For Profit or For Pride?

One of my coworkers recently started asking me about woodworking stuff.  He's a single Dad and in the past couple of years his kids have gone out on their own so he's had the time and a little bit of extra money to pursue his hobbies.  One of them is woodworking.  I told him about the power tool scams, how to tell a good hand saw from a bad hand saw, some workbench design tips, a couple of hand planes to start with, how to sharpen etc.  The basic stuff.  Well, that is, what "basic stuff" is to me.

He's been using pallets as a source of material because they're free.  I do the same thing.  That's where he and I start to part ways.  He's been making what I call "flea market kitsch".  Simple projects that are pretty easy to make but don't really have any value in the grand scheme of things.  An example of what he's been doing is the "American flag" stuff.  He bought a 50 star stencil kit, edge glued some boards then painted the thing up as a faded American flag.  Which, I might add, flies in the face of the Flag code.  He brought the thing into work to show off, as I do, and he immediately sold it.  He then got a couple of requests for smaller versions to use as key hangin' boards.  I asked him "Really?  You're going to sell that kind of crap?"  He said it was easy money.  My narrow minded brain can't comprehend that sort of thing.  It's just like Ikea "furniture".  It exists only to make money and is never intended to last.  It sickens me.  The coworker brought in, yesterday, an American flag "punisher"... board, for lack of a better description.  No purpose to it other than to make money.  He's also acquired the requisite flea market business card with appropriately kitschy logo.  He's also a "sander".  I'm trying to get him to use a hand plane but he ain't budging.  Apparently he likes huge clouds of sawdust, wasted electricity, wasted time and rounded everything.  But he enjoys what he does and it makes him happy.  And that means I'm the snobbish asshole.  True story.

Before I had hand planes and decent, old saws, before I knew what "sharp" was and how to achieve it, I was just like the coworker.  I had the mindset that I couldn't make certain projects unless I had the right power tool or jig.  I measured everything and had no idea what a marking gauge was.  I had never heard of a marking knife.  I had never thought of making parts fit to other parts by simply holding up a board to another board and making a couple of tick marks.  Still, the crap I built back then was made as good as possible so it would last.  It had to be done properly.

About ten years ago I started converting to being a "hand tool" woodworker.  Once I read Christopher Schwarz's "Anarchist's Tool Chest" book, it was a done deal.  I use the table saw frequently but the router, biscuit joiner and palm sander have gone unused for years and years.  I acquired hand planes, molding planes, old saws, learned how to make the tools "shaving sharp", built a proper workbench...  It was a game changer and a revelation.  By regressing I've actually progressed and have become more independent.  With the small selection of hand planes and molding planes I have, I can create molding that can't be produced any other way.

When I build something I think about my nieces, nephews and their children.  I build things specifically for one person and never make a dime on it.  The smiles I see when I give them something is worth so much more than money.  The things I build will last long enough that generations down the road someone will ask "Where did you buy that chest with all the brass bits?" and the future relative will say something like "I think my grandpa's uncle, I heard he was kinda weird, made that for my grandpa."  That's the goal for everything that leaves my little shop.  Like most people, I'm afraid of being forgotten.  I don't have kids so all that will remain of me is what I'll leave behind.  It won't be Punisher American flags, key boards or whatever the fad was.  Remember when everything had a heart either painted on it or cut into it?

I guess I would say that I'm a woodworking (and metalworking to a lesser degree) evangelist.  Everyone wants "antiques" or what they think are "antiques" but have no clue as to why those antiques are desirable.  I try to educate people.  I show them how to tell machine made dovetails from hand cut dovetails.  Why dovetails, mortise & tenon joinery last longer than glue and screws.  I try and show them how the market is duping them into paying more for the cheap wood.  "Knotty pine" and "live edge" are just buzzwords to get you to pay more for common pine and lazy DIY sawyers, respectively.  Don't even get me started on the sliding barn door craze.  Bollocks!

My small bathroom has a built-in cabinet that was, obviously, done by a DIY person.  It's straight out of the New Yankee Workshop school of woodworking.  When I first saw the cabinet door I knew it was made by one of the previous owners of this house.  It was made with found materials, the plywood panel in the door had grain running horizontally instead of vertically *gag* and the door frame was of the stub tenon variety.  The cabinet is directly over the toilet so I looked at it frequently.  It annoyed me to no end, but, it was made by a person so I kept it as is.  Then the glue joints started to fail and the lower rail of the door came loose.  My first thought was that the person who made it did a shitty job, but then realized that it had lasted, maybe, twenty years in a damp, humid environment.  Not too bad.  But it had to go.  I was not going to repair something that I couldn't stand looking at.  So I made a new door.

Like the original, I used what I had at hand.  Poplar.  The rest of the cabinet is oak and oak-faced ply.  I had intended to paint the replacement but didn't.  Semi-gloss poly just like everything else.  Construction of the replacement door was a whole different game.  I made a new door with actual mortises and tenons.  The panel was wood, not ply, and the grain runs vertically as it should.  I also draw bored the tenons.  With that kind of construction, glue was an afterthought.  It doesn't matter how humid or wet it gets, unless the wood decomposes, that door is never going to come apart.  Unless the next owner of this house is a complete moron.

Long after I'm gone someone is going to remodel that bathroom.  If my initials and year of creation that I carved into the back of that door don't mean anything to them, it will end up in the dump and some shit Ikea-type crap will wind up in its place.  The thought of that disturbs me.  Getting rid of something decent for something that's crap, but in fashion, is what we've become as a society and we should be ashamed of ourselves.  We all can admire an old house that still has its original cabinetry and fittings but most will not think of how it survived.  Those things survived because stubborn berks like myself are not slaves to fashion and style.  Which brings me back to the coworker.

Though what he's making (for profit) is not what I consider a worthwhile investment of time, he does enjoy doing it and other people like it too.  They get something made by a real person and he gets some money.  That money is spent locally and not overseas at some massive factory that makes "fashionable" crap for Wal-Mart.  Though I can't stand the stuff, every piece of "rustic" or "heirloom" *gag* furniture that is sold at a flea market is a huge middle finger to overseas furniture farms.  Every antique that is saved and repaired says "Fuck you and your MDF 'cherry finish' crap!"  That's what I revel in.

Please, please, please learn how antique furniture is made.  Learn the signs left by the woodworkers of generations past.  Learn about the base woodworking joinery and why it works so well.  Please, don't buy commercially made crap.  Give it a go and build it yourself.  It will be worth so much more.