Why We Woodworkers Do What We Do

Surely craft and working with your hands defies the status quo. I think there is more to becoming an artisan than just hobbyism. I see it when people come to my classes and of course in the hundreds of emails people write to me expressing how they have found true meaning in becoming real in their woodworking. By that I mean they are not merely looking at woodworking as some kind of pastime but as an integral part of their life. They want to work with their hands and establish real skill. They are not looking for a machine to substitute for skill but want the skills as a practicing artisan in their own right. They discover against all odds that it isn’t so wild a thing to become a woodworker with serious goals and a serious outcome to their lives. The hands they have are not working hands like mine yet but they use what they have and start manipulating the tools like crafting people. A muscle develops and then another and before long they are less sore ad they are in total control of what's happening at the other end of that tool.
Throughout the last century of course people worked more manually than people working do today. They lifted, pulled and shoved more instead of punching keys and driving machines and then exercising in gyms to create muscle that doesn’t actually do work for a reason. I hope that people can continue to pursue physical work like mine, craft work, for a worklife and don’t always pursue it as a mere hobby. Hobby seems to me to be such an empty, powerless word and I am glad there are guilds of woodworkers and that disallow words like hobby in their title as in days of old when someone described themselves as having “only a hobby’”. I don’t teach hobby woodworkers hobby woodworking but a serious alternative reality as a way of living and working with wood and tools that defy hobby. There’s much more to this thing called real woodworking than many people realise and that’s why I think that people pursue it with such a passion. Nothing and no one will stop them from working with their hands working wood every minute they get.
Being able to buy tools secondhand on eBay has opened up opportunities for us woodworkers to acquire tools and related equipment much more readily than ever before in the history of woodworking. needing a special awl or a low angle block plane and within two days it’s there on your doorstep replete with a note saying leaving good feedback if I gave you good service. A quick search in Google links us to wood and leather and glass like never before and if you need an anvil or post vise there will be several for sale there and elsewhere. Tools are sold and exchanged far more readily today because of eBay than ever before and trading is commonplace. I often contact sellers with an offer outside of the bidding zone because I need a tool and want the actual one they have. Sometimes it works that we can do the deal and both be compensated in the outcome. A plane part can be had that completes an otherwise incomplete or broken plane and of course new handles or a setscrew can take that useless into usefulness again. Occasionally a lemon pops up and we have to live with that but there are usually ways to get the compensation you need for a failed transaction. Trading off earlier lesser purchases for an upgrade and better one becomes simple of you are prepared to repackage and ship out. I never sell on eBay because most of what I buy has a viable place in my work and school, but others enjoy bettering their collections when they see something they collect.
This week we will conclude the workshop foundational course yet again. Sending them home with a few projects is always of secondary importance but to them it is important in that it validates their being here and shows off the skills they developed in a tangible way. What they once dreamed might be possible becomes a reality and clearly proves that they have indeed mastered some skills and techniques they actually didn’t altogether know they had but thought might lie dormant inside their DNA. It takes out a little of the risk and even though paying for a course has cost, coming here takes out some of expense in that they have benches and tools and wood and instruction that produces what they pursue and they can evaluate what they will need to pursue this aspect of becoming a lifestyle woodworker. I have seen the development of knowledge and skill, tools lifted from the bench that cut and shape the wood and form joints to the corners of wood become an extension of this new found skill and knowledge. When they leave here they will know that they are serious woodworkers and not mere professionals who only do what they do for money. My ambition will be complete and my goals achieved. Some will go on to do this for a living and some will do it for a living without ever selling what they make.