The following is excerpted from “Ingenious Mechnicks,” by Christopher Schwarz.
I empathize with the early woodworker. My brain is wired to look for a simpler solution to a problem instead of creating complexity.
Example: Earlier this year, I spent a couple hours in the dentist’s chair and was force-fed several episodes of a home-improvement show focused on carving out storage from oddball places in a home. Some of the examples I remember over the whirring of the dental Dremel include:
• Hinge your steps to create trap doors on the landings of your stairs to make small bins in the wasted space between your stringers. • Find stud walls that are chases for utilities and turn them into built-in chests of drawers. • In attic spaces, create sliding racks on the interior of a high-pitched roof. You slide giant plastic bins into the racks – it’s a bit like a top-hanging drawer. Through the entire program I wanted to puke (that was mostly because I have a sensitive gag reflex). But it was also because these “storage solution” programs neglect to mention the easiest way to control clutter:
Get rid of your excess crap.
No one should have so much stuff that they have to slave excessively to make a place to stow it. In the same way, no workbench needs vises on all four corners (I’ve built these for students and customers) to build fine furniture. You just don’t.
With this book, I hope to expose you to early and simple ways of holding your work. While many of these devices were used on low workbenches, most of them work on high workbenches as well. I use both sorts of benches – high and low – in my work for building all manner of things, from stud walls to Welsh stick chairs, dovetailed chests to nailed-together coffins.
The workholding on these benches is truly ingenious and effective. Things change when you sit down to work. And I think you’ll be surprised what you can do on your bum: planing, chiseling, shaving and even dovetailing.
The low bench form might not be for everyone. But it might be right for you and you might not know it. Woodworkers with limited mobility use low benches because they can sit and work. Apartment woodworkers use low benches because they take up little space and do double-duty as seating or a coffee table. Curious woodworkers use them because – dammit – they are an interesting form to build and use. Many chairmakers already use a low bench (but they call it a shavehorse), as do many other specialty trades, including coopers and basketmakers. Oh, and a low bench is the best sawbench ever made – promise.
One more plug for these early benches: Using their lessons, you can make almost any surface into a worksurface. A couple drywall screws can turn a picnic table into an English-style workbench. A missing brick in a wall (and a pine wedge) can become a face vise. A shavehorse can be cobbled together with a rock and a scrap of wood strapped to your gut.
Even if you never build a low workbench and reject its appliances as “not whiz-bang-y” enough for your engineering mindset, you might enjoy the journey of discovery required to write this book. It involved trips to exotic Italy, Germany and Indianapolis. (And understanding the low bench might connect your work to Chinese benches.) In the process, we rescued oak slabs from a pallet factory. We flushed $1,000 down a metaphorical toilet to learn about the construction of the first modern workbench in 1505. We ate a ton of Neapolitan pizza.
Workbenches are at the heart of everything we do. So, let’s take a brief look at the history of Western workbenches and consider why it’s even worth looking at ancient benches.
These drawer slips are a step beyond; they’re let into rabbets in the drawer sides, then sanded smooth to blend in perfectly. This approach is shown in “The Intelligent Hand,” by David Savage.
Q: In making a drawer with half-blind dovetails for the front and through-dovetails for the back, what is your favorite way to incorporate and assemble a bottom? Through-grooves on the side pieces or slips added to sides? Stopped grooves on front/back pieces or through-grooves positioned to fall within the lowest tail?
— Nick
A: As almost always, the answer is: it depends. Some projects call for a particular approach, for example, a reproduction of a high-end 18th-century English piece is likely going to call for drawer slips. As might any drawer that has delicate (read: thin) sides – slips can add enough extra thickness and thus strength only where it’s needed. Particularly nice slips (see above) are also an excellent way to showcase mad skills.
Chris’ slipped drawer from underneath. Here, you can see that the slips are simply strips of wood grooved to accept a rabbeted drawer bottom. Traditionally, the drawer front is also grooved to accept the drawer bottom, though here Chris chose to add a mitered slip up front instead. Note that the grain of this solid-wood bottom runs from side to side, thereby pushing any wood movement to the back, where it’s secured with a single nail. (Nails bend to accommodate wood movement).
