Don’t get me wrong. It’s a beautiful site and there’s some amazing work displayed there. The problem is how ridiculously inexpensive the things are. And it gets worse every time i visit the site. I’m wondering if the whole concept has served to over saturate the marketplace in an uber competitive setting that simply adds to the demise of handcraftiness.

My instincts have told me for quite a while to withold and resist participation in such a downward spiraling marketplace. Surely i’m not alone. And it’s not like i’ve put my craftsmanship skills in mothballs. I don’t think i could if i wanted to. I love doing it. I just don’t use them much for the benefit of selling to others any more. I make gifts for friends and occassionally wonderful gifts for myself. But i can’t in good conscience accept and participate in furthering an upside down economic world where a high school janitor is likely better compensated than a master craftsman, who maybe with a little practice can probably mop floors pretty well too.

I can’t say i’ve ever looked at a mission statement and said “Now this guy is a woodworker that obviously has a vision”. Has anyone else? Of course not. Quite the contrary. The slickly worded pinnacle of mission statement writing has now become synonomous with way too much hat, in the hope you wont notice the abscence of cattle.

But that’s just me and my rant for this Sunday morning.

I also watched a carpenter drilling a threshold in a door stoop once when the drill slipped. He gets up hollering “I drilled my *$#! I drilled my *$#!”. Then proceeded to pull his pants down to show us all the damage. Luckily it was just a “flesh” wound requiring a few stitches.

Then there was the time i’d just gotten off the phone with an irate contractor, assuring him that his 30 tall wardrobe cabinets that were two weeks late being delivered were lined up to go on the truck. Then seconds later i hear a “Boom Boom Boom” coming from the shop as all 30 cabinets had apparently been lined up just like dominoes. Oh yea. It was bad.

So what’s yours? Lets hear em!

I’m thinking there’s a general misunderstanding about how adjusting the level of craftsmanship depending on circumstances is not a skill set in its own right. It is. And a very valuable one. Maybe what we’re seeing is simply the difference between how a hobbyist views woodworking and how those who do it for a living view it. I’ve done both, so i know all too well the difference.

In woodworking as a business, the world of woodwork is a different animal. You have to figure out how to make money with the employees you have and all their quirks and eccentricities. And none of us are immune to those quirks and eccentricities by the way. We’ve all got em. But Rich’s post has reminded me of one type of employee that stands out and has given me my share of headaches through the years is what i’ll call the “inflexible master craftsman” (IMC).

The IMC is the guy with much skill and knowledge and the ability to do the most beautiful woodwork you’ve ever seen. But he also is lacking in some things. Insight i guess is what i’d call it. Because he operates as though he has no concept that time equals money and everything worth doing does not have to be done perfectly. So you have to watch what you give the IMC to do. He’ll cost you a fortune if you don’t.

You can’t send the IMC to fix the door that fell off a customers $300.00 vanity for example. He’ll be there all day with no understanding that the extent of work he puts into replacing a split stile instead of patching what’s there is worth far more than the vanity itself! Oh but it will be beautiful. No doubt.

Maybe in another post i’ll feature the close relative of the IMC. The Jigaholic. That’s the guy who’ll spend 4 hours on making a jig that will save him 1 hour of labor and likely never get used again for 20 years. :)

This is the same lumber industry we here complain about eco terrorist spiking trees to screw up their operations. Then they produce an end product with more metal in it than every tree hugger in the country with a hammer and a sack of 40d common nails could possibly compete with.

If these same people ran the meat packing industry, i’m convinced there would be a bar code stapled to every t-bone steak and porkchop we bought.

There. I vented and feel better already :)

Somethings not right here. Are we at a point where the most economical source of wood is to tear a finished table apart? I’m serious. I saw a Teak carving that was out of a chunk approx 3” x 4” x 8” tall for 4 bucks. You couldn’t find a chunk of rough Teak for that price. A table with 3” x 3” quarter sawn oak legs AND a top for 30 bucks? All things i saw associated with wood were ridiculously cheap.

The near future may be in woodworkers tearing furniture apart and milling the lumber from it to sell for a profit…...So somebody else can build a piece of furniture worth less than the sum of its wood????

I’m not sure what to make of all this but it sure isn’t comforting. I’m sure over saturation of imports isn’t helping the situation any. That, and woodworkers are notoriously bad at applying value to their work.

So i made me a shell for it out of a chunk of mahogany the other day. Heres what i’m wondering. Can i spray this shell cartridge with my grey lacquer undercoater followed by my matte black lacquer? I’m just not sure how a non automotive type lacquer adheres to metal. Anybody with any experience at attempting this?

I was personally always taught that it should be expressed as thickness x width x length. Yea i know. On the other side of the pond they believe it should be the exact opposite. Kind of like the way they choose to express the day, month and year when giving a calendar date.

I hereby resolve that no expression of dimensions is inherently superior to any other. Perhaps whats needed is an international coin toss to decide once and for all a standard that will be recognised across the planet. I’ll even vote for lumberjock Stewart from Yorkshire be allowed to flip the coin!

