Seeing Beyond––Part I
Seeing beyond the ordinary and commonplace can, at least for some of us, be a challenge. Don’t move with the times and we are accused of being Luddites but we know that some things, perhaps more than we care to admit, didn’t improve the life of an individual but catered more to so-called entrepreneurs whose sole goal was to make money from a mass-making market. In essence, what is mostly needed and will better place us is to go to the origin to see exactly what the spirit of intent was when whatever it was we’re looking at began. Inevitably, most creative people will indeed end up selling what they make, grow, cook, write, film or whatever. The more of an item they can make in a given space of time means lowered prices resulting in competitive prices. Throughout my working life, people have said to me, “Wow! You could sell those.” Indeed, some things I made were products I designed specifically to make in large quantities purely to sell competitively. I see nothing wrong with that if or when that’s your intention or becomes your intention. The issue for me is more how we nowadays measure success. But more important to consider these days is how we see and feel the need to express our successes or see the successes of others. For a century and more and especially this last half century people are referred to as billionaire Elon Musk or Olympian so and so. Whether such competetives find contentment from pinnacle positioning I’ll never know. I do know this though, I have found a set of chisels that cost me under ten pounds at the time that I still reach for in the everyday of woodworking that carry no real maker-name yet I have versions considered premium versions I never touch. The same is so of my bench planes and saws. This last few weeks I have been making a wide range of projects that resulted in near perfection using the most ordinary of everyday tools plus one or two others like plough planes. After every handmade piece, beds, an oak wardrobe, a corner desk, and things like that, there was no cheering crowd and no quotes of Paul being a billionaire or even a millionaire. No one said too much about it really. But what I felt starting out with little more than a thought in my head, then all the way through and after that on completion was something that needs only a word or two and is enough for me––inner contentment. How come I feel such peace when I didn’t use anything more than hand tools to create dozens and hundreds of joints in the last year? Why, after planing hundreds of rough-sawn board feet for hours did I not ache and complain of sore muscles and pain? Well, it’s simple. I’m content, feel well and healthy and find the most joy in not using machines to do my work or substitute for the skills I have earned.
I do understand the many reasons that people rely on machines to do the work for them. My energy levels at 74 are not the same as they were when I was say 65. I can tell the difference even though it is not very much. The man who broke my ribs five months ago did set me back. I’m guessing that he would do the same to assert his rights as a runner rather than take care of the two tots on the bikes he ran against. But here is the thing. I am truly back in the saddle and making again and had I not had such good health I most likely would not be. This makes me glad that, for the past decades, I have built up resilience to establish built-in resilience along with stamina and determination even in the face of adversity leading to a disabling period needing rest and recovery. My recovery has given me contentment from knowing I have made at least one good decision and that is to maintain the way I work.
Another thing worth noting. I mentioned the tools above for good reason. Transitioning from a professional maker to using hand tools predominantly was a conscious decision. It was too easy to spin on one leg from a tablesaw to a chopsaw to a bandsaw for every cut needing dead-on ninety-degree parallel and repeat cuts. My challenge 25 years or so ago was could it be done by hand without too much complication? I found it could and I do it most days. My next challenge was could I teach others to do this without taking them back into the dark ages? I did, I have and it works! So you see, the spirit of intent had the dynamism to empower hundreds of thousands of others using the digital technology of this new age.
You see, there is something about muscle power that demands mental energy to match sensitivity to every task we do at the bench. That infinite, unmeasured but self-controlled flex that directs the path and passage of the tool into and through the cut belongs entirely to you alone; and this empowering is yours in the doing of it. No one else can own what you have mastered. They must master and own their own and we know it is worth working out for.
