On becoming a craftsman

“We need to observe ourselves as we work, not just to look at what is happening, where the work is taking us, because if we cannot observe and really notice what is taking place, how will we ever see the connection between what we are doing and where it is leading us?”

James Krenov

As an undergraduate in college I selected mathematics as my major. While I did ok in the subject in high school, no one would have considered me to be a mathematical genius. I enjoyed the subject because I liked problem solving, seemingly impractical topics turned out to be extremely useful and last but not least – everyone else thought it was too hard or complex.

The first year of Calculus is much like most high school mathematics in that it is very process oriented. Learn the process steps and which problems can be solved with a particular process and you will do fine. As I entered into my second year the mathematics became harder and yet more interesting. Instead of learning a set of steps you started building a tool chest of tools and acquired the knowledge of how and when to use them but more importantly how to build new tools. I remember distinctly a professor I had for Differential Equations. This mathematics’ course can be very process oriented if taken as part of an engineering curriculum. With this particular professor it was definitely a mathematics course. He stressed theory, understanding why, finding creative methods to solve problems and building blocks of mathematics.

Besides learning a great deal of mathematics, the professor brought forth an epiphany for me. The dictionary states an epiphany is “A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something…such a moment of revelation and insight.” After the course I understood “real” mathematics and the approach and insight needed to succeed.

I found this reference to Wordsworth which better describes the moment. Wordsworth, in Prelude Book VIII, describes the "moment" when he for the first time passed in a stagecoach over the "threshold" of London and the "trivial forms/ Of houses, pavement, streets" suddenly manifested a profound power and significance:

'twas a moment's pause,--
All that took place within me came and went
As in a moment; yet with Time it dwells,
Aned grateful memory, as a thing divine.

The moment has stayed with me - understanding of the difference between doing and being. Whether it is mathematician, a cabinetmaker, or other profession to be successful and truly enjoy the work it needs to become you.

I started out with woodworking as a hobby. First projects were crude. I finally created a coffee table my wife accepted for our living room. I felt like I passed my first major test. The next project was better, they increased in complexity and my woodworking knowledge increased. At this point I was a good woodworker. Next step was how do I gain the skills and experience to be able to call myself a cabinetmaker – a craftsman.

How do you get to that next level? Does it mean buying better tools? Good tools are important but it does not distinguishes the craftsman from a hobbyist. What does it mean when your passion or work becomes you? Just as I found the correct insight with my study of mathematics I found someone to provide me with the epiphany to become a cabinetmaker. That person is James Krenov. What follows are excerpts from several of his books which I found most inspiring and to me summarize his philosophy and approach.

James Krenov

The author of four books for any serious woodworker, Krenov teaches a philosophy that has become a prerequisite for advanced cabinetry throughout the world. A recognized furniture maker in Sweden, he moved to Northern California in 1981, where he created and led the College of the Redwoods' Fine Woodworking School. In his twenty years with the school he taught hundreds of eager students from around the world while continuing to build his own fine furniture. He retired from the college in 2002, but is still actively creating cabinets in his home woodshop.

James Krenov is represented with works at museums in Sweden, Norway, Japan and the U.S.

Identification:
The definition for this word comes from David Allen, a productivity and organizational guru who give very sound and practical advice. While interviewing for positions I heard several times the prospective employer desired the person to exhibit a passion for his work. David Allen offers a better word – Identification. He states: Rather than passion I would suggest the word “identification”. When you really identify with something, whether it is some intended outcome or some internal standard about your reality, it creates a true motivational energy to make it happen.
Identification will create incredibly focused energy when that energy is required. But most often it will manifest as calm and deliberate thinking with action continually refocusing on desired outcomes is the master key to success – try peaceful purposefulness.

Krenov: The Impractical Cabinetmaker

We have to feel good about what we are embarking on; even if it’s the start of a long, difficult job of various definite processes we still have to feel good inside, there has to be something central about the whole thing that adds up for us.

So your way of going about doing things will be an interpretation of something basically sound. It won’t be against the laws of wood or of clean work or the simple truth of good and bad joints, but it will be a series of personal adaptations. It will be yours, with flexibility and a final clarity of your own. Even your mistakes will be personal. And I think personal mistakes are less painful and more enriching than mistakes made through other people’s methods or measures.

You cannot divorce the shapes with their details from the process of work itself. All the things we are must be in our work. The difference in our work will be the difference between us as craftsman.

There will be certain stiffness about the work of those who rely mostly on techniques and want predetermined results.

Try to live the way you are, be the person in your work that you are in the rest of your life. Easy to say!

With repairing mistakes there is a crude way and a fine way of going about it. By allowing ourselves to be crude in moments like this – a little moment of crisis – we might develop habits that will spread the crudeness into other parts of our work.

We need to observe ourselves as we work, not just to look at what is happening, where the work is taking us, because if we cannot observe and really notice what is taking place, how will we ever see the connection between what we are doing and where it is leading us?

One of the designs could be executed by 5 or 6 cabinetmakers and even in broad daylight most of us could not tell who made which. There were no cabinetmaker fingerprints on the work.

Different people, different ways. – D. H. Lawerence

Things men have made with awakened hands and put soft life into

Are awake through year with transferred touch and go on glowing

For long years

And for this reason, some old things are lovely

Warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them

- D. H. Lawerence

We are blessed to work with wood —
A medium with color, figure, and character
That can only come from sun, rain, soil, and time.

