Meeting Friends
Each week or so someone stops me somewhere and says, “You’re Paul Sellers!” or “Are you Paul Sellers?” It’s gratifying, I must say. Afterwards I ask myself, ‘How did this happen?’. This morning I was working on my computer in a cafe at Waitrose which is quite usual for me and Ben came over from two tables away. He was with his friend, a coworker, neither of whom I had met before. We chatted and found our common interest of woodworking and Ben said that his wife was a fan of our woodworking program too. I found out that Ben and his friend work just around the corner from me at Sophos and Ben told me he and his wife love woodworking back in Australia, which is where he lives and works for the Aussie arm of Sophos. A few weeks ago, walking through town, two software engineers from Lancashire working at Sophos stopped me in town. One of them recognised me and greeted me and then the other realised who I was. It was nice walking along the road with them and chatting for a while. Anyway, it’s nice!
Oh, ten minutes ago someone else stopped by and said he too followed us online and was new to woodworking: It’s a new world!
Paul,
How fantastic and snap!
Like Ben I work in cyber security too over here in Belfast.
My wife and I love your stuff.
I’m currently finishing off a workbench build to your plans before embarking on some of your other designs.
As someone who works in a tech related field I think the attraction with woodwork, especially the craft you practice, is the absence of digital technology and the tangibility, and long life, of the fruits of your labour.
The tools haven’t changed in a century. A plane is a plane whether it was made in 1919 or last week. Oh and it can’t be hacked by cyber criminals!
Keep up the good work Paul!
I also work in the IT and the reason I like woodworking is you are creating something with your hands. You can stand back an see it, reach out and touch it and there is a feeling of accomplishment there that I do not get writing a bit of code.
There is also a peace that you get from hand tools. No loud noises, just the sound the wood makes as you work it.
Don’t discount the charm that comes with a soothing english accent and a gloriously silver beard either!
New project, Paul redoes all the furniture in the Sophos office. Replacing office furniture with the plywood bench with laptop vise.
Paul, have you ever been commissioned to do any office furniture?
I have, lawyers in Texas who love mesquite and then a County Council has some suites of pieces for their offices that were my designs too.Maybe half a dozen times in the USA and also in my early career here in the UK.
When I visited my brother in Austin for Christmas, I stopped by a Woodcraft and picked up enough to mesquite wood to make one of your wall clocks. I also plan to use that video where you show how to make a Texas star to decorate below the clock face. I will then give him the wall clock as a gift for Christmas. I’m really excited about doing this. Mesquite is very pretty wood.
if you don’t have the feeling of accomplishment when you write a bit of code, this is bad, means probably you work for a big company and don’t feel the product as yours.
I personally still can have the feeling of accomplishment when write the code, it’s the same as with making something with my hands, a physical object. I’m happier working in both worlds. I think I have better results in software if I do something with my hands too and it’s a great time woodworking, metalworking, working on electronics or mechanics.
Abbe Warre in his ‘Beekeeping for All’ says that all people have to ‘satisfy their human needs’ where both mind and body play a part. Both office workers and factory workers end up missing this balance ( even as some of us really enjoy the work as sla comments above). Woodworking with hand tools definitely helps restore this sense of balance and satisfaction.
No surprise about friendly people approaching you all the time Paul. The immense value of your soft spoken style with carefully chosen words and technique reduced to its essentials is much appreciated.
I bet it showed the same craftsmanship and attention to detail as all of your work does.
Paul,
Thanks to you, I transitioned from a full workshop out in the country with machines to a single car garage bay in the city with hand tools and I couldn’t be happier. My spacer is smaller, much smaller, but I have the hand tools I need, nothing more. I’ve given away substantial quantities of power tools to Habitat for Humanity and Salvation Army. What I have left I am cherishing. How many woodworkers are there working out of a single car garage bay and who follow you? There have to be scores of thousands.
The acceptance of my new situation is because of you.
William, that’s a lovely comment. I don’t have any machine tools, except for the drill driver that I bought today, and I was speculating that it must be the case that machine tools would need a substantial amount of space, which I don’t have so its just as well I have a hand tool fixation. My “workshop” is nothing but a cheap Irwin Record vice that has G clamp attached to it, clamped to my kitchen table and all my 10 or so hand tools, the most expensive of which, apart from the drill driver, was the small Veritas hand router that Mr Sellers recommended once (what a beautiful tool!) are in or on the kitchen cabinet, and personality I like it that way, because most of them are pretty beautiful to look at one way or another.