No matter the field you are researching, earning contentment results in mastery of self and there can be no substitute. Because something ancient and past has been replaced by more modern methods does not necessarily mean that we have bettered our scope in life through some kind of evolutionary process. That’s how I feel now after mastering all fields of machining wood and then living with the truth that hand tools do a hundred times more for me than any machine ever could. Now I do also understand that people may not have the dedicated time or strength to do so much by hand so please do not feel condemned or as some say that you are somehow “cheating”. I suggest in these cases you just do what you can. And my nudging multiple thousands across the globe to relook at how and what they are calling woodworking working wood is only for their betterment and to add true skill and health to their woodworking. It took me two decades of the last three to get people who were involved only in machining wood to consider and investigate what they only considered from an erroneous perspective. They thought that hand tools were outdated and outmoded and didn’t realise that the hand tools I speak of above, perhaps £200 worth max, were not equal to the tasks of real woodworking when in reality they were real woodworking. Getting them to accept change by returning to how they first thought that would and could and even should work wood when no one was doing it that way anymore did not make any sense to them. Things they thought, perceptions if you will, challenged them. They actually believed that to work with hand tools was too outdated, hard work, slow and inefficient. And then too they had to overcome not only their own personal doubts but the doubts of the majority of woodworkers they knew or heard of or read about. They doubted then that they could ever establish the kinds of skills I’ve owned and lived off and by and with for my sixty years of hand-tool woodworking. Now these are not minor things to consider when, by slipping a roughsawn stick into an opening, the wood comes out square, parallel and true in a matter of seconds. I know, it’s not quite like that but neither is it far off either. The real problem is the reason we compare machining wood to working it with hand tools. Ease and efficiency negate what we really want and need in our working wood.
Reestablishing hand-tool woodworking on a more global scale meant a change of strategy and of platform and was made possible only because of the internet emerged to create options for new platforms to transfer knowledge. Paper magazines have dropped off the planet exponentially one by one and I suppose that the last one or two will disappear altogether in the next two or three years. Their background is mostly about media and marketing and when their profits drop to a certain level these remnants will quietly disappear. But then there is us. The best way to preserve any seed is not in a glass jar in a dim and dark cellar but in the planting of the seed in fertile soil. In the beginning, there in the USA, the soil was rock hard and stoney. People even laughed at me as I pulled out a gent’s saw and a few sticks of pine. But one by one they sat in a circle on plastic chairs and the circle grew from ten to twenty to thirty and on up to 200 for each hourly demonstration I did. And no one left the circle until it was over 40 minutes later. The vendors selling machines asked the show owners to stop me from coming not realising that the show owners paid for my flights from and to the UK, my hotels and car hire between shows, twelve in a row at one per week. Such like that. Planting in those days had its challenges but gradually the seeds planted began to grow and flourish and we now have thousands upon thousands of woodworkers making in their home workshops and gaining health they thought that they never could own again.
As long as you really know what you are looking for you can soon learn how to pick through the dross for the online information you need. This covers everything from the basics to the more complicated. Those of us who just love our craft are not some old-fashioned nostalgics acting out roles but we’re living the life whether full-time like me or every spare hour we get from our day jobs. Nothing I do now in terms of real woodworking is any different than back in 1965 when I made my first dovetail and mortise and tenon with chisels and saws. Imagine! 60 years full time six days a week making every single day and never knowing a single day when you didn’t have paid work.
Seeing Beyond II coming soon
Thanks Paul. Beautiful post. In college, I took a class called Mythologies of the Western World taught by an old Jesuit priest, Father Swain. Wonderful class where he told all the western mythologies though his tests were quite hard. I distinctly recall in 1989, while taking his class, him telling us that we all lived under a currently mythology. I was rapt with attention. He stated we live under the myth that as time progresses, things get better. He gave several examples that resonated. The only one I recall was him saying “Can you really say modern music is much better than classic music was?” My 20 year old mind was blow by this insight. Your post taps into that sentiment. For some things, once humanity figures it out, it is figured out. For woodworking that was likely millena ago. Wood doesn’t last long but they have found one piece (fossilized I think) that was 500,000 years old that had a tusked tenon. Rather recently, they found something a million years old that had hand tool marks. Yup, all what was needed for woodworking likely done before homo sapiens came into being. By the other evolutionary human species.