But around here, we’re not usually that fancy (or British) – both Chris and I typically make drawers with bottoms rabbetted to fit into grooves on the drawer sides and front; they are then nailed from underneath at the center of the (narrower) drawer back, or supported with a nail or screw through a slot. The grooves land in half tails at the bottom of the drawer sides. And I can’t speak for Chris, but I’ve never cut a stopped groove for a drawer bottom…that I can recall.
Here, you can see a screw through a slot (to allow for wood movement) that supports the rabbeted solid-wood drawer bottom, which is captured in grooves. The drawer sides have a half-tail at the bottom, into which the groove gets cut.
This is one of the 120-year-old drawers from the original bar in the Lost Art Press shop. You can again see a rabbeted bottom (rough on the underside!) captured in grooves. You can also see that the bottom of this drawer side is starting to split, where the groove weakened the side (combined with a century of abuse).
Same grooved approach, but for the nail profligacy.
This drawer has through-grooves in the tails of the sides and pins of the fronts that capture the rabbeted drawer bottom. But I hid the grooves on the two fronts by applying the drawer faces after the joinery was done (aka fake half-blinds). Because this solid-wood bottom is fully captured, I left it loose from side to side so it can float. (This drawer goes all the way through my coffee table and can be pulled out from both sides.)
This overly large drawer also has grooves in half tails – as well as in a central support that’s tenoned into the drawer front and screwed to the underside of the back (no one wants saggy drawers). The rabbeted plywood bottom pieces ought to be pinned at the back, but now, because I could easily pull one out, I’m glad I forgot to do that!(Note: every time I pull out one of the large drawers from my hallway built-in, I castigate myself for not using pine as the secondary wood. These suckers are far too heavy.)
Fig. 1. Points to be considered in a drawer when the drawer is extra long it is necessary to fit a strengthening muntin at the centre from front to back
Perhaps there is nothing which so quickly reveals the quality of piece of woodwork as the fitting of its drawers. Properly made, a drawer will move in or out without jamming when held by one corner only, even when it is 3 ft. or more long. A poor one will drop badly when opened, it may be stiff in some positions even, although it may appear slack all round, it will most likely racket sideways and jam, and it may have unsightly gaps around its edges at the front. We deal with some of the problems and describe the procedure in making which experience has shown to be sound.
At the outset it should be realised that drawer making begins before the actual drawer itself is put in hand. It starts in the carcase or cupboard to which it is to be fitted. If this is out of square or is at fault in some other way the drawer will make a poor fit, even though it be faultlessly made — in fact its squareness and truth will be a source of trouble.
Carcase and Runners. Perhaps the most obvious point is that the carcase must be square in plan as otherwise a square drawer will not fit. (Squareness in elevation is not so important from the drawer-making angle because the front and back are fitted to the actual carcase, and if it is at all out the drawer itself will be out correspondingly.) If anything the carcase back should be a trifle wider than the front, and when guides are to be fitted some workers fix these so that they are about 1∕16 in. wider apart at the back than at the front. When there are no guides, the drawers running directly against the carcase ends, the top and bottom can be made a trifle full at the back to allow clearance.
Winding Runners. Quite clearly each runner must be parallel with that above it or be slightly wider apart at the back (this is easily managed by planing them a little thinner towards the rear), but, what is equally important, they must be free of winding. Unless this is the case the drawer will bind even though there appears to be sufficient depth when measured at each side. Take A, Fig. 2, for instance. Even though the distance X equals the drawer depth, the drawer is bound to bind because the runners wind.
As a rule it is impossible to look across the runners to test for winding, but the method at B can be followed. A strip of wood with parallel edges is placed across the runners at the back. Winding strips placed on this and the drawer rail then at once disclose any inaccuracy. When the runners fit in grooves this trouble is not likely to arise, assuming the workmanship to be accurate, but even so a test is desirable. Be sure, however, that the carcase is standing square. Otherwise if one corner is resting upon an irregularity the whole thing may be distorted.
