AGW Show Nevada #2
Yesterday seemed almost surreal. Just as digital cameras don’t make many of us photographers and computers cannot make every individual a printer or publisher, massive machines will never make us woodworkers.
Getting to the core of woodworking will be difficult for any attendee at this show because, even at its most base level, it’s primarily about substituting machine method for real woodworking. We’re engaged in the Real Woodworking Campaign and the campaign for real wood, establishing real skill and finding once again the relational connectedness we have lost through the past 200 years of industrialising our woodworking crafts. We are searching for the rightful ownership of skill, campaigning progressively for the rights of our young, underdeveloped generations to find this skill, and showing them how to establish it through diligence, self discipline and real work working with their own hands.
As I wandered through the aisles in its pre-show state, men and women unroll the carpets on their knees so manufacturers can plonk 10-ton machines on carpeted surfaces. The sterile environment smells of new carpet and glue. There are pockets of wood stashed here and there, but, dwarfed by industrialism, machines and equipment, they cannot be detected by smell.
Not quite like my North Wales workshop where people walk through every day and say, “Wow, I just love the smell of wood.” They immerse themselves in the aromas as they wander around my shop and cannot believe what they see, and feel and hear and SMELL.
Finding the balance would of course be impossible in this arena. But that’s why we are here. To present a real alternative and find the balance.
As an oasis in the almost desert field of woodworking we can help others reconnect the missing post-war years when the greatest degeneration took place in the demise of real woodworking. Regardless of objective, age, gender or background new and emerging woodworkers are finding skill for the first time. And it’s this that makes it worth the uphill slog for me.
Later today the show opens and we will be ready to give people the core essentials of woodworking; equipping them to take charge of their lives as the newly emerging new-genre woodworker, supported by a team and network of conscious enthusiasts around the globe. If you want to join this team, please contact me and we will start an unstoppable campaign.
I’ll keep you posted.