Woodworking

I envy you guys who are good with wood. Don't even ask me to cut two 2X4's to the same length.

My "88 D15 is a study in workmanship. It was Guild's entry level Dread at the time. There is no binding, but the joining of the back and top with the sides is a true work of art.

I so wish I was good with wood. I like to think I am, but I’m not.

I used to work for a guy who built scale sailing ships from scratch in his woodshop. They were amazing! He was an absolutely terrible leader, but man could he build with wood.

I can do micro-soldering flawlessly, but joining wood is not in my wheelhouse.

My Father-in-law was a Master carpenter. He always built the cabinets and bars. He could join two pieces of wood so you could not even see the seam, similar to a fine acoustic guitar top.

I don't wanna build guitars, I just wanna play them.

I'm horrible with anything really detail oriented, but I roughed in all the wiring for my off grid camp, have done ton's of carpentry and plumbing

But detail? I can't even draw a conclusion!

I too envy such people. I am basically incompetent at most all things in life. But hey, that's why I hire people that are very good at what they do.

Back in the early '80s I spent some time working with a Wisconsin cabinet maker in one of the downtown Chicago hotels. Much of the work involved routine repair of so-so quality furniture. But some of the upper floor suites held some seriously valuable millwork. This was Larry's forté. He could carefully search several sheets of veneer to find exactly the section that could be used to repair a cigarette burn on a hundred year old chest of drawers, for example. Pictures of some of his projects left me in awe. He met every criteria of "Craftsman" in my book.

I reported for work one morning, found him sharpening a razor blade with an Arkansas stone.

"Why don't you just buy a new blade", I asked.

He looked at me and said "This IS a new blade".

When Guild relocated their factory to Westerly, they bought an old furniture factory and with it came many of the skilled woodworkers. A smart move.

I would love to be able to work with wood, but I also know that my hands are a part of my livelihood, so I stay away from all power saws and anything that could damage my hands permanently. I also take a blood thinner due to a DVT ten years ago, and it takes me a while to clot if I sustain a cut. Another reason to avoid power saws.

In junior high school, which I believe is now called middle school, I wanted to take woodshop but it was for boys only so I took home-ec. I never have learned any woodworking or carpentry skills but the interest is still there.

Woodwork is like anything else. There are people who have some sort of innate talent (eye-hand coordination, ability to visualise/understand objects in 3D, artistic flair for design, patience, physical strength, etc) and then they build upon that talent. And there are people who just get better at it by working hard.

When I was a little kid, I used to go down to a wooden boat shipyard run by old Norwegians. There were two Norwegian Elk Hounds with whom I formed a mutual affection society. We would sit together in the wood shavings pile, out of everyone's way, and watch the comings and goings of the yard. One of the things that I noticed is that there wasn't a lot of measuring going on, and there were no squares because they are useless for boats. It's not that there were no tape measures; they just weren't used much. The old Norwegians would visually size up what they were working on, go to the wood pile, sort through looking for a piece of wood about the right size and with the right grain, and then they would free-hand cut and shape it to size and shape with saws and planes, and it would fit perfectly. Skill. I think there was something genetic going on with the skill, because the kids of the family who ran the shipyard could draw boats really well and get perspectives right. Drawing boats accurately in perspective is not easy. Many otherwise skilled artists are hopeless at it. My dad said that the owners of the yard could free hand draw a lot of the complex curves in their blueprints.

Although I was academic stream in school, I took shop classes, woodwork, metalwork, and electricity. The skills learned here have proven extremely valuable over the course of my adult life. I wish I had taken mechanics, too, but there wasn't room in the schedule for it.

Woodwork was probably an easier skill to acquire in the past. Wood was inexpensive. You could botch a job using a fair amount of teak, walnut, rosewood, mahogany, padauk, or whatever, and then just shrug your shoulders and say, "Oh well. Start again." And in relative terms, tools were also less costly, too. And you do need a lot of tools, good tools. Clamps. No matter how many clamps you have, it never seems to be enough.

Opsimath said:

In junior high school, which I believe is now called middle school, I wanted to take woodshop but it was for boys only so I took home-ec. I never have learned any woodworking or carpentry skills but the interest is still there.

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I took Boy's Home-Economics in senior high-school. What I remember from it is limited.

The teacher was female, young, inexperienced, and very cute - none of these personal aspects helped her as she tried unsuccessfully to be the ring master at the raging testosterone circus. Poor woman.

The morons in the kitchen pod next to mine once tired to cheat when we were making oatmeal cookies, surreptitiously doubling the recipe. However, they forgot to double the flour. They managed to set the oven on fire as the sugar melted and burned.

My daughter got to take some basic combined skills shop class in high school. She made a metal garden trowel and some bookends.

I remember when I finally understood the following joke:

What's the difference between a carpenter and a cabinet maker?

About a sixteenth of an inch.

DrumBob said:

I also take a blood thinner due to a DVT ten years ago

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<veer>I know of several people who have had DVT and even clots that migrated to their lungs. The side effects of blood thinners, including a requirement for frequent blood tests were a PITA and they have managed to work out a treatment regime that doesn't require a blood thinner. Ten Years After maybe your doctor might discuss alternatives to thinners?

As far as sharpening goes, I have learned a lot from YouTube since I moved into my house.
Chisels and planes are worthless from the store. You need to true and sharpen them before you set them to wood. The method I'm using at the moment is called the"Scary System". You need one or two pieces of tempered plate glass, like a curio shelf, which, strangely enough is what I have. You also need a variety of sandpaper from 100 grit, all the way down to 2500, even 4-5000, if you are willing to kill an afternoon.
I bought/inherited a whole lot of tools over my lifetime and I ended up with a ton of chisels. I was able take a Kresge's chisel and make it sharp enough to shave with and it gleams like silver. It makes woodworking so much easier to have sharp tools.
There is an English guy named Paul Sellers on YouTube, who is a tremendous teacher. Bourbon Moth is another channel that is a great learning resource. He plays the goof, and he has that huge shop that they all seem to, but he's one of my favorites. Stumpy Nubs, he's excellent, and Tamar does amazing things with a DeWalt job site saw.
Well worth the time!