Other causes of trouble are shown at C, Fig. 2. At the top the rail is not square. Consequently the whole weight and movement of the drawer is borne by the extreme front edge, causing rapid wear. In the middle example the rail is twisted the other way. Consequently there is an unsightly gap at the front edge which is difficult to avoid. The same result occurs at the bottom diagram and is due to the runner not being flush with the rail. In cheap, machine-made furniture the drawers are intentionally made a very slack fit so that all individual fitting is avoided. Each drawer goes straight into its carcase direct from the assembling shop, and, to mask what would otherwise be an unsightly gap around the edges, the drawer front is rebated all round, the projecting lap standing out from the surface as at D, Fig. 2. This means that all the drawers can be entered easily, but they are all a bad fit. It is largely because of this that in better quality machine-made furniture the drawers are still dovetailed and fitted by hand.
Fig. 2. Construction details and stages in making and fitting a drawer. A. Shows how winding runners cause bad fitting. B. Testing runners for winding. C. Faults in drawer rails. D. Commercial, machine-made drawer. E. Stages in fitting drawer front. F. Drawer sides being fitted. G. Supporting drawer when planing. H. Drawer stop. I. How plane is held askew when planing sides
Normal Type Drawer. As a straightforward example of drawer-making take an ordinary chest of drawers such as that in Fig. 1. The fronts might be in 1 in. stuff, and the sides and back 3∕8 in. For the bottom 3∕16 in. stuff is about right for average sizes. It is common practice to use oak for sides and back even when the front is in another hardwood such as mahogany, and it should be realised that it is of little value to have a drawer in hardwood and then make the runners of softwood. The last named would wear very rapidly.
Prepare the front first, planing it to thickness and marking the outer surface as the face side and the bottom as the face edge. Plane the bottom edge straight and square, if anything making the inside slightly smaller than the outside. There should not be more than the thickness of a piece of newspaper difference. Try it in position on the rail. Theoretically it should fit, but if the rail should not be perfectly straight the edge should be planed to fit it. Now trim the right hand end to make a close fit with the cabinet as at E, Fig. 2, again making a very slightly tapered fit.
Mark the length at the bottom as shown inset, square across, and cut with the saw on the waste side. Plane the end grain until the inner edge just enters the space with a tight fit. There will probably be enough width to enable the upper corner to be chiselled off when planing the end grain, but be careful not to chisel away too much so that the corner of the actual drawer is taken off. Finally the width is marked and the top edge planed so that the complete front just enters the space as shown at the bottom at E, Fig. 2.
It is most important that the angle at which the edges are planed is not excessive. As already stated there should not be more than the thickness of a piece of newspaper difference between the two. One way is to plane the edge square, then pass the plane over to one side and take another shaving.
In this way the shaving is thicker at one side than at the other and this gives about the right angle. All fronts should be planed to fit, and, in the event of there being more than one drawer of the same size, each should be fitted individually and its position marked to give quick identification.
Back. Preparation of the backs is similar so far as the bottom and ends are concerned except that they are planed square. The width, however, is less because the back stands above the drawer bottom and is well down at the top to give clearance (see Fig. 3). It is therefore necessary to decide the position of the drawer bottom and the top clearance straightway. The former is generally fixed by the size of drawer bottom slip moulding being used. Top clearance can be 1∕4 to 3∕8 in.
Sides. To fix the length of the sides the lap on the front dovetails has to be allowed for. On 7∕8 in. wood the lap is about 3∕16 in. and the sides have to be short by this amount. At the rear the drawer should be short so that it does not quite reach the carcase back. Allowance has also to be made when the drawer bottom is of solid wood as distinct from plywood because it has to project anything up to 1∕2 in. in a large drawer to allow of its being pushed forward to take up shrinkage (see Fig. 3).
Plane the bottom edge straight and trim the front edge square with it. Mark the length and plane the back as well. Set a gauge to slightly more than the width, mark the wood and plane down to the line. It is then a matter of trying the side in position and removing fine shavings until it fits. There should be a hand-tight fit. Shavings are best removed on the shooting board. Mark the front bottom corner R or L for identification as at F Fig. 2.
Fig. 3. Setting-out of drawer dovetails.
