The Real Woodworking Campaign is on

Soon we will be launching our website for the Real Woodworking Campaign, which we plan to open as a worldwide endeavour to promote the art and craft of real woodworking for all.

You have heard me talk of the Real Woodworking Campaign (RWC) for some months and it started out by provoking my audiences to go home and start woodworking for real. I would say things like, “We need a real woodworking campaign to get people off the router and onto the workbench again. We need to boycott throwaway saws and learn the skills of sharpening and not follow the ‘professionals’ any more because their standards went out of the window four decades ago when they lost the skills of sharpening almost everything altogether.

I want to stop calling machines tools as if they have rightful place alongside hand planes and saws and I am willing to tell anyone why I feel this way. I want children to be safe and welcome in my workshop and to be able to work there too. Health and safety are important aspects of our general wellbeing in working productively and creatively so finding the right balance between hand methods and machines is important.

What about forming guilds and clubs, regional workshop training centres with chapters, teachers versed in their craft, expert advisors  and so on? What about fund raisings and sponsorships, real apprenticeships and other such things?

To make the Real Woodworking Campaign effective in renewing the community of woodworkers around the world, we must first define its objectives and concerns. This will enable us to determine how best we can restore possibilities for future generations of woodworkers. Identifying the needs and then providing answers from a lived life gives a powerful message of an alternative fulfilled and sustained by the work of your own hands.

By this we sweep away the mysteries and old myths to present a new and vibrant story of struggles in gaining mastery over the unmastered; a story inclusive of others engaged in thought and presenting ideas from the past and present to create a coherent future so that all can take the next step—Changing the future begins in our present.

Over the next few blogs I will post some of the thoughts and feelings I have. If you have anything to contribute about how you feel this campaign could and should progress I would be glad to hear from you as might others who follow our progress.

But here is a fact; without you and many others contributing in whatever measure you can it will not go anywhere. I know that this is thought-provoking and I sincerely hope that that’s the case. I hope that you will think about how you can help. It might be by asking the right question. Remember this. The hardest question to answer is the one that’s never asked.

I look forward to hearing from you, and hope your name is added to those already signing in to push the campaign forward. This a non-political campaign that will one day have some persuasive input for the next generation.