What are our goals as woodworkers?

It is just wood, right?

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

I am not sure whether many of us here can make grand generalisations about "woodworkers". I know a few professional woodworkers intimately enough to understand their motives for woodworking as they are personal friends. Most of the woodworkers I am familiar with are on forums, and these cyber friendships are limited to observations according to what others are prepared to reveal. I think that we are really a diverse bunch.

Still, I think that there are two more common reasons, in varying degrees, for woodworking on the forums. The first is the desire to belong to a group. No getting away from this one. You are here, yes?

The other quality is a desire for self-actualisation. I think that comprises the majority of handtoolers. It all seems to start with owning handtools as an entry to the group, but slowly a force builds within and there is a drive to develop the skills of our forefathers, instead of just wearing their badge.

David wants to make extraordinary planes. To do this he must not just use a plane - he must become the plane. I have these visions of David sitting on a lotus position, on his bench top, rocking back-and-forth, humming his mantra, "be the plane ... be the plane ... be the plane ...".

Woodworking are passionate people. Well, anything creative demands passion, and while one may start off reproducing the work of others, eventually we will want to forge a path that we believe to be unique. It is ironic that individuality and membership of a group are not mutually exclusive. The upshot is that we develop religious-philosophical alliances. The BU vs BD users, the freehand vs honing guide users, the Eastern vs Western tool users, 18th Century vs 20th Century furniture design ....

Me? I work long hours in my psych practice. I'm just a Weekend Warrior. There is little time to do anything more physically than that. During the week I dream, cogitate and plan - and my patient's think that relaxed look and quiet smile is my way of encouraging them ... in my perfect day dream I am building great furniture, of individual design and complexity, examining a handtool and understanding its roots and abilities, or paring with a perfect edge.

This is just our secret - right?

Regards from Perth

Derek

Baloney

Warren in Lancaster, PA

It might make him an amateur in that surgical procedure.

About two minutes after I finished my post last night my sister called about some family business. My sister is a scientist, her husband a doctor. After discussing our business I asked about her husband who had had surgery that day. She said with some surgeries everybody leaves feeling much better, but with this surgery there is a large range of outcomes and we won't know about the success for a while. That does not mean the surgeon was an amateur. No doctor would hire an amateur surgeon. I read her the last two sentences about a surgeon from my previous post; she said "That's exactly right."

Maybe guys can make a living growing tasteless tomatoes in your neck of the woods. Here in Lancaster County that is not going to happen.

Sometimes some woodworking business will bring something for me to carve, some wood that I have never carved before. They know the results are not 100% "predictable". Doing this work does not make me an amateur.

Re: Baloney

David weaver

I don't think the surgeon is a good example. Some surgeries have a lower probability of favorable outcome than others, but that is because of the nature of the problem.

If you were unfamiliar with the surgery as you would be with the carving wood, you would refer the patient to a surgeon who was familiar with it.

Re: I think..

david weaver

...this is an argument that could be tossed back and forth endlessly, and it would be kind of pointless.

I do like Buchanan's description, which is just one aspect, I suppose of what a professional does that most amateurs don't.

It reminds me of something Robert Plant said about working with Alison Krauss, that he had gotten used to a standard for recording in the studio, and his standard and precision wasn't up to what Alison Krauss (who is as professional as any musician I've seen) demanded and he described the session as her scolding him about his inability to accurately reproduce a segment several times in a row for recording.

Re: What are our goals as woodworkers?

roger lance

My goal is simply to make more pieces for my home. I know that what I make is not exceptional.....its functional.....somewhat attractive.....practical.....and, hopefully, will be enjoyable and satisfying in the making. Although I'm aware of these limitations, I'll post pictures of my work.

There are several people here who discuss woodworking on a very high level but never post a picture of what they are making. I'd hope that they would make it their goal to show more and speak less.

Amen to that thought

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

"I'd hope that they would make it their goal to show more and speak less. "

A picture can be worth a 1000 words.

Re: What are our goals as woodworkers?

Matt Robinette

I like to make a project,hope it weighs more than the waste left over and whoever asked for it happy. I always look at a finished project and see things that I think would be better done a different way. I have found that saying, it is what it is,works just fine for me. Then onto another.

