Intenseness and relaxed self control

I love the charge of intenseness in the workshop. I’ve experienced it in so many ways and hundreds upon hundreds of times. One year we worked through many nights to complete two designs for the White House that I had done. It was intense for weeks. Another time my son strung up his first instrument, a cello, others followed and there was intenseness that made them happen. I recall my very first rocking chair workshop when 16 people made their first rocking chair in black walnut. Intensity makes that which is not, happen. Since then hundreds have made them. Many hundreds. They follow the curriculum I designed and made and created. Intenseness, pressure, makes things happen and it’s happening on many fronts. A few weeks ago we launched the online broadcast to provide another way of passing on the things I know from lifelong work as a practicing woodworker and furniture maker. It was an intense time for us. We shared the frustrations, wrestled with the issues and brought to pass a way we can teach hundreds more to make clocks and rocking chairs and many more things beyond.

Mixed emotions, levels of attentiveness, focus and so on, the atmosphere now fully charged with attention needs the balance of measured self control to relax tension yet maintain intention.

Attention is that aspect of accuracy we seldom consider yet without it our work remains in mundane realms outside what we once called workmanship. Workmanship is something no one seems to talk of any more. I think that’s because we don’t know people that actually make things skilfully and make things that require the energy of intenseness. We may know fitters, installers, assemblers who fit things to one another, but to take a raw substance, say of steel or brass and shape it by hammer on an anvil and make a handle, or someone who can create a fine chair and such from rough wooden boards has become increasingly unlikely. So many substitutes have crept in and nowadays most people are concerned with health and safety issues instead of working wood with their hands. I suppose that’s another story.

These past few days we have developed intenseness and it’s this that drives the chisel with greater precision than ever before. I, for my part, drive this intenseness to a degree by forewarning of the difficult possibilities, the goals and the outcome I am looking for with them. They guide their tools on their own, provide all energy and live with the results of their own hands. I watch them working and enter into every cut. I listen to the tools and know their sharpness or otherwise. They go frequently to the diamond plates now and their tools are always keen. Yesterday they dovetailed the apron corners to form the table sub-carriage and today began forming the columns. Precision demands attention  and care, so everyone severs the fibres with the sharpest knife edge against the square. The knife is never forced but placed and drawn tight to the beam, starting and stopping exactly between the saw kerfs that just cut the tails. Intensity continues through every saw and plane stroke. The hand relaxes into accuracy and muscles flex between each  forward cut and the recoil eased back through the passage. In working wood, every forward move relies on an intenseness coupled with the relaxedness, recomposition and dedication until the work is done.