Dovetailing. Dovetailing now follows, and this follows the normal procedure except for the special form of dovetail which is shown in Fig. 3. At the front the pins are very small and run almost to a point, and the bottom dovetail must be close enough to the bottom to include in it the groove which holds the bottom. Otherwise the groove will show at the ends. The bottom edge of the back rests upon the bottom and it passes through the sides and thus forms the bottom pin. The bottom cut is therefore square, not at the usual dovetail angle (Fig. 3). A gauge can be set to mark the position (it is fixed by the groove in the drawer bottom slip moulding) and the bottom cut made in line with it. Before assembling all inner surfaces must be cleaned up, and the groove to hold the bottom worked in the front.
Fitting. All fitting is done before the bottom is added, and precautions are necessary to avoid racking the drawer when planing. The simplest way is to screw a couple of stout battens to the bench and place the drawer over these as at G, Fig. 2. As a rule it is necessary to work inwards from each end to avoid splitting out the end grain. Do not remove more than is essential to give a clean finish, and try the drawer in position frequently. Note carefully where it appears to run tightly. This is often revealed by the shiny appearance of the surface, but it is generally possible to tell by the movement where the tightness is. So far as the edges are concerned use the panel or trying plane so as to keep them straight, and rest the rear part of the plane across the front as at I, Fig. 2. It is a great help in keeping it square.
An excellent lubricant for drawers is candle grease, but it should not be used until all fitting has been completed—in fact it is better to leave it until after polishing, especially if the drawer sides are to be stained. Grease may prevent the stain from taking.
The bottom slips are glued to the sides and must be cut away at the back as shown in Fig. 4. The more usual form is that to the left in the small diagram, though the other has an advantage in giving a flush top surface. The reason why slips are used is that the sides (which are thin) are not weakened by grooving, and the bearing surface is increased in width.
Fig. 4. Drawer separated showing construction
When plywood is used for the bottom it can finish flush at the back. In solid wood allowance must be made for shrinkage. It stands out at the rear (Fig. 3) and is screwed up to the back. After a few months the wood shrinks and pulls out from the groove at the front and the screws are then slackened, the bottom pushed forward, and the screws tightened afresh. Slots for the screws are often cut as in Fig. 4 to avoid making fresh holes. The bottom is never glued in because it would be liable to split in the event of shrinkage.
Drawer stops are fitted as at H, Fig. 2. A gauge is set to the front thickness and the rail marked to show the position. The grain runs from front to back as it resists wear better.
And here’s a bonus drawer picture – simple stops screwed to the inside back. Chris includes these in some of his work.
The good news: We have a new printing on order of “The Woodworker’s Pocket Book” … but it won’t be in until mid-April.
The better news: You can get it now from Lee Valley Tools and Lie-Nielsen Australia, and Classic Hand Tools (in the U.K.) is awaiting its shipment but taking pre-orders. (Tools for Working Wood, Highland Woodworking and Rubank Verktygs – all of which did have it – are, like us, currently sold out.)
Roll your own. Simple screw vises such as this one are quick and easy to make with a threadbox and scraps. You can make as many as you like and as large as you like – even the entire length of the workbench. Photo by Narayan Nayar.
While screw vises were known in Roman times (there is an extant example of one used for jewelry making at Augusta Raurica), they don’t start showing up on woodworking benches until much later. The earliest image I know of is from northern Italy in the early 14th century and shows workers constructing Noah’s ark.
While these vises appear similar to modern vises, there are significant differences. On these early vises, the screw does not move. Instead, there is a movable nut that presses the chop against the work.
One slick tool. Lubricate the cutter with a little tallow or wax with each use. Some people soak the screws overnight in linseed oil. This is supposed to result in crisper threads. It’s not entirely necessary with a sharp cutter and a little lubricant.
These older screw vises are easier to make than a modern vise and can be installed directly into the benchtop without much effort. To make these vises, you’ll need a threadbox and a matching tap. These once-common tools are available used, and it’s worth searching out a functioning set because with them you can make all manner of vises and clamps. I also use these tools to make threaded parts for furniture pieces to allow them to be knocked down flat.
Note that the German threading kit shown in the photos cuts a 1-1/8″-diameter (28mm) thread, which is a good size for general workshop use. The 1″ version would also work fine and allow you to use a store-bought 1″-diameter dowel to make the screws. You can make the vise’s jaw any size you desire, including the entire length of the benchtop. Because I don’t build boats or fear the Great Flood, I made the jaw of my vise (sometimes called a “chop”) 1-3/4″ x 6″ x 36″.
