Joy of scraps
Hello and welcome! In today’s newsletter:
A very brief update
Essay: Joy of scraps
Learning notes: Processing lumber
(Very) Brief Update
Much of my focus has been on the computer lately—creating an online shop, connecting this bit of software to that bit, keeping files organized. It’s not terribly exciting but it is necessary. Which feels like a statement any adult can make about 90% of activities they engage in.
I have started an Instagram account—if social media is your thing, you can find me there: @hungrywoodworker.
Thank you for being here—may at least 20% of your next two weeks be filled with exciting, unnecessary delights!
Joy of scraps
Today is a snow day, so my children helped me record the essay. They gave it a dramatic flair!
Do you have time to play?
“No matter the self-conceited importance of our labors we are all compost for worlds we cannot yet imagine,” writes David Whyte in Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.1
Here I am diligently learning a craft. Courting headaches to unravel the mysteries of making a business spring out of that craft. Caught up in a snare of earnest twine (if I can just work smarter, practice more, change this, tweak that). And then to be reminded of my cosmic position. A necessary adjustment that stings, but unlocks the mental cages holding ambitions, manufactured worries, the desire to matter. Releases those ideas to the wind (for now).
With new eyes I look at the shop and take some time to play.
My mentor’s shop is filled with delight in the form of extra parts, blanks, templates, and rejected scraps of Black Walnut, Mahogany, Maple, and other species I’m unfamiliar with. In her shop, mentally I’m Scrooge McDuck sliding on his backside in joy—only my mountain of gold is the shop itself, a world filled with problems to solve each day.
The fact of the matter is that sandwiches taste better when someone else makes them, clothes are more comfortable when taken from a friend’s closet (try it!), and wood scraps are most delightful when pilfered from another woodworker.
Wood scraps hold the hope and promise of what could be without the heavy weight of anxiety imbued in a prime piece of lumber.
A wood scrap is an invitation to play, to be creative, to flop unceremoniously but pick yourself back up easily because it’s all okay—no great loss, it was going in the burn pile anyway. All firewood until proven otherwise.
Everyone should get a chance to sift through another woodworker’s scrap pile and stuff a few cut offs into their pockets for a future day. Seriously, if you ever visit my little garage shop, I will open my scrap pile up to you.
I’m not going to make a taxonomy, but there are different kinds of scrap piles. Scraps can be little cut offs or chunky, misshapen slabs winnowed away at the saw mill.
At my dad’s, the scrap pile I love best is just that—slabs haphazardly taking up the available space around the sawmill. Scantily clad in a layer of dust thick as a bedroom sheet, they peek out, Marilyn Monroe–seductive behind that dust, behind other slabs.
At my mentor’s shop, the scraps are high end. Just this past week, she gave me four small box handles she’d made that she no longer wanted because they were about a 1/4” too long. I’m learning a lot working with her, but the scraps alone would keep me coming back to her shop.
I took two of those little handles and made a baby charcuterie board using a scrap piece of quarter-sawn Red Oak that I’d been hanging on to from a project a couple of years ago. It’s not the most practical household item, but polished up with a bit of Walnut oil and beeswax, it shines.
Scraps are the woodworking equivalent of writing prompts—opportunities to create something new that may or may not turn out to be anything good but the practice is the point, as is engaging with something you love.
Rummaging through Dad’s slab pile led to the idea of making robust, unusually shaped charcuterie boards. If I’d stuck with the stacked lumber, I might never have thought to make one. These boards make me happy—playing around with that idea, figuring out how to make it work, taking a scrappy piece of wood and making it beautiful. Doing all this is joyful in itself, and I love that other people enjoy them, too.
Scraps symbolize the unwanted; picking them out of the pile, investing time in them, satisfies my deeper need to demonstrate that even the unloveliest thing has value.
Playing can feel like a distraction, like a deviation from the Serious Business of Important Tasks. Especially because it might not lead anywhere.
Playing can also be the ticket to inspiration for a remunerative project. But I wonder, if you have the intention that this present play is focused on making future money, does it free you to genuinely explore or does it keep your mind tied up in knots?
At the end of the day, playing is an activity to feel grateful for. The ability to play necessitates having safety and time. If we have those resources, we are rich indeed.
Learning notes: Processing lumber
My mentor gave me several small 1/8” thick cut offs of Douglas fir she had no use for. These are great for cutting into small strips and making into sanding sticks. Often times we need small, precise, easy-to-hold sanding implements. By making them ourselves, we can customize them to our needs.
Use rift-sawn or quarter-sawn wood for lids because they expand and contract up and down, not out and in on the sides. This will keep the lid from growing too tight or too loose during the summer and winter months.
When processing lumber, be sure to plane each board on each side. Planing opens up the wood grains, and you want them to be open the same amount on both sides of the board so that it acclimates evenly.
Any woodworking tips to share?
Shout out to my friend for loaning me the book. I’m quite enjoying it!
Just found your 'stack and subscribed :-)
Looking forward to following your work.
Keep writing and making chips!
And yes! scraps are essential.
Excellent readers, budding talent of expression bringing the audience closer to the ideas and emotions of the writer. Thank you to the guest performers!