The workmanship of risk: It is possible to make a bad mistake with your work at any time, because of the way you are making it. Sound familiar? Imagine you are planing a piece of wood. If you're not careful, the plane could grab a piece of gnarly grain and tear out a huge chunk from the otherwise flawless surface! This kind of risk is true at every phase of creating your project. This method is in contrast to...

The workmanship of certainty: This is the method employed by "factories". Instead of using a plane, they use a wide-belt sander- you feed the piece into the machine, which carefully sands off a carefully calibrated thickness of material, without risk of tearing the grain. We know exactly what the wood will look like when it emerges out the other side: perfectly sanded (if we calibrated the machine correctly), completely uniform, and perhaps, uniniteresting. 

Diversity: This is what some people call "patina". The results of age, wear, and a great variety of surface imperfections that are the result of work done by hand, using the workmanship of risk. Even factory made objects can possess this quality (the example in the book is the lid of a soda can), due to natural variety in the material used in their production, and by the effects of time and natural wear. Diversity is appealing, because it is more interesting. 

Equivocality: This refers to an unpleasant contrast in surface texture, which may be the result of the materials used or in the way they are employed. The example given is a broken mirror, where the highly reflective surface is contrasted with the very jagged and imperfect broken edge. The effect is very jarring. Highly polished surfaces are certainly acceptable, as in the case of very formal or modern styles of furniture, however an example of what not to do would be a coffee table made of a natural or "live" edged slab of wood, with a thick, shiny coating of epoxy varnish poured over the top. The rough, natural edge of the wood is in sharp, unpleasant contrast to the highly polished top. 

Regrettably, the conclusion drawn at the end of the book is that a living cannot be made using the workmanship of risk, because of the time needed and the risk itself. Instead the only people who can carry on this high level of craft are amateurs, or people for whom craft is not their primary source of income. My opinion on this is that he does have a point, but he is not altogether correct. He was also incorrect when he said that large factories could not produce objects with a pleasing level of Diversiy, as the Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, and a number of others have proved- their products exhibit a very pleasing level of diversity. Those companies are also proving him right, since the people who produce their furniture can not be said to be making any sort of living wage at their craft. Their labor is being exploited, at their own cost, and the cost of public expectation.

It is my wish that crafts in America (and in the rest of the world) will be appreciated for what they are, and that a good, living wage can be had in their production, and I have faith that indeed this will be so. The reason? Fuel prices will soon make shipping from overseas economically impractical. Cheap goods produced in our own country will not possess the qualities of durability and diversity that consumers have come to expect. There will always be a place in our culture for such items, however I remain hopeful that the age of underpriced work will soon be over. 

Both dudes have their own PBS shows about woodworking. Yet their styles are very different. Norm builds things the way most of us normally do, here in the 21st century: with power tools, glue, screws, and all of the other methods and materials that humans have been developing over the last 100 or so years, to make woodworking better, faster, and easier. Roy, on the other hand, works only with "antique" methods and tools; anything that was used 100 or more years ago, mostly human-powered, but including steam, and some early machinery from the industrial era. 

If I was going to be a fair and impartial judge, I would have to reduce the discussion to three questions: Who does a better job at their work? Who is a better educator? Who's style is more accessible to the majority of viewers?

I would say that the answer to the first question is that they are equals. In addition to being craftsmen, both gentlemen are also performers (I would not say actors, because they are not trying to portray anyone but themselves). Who can say what it is that elevates one person's work over another's? Not having seen everything made by either guy, I am in no position to judge.

Let me also say that performing woodworking tasks on television has got to be really hard. I don't think I could do it. Maybe someday I'll post a youtube video of me doing something cool, but that is very different from holding down the fort season after season, project after project, not losing it on camera, keeping the ideas fresh, keeping the new techniques coming, and delivering solid advice to the masses. 

As far as who is the better educator, again both are equals. Norm does a great job of explaining techniques; he tells you why he chooses one tool over another, as does Roy. They both go over the design process and features, lay out the methods and approach of every project, explain and demonstrate the techniques well, and have great film crews to show you everything clearly. Both have written a number of books, so that the viewer can get more detailed information. However, I would say that Norm's web presence is a bit more extensive, and his plans are probably more specific. 

But here my impartiality ends. In my book, Roy is WAY more awesome than Norm. 

First of all, the guy has Panache. He has energy. He is a character. And, he is always injuring himself, while on camera. These things make him very fun to watch. 

Second, he often films his shows in one continuous take (or at least he appears to). Norm has the luxury of going off camera, having a cup of coffee, using the bathroom, checking his blackberry, or whatever, but not Roy. He's there, working up a sweat, and hoping he doesn't mess up and have to start over.