The finished screw. The last 4″ of the stick is 1″ in diameter. The remainder is 1.10″ in diameter and threaded.
Begin by making the screws. Mine are hard maple, 1.10″ in diameter (which works with the 28mm threading tool) and 12″ long. Turn down 4″ of the length to 1″. This 1″-diameter section will be glued into the benchtop. Thread the remainder of the stick.
Now lay out the location of the through-holes for the screws on the chop. My holes are 30″ apart on centers and located 2″ down from the top edge of the chop. Bore 1-3/8″ holes through the chop at both locations. The oversized holes will allow your chop to pivot and clamp tapered workpieces.
Go for tight. Ideally, the screws should have to be driven into the bench with mallet taps. Go for a tight fit. The glue should be superfluous.
Show the chop to the front edge of the benchtop and use your 1-3/8″ bit to punch centerpoints on the front edge. Drill 1″ holes that are 4-1/4″ deep into the benchtop. Glue the screws into their holes.
Full-size nuts. I tried drawing the nuts and explaining them with geometry. The original, quickly sketched nuts looked better. So here is one of them, shown at full-size.
Make the nuts from maple. Before wasting time on shaping the nuts, bore and tap several holes in a board and use the two tapped holes that came out the straightest and cleanest. Cut the nuts to shape using [the figure above] as a guide. Then rasp the corners. Simple screw vises such as this are nice for working on the edges of chair seats, planing the edges of boards or working on anything that needs to be held securely. I have installed them on low benches and tall ones.
Rasp for comfort. After you drill and tap the holes in the nuts, cut them to shape and ease the corners with a rasp. Shown is an alternative shape to the nut above.
Wilbur Pan, like so many others, has been teaching online during the past year; here, he’s doing so from his basement shop.
When Wilbur Pan was doing his pediatric residency at Children’s Medical Center/University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, he and his colleagues developed a routine. Each Saturday, when they were on call, they’d go through their rounds as swiftly as possible so that the residents who were on call the previous night, and any patients who could be discharged, could go home – as Wilbur notes, no one sleeps well at the hospital, and that includes children.
Wilbur calls this shot “Time wasted in medical school.” He spent a lot of spare time playing in bands as part of the Chicago music scene. Here he’s playing at Kingston Mines, a Chicago blues club.
They were usually done with rounds by lunchtime. Saturday afternoons were generally quiet – they got few kids in the Emergency Room. So Wilbur and his colleagues would “sit around in the residents’ lounge watching college football,” he says.
After the football Wilbur would grab the remote control and switch the TV to PBS “to watch Norm or Roy.” Because they watched “The New Yankee Workshop” or “The Woodwright’s Shop” every Saturday afternoon, they quickly figured out how the episodes typically progressed. At some point during any given episode of “The New Yankee Workshop,” Wilbur recalls, “one of us would say, ‘Hey, I bet Norm’s going to get the dado stack.’ And then Norm would say, ‘I’m going to get the dado stack!’ and we would all high-five each other.” Ironically, he goes on, “none of us did any woodworking.”
What a bunch of geeks.
Wilbur made this replica of an Enzo Mari bookcase using Japanese hand tools and cut nails, even though the parts look as though they were made by machine.
Today, Wilbur does as much woodworking as he can. He started – or more precisely, started back up – around 2006, after he and his wife, Mary, bought a house in East Brunswick, N.J. After living in apartments for most of his life, it was the first time since high school, when he took a shop class that taught him to make a bellows (which his parents still use), that he had a place to do woodworking at home.
Wilbur was born in Lafayette, Ind., in 1964. His parents had emigrated from China to Taiwan in the late 1940s, and from Taiwan to the U.S. in the late 1950s. His father, Jaming, completed a master’s in physics, eventually completing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering as well; his mother, Clara, has a master’s in accounting. They met in Chicago, then made their home in Homewood-Flossmoor, a suburban area south of the city. Dr. Pan senior taught at Purdue University-Calumet, in Hammond, Ind., just over the state border; it was less than a half-hour commute, which gave the family the best of both worlds: steady employment, while continuing to live close to the city they loved.
