Keep a Woodworking Journal

So what, if you can't draw. Even a stick man or five lines for a hand become an aid to memory. Much of my work in the shop begins with a few lines, some notes and a look over the wood in hand.

My journal gives me the opportunity to record my thoughts and feelings as I prepare to make a piece. Please consider this. It has nothing to do with your art skills but order. Art actually derives its root from order and the artificer of work who learned as a result of learning and practice.

I draw to record of course, but holding a lifelong record of work is rare in our present day and has diminished more rapidly in the last five years than in the previous five decades. All of my work for the books I write start in my journal and so too the lists of the tools I use or the materials I try to keep track of. That way, when a piece sells, I have my notes and thoughts available.

Here is the tool chest I am making, with the details of the drawers drawn full size. My measurements and cutting lists prepared and thought through beforehand minimise mistakes and prove viability before the work begins. On the pages I begin to see proportion and shape, size of sections and features like joints. Points that I find important to the design.

My enjoyment in design becomes a second build as the shavings fall from the wood and the bench and the joints are formed.

Reality comes first in the drawing and then in the wood. the hands bring shape with the pen and pencil and then with the chisels and the saw and plane, the auger and the file in hand.