But the most important thing about The Woodwright's Shop, to me, is the material itself. Not to say that woodworking using hand tools is a lost art, but I will say that while there are many shows that show people working with chop saws and cordless drills, there is only one show that I know of that will tell you how to sharpen and use a spoon bit, or how to plane custom moldings using those old wooden molding planes that everyone likes to buy and then use as bookends. 

Roy was my first woodworking instructor, back when I was a kid. I had almost no access to machinery, and even my hand tools were few. But thanks to that show, I felt that I was just as able to create wooden items as the next guy, even without a tablesaw, because after all, Roy never used one! He just split his wood out with a froe (which I did have, thanks to an early trip to Colonial Williamsburg) and then planed it by hand! A lot of kids graduate from shop class without even a basic knowledge of how to properly sharpen the most basic woodworking tool, a chisel (or a knife, for that matter). Believe me, I've worked with them!

Because of this, his woodworking is subversive. The dominant consumer culture does not promote the self-reliant attitude of early Americans, but Roy's version of off-the-grid woodworking certainly does. And I'm sure his rampant use of early and antique tools offends a great many collectors, who would much rather see them displayed, and traded as commodities. 

And I'm sorry, but Roy seems to be in WAY better shape than Norm. Norm huffs and puffs just explaining what the piece is that he's going to be making on the day's show, but I can't say I've ever seen him break a sweat on camera!

So anyway, those are just a few reasons for my extremely one-sided and totally slanted opinion. I have more but I won't bore you any more. 

Be safe out there, and don't cut off your fingers!

-Mike

During the course of my career as a woodworker, I have had very different perspectives on the nature of time. When I was a (very young) hobbyist woodworker, I did not really consider time to be a significant factor in my projects, as I rarely had any sort of deadline, and any time I spent on a project was pure recreation. Yet I often found myself surprised by how long it actually took to accomplish tasks, and lacking patience, I was always wishing that I could get things done faster so that I could get to my results sooner. This was particularly true in the area of wood finishing, as I did not have much knowledge of or access to different finishes. My mind would leap from project to project, but the time it took to complete each project kept me from either finishing the previous one, or being able to begin the next. Time was therefore an obstacle.

As my skills increased, and I found that I could earn money in the local crafts market, I soon discovered that there was a direct relationship between how much time I spent on salable items during the week, and the amount of things I could bring to the market, and thus the potential earnings for any given week. I began to figure out that there were very different quantitative values between different types of work; some items took a long time to make, but did not sell for very much, while others that took less time ended up selling for more at the market. Since my practice was still very much a hobby, I did not take much of a lesson from this observation, and continued to make whatever my heart desired and simply hoped it would sell, regardless of how long it took for me to make it. 

The second major phase of my woodworking career gave me a more structural understanding of time as a commodity: Time = Money. This was during my employment at a woodworking company, where I saw my hours spent at work transformed directly into a paycheck at the end of the week. I also began to learn that my time had a double value: for me, and also for my boss, because we were both making money from it. Therefore the total monetary value of my time was significantly less than what I was receiving in exchange for it. However, I decided that this discrepancy was accounted for in other ways, namely, the experience and skills I was gleaning. In addition to physical skills and knowledge of construction, I was learning that there was a critical path between the amount of time spent on any given project, the quality of the resulting product, and the amount of money the company made from that product. For the business to be successful, it all had to be kept in balance. 

As an independent woodworking professional, I am learning even more things about the nature of time. It is a critical factor in any project, and the more other people are involved in the project (clients, designers, GC's, and other tradespeople), the more important the scheduling becomes. One's personal schedule must be streamlined as much as possible, and you begin to weigh productive hours against time spent cooling your heels or twiddling your thumbs, as a direct loss of profit. Time is a billable cost for any project, but it is the most unpredictable factor in any estimate. The keeping of accurate records is the best way to predict time requirements, but even the most disciplined people still often find themselves surprised by how much time they spend on even the most familiar tasks; time varies. This is why the safest billing practice is to keep the time as separate from the rest of the bill as possible. 

