For a craft or any pursuit that is meaningful to you, to do it really well, you must grant yourself freedom. And that takes courage.

Many woodworkers, knowing the joy that tools can bring, will give gifts of toy tools to young children, their own or those of relatives and friends. As Christmas approaches, here are some thoughts on the matter.

First, toy tools that actually do something are much more exciting than toys that resemble a tool but are capable of nothing. For example, a thing that looks like a power drill but can make only noise soon becomes boring – and boring is bad for kids and everyone else. A toy handsaw that cannot cut anything is likely to be quickly abandoned, while a toy saw that can cut something, even a potato, is much more fun. Within the range of age-appropriate complexity, even a simple active toy beats an elaborate passive one.

Second, toys that have open-ended tasks are more stimulating than those with narrowly defined tasks. For example, something like the classic wooden peg pounding bench is great fun for very little kids. Soon, however, the developing child will probably have a lot more fun with a tool for which he can decide the use instead of being restricted by the design of the toy. A saw that cuts or a set of little wrenches is limited only by imagination. Of course, you must consider safety and the potential for your home to get destroyed.

After all, that feeling of unboundedness and the swell of imagination are what tools are about at all stages of life. I remember somewhere in the early 1960s the now long-defunct Marx toy company made a line of miniature toy tools called Pocket Tools. Does anyone else remember the TV ads, “Uh-oh, dad ran off with his Pocket Tools again”? I carefully considered the capability of each tool in deciding which ones to ask my parents for. I wanted the tool, albeit a toy tool, to do something. The little Marx pipe wrench in the photo above, dear to me, really, really works.

Finally, what about a first real woodworking tool when your little boy or girl is old enough? I suggest a coping saw. Attach an inexpensive portable clamp-on vise to a sturdy table or countertop to secure the wood so both hands can stay on the saw handle. Get some pine wood and a bottle of wood glue and you’ve opened up unlimited possibilities. Spend time together; you are the assistant. Ensure safe work habits.

Merry Christmas/happy holidays to you and yours, dear readers.

Readers of this blog may have noticed that the author has a few pet peeves. Among them are the belief in magic, pretending that woodworking is quick or easy, and purporting perfection.

Here’s another one.

We contemporary woodworkers have a lot of advantages. We benefit from access to lots of excellent instruction, centuries of accumulated craft wisdom, and great quality tools.

“So, Rob,” you say, “what’s the problem?” Well, there is the danger that the more there is of all that, the less there may be of any one of us. 

There is, however, an absolute protection from that danger. It is your brain, but only if you use it.

A technique, method, or tool is not right just because a guru said so. Now, of course, we should heed expert advice and ages of experience, but woodworking is right there in front of you, where the steel meets the wood, and the product of your work is also right there for honest appraisal by you and others. Though each woodworker does not need to reinvent the wheel, he should assess and choose what works at his bench in his shop.

The issue is how one might take in what is put forth. A technique, approach, or tool is good or bad on its own merit, and one can also have reasonable preferences among good options, but reflexive adherence is not the road to genuine craftsmanship or artistry. It is similarly foolish to offer the annoying “I was taught,” or eighteenth century dogma as the decisive justification for a methodology.

Consider that no instruction can cover all situations, woods, designs, and preferences. Moreover, technology changes, and no one is infallible. Many nuances of the craft are very difficult if not impossible to communicate but must be discovered through your hands. For these reasons and more, second hand information should become first hand – pun intended.

I think the right road is to continually learn and put the learning through your head and your hands, so that skills are not merely borrowed but absorbed, refined, and customized.

Thus, your woodworking will be grounded in solid technique but evolves to become your own. And that, in my view, is the heart of the matter here. Your woodworking is personal. Make it that.

Photo courtesy photos-public-domain.com

A nice byproduct of messing around with photography using a fancier camera has been that I think I’m also improving my seeing skills for woodworking. By this I mean learning to better observe and process visual elements of composition and design.

The simple key is that this takes effort – it’s not automatic – and it takes practice. Sure, it’s easy to have an immediate reaction when confronted with a creative work. “Wow, beautiful,” or “Please, you’ve got to be kidding.” This sort of intuitive response does have its place and value, and, at the other extreme, over analysis is probably capable of dissolving any creative work into boredom.

Between the extremes there is a very valuable habit of pausing, observing, absorbing, and seeing what the maker has in mind, including if the maker is you.

It is similar to the difference between quick snapshots versus truly observing and appreciating the light and visual elements before you, then using your technical skills to compose a satisfying photograph.

Among many woodworkers, including me, there is a tendency to too soon get absorbed in the intricacies of construction and joinery. Pause and see first, I tell myself, and in this, photography is good training. Photography is humbling because so often the photograph shows you that what you thought you saw when you took the shot is not quite so.

It is amazing what the trained brain can see. During a guided walk in the woods with an expert naturalist, I marveled at his ability to spot interesting things that I walked right past. Yet, in the more subjective landscape of designing and making good work in wood, I think one must be similarly astute.

The main thing is that, just like cutting joinery, it takes effort and practice.

A project idea has taken hold, a concept has developed, and maybe you even have scale drawings. This could come to fruition but your jointer isn’t wide enough or your bandsaw isn’t tall enough. Or the boards you found for the project aren’t quite consistent in color and figure. Or your shop isn’t big enough, or you don’t have a real shop at all. And you really don’t have the time anyway.

