous designs to build something solid, comfortable, and attractive.  An artisan would probably build a solid chair, but their original design may not be as comfortable as some existing designs or the design may not be appealing to as many people.  The artist may not even consider those things to be important in comparison to what they are trying to communicate to someone looking at it.

What is important to these definitions is the idea of originality.  If I were to see a pattern in the inlay around the edge of a coffee table and reproduce it in a segmented bowl am I being original?  If I come up with one original idea, does that move me from craftsperson to artisan?  The lines start to blur.  It doesn't help that in order to become good at something you need to practise the methods of those who have gone before, until you don't just know them, you understand them.

That idea, that you need to understand what you are doing, is very important to me.  In mathematics, when you know an equation, you can plug in the numbers and use it to solve a problem.  When you understand how that equation was derived, get down to its roots, you can play with it, make changes, and solve a wider range of problems.  The same is true of throwing a football, playing music, or designing a chair.  Understanding what you are doing makes it possible to be both original and successful.

I've gotten a little off track with that last paragraph.  Anyway, if you are still with me, I invite you to take a look back through some of my previous posts and see where you think I might land in those three classes.  If you are also someone who likes to create things, take a look through your own work and see how you feel about that.  And if you've read through all of this and you think that I'm way off base, I'm willing to admit you may be right.

Exotic Wood Close to Home

Woodworkers love exotic woods.  Vivid colors and strong grains catch the eye and can give a piece that wow factor we all want.  Wood from far away places like Africa, South America, and Australia add extra cachet to your work.

Exotic can also be in the eye of the beholder, I've found.  A friend told me about a time he was on vacation in the Carribean and watched a worker use a sledge hammer to drive a beam of purpleheart into place.  He said it almost made him cry.

In that spirit I would like to tell you about some extremely rare wood that I recently harvested.

That tall spindly thing between the houses is an apple tree.  It is shaded from the east by my neighbor's house, from the south by the large pine at the front of the picture, and from the west by large trees on the other side of the yard.  As part of our plan to rejuvenate this side of the yard these two trees, along with two more, are coming out. (Before you get too upset about four trees being cut down, you should know that this still leaves eight trees in my front yard alone.  If you are still upset, come over and rake leaves this fall.)

There should be enough there for at least eight bowls, although I hear fruit wood is also good for making spokshaves.  That rings a bell for some reason...

Whatever I choose to make from this tree, no one else will have wood quite like this, and that's about as exotic as you can get.  I have a couple of other 'exotic' woods in my collection already.  These pieces are made from a mountain ash that grew in my back yard:

This bowl came from a big leaf maple burl that grew in the back alley two doors down.

No, I didn't cut it down in the middle of the night.  I happened to see the guy cutting it down and offerred to help if he gave ms some of the wood.  He gave me a piece about two feet in diameter and three feet tall, covered in burl.  It was all I could do to roll it over to my yard.  He said a friend of his was going to take the rest for fire wood.  Doesn't that almost make you cry?

When is "good enough" not good enough?

A couple of posts ago I was lamenting the shortcomings of my vintage Stanley #60 spokeshave and I wrote "I guess building a spokeshave is in my future."  To be honest, I've had a spokeshave kit for almost a year now and I had just misplaced it for a while.  What was lost, however, is found again and I have started to build it.

My original intention was to post about the process (I have lots of pictures) and thrill you with the story of how I recovered from my massive screw up, but something else happened that I felt I needed to talk about.  If you really feel you need to know how to build a spokeshave you can read about it here.

At one point in the instructions, very near the end, it says "Lay a piece of 120x sandpaper on a flat surface.  Sand the sole of the spokeshave until the brass parts are flush with the surounding wood."  The brass parts refered to are the brass strip in front of the blade and the two screws used to hold it in place.  I clamped one end of a role of 120 grit sandpaper to my jointer and carefully began to sand.

After about a hundred strokes I was almost done.  The screws were nicely flush with the brass strip and the strip was about 90% sanded.  Just a the two front  corners that were a little high.  Good enough for a first try at a spokeshave...

"You can do better."

Besides, my sharpening experience has taught me that when it looks like you are 90% done you still have 90% of the work left to go...

"You can do better."

I had already spent a lot more time on this than I planned due to a careless mistake that I had made.  Leaving these corners would help me make up for lost time...

"You can do better."

Sigh... 

In the end, it only took me another 130 strokes to finish it off.

You may notice that I even 'clocked' the screws.  Thank you Chris Schwarz for that little obsession.  The instructions that came with the kit don't say anything about making the brass any smoother than this, but there's no way I can leave it at that. I want that brass polished so I can see my reflection when I'm done.

So why is "good enough" not good enough?

I've stared at this question for three nights in a row now and I'm still not sure I've got it.  Pride, of course, is the simple answer, but it goes beyond that.  If you read my blog regularly you know that I make a lot of mistakes and I'm not too proud to share them.  Somewhere deep down I need to get this right.

Actually, my mistakes have been on my mind a lot while I stared at that question.  I'm not afraid of mistakes and I'm sure I will make more as I go.  At some point though, I want to be able to pick up my tools and know, whether I'm doing it for the first time or the hundredth time, that I can get it right.  I want to know that the result will be useful and beautiful and lasting.

I guess that by obsessing over this one little detail and getting it right I am reassuring myself that that day will come.  One detail at a time I am building the skills to make it happen.  As I create these tools they become an extension of myself and part of me will flow through them into everything I make.