Investing heart, mind, and muscle,
We shape wood into works of lasting beauty and utility —
Furniture that will long outlive us.

http://www.garyweeks.com/wood_forests.htm

Krenov and His Students:

In his quick, self-effacing and sometimes impish way, he delivers his critiques in the form of questions and oblique suggestions, which convey his point without becoming too didactic [ Intended to instruct. Morally instructive. Inclined to teach or moralize excessively ].

- Ellis Walentine on James Krenov

Krenov’s teaching seeps into you even if you don’t know it, it comes back to you. He’s given me insight into details of the craft that may have been forgotten. It’s more of a way of working and being with the wood. – Frank Barrera

What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask; or never think to ask. – Sam Keen

Wood is a living material quite unforgiving and sometimes very elusive. It takes for granted that we are sensitive in hand and eye and our whole being – our intuition, our sense of proportion, line and detail – is finely tuned yet always modest.

Workmanship – Sum total of the skills and sensitivities of the craftsman.

It is not drive by ego but rather by a sincere and lasting desire to do one’s best and to be proud of what one has done. There is integrity in this.

I have a little hideout in one far corner of the building. There is a sign on the door that says “Please knock”. There’s a great deal of knocking, which I enjoy. There I am tucked in the corner, an old guy, and Im still needed.

Krenov: Cabinetmaker’s Notebook

Page 32

I stand at my workbench. Shavings curl from the plane in my hands, swish-and-slide, as I rock to the motion of the work. The smell of fresh-cut wood, a slick, silvery yellow surface gleaming under the tireless plane and a feeling of contentment. Nothing is wrong. Here am I, here is my work – and someone is waiting for the fruits of these fleeting hours. My contentment is bounded by the whitewashed walls of my little cellar shop, by the stacks of long-sought woods with their mild colors and elusive smells, by the planked ceiling through which I hear the quick footsteps of a child – and yet it is boundless, my joy. The cabinet is taking shape. Someone is waiting for it. With a bit of luck, it will be liked, given continuity in a life of its own.

Page 42

Working alone I do not have help even when I need it. I do all the work myself. Partly this is because I don’t like the idea of having someone do the dirty work for me, and then come along, the artist guy, to do the finishing touches and put my John Henry on the piece.

Page 45

Don’t be pressured by originality. Don’t lose time thinking your work has to be wild and wooly or slick. A nice four-legged table with pleasing and subtle, well proportioned legs spaced right, the top in a pleasing form, is a beautiful thing; and rare.

Page 52

Good cabinetmaking is usually a complex task. It is a lot of concentrated thinking and exact moving. Think wrong and you’ve probably ruined something, maybe a week or month’s of work. Move wrong and you can lose a finger or hand. Especially if you get impatient.

Page 60

I don’t love working – it is working well that I love.

Page 74

David Pye The Nature and Art of Workmanship

I’m going to do something; it should be personal and contain all of myself… I think this consistency – the fact that these little objects perhaps have what Professor Pye called diversity, things to be discovered as you get close to them – is of crucial importance … A handle becomes and adventure and a challenge; so to a little latch on a door and the joints in a drawer.

Krenov on Grain: The Story of a Cabinet
From Fine Woodworking #133

http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/pages/w00082.asp
When it comes to reading grain, Krenov wrote the book I started with only a vague idea of what I was going to make. I knew it was going to be a small cabinet and that it would be made of a wood not too light -- and not very dark. Medium, like this teak. I did a little sketch, more of a doodle than a drawing. The sketch just gives me a line on a map -- I can follow it, but I still have to take a look at what's on either side of the road.

From there, I went to the wood room and picked and poked my way to a sense of confusion, irritation. I looked through the wood I had in my bench room, but I didn't find what I wanted. I had some teak that was very dark brown and extremely straight lined. Teak like that seemed too good to be true -- it didn't excite me. Then, back in the wood room, I noticed a small, crooked, sawn-up log of teak lying partly hidden on the floor. We'd had it for several years, and nobody seemed to want it. It was no more than 5 ft. long and had been sawn into 8/4 planks. I scratched it a little bit and discovered it was rather a lively teak. It had nice color and a lot of motion in it. Once I found that log, I was off and running -- it really gives me energy when the wood helps me with what I hope to do. But I have to take care. If I turn to one plank instead of another to start a cabinet, it can be the difference between night and day. Or maybe just night. ...

It's a matter of getting acquainted with all of the properties of each wood you choose to work -- a wood's colors; its hardness or lack of hardness; whether its grain is ornery or not. It's a very personal thing, and not everyone pays such close attention. But if you do, you are more in harmony with the wood and the work. And the results seem to flow from this harmony, even though it is connected with periods of stress and doubt. In the long run, knowing about these things will help a person.

When I was working on the sides of the cabinet, it became apparent that something different from what I had anticipated was going on. I was making a perfectly rectilinear cabinet, but here the grain was bending forward at the bottom: The crook in the log of teak was now visible as a pleasing but definite curve in the grain of the veneer.

When I saw that the side of the cabinet created a forward curve, I decided to change the stand to one with front legs that swept forward. Making this change is an example of observing what's happening with the wood as you work. But while you sometimes let the wood guide you, you shouldn't let it dictate. You have to refer to the wood without abandoning your intentions. There has to be a cooperation, a partnership between the two. The idea is to follow, but be careful.