On a different note, could you please someday write a longer post on those carvings you made in one of the photos? I’ve admired them. Where did you learn to carve? Hold long did it take you to do them and what was it for? They are quite beautiful.
PS Bill Bryson (one of my favorite authors) wrote a book about this history of science (forget the exact title). I read it 20 years ago, In it, he mentioned that all the fossils by which they have figured out humanity, could probably fit in the back of a pick up truck. As such, lots of holes in our knowledge and any one find has the potential to rewrite history as it were. Couple that with wood decomposes over a long enough time horizon, I doubt we will every fully know how advanced and developed things were. I suspect those individual were as skilled in the craft as we were.
I second the request for more details about carvings. Does Paul have any videos about carving or anything in that neighbourhood? Having watched many hours of his videos, I was under the impression that it wasn’t a part of his skillset.
Insightful post. Our culture is definitely in love with technology for technology’s sake – newer must always = better!
my desire to become a woodworker began from a James Krenov book ” The Impractical Cabinetmaker “. Some 40 years later I have proudly created my own career with machined precision. Now at 67 working daily, with many compliments from clients and peers , the mastery of hand tool fabrication has always been a great desire. I have experienced the wonder a sharp plane , chisel, or saw can be. Never had the time. Your article has intrigued me to maybe change my approach to my impending shop consolidations. great article, passion , I will look for more.
Greetings Paul,
My operative term now is “contentment”. Do I have everything I want? No. Does it matter? No. I have more than I need, however and I am content.
Thank you for a pleasant reminder as I start my coffee and prayer time.
Hi Paul,
Glad to hear that you are productive again. Long may it continue. I can’t begin to imagine how frustrating the past weeks and months have been.
I believe you are a frequent visitor to a well known local supermarket. We go every Monday at around 1.30pm. It would be lovely to meet you in person. All the best.
Dave, Just for clarity, I wasn’t at all frustrated by the assault or the recovery period. I was actually making, writing and drawing and designing within a few days. It was mostly a matter of planning and working within new limitations. That said, there can be no doubt it did change my life.
You like the creative financial genus of people like Elon Musk have a special talent for materializing aesthetics. Taking a mental image and making it a reality with your own effort takes a special discipline. Something I had a problem developing all my life.
The other talent you have by taking something that appears complicated to do and explaining it in simple terms. Something you share with Elon Musk.
Thank you for your inspirational and informative site.
Relaxing into the make, great notion. Yes. I find in my own life, when I am hurried and frantic, hyper-competitive, or envious, while I may get the job done, the journey is not healthy.
PS: After re-watching your video on refurbishing old wooden planes, I sharpened a few more plane blades and tested them on the white oak with a very thin shaving setting. Now I have a glassy smooth surface! I feel I’ve gotten the hang of PS Sharpening! That Warrington hammer for setting planes is one of my favorites!
Joe and Michal- If you’re looking for a master carver to learn traditional carving from online, I suggest master carver Mary May’s website for online instruction. Her work is exquisite and her dedicated carving instruction is one of the best values online- from beginner to advanced.
marymaycarving.com
Thanks for the suggestion. I have purchased several of Mary May’s carving classes. She is wonderful. Almost took a class from her but couldn’t quite make it work. I also take a local woodcarving class one night a week. Woodcarving is fun.
I suppose I should answer you, Joe. I carved half a dozen medallions for a restoration project in a Vineyard in San Antonio, Texas in 2008/9. Carving is just an extension of woodworking but three-dimensionally in a single piece. When I was young, customers saw carving as carpentry as they do furniture making and building kayaks, guitars and, well, cellos and other bowed instruments. In essence, it is carpentry in that carpentry is working with wood and all of these projects use wood and hand tools to make them. I have never altogethr liked decorative woodworking so intarsia, carving and other areas are not my field. Though I have yet to find something in wood that I couldn’t make and know how to make just by looking at it, I am not at all interested in it. My greatest and most interesting challenge was building a cello with Joseph. Life changing doesn’t come close to describing thisadventure. Wood generally dictates how it must be worked so most hand tool woodworkers will adapt to make projects they were never trained to make. These days, carvings can at least be roughed out with a CNC machine carver or some other device to deal with ther tedious elenents of basic reduction.
