Magazines pronounce that you too can have Stress Free Glue-ups! These headlines try to sell magazines. I am afraid however that with this style of trumpeting, woodworking magazines lump themselves more with the scandal rags of the grocery store aisles than with the journals of opinion found on the library shelves.

Stress free glue-up! An oxymoron if ever there was one. And here please note that oxymoron does not mean going stupid from a lack of oxygen. Which can actually occur during a glue-up. It means that no one who has been in an assembly involving glue has ever seen an important one that doesn’t raise the blood pressure just a bit. That doesn’t quicken the pulse and sharpen the eye and sometimes tongue, regrettably.

Who writes these headlines? Clearly no one who has ever been in a glue-up. I know I didn’t write this banner although my name comes after it as the author of an article on gluing. It brings to mind a point I continue to make to new woodworkers. Don’t believe what you read and try to discover your own way.

I remember in a literature class back in college that I was making a point in a debate about a book. I finished my brilliant summation with the phrase: “it said so in the book”. My teacher turned to me and said: “You actually believe what you read in books?” I felt all the wind go out from my sails. My debating adversary smirked at me and I shut up. Point taken and learned.

The fact is that with all information, including these scribblings, you need to sift through it for the pertinent stuff and let the fluff, the advertising, the non-factual, the drivel go by. Like that headline. We want the easy way of course. But too often young woodworkers want to know “the way.” Not three possibly very good ways, but “the way”. As if that will be the truth. As if one way is the right way. Or one truth the only truth.

The beauty of the woodshop and being at your own bench is that, within roughly defined parameters of craftsmanship, if it works and you like the method, it’s the right way. If it doesn’t work and you’re just stubborn, well that can be a part of woodworking too. But if you like the method and it works for you, then it’s the right method. It may not be anyone else’s method, but yours alone. If you get the results you want, that’s okay. It’s one of the reasons we like this woodworking stuff. To make up our own rules to follow. To develop our own versions of the truth. To develop a place to work where the rules make sense and the truths hold true. Don’t get waylaid by what you read.