Re: Fear is what motivates me

CJ in MPLS

Tom:

I get you. I look at woodworking as a way to challenge myself. Meeting each challenge improves my confidence. It is a great way to boost oneself without having to 'win' at silly little competitive games that so often are pushed on us. I get to deal with all kinds of big money existential problems at work. It is nice to have solvable problems looking me in the eye from time to time.

CJ

Re: I think..

Warren in Lancaster, PA

Merry Christmas, David.

It is kind of weird having amateurs tell me what professional woodworking is like. I thought you might like to hear about production carving.

I sometimes have to carve something for church pews, like maybe a leaf for each of 100 pew ends. I am given a drawing or a picture or an old sample or a plaster cast. The first leaf takes a while and for the first few it seams as if I am constantly referring to the sample, but things settle into a routine. Somewhere around 10 or 12 leaves I really hit a wall. Boring boring boring. 90 more of these to go! I look for an excuse to do something else.

Then at about 25 or 30 I notice a change. I am hardly thinking about what I am doing, the work is enjoyable, and surprisingly the leaves are more charming and more stylish without any conscious effort on my part. When I get to 100 I wish I had 100 more to do.

The next month the same customer could come in with just one item to carve. Maybe some think I am professional when I carve 100, an amateur when I carve one. But that is just work. Whether I am carving a mahogany shell for a Townsend chest or planing pine for a candle box, it is just work. One is more fun to talk about or show your friends, but not especially more enjoyable to execute.

Re: I think..

david weaver

Warren, I think you're overstating what I'm doing. I'm stating a part of what a professional might do. My mother is a painter, she paints folk art type stuff which includes material preparation. Over the last 30 years, I've seen her get better at it until it is a full time income (despite being retired). She can earn about $25 an hour for her time because of her swiftness with very little expense and overhead.

I haven't got a great interest in making a single definition of what professional is, but I have seen and been around the professional vendors who my mother hangs with, and I've seen them and my mother working.

My point about the planes is being able to make them in a way that isn't amateurish. That, to me, is not to be confused with something that looks like it was made by a machine, because I'm not making them by a machine. I can identify spots on my early planes where I was tentative and the tool marks show it. When I watch the professional dai makers, there is no tentativeness, and the result is a dai that doesn't look machine made, but where you can tell by the tool marks (or lack of in some spaces) that the work was done with taste and economy.

I knew a carver when I was a kid, but he is dead 20 years now. He was one of the vendors in my mother's circles.

Sometimes I get the sense, warren, that with the discussions here and on SMC, that your definition of professional is very rigidly described by how your business is, by the labor rates provided to factory workers or some other parameters, and I am not making a rigid definition but I have seen various income-making professionals (like my mother and her types) who don't run a business similar to what yours may be.

My mothers is more like production, she makes what she wants and it sells. She takes special requests if someone wants to pay. I don't know too many people making furniture the way she makes what she's doing, most of the places around us who have someone who would call themselves a furniture maker are doing more repair than making.

(read the next post, too, it builds on this one)

Re: I think..

david weaver

Upon rereading, I think we're closer in definition than you think.

If I were to try to build planes part time professionally, I'd likely do what people wanted me to do. I don't really want to do that. That may mean 100 of one type of plane or 10 each of 10 different types.

My mother's situation (again, she is a professional), is similar to yours more or less but she is probably 80/20, where 80% is what she chooses to make (based on what she believes will sell) and 20% is work to order. Sometimes the work to order is 4 pieces from a person, and they are all different, and sometimes it's 10 pieces from a person where each is the same.

As you are implying with your orders, my mother may rather make one piece at a time and admire it, but even in her spec work (for stock) she may make a run of 20 or 50 of something, but my focus was not on the number, it was how she executes her work. Her work is tidy, it is not pretentiously completed (as in slow with anxiety), every line she paints is continuous and flowing and she does it at a rate that is as fast as you could physically. The elements in the pieces are whimsical but not awkward or disproportional, and she doesn't have to think to make them that way - she visualizes it and does it. That is what separates her from the hobby painters who come to her to learn to paint (something that she doesn't charge for but should). The hobby painters are constantly pondering, and what they really lack is experience and repetition so that they can see something in their head and then paint it without having to analyze anything. Instead, they ponder and pause, and do little in a way that seems natural.

