Dan Masshardt
Member
My Aunt gave me this book for Christmas. It is written by Peter Korn - a furniture maker turned teacher and administrator of a furniture making school in Maine.
The book tells his personal story, but also includes reflection on the nature and importance of craft. Why we make things. What it means for us as people. Interesting. While I don't agree with the author's perspective on everything, I found the book to be very thought provoking and there was much that I resonated with. I copied down several quotes.
Here is an extended quote that uses the example of furniture making, but applies very well to those of us who are turners. When I read this, I can easily substitute the steps in making a pen or a bowl and the idea applies well.
I remember the first time I put gouge to wood with fear and trepidation and excitement just over a year ago. Now I can already sense a bit of what he's talking about in the latter part of the quote.
"When I was a novice, every step in woodworking required conscious deliberation. Even something as simple as making the hard edges of a table top friendly to the touch meant that I had to think about the extent to which I wanted to 'break' them, whether I should chamfer or round them, and a host of other questions. Should I use a file, a rasp, sandpaper, a block plane, a router, or some combination of the above? Was the plane sharp enough? How wide should the plane's throat be open? What grit of sandpaper should I start with? Should I sand freehand or with a sanding block? Should the block have a hard face or a soft face? As you might imagine, with so many decisions, work progressed haltingly. But by the time I had been at it for ten years, these decisions had become second nature." pg. 51
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"My hands had learned the difference between overpowering a saw, chisel, or gauge and listening to the tool. If I was making a set of chairs, the work of any particular day might have included drafting, tuning up machinery, milling rough boards into accurately sized components, building forms and laminating curves, making jigs and fixtures, cutting joinery, shaping, scraping, sanding, assembly, and/or finishing. Whatever it was, for long periods of time, my ordinary consciousness was subsumed in a dance of making where not a motion was wasted. This is not to say I wasn't thinking - just that I had become far more adept at making decisions. Mind, hand, and body were reading from the same page; they worked together seamlessly." pg. 51
The book tells his personal story, but also includes reflection on the nature and importance of craft. Why we make things. What it means for us as people. Interesting. While I don't agree with the author's perspective on everything, I found the book to be very thought provoking and there was much that I resonated with. I copied down several quotes.
Here is an extended quote that uses the example of furniture making, but applies very well to those of us who are turners. When I read this, I can easily substitute the steps in making a pen or a bowl and the idea applies well.
I remember the first time I put gouge to wood with fear and trepidation and excitement just over a year ago. Now I can already sense a bit of what he's talking about in the latter part of the quote.
"When I was a novice, every step in woodworking required conscious deliberation. Even something as simple as making the hard edges of a table top friendly to the touch meant that I had to think about the extent to which I wanted to 'break' them, whether I should chamfer or round them, and a host of other questions. Should I use a file, a rasp, sandpaper, a block plane, a router, or some combination of the above? Was the plane sharp enough? How wide should the plane's throat be open? What grit of sandpaper should I start with? Should I sand freehand or with a sanding block? Should the block have a hard face or a soft face? As you might imagine, with so many decisions, work progressed haltingly. But by the time I had been at it for ten years, these decisions had become second nature." pg. 51
_____
"My hands had learned the difference between overpowering a saw, chisel, or gauge and listening to the tool. If I was making a set of chairs, the work of any particular day might have included drafting, tuning up machinery, milling rough boards into accurately sized components, building forms and laminating curves, making jigs and fixtures, cutting joinery, shaping, scraping, sanding, assembly, and/or finishing. Whatever it was, for long periods of time, my ordinary consciousness was subsumed in a dance of making where not a motion was wasted. This is not to say I wasn't thinking - just that I had become far more adept at making decisions. Mind, hand, and body were reading from the same page; they worked together seamlessly." pg. 51