We’re putting on a show! It’s the Resident Mastery show and I know that one of them is working real hard to get his piece done on time. Please come by the Studio from 4pm to 7pm, Saturday June 25^th, and see the work of the present and some previous resident students. It’s sure to be a great exhibit. This show deadline is always tough but it’s one of the benefits of the program for those who see it through. Building work on time takes focus.

I know when I started woodworking here in Portland there was no one at all to study with. Unless you counted that funky old cabinet shop down on Clinton Street. It’s now a hip pizza joint or a coffee house or something. But along with more hipsters in town than you can shake a chisel at, there are more possibilities too. For coffee and for education.

The Resident Program runs for nine months and every day students are working at the bench practicing skills, trying out new ideas, and learning about design. It’s fascinating to watch really because every Resident has approached the program from a different point of view. The design work done is always very different. Very personal touches emerge from each notebook.

What I truly hope for the people who have come through the program and for those who are considering it is that they develop the skills that will enable them to each work on their own. I want to teach woodworking in a way that lets people understand that there are only a few rules in it.

One: every woodworker sharpens a scraper differently. My way just happens to be the best. And two, wood moves. Just kidding about number one but number two you better believe. After that, most of the rules are broken, bent, and mutilated beyond recognition every day of the week. Doesn’t mean that you can break all the rules and have a piece turn out. But it does mean that woodworkers are an independent lot. Free thinking, independent thinking, and creativity are the real keys then to making successful work.

I can show you some shortcuts in your education. I can tell you some of the mistakes I made so that maybe you won’t make the same ones. But really what I can do is foster a sense that hey, you learn safety, how to work with the tools and the wood, and how maybe to make some good furniture and after that, you make up the rest of the rules. There is no guidebook for this life.

As I tell all my prospective students, woodworking is a lousy way to make a living. But it’s a great way to live. You’re the boss at the bench. What’s better than that?

Now let me tell you a story about deadlines. True story.

I cannot work without them myself because I am the world’s worst procrastinator. Even when I have a deadline I put things off until the very last moment. But I had an editor, Vinny by name, who was even better than I at stall tactics.

He flew into town some years back for a three day scheduled shoot. Now this was in the horse and buggy days of photography. Where you would take a half hour to set up a shot, light it, meter it, light it again, maybe take a polaroid, light it again, and then finally shoot it and bracket it and try again and cross your fingers and light candles and say a novena hoping that the magical eye of the camera worked. We spent the first day getting ready, talking about shots, prepping wood, and reacquainting ourselves with some of the finer restaurants in Portland for lunch and then for dinner. The next day we worked. We did. We worked. A little. You don’t want to push the envelope too hard early on. So we worked a little day two.

By day three, we had that feeling that only being late and up against a deadline can give you. It tightens certain inner core muscles if you know what I mean. It quickens the pulse. It makes eating food seem like a by-gone luxury. No time for that. We’re on deadline! We knew we were in serious trouble so we put the pedal to the metal all day long. I was busy flying around the shop building stuff for the shots and Vinny was busy looking frantic. Then we would reverse roles and he would be the busy one. He helped me when he could. I could do nothing for him but stand there and follow his instructions: “lift your head up”, “put pressure on your fingers so it looks like you’re working”, “smile”, “don’t smile”. Magazine photography. Endlessly fascinating stuff. Can you imagine what vanilla pudding is used for?

Well we worked that third day like two guys getting paid by the buckets of sweat we produced. We worked hard and right up to the deadline. Which was Vinny’s plane back to the East Coast. He had to be on it and with film canisters. So that evening we worked right up till 20 minutes to flight time. He got in his rental car, and I followed him out to the airport. Of course we drove the speed limit, don’t even think otherwise.

Off we screamed to the airport in tandem because there was no time for him to park his car back at the rental place. He pulled up to the Departures area, left his keys with a Skycap, and I pulled into the short term parking lot. I parked my car in the lot, and about two minutes after he had left, came running up to the departures area looking for a perplexed luggage handler. Found him too. I said, “you got a set of keys for this car?” The rental was parked right at the curb. I explained the whole situation, described Vinny, all that. It worked. Vinny got on the plane just as they were closing the doors and I drove the car to the rental lot. Cutting it close we did. You should never be rewarded for this kind of behavior but we got away with it.

Deadlines bring focus. That’s what it takes. Focus. We had it. Day three. The lesson has yet to fully sink in but I can preach it. Amen brother and sister, start your work early so you can get it done early and you can always fret during your extra free time.

Please come see our Residents’ work. It is remarkable what focus can do for one. The work will impress you with its creativity, workmanship, and the fact that on some pieces the finish is completely dry.

Phil Lowe is a walking compendium of 18th century furniture knowledge. He knows this stuff so well as it has been his life and work since his high school days. I visited Phil at his shop and school, the Furniture Institute of Massachusetts, in Quincy, Mass. a few years ago. It’s housed in a cool old brick building that he should have bought back when it was just ridiculously expensive. He had 5 or 6 full time students all working at their benches doing reproduction furniture.

