2nd day of the three-day
We were so busy today. My students, as usual, are thoroughly enthusiastic and never took a breather once apart from a half hour lunch break, which I had to insist they took. David and Judy are married to each other and watching them working is a treat. Their dovetails were very nice too and this evening they had the bottoms glued to the main box before we left. In fact, all the students were at the same stage when I locked the door at 5pm. The challenges vary from one to the other, but the heightened sense of awareness is the same for all.
A box with dovetailed corners lasts
Beyond the maker’s hand
To carry deep within its walls
The memories of many distant pasts
So, what would it mean to you to spend three days in a hand tool workshop making a box? Would it mean the same as many others who come here? I discovered teaching almost 20 years ago. I do it only from my background as a working craftsman and that’s how I have done it all the way through my life. I cannot say how many I have trained at the bench. I know what it meant to me to have someone train me and my time to return the favours given me came.
Gaining knowledge, skill and confidence
They push the plane they never held before diffidently. The first five swipes and confidence wanes. I twist the adjustment wheel in their view and they seem to understand. We set the plane to the wood and push together. A wide ribbon of pine rises in the throat and twists as smoke curls from the chimneys in the farm cottages high in the mountains above me. We push more, and the pine twists wryly again from the throat and spills to the bench top. There’s an unspoken sense of connectedness they’ve never known till now. The plane works… but then it doesn’t. I recall the same hit-and-miss results the first time my new plane balked at the work. “Push!” My mentor urged loudly and unwaveringly. “Push.” The cry came again. And push I did. Within a few hours I could more readily land the plane on the wood and correct the faulty surface. Hour by hour my faltering lessend and my confidence increased. That same plane has served me 46 years now. I’m glad George said loudly to “Push!”
You see becoming does not come by any easy path. Were it so it would not be worth the having. Becoming takes strength of character, a self discipline that has nothing to do with law or legality, but a determination to overcome, a willingness to approach the wood from a different angle, a willingness to shift in direction without withdrawing from the task.
Those who overcome have these ingredients, the right hand tools, the right wood. The dovetailed boxes will soon be done. It’s no small step at all. It’s no small dovetailed box. It’s a stride.