Hubris and making a (big) box
Hello and welcome to Hungry Woodworker, a newsletter about learning the art and craft of building stuff out of wood. I’m Taliesin and one thing I do when I’m not in the wood shop is jot down notes and edit some of them into essays. Thank you for being here.
A little update—above are oval-shaped discs my dad cut up on his sawmill. He had been cutting slabs from crotch wood off a Black Walnut tree and had a skinny branch left, from which these are cut. We put anchor seal on each side of these discs and left them in the covered barn to dry. We’ll check them in six or so months to see how they’re doing. Not sure what they’ll become.
Today’s newsletter is only an essay. It’s below. I hope the new month of April is treating you to a nice transition from winter to spring.
What’s your perspective on hubris?
Someone advised me that with woodworking I should start with small projects to build up my foundational skills and muscle memory. Something like boxes. This seemed quite sensible to me. Unfortunately my family’s need for wooden boxes is low.
What we do need are dressers. Which are basically boxes, though a bit bigger. So that’s what I’m currently working on.
Viewed from one perspective, this work is over my head and fueled by no small amount of hubris. Viewed from another, it’s a practical way to learn new skills. (Plus it is part of my ongoing propaganda effort to encourage my children to think I can build them useful things.)
Or, to put it more poetically, let me turn the words over to David Whyte:
“The essence of work after providing for our simple survival is an intimacy between two seemingly opposing poles: an interior closeness to a foundational sense of self, and the felt longing for some recognized outer and as yet invisible horizon to which we dedicate our endeavors.”
Indeed, David.
The dresser is inspired by a Mike Pekovich design, an old Thos. Moser dresser from Measured Shop Drawings for American Furniture, and a book about craftsman furniture designs.
Along with this, I’m reading chapters from R. Bruce Hoadley’s Understanding Wood. “In joinery, the combinations of stress, strength, dimensional change and surface quality are endless.” Too right and it’s much on my mind.
In the past, I’ve used screws in my joints. Often, for example, backing up a mortise and tenon joint with pocket hole screws or finish screws.
But for this project, I wanted to attempt to make the dressers without screws—only joinery and glue.1 I don’t think there is anything wrong with using screws, but this wouldn’t be much of a woodworking course if I wasn’t trying something new.
According to Hoadley, “Most woodworkers readily appreciate the importance of nails in general carpentry and softwood construction, but also assume a traditional notion which holds that fasteners should be avoided in cabinetmaking. But it has been observed that wood joints ‘can be poorly made with considerable ease,’ and this would certainly apply to many fastened joints. On the other hand, fastened joints can also be well made.”
After rough cutting and sizing the lumber into various parts, we started by creating double mortises in the front legs and double tenons in three of the front rails. Dad and I did this at his shop, then I brought the pieces home and worked on the tenons with a chisel. Each tenon is fit to a specific mortise. I enjoy working by hand, but it’s faster for me to carve out the majority of the material with a machine and then tailor the tenons, so to speak, by hand.
As I was leaving Dad’s shop yesterday—we’d spent the day creating the half-lap joints for the top rails and the coves on their ends—Dad held up one of the legs and said (again), “I don’t know about the tapers for these legs.”
We’d been having an ongoing discussion during the day about the gentle taper that will go on one side of each of the legs. The top of the legs will be 1 7/8” square, and then the outside edge will flare out so that the bottom of the legs are 2 1/4” x 1 7/8”.
The issue Dad was bringing up is that if we start the taper at the very top of the leg, there will be a slight gap between the rail and leg where they connect via the lap joint. The taper is tricky. But I told Dad, somewhat exuberantly, that we’d figure the taper out. And doing so would be great! Partly I was coming off the high of being in the shop for the past several hours. Partly I’m naive, so it’s easy to feel optimistic.
I told my partner Josiah about it later and said that my dad didn’t look convinced at the gumption I would bring to figuring out the taper.
“But I don’t want chunky legs on this dresser,” I said. “The whole point of this project is for me to learn to make something elegant!”
“No,” he replied, “the whole point of the project is to provide our kids with a place to store their clothes.”
Viewed from one perspective, hubris and hope are leading these efforts. From another, all the many problems to work out are surmountable, even if the path up this mountain winds and twists into unknown territory.
But there is a third perspective, one of a patient partner who just wants a dresser but dare not suggest buying anything (because the only ones within our price range are an affront to the senses with their particle board and shaky construction): this is not art, this is not a masterclass for a novice woodworker. This is simply a big box, a solution to messiness.
One exception to my no-screws plan is that I am using metal soft-close drawer slides. The drawers are wide (36”) and my kids are small, so I thought the metal slides would make the dresser easier to use.
I do not work with wood, but some how I can relate, I enjoy your writing and how it applies to the things I do in my life. I consider your essays (written and audio) a form of art! Wonderful. I'll keep subscribing. You keep writing. Mark
"This is simply a big box, a solution to messiness." Very true. The essence of cabinetry is using wood to enclose a space, which can then be opened and closed (drawers; sliding, tambour or hinged doors; lids etc.) for keeping stuff in. The Japanese, with their tansu and austere interiors, have this refined to a neurosis :-)
As for hubris ... I'm not convinced it's the right word for describing your undertaking here. It has connotations of vanity, excessive pride ... of flying too close to the sun. In Norwegian we have a word 'pågangsmot' : 'go-on-courage'. Nothing gets made without it. A maker is one who says "Yes, I can do that" (and has a cunning plan for how to do it)
I remember one of the first paid jobs I did. I was still at trade-school and had undertaken to remodel (?) a dividing wall in someone's living room. It was a normal, non-loadbearing dividing wall and they wanted me to make it into an open, shelf-like structure. I was to do the deed while they were away on Easter holiday. So, I had a plan, had bought the materials I figured I would need, and had carefully dismantled the old wall. I find myself alone in this stranger's apartment, which is now a building site thanks to me and I realize: I better pull this off, or else I've just trashed someone's living room.
I did, it went fine. You gotta have heart (but sometimes it is a bit scary).