Learning the subtleties of mastery
A little update: I just finished the final two tables in a project. They are part of a set of four tables (two side, one coffee, one sideboard), all Shaker-style, made for my mom, who believed in my ability to be a woodworker two years ago. Yes, she commissioned this project that long ago. I mean, I’m slow, but I’m not glacial, it’s just Covid mucked work and transport up. But soon they will be on their way to her house, so it’s my turn to be patient . . . but I really can’t wait to see what they look like in her living room.
Other than that, I’ve been helping make trim out of a pile of Green Ash that is as wide and near about as tall as my car. I don’t think I could be more covered in sawdust than if I’d gotten on the ground and rolled in it.
My essay is below. I hope you have a good week!
This week I was sanding boards that would become drawers and shelves in a cabinet, thinking about what separates the efforts of an apprentice from those of a master. Obviously a mind focused on the work would be one area. (Clearly I’m still working on this.) But in the in-between seconds of placing a board on the flat rolling bed of the sander and awaiting its arrival on the other side, thoughts arose about how two people can apply the same amount of effort but achieve wildly different results.
It struck me that with this work, you are not paid to cut corners.
You are compensated for your meticulous eye. Your patient hand. For your ability to pause at the right times (you can’t just work slowly and call it thoughtful). For following that pause with the next best action—not “right,” as many next steps could be labeled such, but best as in better than you would’ve done when you were less experienced.
For your ability to fix mistakes (more on this another time).
For your skill at holding large and minute details with care so that your clients can appreciate them for years to come.
This is what makes an heirloom. And in so doing, distinguishes a master craftsperson from, well, everyone else.
There’s more to mastery than this, but that’s the list I mentally jotted down while sanding those boards. And you know what? It made me feel tired. Compressing into a few moments what will ultimately take years to truly learn has that effect.
The road ahead unspools in winding, sometimes circuitous routes, but too much time spent looking at that makes it hard to do the only thing we actually can do: put one foot in front of the next. Writing helps here, as a way to create a habitat for the overwhelm so it doesn’t take up residence in me.
I let all those thoughts go and shifted focus to the Soft Maple boards in my hands. They’ll be made into drawers by a master woodworker I’ve just begun apprenticing with. I’m continuing to work and learn from my dad, but now I’ve got another teacher. Feels like I’m doing a master’s degree in woodworking.
Soft Maple is a good species for these drawers because it’s lighter in weight than the White Oak of the rest of the cabinet, and will be durable and strong. My task was to sand them down to 1/2” thick, starting with 80-grit (fairly coarse) and ending with 180-grit (less coarse; the higher up you go in grit, the smoother the surface of the wood).
I measured the boards’ widths each pass using electronic calipers, which required translating decimals into fractions, something my brain is not inclined to do. I befriended conversion charts.
I spent half the morning standing at the sander, bringing the boards to their final width. And then I spent the other half sanding White Oak boards down to 3/4” so they could become shelves.
The day began and ended with two stacks of boards, slightly less tall in that second iteration, but otherwise you wouldn’t have known I’d been there at all. Yet, without those hours of work that cabinet would never fit together.
That fitting will be the work of my teacher, whose eyes are meticulous, hands are patient, and whose skill at holding both large and minute details are clear in the work she produces.
With each hour of practice in the shop, I am training my own eyes and hands to become ever subtler, attuned to the nuances that even last month, last week I hadn’t the skill to know existed.
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Shout out to my friend Andrea for her insightful notes!