When I put out a call for readers to help fund the upcoming free chair class for people who have been historically excluded from woodworking, my hope was to be able to buy a truckload of clear cherry for the students for their chairs.
But y’all dumped about five times the amount of money I needed for that into my pockets.
So here’s what I’ve done. I set aside enough money for the lumber and to buy lunch every day for the students during the July class. The remainder of the money ($8,400) was donated to The Chairmaker’s Toolbox, the non-profit organizing the class.
Your money will fund additional classes for students who have been historically excluded from our ranks. Plus it will assist toolmakers who are being helped by The Chairmaker’s Toolbox.
The donations ranged from $5 to $500. And they came from all over the world. So if you are wondering if there are still kind and generous people out there in the world, here’s one answer.
It’s easy to find lots of scolding about the hazards of using woodworking machinery.
I have seen some stuff. I have cleaned the interior of a jointer after someone else’s accident. I have seen a man wrestle a grinder (and lose). I’ve seen a guy try (and luckily fail) to cut off his finger with a jigsaw. Oh, and don’t forget the fine, cancer-making dust.
But what you don’t hear as much about are the hazards of hand-tool woodworking.
I have seen some stuff. Through-mortises in hands. Severed tendons in arms after a chisel poke. A dismembered finger from a Japanese pullsaw (one stroke). And sure, sharpening and axe gashes galore.
But this blog entry is not about the gory side of woodworking injuries. Instead, it’s about taking a reasonable approach to work that allows you to be creative into old age.
I started in hand-tool woodworking against my will when I was about 10 or 11. My parents were homesteaders building houses on our 84-acre farm outside Hackett, Ark., without electricity. This was not by choice; electricity had not come to Hilltop Lane in 1973. So it was all hammers, handsaws and braces at first. And it was work. Back in our house in town, my dad had a full machine workshop, but I wasn’t allowed to use the machines for safety reasons. So again, everything I did was by hand.
Our second house on Hilltop Lane. This was after we got electricity (you can see the transmission wire). We had one plug.
After I graduated college, I started taking classes in handwork at the University of Kentucky under Lynn Sweet, and that’s when I got the fire in my belly. I wanted to do everything by hand. And that deep dive into handwork coincided with my years at Popular Woodworking Magazine. I started at the magazine when I was 28 and ended my association with them when I was pushing 50.
For me, handwork has always been the best part of woodworking. And I do everything to maximize my time at the bench. When I make a chair, the whole process takes 16 to 18 hours. Only one of those hours is on machines. The rest is at the bench.
As I’ve gotten older, I have observed firsthand the toll that handwork has taken on my body. Because of ripsawing and planing, my elbows are not what they used to be. After a full day of planing, I cannot do another day of consecutive planing, or my body will revolt. When I saddle the seat of a chair, my hands are curled into claws the next day. I have to stretch them out.
I am happy with the cardio I get while hand-tool woodworking, but I am humbled by the repetitive stress injuries that come from brute-force jack-planing, mortising and ripping.
Let me put it another way. When I read about people who consider hand-tool work as exercise, I think about the exercise I have to do in order to do hand-tool work. Every morning my day begins with 30-45 minutes of stretches recommended by my physical therapist. If I don’t do these, I’ll end up on my back on a workbench, trying to work out the kinks in my back, shoulders, arms and hands. In the evening, a heating pad takes care of the muscles that are damn whiners.
I am not alone. I know other hand-tool woodworkers who have suffered repetitive stress injuries. (Sorry, no names to protect the crooked.) I have friends who can do only so much planing or sawing before their elbows give out. What caused their injuries? Planing and sawing. I know woodworkers who can’t hold a chisel or scraper well anymore after years and years of chopping and scraping.
So here is the personal confession: As I have gotten older, I’ve had to rely more on machines than when I was 20, 30 or 40. Don’t misread me: I love handwork dearly. But I love woodworking more. So any small crutch that can keep me making things at pace is most welcome.
To be precise, I have no interest in router jigs, CNC machines or any tool with a digital brain. Those things are cool (and yes, they are “authentic” woodworking). But they don’t suit my analog belt-driven brain. I am a simple machine guy, mostly band saw. Sometimes jointer and planer. Occasionally table saw and drill press.
I do not hide this fact, either. One of the other annoying aspects of handcraft publishing is watching some people do one thing and tell their readers to do another. After years of handwork, I can tell when a streak of dust from a handsaw has been faked (I’ve watched set directors do it). Or when material that has been machined is held up as four-squared by hand (i.e. they planed the already-machined boards). Not everybody does this, but it happens.
This legerdemain fools some beginners into thinking they should embrace pure handwork. I’ve met a lot of them who took the bait, became miserable, then bought a band saw or a planer. And they were much happier.
Since the 14th century, woodworking has been about simple machines, plus a small kit of hand tools. And it can still be that way in the 21st century. The best woodworkers I know use all the tools – hand and electric. And they are smart enough to know how to avoid ridiculous situations. Such as making a Plexiglas router jig to cut one butterfly recess. Or converting entirely by hand 300 board feet of rough lumber into a highboy.
If you take a pragmatic path – machines for tendon-destroying donkey work and hand tools for the joinery and surfaces – you might end up like me: an old guy still working every day at the bench. Still with all my fingers and still able to cut damn-good dovetails.
This is the balance I have found that works. You might experience a different journey.
Running an active workshop and publishing company in an inner city has its challenges, especially when it comes to moving stuff from Point Lumberyard to Point Workbench to Point Truck Terminal. Every week Megan and I move stuff – 500 woobies, 500 board feet of cherry, 500 lump hammers – to keep the business going.
