The aesthetics of tool handle designs can be so deceiving in their beauty that they hide the fact that they are part of a sophisticated feedback loop. A tool handle may look simple, but that doesn’t mean every aspect of the tool hasn’t been carefully thought out. The shape of a chisel or knife handle tells our body exactly how the cutting edge is oriented and what angle to position it to execute a clean cut. Scientists have been stymied for decades trying to map the electrochemical signals in the brain during complex thinking. No less mysterious is how our hand connects with the curved sweep of an axe handle such that we can throw the blade with our arms...
Every time I pause to observe the marks left by the tool, I look at the fibers of the oak. You can follow the movement of the grain with your fingertip. It carries on without any concern for the chalk lines or pencil markings, suddenly curving, sometimes plunging, elsewhere whirlpooling around a knot, departing unpredictably and never straight. These lines have a lot to say, and I am reminded of a remark the poet Gary Snyder made to his friend Jim Harrison: “And so each one of these huge old coastal live oaks, with their remarkably twisting, turning, tumultuous structure…. It’s one expression of what it’s like to live in the wind.” The bit of my axe strikes wood again....
But cattail deserves a renewal – there is not a greener, more environmentally conscious option for chair seats. This may sound like a bold claim, but consider the alternatives: Woven hickory, ash splints, and solid wood all require a tree to be chopped down, and in the case of a pine seat for a Windsor chair, it’s quite a large tree. Manufactured materials like Danish cord or Shaker tape require factories, infrastructure, and mail-order catalogs. On the other hand, cattails grow in that muddy ditch just up the road, and whatever you cut this year (if done responsibly) will come back again next year. In fact, they tend to spread aggressively and take over wetland areas, so keeping after them...
Blaise Pascal wrote about gambling and how it grips us because of the thrill of risk – if every roll of the dice was known, it would lose its power. The idea of taking on risk speaks to something deeper within us. When we as woodworkers split open a log, there’s always the possibility of the unknown. Our effort may reveal rot or some beauty never seen before. Hand tools are a means of connection that bring us into close contact with the risk found in nature. Never before in our history have we been surrounded by so many faux materials – imitation leather, marble, or wood, without any of the risks or quirks of natural materials. We can even...
One of the things you’ve heard me quote again and again over the years is G.K. Chesterton’s adage: “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” In his characteristically provocative and opaque way, Chesterton tells us that the really valuable stuff of life (such as work, leisure, birthing and rearing children, etc.) is something we ought to handle ourselves, even if it won’t yield perfect results. It’s that important. A true amateur – as understood in its literal sense of a person who does something “for the love” of it – is still a rare breed it seems. The word is often hurled as a pejorative to disparage the work of the non-specialist, but in Chesterton’s view,...
But the principle may be stated more broadly still. I have confined the illustration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it as if true of architecture only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the laborer’s mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no great man ever...
The fluting engine is a simple device. Pull on the lever, and the cutter – attached to a short arm at a right angle to the lever – moves in an arc and cuts a path through the wood. Rotate the turntable a bit and repeat – somewhere between 50 and 100 times to complete one pass around. Raise the table, and make another pass. Then repeat, perhaps carving 1/32" to 1/16" at a time until you’ve carved out a bowl. This is what happens, but the description completely misses the wonder of carving a bowl this way. The sound of a sharp cutter slicing through the wood is amazingly satisfying. The cuts come out glistening from the sharp edge...
After we rived enough parts for two chairs, Kenneth opened a tool chest full of drawknives and I used a half-dozen different styles to begin refining the riven parts. Kenneth had spent many hours with these tools. He had no trouble using any of them, but knew the ones that fit his body best. I had the freedom to switch back and forth between drawknives, finding those that felt most natural to my hand and comparing them to the only drawknife I had used, an antique from my grandfather’s farm. Kenneth noticed that the handles of my grandfather’s knife had been bent out of parallel, so we spent the last part of the afternoon removing the wooden handles, heating up...
It’s easy to imagine the logical progression of the use of these plants in furniture. Centuries ago in Europe and Asia, homes commonly possessed earthen or dirt floors, and rushes were often gathered and spread in living spaces as a means of refreshing the room and insulating against cold. Indigenous peoples in North America often wove cattail mats as places to sit and sleep. Rush basketry and other crafts were common in those days, and it doesn’t take a leap to imagine how readily and naturally the fiber was incorporated into the frames of simple chairs when they came along. The use of this material throughout history highlights a common human trait that has only recently faded away: making the...
The driving of a nail is a vivid illustration of the kind of skill and agency that is often underappreciated in our time. No one comes out of the womb able to swing 16 ounces of steel on the end of a stick to a precise location with a precise amount of force. This is an acquired skill that, once gained, becomes a mindless and simple task. When a confident craftsperson is absorbed in hammering, there is no consciousness of the features and characteristics of the hammer. The only thing that would bring attention to the tool itself would be if something went wrong – the head came loose, the board split in a weak spot, etc. When all is...