I know i would be one broke sucker if i had to call a plumber every time a sink trap sprung a leak. Or call an electrician when i wanted to put in flood lights or move a receptacle. I just don’t get how some people allow what i’d consider the basic skills of life to go unlearned. Anyone with enough sense to balance a checkbook or drive a car surely has what it takes to do most of the basic “fixit” skills, but for some reason don’t.

Are they intimidated? Do they think such task require a mysterious gene they are sure they lack?

I believe we all are knowledgable about things that interest us. But paying the Sears repairman $60 to come tell you your washing machine wouldn’t drain because the hose had a kink in it (true story of a couple i know).....should be a wake up call to all those disinterested!

So i got to thinking. What possible door design (and these weren’t anything special) could possibly be copyrighted? Do i myself own copyrights? Except mine are basically useless because i don’t have deep pockets and a team of lawyers at my disposal? Is every single one of the 5065 Lumberjocks here a criminal liable for damages if an organisation lawyered up enough decides it so?

Somethings not quite right. Listen to this quote from UK’s “Design and Artist Copyright Society” found here http://www.dacs.org.uk/

””10. When is copyright infringed?
Copyright is infringed when an individual carries out one of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights (see FAQ 5 above) without the permission of the copyright owner in relation to the whole or a substantial part of the artistic work. The test to determine what is substantial is a qualitative test and not a quantitative one. This means that there may be an infringement even if a small but distinctive portion of the original artwork was copied.””

I ask one simple question. According to the above statement, what front door in existence isn’t in violation in some form of a door before it? I’m at a loss as to how its even possible to build a front door, or anything else for that matter, that doesn’t violate such absurd criteria.

I won’t copy the door i build verbatim. I simply find it a bit distasteful and disrespectful to do so and i’ve written about it before. But what i build will no doubt meet the incredible criteria of violation in this company’s view. Perhaps in time we’ll need a Lumberjock defense fund for just such matters.

As`a reasonable adult, i know from the moment i put my creations out for public viewing, like we all do here at Lumberjocks, that theres a darn good chance it may get duplicated. Big deal. The only alternative is to never let your work see the light of day. Besides, it seems to me the best way to kill creativity, is to immerse yourself in a world of paranoia and litigation concerns, thinking somebody may actually copy your stuff.

What i started out with was a full size drawing of the handrail profile. I then decided i was going to do the rough hogging out of material by using a core box bit in my formica router. So if you look at the drawing you can see how i drew in the actual router bit size and its depth location to tell me how far from the edge of the rail to go, and how deep to go.

I then fashioned a fence to clamp onto my router base. This fence allowed me to reference off of the 90 degree side edge of the handrail. Also i made it a tall base so i could simply let my router ride on top of the handrail, but the edge being held at 90 degrees is what reall kept the setup user friendly. Of course, with such a small (but easy to hold) router i had to take all this wood out in about 1/8” increments.

I then took away my referencing edge on both side using the coping saw. Refering to my full size drawing i was able to get a line to cut on i knew would get me close to the actual shape.

Next i used my scraper or chisel to get most of the high ridges off. Then i fashioned a scaper to the profile to help me stay as true to the correct shape as i could.

Finally i got to do a lot of 80 grit hand sanding to clean the piece up and make it start looking presentable.

I could go on as to how i got the lower profile area but i suck at this getting photos into my blog. I just hope i’ve given you a pretty good idea of how i went about this project.

We shouldn’t confuse expertise in precision with the pinnacle of success. I could spend four months on a kick ass table, seeking out praise from my peers. I just probably couldn’t sell it for enough to be “successful”.

Woodworking, like life, is about tradeoffs and applied good judgement.

I did hear that the drought has produced a bumper crop of Pecans this year. Plus a guy up the street with a yard full of cactus seems to be weathering the drought just fine. I suppose how bad something is really depends on which perspective you choose to look at it from.

A hundred years from now, i figure this drought will mean a neat little area of tight grain wood on some unsuspecting guys coffee table. I think i’ll now pay a little more attention to the wood projects im surrounded with. Just to gain perspective of how climate fluctuations produced the beauty i’m looking at.

To see a project you like and wish to have exact blueprints for it seems foreign to me. Sure i get ideas from what others have made. I just don’t want to make an exact copy of it. I would almost feel disrespectful toward the person that created it in the first place. Plus i don’t get the fun of adding my own unique perceptions and personality into the thing i’m making.

Maybe its that “different strokes for different folks” deal. I’ll just go out on a limb and say you don’t know half the joy of woodworking until you find a way to express YOURSELF with it!

Not that i don’t enjoy making things for the family (and friends), i just can’t charge them enough. When i do, i’m likely to get that look that says “Hey, i thought we was family”. Oh well, i guess i should just be glad to have sought after skills and chalk it up as a price to be paid.

Maybe i’ll move my shop back into some deep hidden woods, and start passing out fake business cards at this years Christmas party to inform everyone i now work for a mobile colonoscopy clinic headquartered out of Somalia.