We went over to the Peabody Essex Museum where there was an exhibit of the John and Thomas Seymour furniture. The Seymours did incredible work in the 17th and 18th centuries. Incredible. These were phenomenal Federal style  pieces with inlay in them that make you scratch your head trying to figure out they did such things.

Phil took me on a guided tour of the exhibit to show off this work. The first thing that happened was that the guard started following us. Now I have set off alarms in a museum in my time, gawking at pieces and getting too close to them so I wasn’t completely surprised we were being tailed. But the guard wasn’t following us to keep us off the loot. He was following us so he could listen to Phil talk about the pieces.

Mr. Lowe is very well known at the museum as he does repair work and gives the occasional talk about the furniture there. He knows so much about the details, the intricacies of these pieces that the guard just wanted to hear him talk. So we proceeded to look at these Seymour pieces close up, underneath, touching the occasional drawer or two, seeing how a tambour might have moved. We set off the alarms 6 times by my count. And it was worth it every time just to see the kind of work these men created. We’re talking intricate split turnings, exquisite bandings, veneer work, inlay made of turned columns which then were sliced and burned in hot sand to create more depth to the look. We’re talking refined detailing and classical proportions that give these pieces such presence, such a solid nobility.

Well Mr. Lowe is coming out to the Studio this July and we hope you can find the time in your schedule to join us. It is always a great week both listening to Phil and watching him work. He is like no other woodworker you have seen. He is like no other woodworker I have seen. He not only knows this work inside and out, he is such an accomplished master of the craft. Yet he is humble and still great to go out and have a beer with. I hope you’ll join us for a week this summer with a true Master of the craft, Phil Lowe.

It was many years ago when my interest in this woodworking stuff began. In search for truth or at least some information, I would wander over to the Sears store just off Grand Avenue and go up to the second floor and stare at the wall of woodworking tools. I would stare, just stare at the wall, wondering what in the world these things did. What kind of magic did they possess? What sort of language did they speak? Forget language, what the hell did some of these tools actually do?

Because they sure as hell didn’t say much to me then. They were mute. They said nothing. They were quiet and elegant and complete in their silence. I wanted to know what they did, but these tools only smirked at their potential.

It was stunning really to go from the world that I inhabited to the one I was curious about. I was a recent graduate of Literature at the time. Capital L. Fluent in logorrhea. Look it up. It means just what it sounds like. I could give you 30 pages on anything. The pages wouldn’t really say much but I could obfuscate with the best of them. Obfuscation R Us.

In my world, wordy argument was the staple. No concept could be pinned down so unleash your best Gordian logic and a volley of words and dive into the fray. I had trounced down the halls of learning, imagined feathers in my cap for my philosophic genius, and yet in the end I was somehow unhappy with the whole thing. I knew that a more substantial world existed out there.

Here is why. In my august school of liberal arts learning, there were many disciplines practiced. The people with whom I felt the most affinity lived in the halls of the physics labs. They knew about particle physics and gravity and astronomy. They knew about the world on a subatomic level and on the level of galaxies. And if they really did not know, they sure talked a good game and I was entranced by this knowledge of the actual physical world. I loved this kind of chatter which was so different from my own, that had nothing whatsoever to do with foreshadowing, or imagery, or metaphor. For in my view of the world, the telephone wires, the hardware and the poles that held them were all extruded out of the same plant somewhere. Things just appeared when needed. Nothing was really made because I could not imagine how that was possible.

But when I heard what could be done in a lab with tools, when I saw what tools, rudimentary tools like a saw or a file could do, when I became curious, it was a revelation. These tools turned out to be stunning in their immediacy, in their impact on the world and on me. It continues to this day. I remain curious about tools and how I can make them work for me.

So thanks boys: Joel, Bobush, Michael, Wheaton, Petros. You wacky guys who inhabited a world like no other. Thank you for the enlightenment. You opened my eyes to this world of tools and got me into the Sears store to learn.

Well it has come to this. You’ve seen it all around you. You probably knew that the Studio couldn’t be far behind. I have to say now that it’s true.

We’re dropping our values. The lessening of standards, the fascination with the quick and the cheap, yes these have infiltrated our walls as well. What’s new, what’s hip, what’s happening fast and now. That’s our Twittering. We have been swept along and now swept into the rush to mediocrity. Our woodworking is now pretty good.

Let’s lay out the facts. Those ideals of perfection were hard work to maintain. It takes effort to do things well. After so many years of holding up these standards our arms were tired. Those high standards of craftsmanship were heavy! Too much, we say. Time now to recognize what has been a reality all along.

Good Enough, our new motto. Get ‘er Done, our next bumper sticker. Pretty Good Woodworking our new standard.

It’s happening everywhere; we’re just band wagoning here. Yes, perhaps we’re a little late to the dance but we’ve been so busy being justifiably right and correct and precise that now we can afford to be unrelentingly mediocre. Pretty Good Woodworking is a new branding effort by us to instill in the public a sense of what’s just good enough to get by.