When you carve leaves on a church pew, I would assume (though not assert, you can tell me if this is the case) that each leaf looks relatively similar but is executed with enough of an eye toward looks tasteful that they look lively instead of carbon copy perfect. It is a level of work that most amateurs would not be capable of at speed, and when you look at carved elements that amateurs post on the forums, they often show the characteristics of someone who has to think too much to do the work.

I no longer think, even after only seven planes, I don't think too much. I don't use guides or chocks, but some more repetition would make my work a little bit neater. What I aspire to do is the level of clean-ness in the mortise that is in early 19th century english planes, and maybe I am a bit misled - maybe the mortises in those planes were entirely machine cut and that's why all of the lines are so perfect. At the outset, I just wanted planes that were new and tight and that adjust ideally and leave you feeling only tired if you use them heavily, and not sore or frustrated. That was accomplished with the first planes, but I have a desire now that I didn't expect to have to make a lot of them and do them better. I have the desire to make a plane that looks professionally made, but I don't have a desire to make them professionally, because I don't want to do what my mother does, which is to paint what she believes people want and what people order, vs what she wants to paint.

Perhaps I'm getting toward a two element definition of professional rather than one, the first being the stipulation that you make what the market wants (unless you can make a new market) and the second being that the work looks professionally executed. In my case, that would mean the cuts are where I want them and not where I don't, and executed in a way that the markings look clean and professional. In my mother's case, that's that the proportions are tasteful (in as much as you could say such a thing about folk art) and that the lines are all skillfully made.

I can't really say anything about pay, because I'm not going to get into one of those ridiculous stipulations like we have seen on other forums where someone says they "want to go pro and maintain their lifestyle" (which may be a six figure income) when they haven't made anything of note to begin with.

My take

Ellis Walentine

I have beeen a professional woodworker since 1971, which is 43 years. My only definition is that it has been a profession, and it's yielded me some or all of my income over that time. So, to me, it's about whether you're making a living at it.

For the past twenty-odd years, I've gone into editing and publishing and other things, and I've tried to reserve my woodworking efforts for things that amused me, not things that paid me. I'd be hard-put to say that my results in those non-paying efforts were not professional, at least in competency, but they were labors of love, not lucre.

I've billed millions of dollars of work to customers, but, eventually, I came to the realization that what I wanted was to design things that were important to me, not just for customers' jobs. So, though I still do stuff for pay (occasionally), I'm most amused nowadays by my efforts here at WoodCentral and in the exploratory works I indulge in on the side.

Ellis

Re: I hope people do whatever they want..

David weaver

I'd hate to dictate what people should do more of or less of. I'd rather get ideas from people. If that comes from pictures or talk, I'll take it any way I can get it.

Re: What are our goals as woodworkers?

Rum

As I suspect the case is with many people I have a number of goals.

To further my knowledge and abilities. This is a worthwhile goal in and of itself for me as I enjoy knowing how and why things work. I find that it also improves my appreciation of other works that I see and experience because its often hard for me to appreciate something fully without knowing something about how it was done.

I like exploring forms and techniques. This is somewhat different than the above in that I do a fair number of things sort of expecting to fail at them (either in terms of design or execution) but hopefully learning something about what it would take to succeed in the doing. I suppose that it ties in with the learning goal but in a more abstract sense.

I enjoy the process. There is both a creative and a constructive side to a lot of what I work on that appeals to but my artistic and engineering natures (although there is no harm in indulging either side more or less at times ). It might sounds weird to have "enjoying the process" as a goal, but as a hobbiest it would also seem weird to not enjoy it.

There are a number of things I can make that I simply cannot buy (unless I had them custom made for more than I'm willing to spend - especially since one offs are, rightfully, fairly pricy and some of the things I make are esoteric enough that it would be hard to find anyone willing to even bother). Doing it myself also allows me to make nice things that my friends, family and myself can enjoy that have meaning above and beyond simply something bought from ikea/amazon/whatever. Hopefully its better made as well that the off the shelf products (not always, but that's the goal). I don't pretend that most of what I make is as good as someone who is "really good" at it would do, nor do I begrudge them making a living at it - but I like making things myself

I'm also an avid homebrewer, cook and putter around at a few other things for similar reasons. There are of course risks here in that its easy to become perhaps a bit of a snob. I have a lot harder time drinking bad beer, its relatively rare that we have a restaurant meal that's better (or even as good) as what we make at home and I had to bite my lip pretty hard when someone showed me a very expensive piece of furniture with putty gummed into the poorly cut dovetails.