Wilbur (top, center) with his parents, Clara and Jaming, and siblings, Wileen (left) and Huby. The photo is from a family trip to Taiwan in the 1970s.
When Wilbur was a boy, his father built a set of bookcases for their home, a project that Wilbur found inspiring. You could turn some bit of creative imagination into practical, handsome objects for the family? Pretty amazing, when you think about it.
Among Wilbur’s earliest woodworking influences is this pair of bookcases built by his father, Jaming. Although Jaming built these oak-veeered bookcases out of necessity (there are no fancy joints, just nails and glue), they have lasted more than 45 years and survived a move. To this day, Wilbur appreciates this project of his dad’s for inspiring him with the idea that you can build things for yourself.
Wilbur attended Northwestern University, then graduated with an M.D./Ph.D. from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 1994. After completing his pediatrics residency in Dallas, he did a fellowship in pediatric hematology/oncology at Children’s Memorial Hospital/Northwestern University Medical School back in Chicago. Bart Kamen, an attending physician he’d worked with in Dallas, happened to get in touch one day; he asked whether Wilbur might be interested in caring for children with brain tumors…in New Jersey. On a lark, says Wilbur, he flew to New Jersey for the interview; on the way back, he had a job offer – the hospital wanted him to build a pediatric brain tumor program from scratch.
By this time, Wilbur and Mary, a Chicago native, had married. They moved to New Jersey with a mutual understanding that they could always move back to Chicago if the East Coast didn’t feel like home. That was 21 years ago; they’re still in New Jersey.
Although he uses Japanese tools almost exclusively, Wilbur’s shop looks like those of most hobbyists, with a workbench and assorted power tools.
His shop is in the basement of their house, which was built in the 1940s. On moving in, they learned that their neighbor Marc was an excellent woodworker who had built the kitchen in his family’s house, as well as most of their furniture. Wilbur credits Marc with showing him the difference between a finely sharpened tool (specifically, it was a handplane) and one that…well…is not.
Having lived next door for many years, Marc was able to share what he knew about the Pans’ new-to-them house. The father in the previous family had used part of the basement as a woodshop – one wall still had the painted outlines of tools he’d hung there. Marc recalled that after spate of noisy banging around, his former neighbor emerged from the basement with a boat.
Mary and Wilbur with their sons, James and Kevin, wishing you a happy Chinese New Year.
In around 2006, Mary thought a gift certificate to a woodworking class would make a good present for her husband. Marc referred her to an adult education program run by their county’s community college. The teacher, Mike Zaslav, had trained at the College of the Redwoods. Wilbur signed up.
“I go to the first class and Mike spends the whole time teaching us how to sharpen a chisel,” Wilbur reports. Wilbur was hooked. He learned how to sharpen and picked up the basics of working with power tools. He made his first dovetail joint, edge-glued boards together and made his first mortise and tenon.
Beyond that course, his training as a woodworker has been less formal. “It was a lot of me messing around and reading, and trying to figure out how things work.”
Regular readers of this blog will recognize the inspiration for this joint stool in quartersawn oak.Wilbur built it using Japanese tools.
When Wilbur was first getting started in his 10’ x 20’ basement shop, he understood that he’d be working with limited space. He had to choose between a table saw and a band saw – the shop was too small to accommodate both. He chose the bandsaw. Besides its small size, his shop’s location beneath the family living space led him to minimize the production of fine-particle dust, which the HVAC system would spread around the house; both of their kids were young, and Wilbut knew the kind of damage dust can do to children’s lungs. Hand tools would be better for everyone.
Then Wilbur learned about Japanese hand tools. So many woodworkers were crazy about them and considered them superior to Western tools. He couldn’t figure out why they had the cutting properties they did, so he starting researching the question through practice, as well as reading. He was intrigued, as a woodworker, as a scientist and as an American of Chinese descent. “Probably the whole Asian thing kicked in and it was easy for me to get interested in them,” he suggests (I imagine with a wink).
