DIY - An Abbreviation of Craft in the Art of Work

Do It Yourself – Spell It Out

Sometimes I miss the sensibility of what was happening in the self-power days of DIY. It seems there was a century between The Arts and Crafts Movement’s birthing years that established the art and craft of deindustrialised self working on your property, in your own property and  the 60‘s era of DIY I became exposed to. In my years it was the birthing years from Black and Decker hand-held stuff and that birthed a rejection of hand work to more embrace an age called progress and the machine woodworking we know today.

My first DIY project in 1983

There is and always will be something dynamic about taking stock of your home and deciding to give this or that a go. My DIY era was laying bricks for a barbecue pit, plastering a ceiling or installing a new stud wall. People tried their hand. Sometimes I do a blog on something and I get emails or comments saying you can buy this or that rather than going to the tools and making it yourself. Different cultures approach things differently depending on what’s available to work with and use. Here’s the thing. My blog is mostly about, well, doing it yourself and doing it myself, lower case, quiet, easy, self-relying sustainability. I like the concept of this with a family and decided many years ago that I would live it. When I looked for some hardware piece or another I asked myself if I could make it. Time wasn’t the determining factor. The question was, could I make it and if I could I did. John, this week, needed to finish his oak clock and I asked how he was going to hang it. He wasn’t sure. I gave him a a scrap of brass plate, drew some lines, added a drill, a bit and a file and suggested he make a plate bracket in brass.

My First DIY Bench-build Video

Forging a piece of tool steel into a spokeshave blade or a plane iron is relatively easy when you have the right tools and some basic instruction. I do what I do here, in my blog, online, in videos and via emails, forums and as much as I can because I believe you might want some of this too. Yes, I bought a Stanley knife for my layout knife, and I use it every day, but I have made dozens of nice knives I love to use. My thought in using my Stanley is this. When people are starting to work wood with hand tools for the first time, they don’t need to go to knife-making straight away, Soon they can make their own knives. I make knives and made knives for making violins. I designed a tool for inlay work called purfling and other such things. Sometimes someone warns me of a danger involved in a procedure. I listen, consider and make adjustments if I need to. Life working always has dangers. Chisels slip and cut our flesh and so too our hands slip when the wood splits unpredictably. We assess the work we practice for dangers and minimize risk, but life and creativity has always had unexpected risks. Do we stop and forsake the task, allow intimidation, or do we tense muscle and sinew to take charge of something that might not be if we are persuaded to down tools. Do we, must we, always build in protective barriers that means a task cannot take place and so stymie creativity. The outcome of self-work is self-worth that’s worth different risk types. I think safety is our personal and individual responsibility. We take charge of our lives as much as we can. My brothers are a bit like me. They can weld, work wood, beat iron into handles and plaster ceilings, plumb in a central heating system and wire a house. Jack of all trades master of none? Not at all. I don’t generally believe that. Their work alway excels. I think that for some, unused to hand work, they may not make masters of their craft, but for others, many, mastering skill is a vibrant possibility. A man, woman can master as many crafts as they have time to study and work at. Mostly, becoming an artisan is a made up mind.

My Last Big Bed Build

We have made much progress through the blog, the online broadcast videos we’ve made and of course we have ongoing development that means we can grow in our ongoing do it yourself. Who can name the era we live in as we see a century and a half passed since the Arts and Crafts era? Technology has changed many things, but the digital age has yet to replace a chisel paring the face of a tenon and a plane lifting grain in wide ribbons with the indescribable scents that fill the surrounding air.