Give it as a gift
![Give it as a gift Give it as a gift](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7bc73168-1b7b-4f61-8d3e-f26cab82b787_1500x1125.jpeg)
Hello and welcome to Hungry Woodworker, a humanistic exploration of woodworking, purpose, and making a living. I’m Taliesin and one thing I do when not working is write; some of which gets edited into essays and shared every other Thursday. Thank you for being here.
A little update: The last couple of weeks have been dedicated to lamp-making and all I've got to show for it is a lot of blanks (as in, material cut to the size needed before the finishing touches are applied). In the midst of this work, my scroll saw has broken twice (I'm now awaiting a new cam, which should have it operational again) and my ability to set my table saw at an exact 45-degree angle has been found lacking.
My essay is below. I hope the next couple of weeks find you well and enjoying the fruits of things going right.
Work as a gift
I’ve been helping Dad build a set of 12 outdoor benches. It’s a lot of repetitive work. Last week he was cutting out the same curves on the feet 48 times, then sanding each one. I was sorting 3” wide boards into piles of different lengths (43”, 47”, 50”, 54”, and 57”) and cutting a mitered edge on one side. Then we worked together rounding over the edges on the feet, one of us holding the vacuum while the other cut the round-over at the router table.
It is doubtful any woodworker dives into the craft thinking, gee, I can’t wait to make the same item repeatedly. And yet sometimes that’s what the project calls for. (Or, in other cases, that’s what making money calls for.)
The bright spot is that the repetition helps build muscle memory. When I was first learning Brazilian jiujitsu many years ago, I’d get annoyed and bored at having to practice the same moves over and over. Same take downs, rolls, arm bars, all of it repeated so many times I could do it in my sleep. And that was the point. My muscles learned so that when sparring I didn’t have to go through the process of thinking how to do a move. I just did it.
Now I’ve got to do the same thing as an amateur woodworker. Repetition with the driver so that I am less likely to bury the screw-head too deeply the wood (easy to do until your fingers and arm and brain gets a relaxed, confident sense of how hard to drive the screw in). Repetition at the router table so that my hands and arms pivot the edge of the wood into the bit just so, keeping it from pulling the wrong side into the blade and ensuring it cuts a consistent round-over along the whole side of the piece.
Repetition isn’t particularly glamorous. Sometimes it can cause my eyes to glaze over and then I’m not really seeing the material in my hand, it’s more of a symbolic representation of that material. It’s not that my mind is elsewhere so much as it’s not on the specific item before me, attending to the quirks it might have that are different from all the other similar pieces before it. It’s working by assumption rather than by what actually is. And that can cause all kinds of problems.
Missing the grain change that could cause serious tear out. A finger or two placed too near the blade edge.
So the practice of this craft includes a dose of beginner’s mind. Returning to the same task anew, beginning again, being both the person who has experience and the person who has not had this exact experience. Staying humble. Or, in Dad’s words, “don’t get cocky.”
Dad is making these benches for and with one of his grandkids for their school. His time and all the materials are a gift. And my time working with him on it is one as well. (He might debate this when I’m heckling him for a mistake. But I think it’s good for his brain to have to both calculate fractions and fend off verbal jousts.) For adult children, sometimes there isn’t much we can give our parents in material goods that they can’t get for themselves. But time and attention—well, you can’t pick that up at a big box store.
Years ago I took an anthropology of faith course in college. I don’t remember much about the course, as I didn’t understand most of the readings or classroom discussions of those readings (to whit: one bright student suggested that perhaps it wasn’t engineering that kept a plane aloft but rather the beliefs of the passengers in the plane that did so. To which I began to seriously consider whether I was overpaying for my academic experience). However, I remember a bit about gifts, which perhaps I’ve referenced before, about how in some cultures they are toxic to the receiver until passed along. Or in others about how gifts are not meant to be hoarded but rather shared within the community.
This is not often true of the broader culture in which I live and work, but the concept of not hoarding a gift does resonate on an internal level. I’m deeply aware of all the gifts I’ve been given since becoming a woodworker. For those in the crafts, growth comes from work and experimentation, as well as from a certain amount of attention and support from others.
As a newer woodworker, I’m beholden to the many experienced, master woodworkers who have taken time to teach the skills it took them years to gain. There is such a gulf between the master craftsperson and the novice hungry to learn and create at a high level of mastery but who must dare to fall short day after day and return to the bench anyway.
I’m not at the level where I can teach (or at least, not confident enough to do so). But I am at the level where a woodworker can tell me what needs to be done and I can get it done. At the level where I can save someone time or a repetitive stress injury. At the level where at least some of the gifts I’ve been given I am now able to pass along.
It's a good feeling; it rings with the clarity of a well-struck chime. There are so many instances of self-doubt and perplexity in each of my days (my scroll saw stopped working again? Now what's this about and how do I fix it?) that I'm intensely grateful for this clarity. For knowing how to accurately measure a board and cut it just so, how to run its edges along a router bit, how to build something. And for being able to offer these skills back to someone who has helped me.
Thank you for reading! I hope you have a wonderful day.