I would say that Elon Musks success comes from his ability to shape the world’s future and not that he is a billionaire. I would not want to be him for anything as I’m not equipped for that type of life. I wouldn’t know what to do with all his companies and I wouldn’t know how to navigate the dangers such accomplishments bring.
The human world is changing as it always has since our beginning whenever that was.
Some smart people are saying that in 1900 it was taking 400 years to double our knowledge.
In 1950 it changed to 100 years and by 1980 it was down to 16 years. Today it’s estimated to take less than a year to double our knowledge and soon it’s going to be less than 13 hours.
That’s a lot of adaptations for the human race to absorb, how are we going to cope with all of it? It’s my belief the we can see some of the ill effects today as people become dysfunctional, self destructive or even frantic in their daily lives as they try to keep up. We haven’t learned to use all of our new technologies yet. In my opinion that’s why you see what appears to be personality disorders.
Woodworking is a way to cope with all that’s going on especially when you use hand tools.
I find as I get older I need some solitude and peace as I try and absorb all the events, changes and noise going on around me. My only refuge from all the commotion is my shop, it calms me down and gives me strength.
Well said. Thank you.
Cheers,
Michael
Paul,
Here is a little secret I have not shared before. I subscribed to “Fine Woodworking” for many years and read an article about you which motivated me to make a 12 drawer took cabinet of walnut with figured maple drawer fronts in which I hand cut over ninety dovetails. That chest still exists and the last time I looked there were only five of those dovetails that were not to my newer standards. Thanks for getting me moving in that direction. At 75, I am still moving well.
Hi, Paul!
I noticed in the picture of the pine box dovetails that you have the pin board oriented with the bark side in, thus allowing any bowing to lock the dovetails in tightly and avoid gaps! It’s these nuances of knowledge that you help provide to make us better woodworkers! I thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise with all of us!
Yes, I noticed that too, and wondered if he did it for the reason you mentioned, or for the look, or both.
St joseph would be proud of your woodworking knowledge and skills. He too had only hand tools to build and teach his Son the woodworking skills. I am not much of a woodworker but at 82 yrs I still like to work with my hands aand enjoy your videos.
Thanks for your inspiration.
Can you tell us more about that elegant metal grooving plane? I don’t recall ever seeing it before.
Stanley 13-050. Great ploughing plane with a lot of mass! Paul did an article a while back on it!
Today after rereading the sawhorse blog, I made a start on making one in between other jobs.Whilst reading the blog more than one person asked for the angle used, but Paul had given it. Not in degrees but as a ratio. Whilst working this got me thinking, we, at school, are educated to measure angle with a protractor, but craftsmen of old would in all likeyhood not recognise one, but would use a ratio (of the smallest 2 sides of a rightangle triangle) instead. You only need a setsquare and ruler. Perhaps there should be more emphasis on this in our education system. i suspect that it is more accurate and scalable. Although it is easy to convert from one to the other.
Found the blog instructions easy to follow. Thanks Paul!
Mr. Sellers,
I’m so thrilled to have found you. Through an independent path, mainly through looking at the world through a lens of Faith, I have come to firmly believe these exact truths you state: the world of labour has become something radically different from what is fulfilling in human life. Mastery and craftsmanship are being replaced by machines which are themselves merely maintained by man, and our work is bleak. Your work, however, has been inspiring and I hope that one day I turn my labour into something equally as beautiful and harmonious, and teach my children the same. If you would ever take a request, I would love to hear more about your life journey and any wisdom that you can share to those of us wanting to make a living as you are now. How does one train those skills seriously, how does one provide for his family when tasks take longer (especially for the non-master), and questions of this manner. Thank you so much. Cheers.