Re: The Pleasures of Woodworking
by The Inmate
For many, weekend free time has become not a chance to escape work but a chance to create work that is more meaningful--to work at recreation--in order to realize the personal satisfactions that the workplace no longer offers.
Witold Rybczynski, Waiting for the Weekend
Good furniture is expensive. Even some cheap furniture is expensive. Part of the joy of life is living in an environment that feels good, an environment that, at its best, gives one pleasure by simply sitting quietly within it. Where we work should be such places, but this is rarely the case. Ditto furniture, plastic plants, ugly carpet, motivational posters and company banners do little to enhance creativity and spirituality. After work or after the party or, often, even after vacations the place we escape to is home. There we have some control. What we surround ourselves with in our homes is a big part of what makes it a place of genuine refuge and delight, that is, an asylum in the best sense of that word.If you want to trade time for money you may face a dilemma. You can buy quality furniture with more money, but you'll have to work more hours to obtain it. If you work less hours you'll have more time but you may only be able to afford particle board facsimiles of furniture(I have owned my share of particle board). To digress I will mention that there are those who work less hours than the accepted exhaustive norm and can still afford quality furniture. These people use their money instead of allowing it to use them. I've never liked the politics of pitting the "rich" against the "poor," "working class," and "middle-class." The rich have no monopoly on greed. Nor do the other classes have a monopoly on the wise use of money. Money, regardless of our economic class, should be used to enrich our lives not to make us rich. If, however, you do have time but not as much money as you would like what should you do? It's simple: make your own furniture.
Making your own wood furniture(bookcases, television cabinets, tables, night stands, dressers, desks, patio furniture, etc) accomplishes two things. First, it saves money. My father-in-law put it to me this way: if you buy a piece of furniture for 500 dollars you have to earn a lot more than that just to pay for it. Not only do you have to earn 600 or 700 before taxes to get that money, but you, most likely, will have to pay sales tax on top of the 500. That 500 dollar piece of furniture is really much more, not to mention dealing with furniture salespeople who rank right up there with car salespeople who are closely related to televangelists and politicians. If you make it yourself you only pay for your materials plus tax(and tools if you don't have them). Almost a decade ago my wife and I saw some nightstands in a catalog that we liked. $350 a piece. No way we could afford them. I copied the design, bought $70 dollars worth of wood and built them.
Secondly, making your own piece of furniture is an extremely satisfying experience. The satisfaction can come from having copied a piece that you love or from the creativity involved in designing your own piece. Finishing a project gives one a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, something that can be difficult to obtain in the workplace. You have built something that enhances your home and that is practical as a useful part of it. The first pieces of furniture I made(some bookcases), with all their imperfections, still sit in our home. A fine woodworker would see the flaws, but they are made out of solid wood, built exactly to the size that we needed and after ten years still look good. The particle board bookcases I bought years ago are long, long gone. The pieces I built will last a lifetime.
Those of you who already do some woodworking know what I'm talking about. For those of you who don't and would like to, here are some simple, practical ways to get started. I am not a master craftsman nor do I intend to be, but I thoroughly enjoy making and designing furniture something that I did not start doing until I was in my early thirties.
The first thing to do is purchase a good beginner's woodworking book. You can find these at any home improvement store, a good bookstore or on the internet. I recommend Sunset Basic Woodworking Illustrated but most any basic woodworking book will get you started. If you can couple this with some guidance from someone you know who has experience woodworking that's even better, but not necessary. Read through it a few times before you do anything and then read through it some more after you start a project. I still look through mine and still pick up things. If you are thinking about building bigger projects in your yard Sunset Books also publishes Basic Carpentry which will be helpful. You can also buy books with woodworking projects in them that take you step-by-step to the finished project. Time Life Books puts out a good series called The Art of Woodworking and if wood begins to consume your life the magazine Fine Woodworking can start you toward master craftsman status.
You do not have to buy hundreds of tools to get started. The most necessary things in my experience are a tablesaw, a rechargeable drill and basic household tools(hammer, screwdriver, tape measure, etc.), but even the tablesaw is not necessary if you can't afford one. A good handsaw will be adequate. You can always buy a used tablesaw for a lot less money than a new one or you can use your parent's or a friend's. I used to use my father-in-law's. Now I use the tablesaw my grandfather bought when he retired in the mid-sixties. If you have never used a tablesaw and even if you have it is important to remember that it is a dangerous piece of equipment. You must respect it. A mistake on the tablesaw can cost you a finger or worse. Follow all safety guidelines that come with your tablesaw! These guidelines, unlike so many in the corporate world, are necessary.
Depending on your design even materials don't have to be new. When we first moved into our home we tore down a really bad addition and saved all the wood. That wood comprises some of our patio furniture, my son's bug box and even some things in our home. Our neighbor tore down a couple of fences and offered the wood to me and we used it for planters and arbors in our backyard and bookcases in our den. These things would have cost thousands of dollars to buy ready made, hundreds of dollars for the wood to make them, but all they cost us was our time and a few hundred drywall screws. Our television cabinet is made completely from salvaged wood and some paint. If you do buy new wood your projects will(in most cases) still cost a lot less than if you bought them ready made.
Enjoy yourself. Work slowly, patiently. Don't worry about mistakes--you're going to make them. You will recover from them or you can just start over. Remember the time-tested woodworking proverb: "Measure twice, cut once." Even if you've never done any woodworking your first project can still be a delightful, pleasing piece of furniture for your home. If you're planning to buy a table use the money to buy a tablesaw and make the table. You'll probably spend about the same amount of money, but you'll have a tablesaw for your next project. The table you make will mean a lot more to you than the one you would have bought.
I'm a "screw and glue" guy. With wood, a box of drywall screws, a bottle of glue, wood-filler, stain or some good paint you can build some very nice pieces of furniture and get some satisfaction and even some compliments-- something often hard to come by in the workplace.
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