His father had taught him to look at things from the perspectives of science and reasoning, so Wilbur was not about to accept that Japanese tools were superior without some systematic investigation through reading, reasoning and hands-on research. “Japanese woodworkers have the same priorities as Western woodworkers,” Wilbur says. “They have sharp pieces of metal that they use to shape wood so they can build things, and they want to do things as efficiently as possible. If that was true, then the tools must be similar,” he inferred, adding “at least, in certain ways.”
He decided to focus on how the tools were similar instead of how they were different. Based on his research to date, he says, “If there is a divide, it’s not an East-West thing but a pre-industrial versus industrial thing,” He shared what he learned along the way through his blog, articles, an “End Grain” essay for Popular WoodworkingMagazine and presentations at Woodworking in America. It was at Woodworking in America that Wilbur first came to my attention.
“It’s true that there are obvious differences between Japanese and modern Western hand tools,” Wilbur acknowledges. “But if one looks at pre-industrial Western hand tools, when blacksmiths were making chisels and plane blades, there are similarities that stand out. Chisels and plane blades were made by forge-welding a hard piece of steel to a softer piece of steel. And both chisels and plane blades were made in a way so that there was some concavity to the back, for ease of sharpening.
“My approach is that I want to present a straightforward explanation of how to use Japanese tools. I try to stay away from the Zen stuff. I go on the assumption that the audience’s workshop is your typical hobbyist workshop in the U.S.; I’m not expecting people to work on the floor. The things I teach are centered on your typical woodworking shop – I have a typical workbench, a band saw and a drill press.”
What about Chinese tools, I wonder? After all, they would be more directly related to Wilbur’s cultural heritage. “For woodworkers, China has a tradition that may be more interesting to woodworkers interested in furniture making,” he replies. “There’s tansu [in traditional Japanese woodworking], but people in Japan didn’t have chairs and tables for the most part. They sat on the floor.
“China had furniture you’d recognize, made with tropical hardwood species – lots of rosewood and ebony. The joinery is very intricate; decoration can be very elaborate. But not much is known about the tools that Chinese woodworkers used.”
He attributes the differences between what’s known about Japanese and Chinese tools partially to differences between the two cultures in how they think about objects. “I think there’s a case to be made that in Japan, objects seem to be fetishized. There seems to be this reverence for objects that doesn’t exist to the same extent in China.”
For example, in Japan, much attention has long been paid to samurai swords. China has a similar tradition with respect to swords, but in China, swords occupy a less-central position when it comes to symbolic appeal. “In a Chinese movie a warrior may have his sword that’s a family heirloom. And then he loses or breaks his sword in a battle,” Wilbur has noticed. “He picks up something else, like a chair, and fights with that.” In Japanese films, the warrior often seems lost without his sword.
In China, he says, tools were historically valued in instrumental terms: They got the job done. The Cultural Revolution resulted in the loss of much traditional knowledge; such information is still hard to come by, especially for those who are not based in China. “It’s coming back, though,” he says, mentioning a school that teaches traditional techniques for carving with hand tools. But today, he notes, this school also teaches students how to carve by CNC, because they recognize it’s a means to produce furniture that’s affordable to vastly more people.
This joined box is a late-1700s American form, but aside from the turned feet, Wilbur made it entirely with Japanese tools.
Wilbur values woodworking as a counterpoint to his daily work. He still cares for patients, although now indirectly as a director of breast cancer clinical trials for the pharmaceutical company Merck; he left pediatric oncology after 18 years on faculty at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. But when it comes to his medical work beyond basic physical exams, it’s very hands-off. He spends “a lot of time in front of a computer.” As a result, he says, “woodworking fills this urge to be able to create something physical and scratches an itch I think a lot of people have.”
That said, he notes that while “a lot of things in medicine are done with protocols and algorithms, there is a lot of creativity in medicine because there’s always the patient that comes along and doesn’t fit any protocol. So you have to figure out how to take care of that patient. Plus, the process of diagnosis is a creative act, because there’s a puzzle you’re solving.”
He ends with a nice metaphor. Several years ago he made a joined box (pictured above), “a completely American form going back to the late 1700s in the Philadelphia area.” The one he made “looks just like an old one.” But he made it entirely with Japanese tools.
“It doesn’t matter what part of the world your tradition comes from,” he concludes. “There are more similarities than differences than you might think.”