However I can also understand that one of the advantages of being a hobbiest is that I'm afforded the luxury of failure being relatively inexpensive and I'm subject to no standards other than my own. Professionals (and I include anyone who gets paid to do something as their day job in that category regardless of skill level ) have clients (direct or indirect) that they are at least somewhat beholden to (more or less depending on the specific form but in the end someone has to pay for the work) which imho sets a slightly narrower bar on what they can do. On the flip side someone who does something day in and day out would hopefully get a lot better at it (not ignoring the folks who make the same mistakes every day for 40 years but recognizing that they aren't the ones to emulate and won't rise to the top of their craft).

Why did I ask this question?

david weaver

I asked the question because as a beginner, I wanted to do a lot of things. I wanted no constraints, nothing on the results, and was annoyed by the talk of design because I had no sense of it.

The idea of making more than one of something at the time sounded like drudgery, a repulsive idea.

Over time, I realized what I don't want to make, which is pretty much anything that resembles a large project that needs a large number of clamps. I also changed my mind to realize that the things I want to make require some repetition to really refine, and also that I want the constraints to make something "right", inasmuch as there are some things where that can be said.

That requires sometimes a great deal of conversation, and sometimes I assert things to see if I can be proven wrong. That's a bit dumb sounding, but there are sometimes that you can't get any knowledge out of people until you tell them something they disagree with - otherwise they don't share. I see in a post above or below this that the discussion in depth irritates some forum members, who want to see pictures of completed projects. I think I'd rather suss out the details online and then not deal with the serious pain in the butt that taking a good picture entails. I don't generally take pictures of book shelves, kitchen cabinets, case work, etc, because...well, I don't care about them. I build stuff like that, but by household request and it's not interesting to me even like planes are.

I guess we're all on various spectrums for different things. How much tolerance we have for repetition, how much tolerance we have for discussion, how ideal we want our work to be.

I have a friend who has been woodworking longer, and his view is that he still never wants to build anything twice, but he also shies away from hand work. He's decided that hand work takes repetition to learn and he wants nothing to do with it (that's his choice, that's fine).

So, I asked the question to get an accounting of how different we all are with respect to the above. It's been interesting to see peoples' responses.

Re: Baloney

TomD

""It might make him an amateur in that surgical procedure.

About two minutes after I finished my post last night my sister called about some family business. My sister is a scientist, her husband a doctor. After discussing our business I asked about her husband who had had surgery that day. She said with some surgeries everybody leaves feeling much better, but with this surgery there is a large range of outcomes and we won't know about the success for a while. That does not mean the surgeon was an amateur. No doctor would hire an amateur surgeon. I read her the last two sentences about a surgeon from my previous post; she said "That's exactly right.""

Well it might. Bethune operated on his own lung for TB, when he was making an educated guess what the outcome was. He might or not be described as professional in that case, but he certainly was in a different mode of work from the guy who repeats the same operation 100 times. Technically you can only operate or be hired for such if you are a pro in the US, but the point of competence not being directly connected to the license is valid.

"Maybe guys can make a living growing tasteless tomatoes in your neck of the woods. Here in Lancaster County that is not going to happen."

I don't know where that is, but you can't truly be ignorant of the status of the modern tomato machine, google around if you truly are. Up here we harvest tomatoes a few weeks a year, we import them from wherever the rest of the world, and tasteless is a kindness.

Re: What are our goals as woodworkers?

TomD

"There are several people here who discuss woodworking on a very high level but never post a picture of what they are making. I'd hope that they would make it their goal to show more and speak less."

Well I know that isn't me because I have shown work, and I am sure in a saw off, I have more work, in more areas of wood, and in more crafts, than anyone here. But I could be wrong, obviously.

Pretty work that is copied can be done by almost anyone, with unlimited time, or better yet in a class.

