Greetings, All!
I’ll make my confession at the start: I’ve joined this forum today as something of a hobo interloper. My days as a professional furniture- and cabinetmaker are long since behind me. All that’s left now is the mass of hardware I’ve accumulated along the way. And since I’ve fallen on hard times, it’s become expedient for me to dispose even of those artifacts where I can. (You’ll find the bulkiest piece of that legacy—my cabinetmaker’s bench—in the “Buy & Sell” forum. Many other items are sure to follow.)
Actually, it’s rather unfortunate that networking technologies like those represented here didn’t exist twenty years ago. No doubt, they would’ve proven quite useful back when I was pursuing grants to launch a non-profit devoted to resurrecting the discipline and dissemination of what were, on the whole, 18th century joinery practices. I saw this as the brightest hope for reversing the ecologically and socially destructive proclivities of the modern industrial paradigm, which prefers to invest staggering sums of capital in metal and machinery rather than human beings. Regrettably, it was a concept whose time had not yet come ... again. My later iterations of it favored the exportation of such institutions to Third World countries and evolving economies that might have been as yet culturally unsullied by mass production/consumption patterns, so that qualifiers like “highly skilled” would be assumed to apply to a person’s muscle memory and senses— not just his brain—and be accorded greater value along the avenues of commerce. But alas, it was simply not meant to be.
I recall once reading an industry professional who described contemporary woodworking as a never-ending battle waged in the service of risk reduction. The primary goal of the vigilant craftsman is to insure that whenever blade or bit touches wood, it will cut precisely and only where intended, so that the end result is always as he envisions. Being a man of fastidious and exacting standards, I can relate to that colleague’s compulsion for certainty ... but never at the price of human worth and dignity. When it is a question of doing things in the commonly accepted way or doing them in a personally meaningful way, my instinct is invariably toward the latter. For me, process is every bit as important as product. True, like most I take uninhibited delight and pride in an artifact of refined craftsmanship. But the manner in which I arrive at that destination is equally essential to my satisfaction, especially when I can travel lightly on the path and my footprint is a small one.
Of course, from the vantage point of here and now it’s easy for me to fancy it would’ve been fulfilling sharing these ideas with my “crafty” brethren, had there been a means to do it back in the day. But in all honesty, even while I was active in the trade, my immediate associates could never really identify with my urge to “go retro,” at least not to a professional extent. Nevertheless, it’s reassuring to consider that, even after all the paraphernalia of my past vocation and avocation are dispersed, relics of my upstream struggle will survive. Somewhere out there—perhaps supporting a clueless couch potato totally unaware of the heart and soul (and yes, some blood too, if memory serves me) invested in his throne—is a sofa, untouched by power tools, with hand-cut sliding dovetails and through-tenons wedged with wormy chestnut, that has my stamp burned into it; a lasting testimony to my singular way of woodworking.
In a fashion, I suppose it means I don’t ever truly have to put it all behind me, even when the last tool is gone.
Andrew
I’ll make my confession at the start: I’ve joined this forum today as something of a hobo interloper. My days as a professional furniture- and cabinetmaker are long since behind me. All that’s left now is the mass of hardware I’ve accumulated along the way. And since I’ve fallen on hard times, it’s become expedient for me to dispose even of those artifacts where I can. (You’ll find the bulkiest piece of that legacy—my cabinetmaker’s bench—in the “Buy & Sell” forum. Many other items are sure to follow.)
Actually, it’s rather unfortunate that networking technologies like those represented here didn’t exist twenty years ago. No doubt, they would’ve proven quite useful back when I was pursuing grants to launch a non-profit devoted to resurrecting the discipline and dissemination of what were, on the whole, 18th century joinery practices. I saw this as the brightest hope for reversing the ecologically and socially destructive proclivities of the modern industrial paradigm, which prefers to invest staggering sums of capital in metal and machinery rather than human beings. Regrettably, it was a concept whose time had not yet come ... again. My later iterations of it favored the exportation of such institutions to Third World countries and evolving economies that might have been as yet culturally unsullied by mass production/consumption patterns, so that qualifiers like “highly skilled” would be assumed to apply to a person’s muscle memory and senses— not just his brain—and be accorded greater value along the avenues of commerce. But alas, it was simply not meant to be.
I recall once reading an industry professional who described contemporary woodworking as a never-ending battle waged in the service of risk reduction. The primary goal of the vigilant craftsman is to insure that whenever blade or bit touches wood, it will cut precisely and only where intended, so that the end result is always as he envisions. Being a man of fastidious and exacting standards, I can relate to that colleague’s compulsion for certainty ... but never at the price of human worth and dignity. When it is a question of doing things in the commonly accepted way or doing them in a personally meaningful way, my instinct is invariably toward the latter. For me, process is every bit as important as product. True, like most I take uninhibited delight and pride in an artifact of refined craftsmanship. But the manner in which I arrive at that destination is equally essential to my satisfaction, especially when I can travel lightly on the path and my footprint is a small one.
Of course, from the vantage point of here and now it’s easy for me to fancy it would’ve been fulfilling sharing these ideas with my “crafty” brethren, had there been a means to do it back in the day. But in all honesty, even while I was active in the trade, my immediate associates could never really identify with my urge to “go retro,” at least not to a professional extent. Nevertheless, it’s reassuring to consider that, even after all the paraphernalia of my past vocation and avocation are dispersed, relics of my upstream struggle will survive. Somewhere out there—perhaps supporting a clueless couch potato totally unaware of the heart and soul (and yes, some blood too, if memory serves me) invested in his throne—is a sofa, untouched by power tools, with hand-cut sliding dovetails and through-tenons wedged with wormy chestnut, that has my stamp burned into it; a lasting testimony to my singular way of woodworking.
In a fashion, I suppose it means I don’t ever truly have to put it all behind me, even when the last tool is gone.
Andrew