I have a pickup truck for this, and it works great. But recently I found something more appealing.
While teaching at the Florida School of Woodwork last month, Kate Swann loaned me her Mitsubishi Minicab, a Japanese Kei-class truck. Those of you who have followed me for a while might remember that I used to fix up Volkswagen Karmann Ghias. I adore simple, well-made machines. But I sold my last Ghia because I couldn’t bear to expose these gorgeous cars to the Midwest winters (we’ve never had the luxury of a garage).
After about two days of driving Kate’s Minicab, I fell in love. The trucks are insanely simple: stick shift, three-cylinder engine, less than 50 horsepower, 45-55 mpg and right-hand drive. All that appealed to my affection for old cars. But what really sold me was the truck’s bed in the back. It is perfectly suited for what we do. The bed is only 25” off the ground and measures 53” x 76”. And all three walls fold down so you can load from any side (or even use it as a flatbed). Plus lots of tie-downs.
The trucks are not designed for interstate use (many states prohibit them on interstates), and the most comfortable top speed is about 45 mpg. I see this as a huge bonus.
One of the things I loved about my Ghias was taking trips without using the interstates. I used to drive to Charleston, S.C., to see my dad in a Ghia. Getting off the interstate is my favorite way to travel. You see the country in a new way. You see far more Main Streets, interesting architecture and beautiful vistas (and you can pull over without being flattened).
Yes, it takes a lot longer, but it is far more satisfying. (Insert obvious hand-tool comparison here.)
So I bought a Minicab from a dealer in Tennessee that imports them. It’s a 1996 model with 4WD and has less than 17,000 miles on it (these were utility trucks in Japan that were frequently driven around a factory or warehouse lot; the import papers and history of the truck show that the odometer has not been rolled over). And it was a bargain: $6,500.
And yesterday, Megan and I took it for a long spin to Fairfield, Ohio, to drop off a crate at the trucking terminal. It took 45 minutes (instead of 30), but we saw neighborhoods we’d never been in before – even though we’ve both lived here for decades.
Yes, there will be some misery. No AC, for example. But I drove Ghias for years in the South and managed fine (as did our ancestors).
Lucy and the kids have christened the Minicab the “CATBUS,” after the character in the movie, “My Neighbor Totoro.” While they have pushed me to paint the thing like the catbus character, we’re going with more conservative bling: our skep logo on the doors and six happy bees on different places on the truck.
So now you have one more reason to visit the storefront – to visit Catbus. We’ll have her in front of the store at our next open day, March 26.
Drew Langsner’s mauls as shown in “Country Woodcraft: Then & Now”
Wendell picked up a maul, which Meb had made from a hickory tree. It had a smooth handle and a bulbous head, squared off at the end. “With it,” he told me, “you can deliver a blow of tremendous force to a stake or a splitting wedge.” Thinking about a modern sledgehammer, I asked how the handle was inserted into the head. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “No, no, honey,” then hastily explained himself: “That’s our way of taking the sting out of it, you see, when we correct someone.” He showed me the swirling grain of the maul’s head, chopped from the roots of a tree, and swung it over his shoulder to demonstrate how it becomes a natural extension of the body.
When I was back home, he sent me a diagram and explained how the strength of the wood came from the tree’s immersion in the soil: “The growth of roots makes the grain gnarly, gnurly, snurly: unsplittable.” After you cut the tree, you square off the root end. Then, above the roots, where the grain isn’t snurly, you saw inward a little at a time, “splitting off long, straight splinters to reduce the log to the diameter of a handle comfortable to hold. And so you’ve made your maul. It is all one piece, impossible for the strongest man (or of course woman) to break.” He scrawled at the bottom of the page, “There is a kind of genius in that maul, that belongs to a placed people: to make of what is at hand a fine, durable tool at the cost only of skill and work.”
Visiting John Hutchinson’s workshop outside Columbus, Ohio, was an unusual experience. And he wanted it that way.
To get to his shop, you left his home and set off down a path through the woods. Then you encountered a stream and had to jump over it. Eventually you arrived at a small cabin surrounded completely by woods.
The shop was cozy, well-lit and wonderfully equipped. And whenever you looked out the windows, all you saw were trees.
Hutchinson, a prominent Ohio architect, wanted it this way. He wanted the trip to his workshop to require you to encounter and deal with nature. And as you worked, nature was everywhere you looked.
I know a lot of woodworkers who would build the same sort of shop if they could. But I thought it was odd. Sure, I love trees and nature and birds and deer scat as much as the next woodworker. But I don’t look at trees and say: “Eureka – there is an idea for my next cabinet!”
Instead, I have always been inspired by good architecture. Good buildings. Thoughtful details. Window layouts. Overall proportions. These things are an endless diet of good design.
Yes, you can visit beautiful cities to get a taste of it before returning to your rural or suburban home. But it is another thing entirely to live surrounded by buildings and have them seep into your skin. Good architecture – like good furniture design – requires you to live with it for a while to really understand the patterns behind it. And to see the details that escape your first (or 10th) viewing.
The short film above is adapted from a piece I made a couple years ago for the furniture conference at Colonial Williamsburg. It offers a short architectural tour of Covington and shows how some buildings have directly influenced my designs.
This is why I live in an old (for America) city.
I am sure that other woodworkers can take inspiration directly from nature. And I think that’s great. But I have always relied on architecture. And here’s a look at how that works.