Logically, if people don't discuss woodworking at a high level, they could do us all a favour and... post more pictures.

Re: Theoretically...

TomD

The theoretical discussions belong to people who are interested in, or are actually in the process of doing something new. New falls into the category of actually original; rediscovered stuff; modified stuff; custom made stuff for particular purposes; reverse engineered. And so forth.

People who want to see a lot of pictures of really nice looking stuff are probably mostly interested in copying the stuff themselves, being inspired by it, or dreaming about making it.

As usual Sartre and his categories of être-en-soi and être-pour-soi are useful. Though in their form they could apply to either of these activities, in craft there are self creating and external copying types also. In theory, neither is superior to the other. Though apparently some people think they are.

Re: What are our goals as woodworkers?

david weaver

I'm not sure who it was aimed it. It would be helpful if an example of who the offenders are was disclosed. It could be me, who knows?

It's a pain to post work online (at least I think it is). To try to get decent pictures of it, and then have any reasonable level of discussion is a time tax. How much do any of us actually learn from pictures of other peoples work? I don't learn much unless something has really great design aspects and I can learn from those (even then, a few words from george about a design principle is far better than a picture).

I learn at the bench. I'll bet most people learn more working wood than they do looking at pictures of other peoples' work.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Re: What are our goals as woodworkers?

TomD

I learn lots from photos, I have to admit. Depends on the field I guess. I would say that I learn a lot from other's photos, not mine. I think when one is learning a design area, and as usual there isn't anything to fall back on, then one of the best things to do is get lots of photos, draw them dimension them, and tear them apart. Gradually the principles reveal themselves. Architecture and furniture are areas where there are actual book, lots of them, with proportions and such. I knew a guy who had a whole small telephone book of guitar plantilas and number siginificances. He was highly number

inclined. Golden mean type calculations but a lot more involved.

I personally prefer living with fairly simple furniture, and there was less on mid century modern, than earlier periods. If I had to make something for ever, I would prefer to make more complex classical stuff, but I don't want to own it. So I don't get much from pictures of furniture, but it is fun to see what people are working on.

Re: What are our goals as woodworkers?

Chris

Goal is to make a Lu Ban chair. I figure if I can do that, everything else will be a piece of cake.

Here is how it's done (hope it is permissible to post links to YouTube).

Part 1 http://youtu.be/-sxylEphpJE

Part 2 http://youtu.be/VkGJaxyLHbI

Part 3 http://youtu.be/78h-WLCGdSs

Part 4 http://youtu.be/kL3Xuee3pp4

Chris

Re: What are our goals as woodworkers?

TomD

Is that the stool? I think I could do that. Have you ever run across something similar for a bent back Chinese chair? I guess one should say carved and joined back...

Re: What are our goals as woodworkers?

Chris

Hi Tom,

That's a very good point. As far as I understand it the Lu Ban chair/stool is traditionally used as a headrest/pillow of sorts. My understanding is that the traditional Chinese beds would be extremely uncomfortable for us.

I would not rule out that some folks would use that stool as a regular chair though. It's completely normal to see grown men and women sitting on tiny stools that would not even qualify as children's chairs. I think Gustav Ecke writes the thing that we know as chair is a very Western invention and came to China a few hundred years ago via the silk road. I believe chair, stool, it's all the same for them.

Have not seen any instructions on how to make a horseshoe chair. Or do you mean the yokeback chair/official's hat chair? In any case, that's way beyond what I'll be able to achieve in the future though.

Looking forward to your interpretation of the Lu Ban Stool.

Chris

quite

Is that the stool? I think I could do that. Have you ever run across something similar for a bent back Chinese chair? I guess one should say carved and joined back...

Re: What are our goals as woodworkers?

TomD

Thanks Chris,

I won't be making one any time soon, just meant it looked not unlike exercises in sloping joinery I had done before. It looks all pure geometrical, rather than free. The chairs I was thinking of are like that one that Yueng did the magaine article on a while back.

I wonder if Fred's great grandfather was a craftsm

Gary B

I just picked this up at the midwest tool collectors "peach meet" yesterday. A name is stamped all over it. "S.S CHELLIS". It cuts like a premium saw. I'm on my iPhone so, a pick to follow when I'm at home again