The lawyers and IT people above who shared their wonderful stories about the contrast between their hi-tech work and their hand tool carpentry might be interested in two books that had a lot to do with my personal predilection for hand work – The Craftsman, by Richard Sennett (2008) and The Case For Working With Your Hands or Why Office Work is Bad for Us, And Fixing Things Feels Good, by Matthew Crawford (2010). The former is extremely dense and very erudite and not necessarily the easiest read, but its worth the effort, and I’ve read it twice now. The latter I think is a far lesser book, though Professor Sennett wrote a very generous recommendation of it, however its worth a look because it specifically makes the point that Tom Angle makes above ” I also work in the IT and the reason I like woodworking is you are creating something with your hands. You can stand back an see it, reach out and touch it and there is a feeling of accomplishment there that I do not get writing a bit of code.”, though the author worked for a political “think-tank” and gave it up to open a motorcycle repair shop (something you can “reach out and touch”).
p.s. I probably should have said this first, but this is one of my favourite of Mr Sellers’ blog posts. In the end wood is wonderful, but in a way its just wood, whereas a job or a hobby that makes instant friends out of perfect strangers, becomes something larger and deeper than just what it is. Though just what it is is lovely too.
I agree with this.
I work in the pharmaceutical/biotech industry and manage chemistry team that are making medicines that help some really bad diseases. I love my day job most days and feel as if I am helping society as a whole.
Having said that, I do really look forward to making things with my hands for the reasons you mentioned above. It is more tangible on a day to day basis. Many of the medicines I work on take a decade to get to market. It’s nice to work a few hours in the evening and be able to look back and see something there.
In a perfect world, I’d work my day job three days and week so I could do more woodworking. To me it’s not an either or but I do understand the appeal of woodworking and having something to show for it and to be able to use my hands and not just my brain.
agree with eric’s description of Sennett’s ‘The Craftsman’. I bought this book after Paul mentioned it in an earlier blog entry. I am only half way through the book ( after one year) and very thoroughly enjoying it. good philosophy that lets you examine your work and that of your ancestors from amazingly insightful perspectives.
I think that it would have carried more weight had it been written by an artisan or mechanic than a writer. I read it twice and it did feel a bit more like a tour guide the second time around. But that is just my point of view. I wonder if he really would have liked to be one of the ‘one of us‘ rather than the ‘outsider writer‘??? Just a thought really. I remember when I was young wanting to be one of the inner core climbers that frequented the alps and always feeling like the outsider until I had put my time in on the crags and then without realising it I was part of the core climbers all of a sudden.
When I was at school I really wanted to work with my hands, if possible around aircraft with carpentry an alternative. As it happens I joined the Air Force and happily fixed them for a few years. After a while I was promoted and spent more time supervising than fixing eventually I was managing the maintenance of a fleet of aircraft and never getting my hands dirty. When I retired I started woodworking and am thoroughly enjoying it. But recently someone gave me an old lathe which was rather neglected and filthy. So I cleaned it all up and am presently building a new bench for it. But I was surprised how filthy my hands got working on the machinery compared to working with wood.
Mr. Sellers my only regret is not finding your videos sooner. You inspire people with your knowledge and the way you present your knowledge, just as if you were talking to a friend.
I learned to do dovetails by watching your videos and making your dovetail jig, which I gave to a friend looking to to do dovetails. So I look forward to making another one.
I recently retired after working 38 years in a corporate Mainframe computer IT support position. It seems to be a common trait among computer professionals working in a “sterile” work environment, to want do something where you “get your hands dirty” whilst at the same time, being able to relax and “decompress” from the hectic and often pressure filled work week.
Our corporate IT division had people located across the USA and in the UK, and there was many of us that enjoyed woodworking for the reasons mentioned above. More times than not, our weekly project status meetings towards their end, would end up gravitating into a discussion about who was doing what in their garage workshop.
I can’t readily explain it, but it’s intrinsically soothing and very satisfying to work with your hands using “traditional” 19th century technology to make something tangible, that you can hold in you hands, after a work week of living in the world of modern “high tech” computer technology, where things are abstract and virtual.
Thanks Paul for helping us slow down and listen to what truly nourishes is.