I have learned that the keeping of accurate records of one's time is an ever-more valuable tool in the running of my business, and that it can yield some very surprising results. For example, I learned that the amount of time I actually spend building things in my workshop, finishing, and installing them "in the field", is far less than the amount of time I spend sending emails, shopping for and picking up materials, talking with clients, drafting, and other "non-productive" activities. This realization has helped me achieve not only more accurate billing practices, but has also, ironically, resulted in a sense of freedom. I realized that since I spend less than half of my working hours in my shop, and in the shop I spend a certain small percentage of that time on any given task, I can therefore enjoy each task without stressing or worrying that I am going to spend too long doing it- that is, within reason. Certain tasks can still have a fairly critical effect on the total time spent, and general efficiency is still very important if one is to make any kind of a living doing woodworking. However, I do not need to feel guilty if I choose to level an edge with my hand plane instead of with a router, or if I want to spend a little extra time laying out my joints carefully and cutting them by hand to achieve a more perfect fit, because the amount of extra time spent doing these things really isn't going to affect my billable hours. In fact, the time spent doing these types of things is perhaps the most valuable time of the entire day, because it is exactly these subtle differences that add quality, and therefore value, to the things I make. 

As an individual, I have always struggled with time management, but lately I have begun to have a much deeper appreciation of time as something of intrinsic value: time has a very palpable effect on everything, but when it comes to things made from wood, this effect is mainly positive. For example, the time spent waiting in between coats of super-fast catalyzed finishes, while optional, is frequently time well spent. Almost all finishes improve when sufficient time is given to their application. The same is true for designs and ideas. The more time spent thinking about a design, a procedure, or even how to fix a mistake, it's almost certain it will turn out better for it. One has fewer accidents when work is performed calmly, thoughtfully, and not in a rush, and I have come to realize that the quality of the work will be better simply by taking more time with it, no matter what the operation. It is the ability to withstand time that defines quality materials and workmanship. The effects of time on a piece of furniture yield not only wear and tear, but also an indefinable quality that cannot be substituted, no matter how skillfully one tries to mimic it. For time there is no substitute, and in the end, time is probably the most finite, and therefore valuable thing that we have as human beings.

!!!

-Mike 

I like the first method, because it is the simplest, and because it gives me the most control over the tool when I am using it. The broad sharpened surface shows me where the edge is, both visually and by feel, so I know how it will cut when I apply it to the wood. Also, every time you sharpen using method #1, you are maintaining the original geometry of the tool, where with the second two methods, you will need to periodically restore the larger surfaces as the micro bevels gradually become larger. Also, this method gives you a finer cutting angle than is possible with the other two methods. However, the other two methods are very useful, especially when planing, or when a steeper cutting angle is desireable in order to prevent wood tearout.

This is the best video I have found on sharpening. The only thing that this guy doesn't quite explain fully, although he demonstrates it totally correctly, is that you have to keep the back of the plane iron DEAD FLAT and not rounded over or beveled in any way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hm4HiN2Lww&feature=related

You don't have to use the grinding wheel, ever, unless you put a big nick in the cutting edge and don't want to spend all day using a stone- the wheel does save time and the hollow grind gives you control when you sharpen the bevel. He skips from a coarse stone to fine honing compound, but this works fine, it just takes more work, especially as the hollow bevel created by the grinding wheel becomes more flat after repeated sharpenings on the stone. The medium grit stones are intermediary and can save some time if you don't want to polish out the scratches left by a coarser stone using a fine polishing medium- the same idea as sanding wood, to progressively finer grits, where each level of sanding removes the scratches left by the previous sanding, replacing them with finer scratches. Imagine the surface of the metal at a microscopic level. You want it to be smooth, and not rough, or having ridges, or scratches left in it. No matter how close you "zoom in", the quality of the surfaces and of the sharpened edge should remain the same, until you reach the actual molecules, ideally.

Once you understand how to sharpen planes and chisels, sharpening everything else is pretty much self-explanatory. Use the stone, strop, diamond cone, grinding wheel, or whatever thing you are using, to restore the geometry of whatever tool you are sharpening, keep the angles consistent, and polish the surfaces.

First, to educate myself. I am hoping that people will respond to my posts, be they technical or otherwise. In writing about tools, techniques, construction methods, and materials, I encourage people who know better to post their disagreements, so that I can get better at what I do.

Second, to educate all of you reading this. I have found that the more I learn about any given subject, the more I am able to fully appreciate and enjoy it (with the noted exception of politics, which thankfully I will NOT be approaching here).

Third, I have found that writing about things helps me to become more systematic in my approach, not only in the record-keeping sense but also in the necessary reflection involved in the writing process. Writing about woodworking will hopefully help me to become a better woodworker. Even if no one reads this stuff except for me, it will still have this benefit.

Fourth, perhaps this will be entertaining to some of you. Best of luck to all of you with this last one, with my apologies!

In the spirit of self-education, I hope that there are other benefits to doing this that I have not yet considered but which will become apparent as the work proceeds...   That said, have fun, and as my mom says, don't cut off any fingers!