People regularly ask me how long I’ve been woodworking. The answer I usually give is that I’ve been building things my whole life but got serious about making furniture in 2009...and I think that’s accurate. I did a bunch of carpentry-type work in various capacities when I was in high school and hacked together my own personal furniture as a college and graduate student, but I didn’t start what we’d call “fine furniture” making until 2009. I’ll write more about that year another time.
Last year about this time Chris Schwarz published a post called Some Things I Hate About Knowledge. I have left that email marked unread in my inbox until today because I have meant to write on the topic myself for that long. In the post, Chris talks about one of the first pieces of furniture he built. You can read the post for yourself. But it made me think about the early days in my shop.
Today, I work in a well-lit 18X18 garage. It has heating and air conditioning, a radio, insulation, windows, and a lot of great tools. When I first started, back in 2009, I worked in the living room of my rented row house. Jen worked (and still does) some nights and weekends, and I would breakout some saw horses, clamp a piece of wood on them, call that a workbench, and then practice joinery with a $15 dovetail saw I bought at a hardware store. I would spread newspapers out to collect the dust, and then cleanup and put everything underneath the couch before she got home (I wasn’t hiding anything, just trying to be considerate).
From there, I moved into my first “shop,” a 15X9 annex to my basement. It had 3 fluorescent lights, my table saw had to be rolled into the exact center of the room to be used (and I had to duck walk under the wings to get the workpiece from the outfeed side because the saw was between my workbench and chop saw). But I was so excited to have a few real power tools and a dedicated space. Sure, it was not insulated, poorly lit, and I couldn’t afford a dust collector...but that didn’t stop me (it definitely slowed me down, I just didn’t know it)
In those early days, I remember really making do with what I had. My bench was too lightweight for proper hand-planing. No problem: I jammed it into a corner and went to town. I was sharpening cheap chisels with sandpaper on a ceramic tile my neighbor gave me (he worked at a tile shop at the time). I would clamp work pieces with bench dogs and wedges, the way I read about Sam Maloof doing when he taught woodworking to poor people in developing countries. I would show up for work late because I was too absorbed reading Krenov or David Pye.
The learning curve for this craft is so steep at the beginning. I am, of course, still learning so much and always want to improve. But as I see new woodworkers just getting started, and see/hear their envy of my big jointer or hand plane collection, part of me envies that they have the excitement of making do, of learning, of being absorbed in the written words of the masters for the first time, of cutting their first good dovetails. Well fitting joints still excite me...just like the first time...and I have plenty of things to get excited about. But the early days are precious and if there are any newer woodworkers out there reading this, enjoy your limitations.