It’s always something.

Always, because making real things is done in the real world with all its unsavory limitations. The wood is never quite right. There is always one more tool that would probably make the work a breeze. A wide belt sander? Sure, that will solve everything. Everything, that is, until the next limitation comes along.

Make it anyway. It won’t be perfect or just the way you want it, but it will be. Until then, it is nothing.

Let’s take an example from music history. What do you do if you are an organist renowned throughout Europe, later to be recognized as one of the greatest composers in history, you basically get canned from your job and move to a place where you have no access to an organ? It must have been like a woodworker with no planes! Well, I guess if you are Johann Sebastian Bach, you deal with the limitations and use the resources available to you to make stuff like this:

Nearly 300 years later, the lack of a right hand does not stop Adrian Anantawan from playing these works. [The sample heard in most of the clip is from Partita #3 in E for solo violin, 3rd movement.]

So, what then, when the work is done? If the piece is the product of a sincere effort, it becomes its own point of reference, freed from the maker’s expectations, limitations, and nervous influence. Never perfect, but excellent, good, or just fair, it is nonetheless now on its own.

It is too late for substantive changes. This is just as well, because now everything hopefully seems right unto itself, at whatever level the work was done, including the imperfections and doubts, almost as if it was meant to be that way.

Deal with limitations, do the best you can, and accept the result for what it is. Make something.

It’s always something – until the thing is.

Fellow craftspeople, shop dwellers, makers of things, maybe you can relate to this.

Tuesday afternoon was fun time at 13 years old. School let out at noon, and not long after, my friend and I would meet up at our fishing stream to catch sunfish, crappies, and perch. There was little art to it, just basic tackle, night crawlers, and red and white plastic bobbers. It was a decent way to spend youthful time.

My pal and I intermittently conjured ourselves to be real fishermen with serious skills, and more exotically, fly fishermen. We even earnestly tied a fair number of flies using some authentic materials, but with no real intent (or ability) to put them to use.

However, this kid stuff led me to borrow a book from the library that resonated so deeply with me that I never forgot it. A few years ago, while reminiscing about this, I used the internet along with a vague recollection of an oddity about the author’s name to locate a copy of Fly Fishing For Trout, by Richard Salmon, published in 1952.

As a young teen, it was my first encounter with the intricacies of how someone does something truly well, along with the driving passion. It stood in inspirational contrast to my naive efforts at fishing. I marveled at the author’s melding of scientific knowledge, meticulous attention to detail, and deep experience into superbly expert fishing skills. He described details of fish anatomy and physiology, subtleties of stream conditions, and nuances of equipment, all in the context of studied experience. This was serious stuff, even intimidating.

Perusing my copy now, I also appreciate the author’s peaceful, trusting tenor, and, nostalgically, the lack of today’s widespread ostentation.

I sensed then – and understand now – that this book reflected a deep desire in me – to simply do something very well. It is a joy for the soul to unboundedly immerse the mind, heart and hand in a meaningful pursuit.

No, I never took up fly fishing, but it sure is good to be in the woodshop.

From Richard Salmon, page 81: “For in fishing as in anything else, you must, if you are going to get results, have your heart in your work. The more joyous I am on a stream, the more enthusiastic, the heavier my creel. But to be happy and enthusiastic, I must believe in the fishing tools my hands control – must believe that I can work naturally, carefully, and well.”

Two projects, a small table and a wall cabinet, now distant memories from 25-30 years ago, occupied a considerable amount of my attention as I endeavored to advance my woodworking skills. They were moderately complex pieces. The table involved blind and through mortise and tenons, and curved legs. The cabinet involved multiple frame-and-panels, doors, drawers, partitions, and lots of dovetails.

The designs were pretty good, the wood selection was very good, and there was a decent amount of good workmanship including lots of clean joinery. Unfortunately, I eventually got stuck with some poor choices in several areas: coordinating the alignment of certain components, assembling parts with work left to be done that was then impossible to do well, delayed decisions on some joinery strategies, and poor selections for pre-finishing the panels in the cabinet.

I could not bring myself to finish these projects. Both lingered, partly assembled, in the shop for a long time because I also could not bring myself to destroy them. Yet, eventually, I did destroy both of them.

Why? It was not a matter of imperfections; all projects have those. It was because I knew these pieces would never have that fundamental rightness that produces joy. Further effort would be drudgery. My consolations were that I learned, and time would better be spent on work with real promise.

This sort of failure can come from a faulty or misunderstood concept, though not in these cases. Rather, in each, I did not understand a path to successfully putting all the aspects together to complete the piece, even though I successfully executed many individual tasks such as joinery. My craftsmanship, while pretty good in many respects, was naive. I could not put it all together, figuratively and literally.

This is the hardest aspect of a woodworking project – all the elements of design and execution must come together. One must map a clear, controlled path to achieve this. This path is ultimately based on a clear vision of a good design concept, and the insightful craftsmanship to carry out that vision.

I guess it is true of any endeavor, work or play – such as jobs, sports, and arts. It’s one thing to learn the components but quite another to put them together and make it flow. With woodworking, however, you see it all before you. There is no hiding, and you know it.

Next: So, what did I learn?

The American flag hangs at the top of my shop to remind me that creativity depends on freedom, which begets opportunity. And the best place for that is right here, supported by core American values. For this, I feel blessed.

May God bless America.

Happy woodworking.