For instance, why hand cut dovetails, spending all that time fussing and checking and fitting and fussing? We have a jig now that you can use on your jointer to cut dovetails. It works, so why worry if the results need a gallon of putty? Get ‘er done. We’ll call it The Best Dovetail Jig Ever.

Wasting time sharpening chisels is also a thing of the past. We grind an edge now on the belt sander and call it good. That blue color on the chisel? That’s just mood lighting for your edges. As for how sharp we get things, now we check our edges, not on some silly softwood. We slam the edge down into a bench top. If it goes in 1/8″, it’s sharp. Hey don’t fuss, it works good enough.

How about sanding and planing? These are the Sisyphean efforts of the past. We now have a proprietary oil/ varnish mix that covers every sanding scratch perfectly and fills every bit of tear-out. Put it on with a mop and watch your free time flow back into your life. Once that stuff dries in a month or so you’ll swear that you’ll be able to shave by its reflection.

We’ve been working on this next thing for awhile and this will really save you time. The power conversion kit for hand tools will really speed things up for all of us in the shop. It takes a little retrofitting to get the power source held tightly to everything but once it’s in place baby I’m telling you that a 240 volt scraper works fast. Trust me on that. Or put your hands on a block plane with a turbo on it. We’re talking quick removal of material here.

So that’s it. We’re trying out this new approach in the Studio. I hope you’ll welcome this new era into your woodworking life as we have done into ours. It’s a relief really to be a part of the new century. Heck if anything that we make lasts three years, that’s a triumph right? Hair flying, standards thrown out the window like a sack of peanut shells. We’re free to be as mediocre as we like. Or foolish today.

Some years back I was designing a piece of furniture in the studio and I wondered how I could detail it, fine tune it. It was a nice piece but not outstanding. How could I make it my own? How could I give it voice and make it sing? Curiously I realized that I had all sorts of ideas in my kit and that really I just had to choose. I realized that I knew all sorts of ways of doing things. That I had at my disposal a vocabulary of design that I had tried and used, sometimes successfully. All I had to do was pick from this mine of ideas and try to find the right detail to add.

I taught one summer at a high flying art/ craft school in Colorado called Anderson Ranch. It’s a glorious place way up high in the Rocky Mountains, about 7000′ up. When a low lander like me gets up there you feel like your head is going to explode for the first day or so, but after that it’s exhilarating, living on so little oxygen. [You also feel like Superman when you come back down to sea level because of all the extra oxygen you now have in your blood.]

It’s the kind of school where famous people come to teach writing and painting and photography and digital imaging and yet they still teach clay and woodworking there. It’s an exciting atmosphere with lots going on. I was teaching the woodworking class for one week, not high falutin’ just some basic stuff.

Next to me in the clay studio was an older gentleman from Japan. He had been a potter for 60 years or so. He was what is known in Japan as a Japanese Living Treasure. These are artists who have preserved and carried on their craft traditions and have been honored by their country for their contributions. [What a concept! To honor living artists instead of feeding on the dead artists like a Road Show or road kill.]

He had, as his apprentice there, his daughter. A pierced spiky haired punk rocker who looked like no child of this craftsman. And yet there she was learning the craft of pottery at the hands of her father. An unlikely pair it would seem, but can’t that be said about most children and their parents?

And every day, he would have her throw the same pot. The exact same pot and it takes very little time for someone who is skilled to throw a pot. She would throw the pot and then when it was finished, when it was perfect, she would crush it. And start again. This was her job. To learn to throw this pot so well that it became a part of her, a part of her fingers, her mind, her breathing. This was her task. To become so immersed in this technique that she was one with it. What a concept! To practice one’s craft until you became so proficient that you could move on to actually making something. Until that point, you were only making yourself into a potter.

It is a very difficult thing to do to become proficient at something. It takes time. It takes patience. And yet when the time is spent well, it offers something back that is so unexpected. You don’t just suddenly arrive at some spot either. There is no destination that is abruptly reached. No corner of a wall ever gets turned. What one realizes is that the wall is curved. You just keep going. But one day, one day you’ll be working and you’ll throw that pot so well or handle that chisel so well so as to make just the right cut, and you’ll look up and say: Oh, I’m here. And then you’ll also say: I have so much further to go.

I had a Mastery Student who put down floors for a living. He is, appropriately enough for a floor layer, a down to earth kind of guy. He works on multi-million dollar homes but he’s just a straight shooter. Anyways, we were talking one day about having employees and the headaches and he used to run a big crew of dozens and there were always problems to be solved. He said that everyone pretty much came into his crew pretty raw but in a year they were acting like they knew everything. Everything there was to know about wood and floors they acted like they knew it inside of a year. But if they stuck it out, if they stayed around for five or ten years or so, they finally got to the point where they could say: I know a lot. But there’s a whole lot more I don’t know.

That’s when you are on the road to becoming proficient, when you can say that.