I posted a link to this book a while back. It’s about the difference between making something with your hands and using a machine to make something. It covers the aesthetics and pros and cons of each approach.
For example, let’s say you want to build a drawer. You would like the sides of the drawer to be constructed using dovetails because of the nice appearance. You have two options for making the dovetail joints:
Option 1: Use an electric router with a special cutter that makes semi-triangular cuts in the end of the drawer sides. You’ll also need a special jig (guide) into which you clamp the wood pieces – this jig allows you to move the router in an out of specially-shaped slots to make perfect dovetail cuts. Some dovetail jig setups for home workshops cost hundreds of dollars, and allow you to make extremely fancy and detailed joints.
Option 2: Use a small handsaw to cut the dovetailed drawer sides. This involves measuring and marking the wood with various lines and having a steady hand. After the sawing is complete, you can use chisels to remove any remaining wood that fills in the gaps where the two pieces of wood fit together.
Except for a few of specialty woodworking shops, furniture companies use Option 1 when they produce dovetail joints for drawers. (Of course, they don’t use standard home shop routers and jigs, theirs are industrial-strength.) Machines are faster and can cut dovetailed drawers flawlessly every time. Cutting the wood for the sides, planing it to be the correct thickness, and cutting dovetails can be done by machines much more quickly than by hand. The fit of the dovetails is perfect every time – there are no gaps or mistakes.
An expert hand tool user can crank out a set of drawer sides in short order, but most people can’t. Not only does cutting the dovetails by hand take longer, it also introduces a great deal of risk. It requires a lot of skill on the part of the craftsman. A person cutting a dovetail joint by hand has plenty of opportunities to make a mistake: measuring, chiseling, and sawing mistakes are easy to make. Each cut is a risk – any misstep may require you to start over with another piece of wood. The closer you get to your final cut, the more you stand to lose if you make a mistake. Your judgment is always in play – does the saw or a chisel need to be sharpened? Are you getting tired and need to take a break? A small variation in technique or a lapse in concentration might lead you to accidentally remove part of the wood with the chisel you were supposed to keep intact. Machines don’t lose their concentration, and, when maintained properly. can make the same cut, every time, forever.
The advent of mass-produced products has changed peoples’ opinions about what is beautiful “craftsmanship” and what is not . A drawer whose side has a stray chisel mark, or which shows a saw cut which went 2mm deeper than necessary, would cause many people to complain to their furniture store salesperson. This was not always the case, of course. Stray tool marks and imperfections in the wood and finish were common in older furniture. For example, some antique dressers and other furniture that are found in museums have imperfect dovetails in the drawers – they were not intended to be decorative the way they are today; they were meant to be functional. In some old, old furniture, it’s not unusual to find small wedges of wood inserted to fill in a gap made by accident when sawing or chiseling. (Drawer Trivia: People way back when didn’t use drawers the way we do today – many years ago they were primarily used for storage, and were not intended to be opened and closed every day. Drawers did not have the neat fit and smooth glide that today’s drawers do; many of them drooped forward when pulled out, and were sticky and fussy to slide back in. No one cared what the side of a drawer looked like because they were hardly ever seen.)
I think most woodworkers recognize the difficulty of making dovetails that are perfect using only hand tools. If you go to a local woodworking club, and hold up a drawer with dovetails that were made with machines and heavy jigs, people will yawn; they’ve all done that, it’s not a big deal. If you hold up a drawer with hand-cut dovetails that are so uniform they look like they were done by a machine, you’ll get their attention.
Back to David Pye’s book: His essay (which is really what it is) discusses the idea of risk and what it means to manufacturing. He points out the beauty of a slightly flawed, hand-made product over that of a mass-produced product. He makes a solid case for manual skills and the aesthetics of hand-made objects. Something stamped out of metal by a large machine is produced at no risk to the machine’s operator – the operator can always produce the same object every time. Something created by hand, molded, cut, or otherwise produced without the certainty of a machine’s help, requires the creator to take a risk at every step.
(This position avoids a related question – what about the person who programmed or otherwise set up that machine to produce that part? Aren’t plastic or metal parts first prototyped by a person, then made into molds/stamps/forms, upon which machines operate? Sure. So, if you’re striving for creativity and want to produce something, be the one who makes the mold/stamp/form, and try not to be the person feeding the metal blank into the hydraulic press and pushing the button.)
Some of you may be familiar with Roy Underhill, of the PBS show “The Woodwright’s Shop”. He is also an author of several woodworking books. He is the most prominent spokesman for the art of using “old” tools to work with wood. (Serious hand tool collectors and users refer to him as “St. Roy.”) He was formerly a carpenter and presenter at Colonial Williamsburg and is still associated with them, although he makes his home in North Carolina. He loves to ham it up on his show, and the word “corny” often comes to my mind when he cracks a joke. But his message is very interesting, and his understanding of tools is more than just a working knowledge – he often taps into the “zen” of tools to see how they work and what they can teach us. This episode of his show is my favorite – he makes many references to movies (Star Wars, Caddyshack), popular culture, and books, while explaining the beauty and meaning behind hand tools. It’s about 25 minutes long, and I encourage you to watch it when you have the time. (He also references David Pye’s book, which is where I first heard about it.)
This book, and this episode of The Woodwright's Shop, really speak to me. I will keep working towards being a creator and a maker, and continue moving away from the temptation of pushing a button on a big machine.
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