Yesterday

I'm still grateful for the workshop I work in: it's the one I close the door on at night and then open at first light. I reach inside for the light switch and light floods what was left the night before. There's always the certainty of gratitude that so too floods my mind for the work I do, have done and will be doing for as long as I can. The two doors hung and closed gently to in my new wardrobe piece last night hang still in the silence and in perfect alignment and I treasure these moments as pockets of fulfilment I am not sure I have felt quite the same way before. What kind of gift is this that a man now aged 73 can say "I so enjoyed the work yesterday." I remembered feeling wearied in both mind and body but to still feel fulfilled and happy at the making of the thousandth piece seems awesomely incredible to me. There, I used the overworked word many use just to say their 'yes' in answer to another. But to not only be in awe still in the working of a man's two well-worn hands, the lungs, heart and mind but to feel joyful too is a remarkable thing.

The large case now stood square and steady surrounded by shavings I'd left to remind me of the joy of work. In the still evening when the day closes on the workshop and I glimpse my day's work once more I always feel the certainty of hope even in these highly troubling times. Beneath the darkness now enclosing my days work I consider the daunting task I faced in the beginning when bords of oak would be changed to 200 pieces all to become fitly framed together as a carcass. Each day's building ended with the same feeling of contentment coupled with fulfilment. Such perfect closure is not the way for every working man and woman so I look twice and with respect to the decades of closing the doors on my perfect days.

Up to now, I have ripped 200 pieces of oak on the bandsaw mostly but then I have hand planed the four faces to each one using a hand plane. If I said it was easy I would be lying. But I will say that the first roughsawn surface from the mill, with its cups, bows and twists didn't put me off. The workout it gave me could never be achieved by going to the gym dressed in fitness wear and showering to engage with the world. I don't have much muscle but what muscle I do have seems always equal to the task. I usually plane steadily for between an hour or two when I am preparing roughsawn wood ready for final sizing and measuring for joint-making. I do this without much of a break as there is a certain flow to the work that I don't like to interrupt or be interrupted. It's as much to do with the alignment and synchronising of the planes I use as anything else. Four or five planes is common to me. The two scrub planes, adapted #78 and #4, sit ready for roughing down the rough wood alongside two regular #4s and #4 1/2 for finishing and refining stgrokes but then I also like the two jack planes as #5 and #5 1/2. These come in for straightening longer lengths mostly with the wider 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 used best on wider surfaces. But do not forget that I can and often do use just my 4. It's just that on large projects like this wardrobe I must go the extra mile to be efficient with my time, my personal physical limitations and so on. All of this is what gives me the mental acuity such work demands of me. Thankfully, oak's one of the easiest woods to hand plane and saw with the different handsaws. Even so, I rely on my bandsaw for the long and wide cuts. Western woods all plane quite well with a sharp plane; ash, cherry, walnut, all the maples and so on all work pretty much the same but the one ingredient that should never be neglected is sharpening. To plane so much wood by hand means sharpening fifty times not ten. This work and the way of it demands my whole being to engage with it so I never allow anything between me and the work and that includes never wearing headphones, listening to other things in short and controlled measure and disallowing the luxuries others seem always to be distracted by. I work isolatedly with my wood and the tools–I never allow myself too much entertainment beyond my working.

My 800 surfaces are planed, sanded and joined together. My bench planes are resharpened before stowing so as to be ready for the intermittent use I will use them for now. Only a deep satisfaction remains settled with me knowing what I achieved kept me mentally and physically fit and in tune with my work. As I closed the workshop door I couldn't resist that last glimpsing of my work where the fronts of the doors caught the last light. As the door swung closed the dark became the shroud of protection covering my work in safety for the night. I can't say that my lips moved into a smile but I did smile within...and all over!

Sometimes the video work interrupts the steadiness of my pace. I have had to get used to that. The saving factor is the millions of woodworkers that will see this work in the years to come. With the present talk of artificial intelligence I relise that AI will never flip a plane with the obvious dexterity of my experience even though I do know that it might well render me obsolete faster than at any other time in the Industrial Revolution. Technology has been ever advancing through two centuries and more and my obsolescence in one realm as a maker has translated me into a new world of making and teaching. Of course, I am one of the few makers that could still make a living from making by hand and selling everything I make. I know that, but my interests now lie in the world of we amateur woodworkers making simply because we love making. There is no competition for us. Our life as new genre woodworkers is to simply make and be creative in the whole of the process. What do want? We want skilled work that's high demand. Something that truly costs us at the end of the day. Why? One word! Fulfilment. Something that can't quite be caught by the camera but's important to see. The flow of it all, the interconnectedness of each phase, results in an indescribable satisfaction time and time again.

Watching it come together seamlessly creates a deep, deep love that can never be quauntified. This is what I have always had for 58 years of making. It was never the money, the weekly wage, the salary nor the silly thing we call stupidly a career. I am used to the feelings I get, yes, but they have never left me and never have I felt bereft from the hard work it has cost me. Why is that? It's because I answered my calling as a maker at age 14. My vocational calling came early on and I never looked back and never regretted my decision. Never for the money did I work but I did need the money as does every working man and woman. Bills come, get paid and go. It's important that we all see the point in our woodworking that might not always have been obvious to us. I understand time and money constraints but its imperative that we see the benefits of handwork in our making. You might well be answering your own vocational calling on the weekends and evenings and whenever and wherever you are. You may well be software programmer in your day jobe. This is purely practical. We don't do what we do to be approved, to compete, to mass make or to just get the job done and get it done yesterday. We makers pull on the constraints handwork demands of us and we find all the physical and mental therapy we need to partner with good health and a mental aptitude we cannot get in other ways.