Godet's Furniture and Woodcrafts

We’ve all heard someone say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” This quote, originally from Nietzsche, has since become a platitude that is sometimes meant to console, but is probably more often employed when things just stink and the speaker doesn’t know what else to say. In common usage, I think the idea is to recognize that challenges (physical, mental, or emotional) help us to grow and gain strength and character. Put another way, without challenges, people–and pieces of wood, in turns out–can be pretty boring.

Our relationships, experiences, challenges, successes and failures are what we’re made up of. This is what we share with the world and what we enjoy from our interactions with others. Our ability to relate a tale of triumph with humility or a tale of failure with humor is often the way we relate to new acquaintances and deepen bonds with old friends.

Wood also tells its stories. The straight grain and muted patterns we see in commercial furniture indicate the tree (or that section of it) probably lived a safe, boring life–probably one in which it was protected by trees who faced and survived the challenges of storms and disease. Although trees cannot regale us with a well-told tale over a beer, they can capture us with their beauty…beauty that is unique and serves as the hard won metal of an eventful life. Whether it’s the dark spaulting marks in light Maple from a fungus, or even just the tree’s normal growth of branches forming knots in the wood. All of these distinctions of the tree’s experience give their wood character, depth and interest.

Working with these pieces can be more challenging–the grain is less predictable, the finish is trickier to apply, and its hard to match with other boards from the same species.  Nonetheless, the dividend for the work is unique beauty.  Kinda like us.  As with people, I like to embrace these idiosyncrasies and celebrate the unique patterns…even if its more challenging, it beats boring and predictable.

Technology has done some wonderful things.  Computers, iPods, the internet, without question, increase our quality of life, facilitate new innovations, and allow us to communicate faster than ever before.

Over the course of my young life, we’ve transitioned from cassettes, to CDs, to MP3s and are now moving towards online streaming for all of our recorded music needs.  I remember researching journal and magazine articles in the library using paper bound books to find out when articles on various topics were published and then requesting either the old hard copy or looking at it on microfiche.  Letters to friends and family were written by hand and, as such, usually required multiple drafts.

I’m embracing today’s technology, but, there is a price.  As a kid, if I liked a song on the radio, I had a few options: save up enough money to buy the whole album, wait for my birthday or Christmas, or sit by the radio and record the single song on a cassette tape.  Both required patience and a little strategy.

Today, there is little patience or strategy involved in this same act.  You want to hear a song? Enter it into the streaming player’s search box, or download the single song for a buck.  Easy.  It’s no longer necessary to hunt around the library or book stores for rare books or articles–there’s an app for that.  And a few emoticons and OMGs can constitute a letter to a friend or family member.

None of that is necessarily a bad thing (though I’ll pass on the emoticons), but I think it does have a profound effect on us.  The time required to save up for and buy an album or sit and draft and re-draft a letter increased the value we placed on those things.  It also allowed the power of reason to intervene and moderate emotional responses: perhaps MC Hammer’s new album isn’t worth 2 weeks’ allowance….

But today, we’ve all made the rash purchase of something we didn’t need after clicking the link in its review, or snapped off a quick snarky email or blog comment after quickly reading something online…and probably regretted it later.  I wonder if without our rapid communication and consumption machines our better angels might not have intervened and prevented those regretful actions.  But the technology is not going away, so I’m trying to practice slowing down…taking advantage of the technology where its appropriate and embracing its absence when I can…and the woodshop is a great place to start.

I’ve found that the less I concern myself with the time taken to complete a project, the more pleased I am with the results.  The joints fit better, the proportions make more sense, and the piece just plain looks better; and extra time taken to achieve it, was probably very little in the grand scheme of things.  Conversely, expecting the expedited results common with today’s technology, invariable results in furniture becoming to firewood and thumbs becoming nubs.  This, in a way, is the approach of the craftsman (though most craftsman are much faster than I); and its becoming something I am trying to turn to outside of the shop as well.

When you hear the word, “Anarchist” you probably don’t think of guys like Christopher Schwarz and Roy Underhill.  When I think of anarchists, I think of people with mohawks breaking stuff and yelling, “anarchy,” while making the metal sign.  I don’ think of these two aforementioned woodworkers.

Nonetheless, if you’ve seen Roy Underhill’s PBS show in which he demonstrates ancient woodworking techniques, you know the guy clearly doesn’t subscribe to whims of popular culture.  In fact, the opening his show clearly depicts him walking in his own direction, tools in hand, directly away from the daily grind.

Chris Schwarz’s new book from Lost Art Press, The Anarchist’s Tool Chest, (dedicated to Roy Underhill) breathes new life into this word and explains that by learning proper woodworking skills and techniques, and eschewing the corporate demand to simply fill your shop with tools, you too, can be an anarchist–no mohawk or yelling required.  In fact, just the opposite.  Buy quality tools, maintain them properly, and practice and employ proper techniques, and you can free yourself not only from poorly made, imported furniture, designed to self-destruct, but from dangers of consumerism and debt as well.  Doing so is almost certain to reduce any yelling urges you may harbor.

This message is important in a time when fewer and fewer of us understand the physical world around us and how to responsibly take and use what we need from it.  Shop classes are being cancelled, people throw out broken machines rather than fix them, and our greatest entrepreneurial innovations all seem to focus on new web applications rather than tangible goods.  Not understanding the workings of the things we use daily makes us more vulnerable to poorly made goods, and more dependent on companies that are less interested in meeting our needs than ensuring we are repeat customers.  I’ve found that in a few years of woodworking, through interaction with tools and wood, that I’ve come better appreciate the time required to produce quality and attribute more value to the work of other artisans.  Moreover, other physical and mechanical tasks have become easier, I find solutions to physical problems more quickly, and I’ve avoided calls to plumbers, electricians, and of course, carpenters.  Investing time and money into learning the skills has paid back in this increased freedom.

You can read an email I sent to Mr. Schwarz, as well as other readers’ responses here.

I found the book so influential and such an apt characterization of my own woodworking passion, that I preempted another post I intended to use to open this site.  I highly recommend it to anyone…however, much of the book contains detailed descriptions of hand tools, which will limit the interest to the non-woodworkers out there.  Another recommendation is Matt Crawford’s Shopcraft as Soulcraft, which makes an important argument about the value of the manual trades.