DIYbanter - View Single Post - Long & Wrong musings of a miserable COC (read at your own risk)

On 12 Feb 2006 22:36:07 -0800, wrote:

Well Arch, you are playing my tune. When I started professional
woodworking, I had the sad misconception that there was a tool for
every job, and a job for every tool. Working around some of the guys I
was around, they wouldn't even try certain tasks without EXACTLY the
right tool.

After a period on the job, I was put with the best, most experienced
carpenter on the job. He had amazingly few tools compared to the guys
that worked under him, but he always turned out better work. He always
stayed ****ed off at the guys that worked under him claiming that they
needed every damn tool in the store to do the most simple things. He
always stressed to me to learn to use the tools you have, and to never
think of the tools as being good for only one thing.

I worked for a general contractor, so we did all manner of woodoworking
on restaurants. We set forms, did the framing, put on the roof, framed
and sheetrocked the insides, hung fixtures, made and hung door units,
and on and on. We had no radial saws, no table saws, and no other
statinary tools. And no, they weren't big prefab packages, either.

We even used to make cabinets with 1X2 rails and stile on the carcass
and half lap doors on site. We used circular saws, we had one router
(for all of us) a few sanders and a couple of belt sanders. We didn't
have nailguns, or anything like them.

Now 30 years later, I have been trying to teach as I was taught, and
have just about given up. I am lucky if someone knows how to do
something other than a few basic things, much less how to do the same
thing with any kind of different tools. They need the EXACT tool they
know about, and can only do certain operations one way.

I stunned one of the guys that works for me because I fit a door in an
existing jamb that was out of plumb as well as out of level. Can't be
done, he said. No way. In his estimation the frame had to come out of
the brick wall and a new complete door unit needed to be installed.
Well, I did it the way I learned, and mortised the hinges with a chisel
to match the existing mortises in the jamb after measureing them off,
carefully marked the door to fit the opening, and scribed cut all three
remaining edges with my circular saw (with one of those kick ass red
Freud blades) with the edge opposite the hinges cut in 5 degrees. I
sanded and rounded edges of the door to finish the installation.

He was so stunned he couldn't believe it. Then of all things, he
decided that I did it just to show off. Now how is that for a way to
compensate for a lack of imagination and skill? Sadly, with the people
that are going into the trades these days, he is more of the norm than
the exception. He finally settled on the fact that the reason I knew
how to do that was because I am "an old dude". He is 32, BTW.

I see a lot of him in our woodturning group. Some of the guys I really
try to encourage to think out of the box. Grind your tools the way you
want them, turn the wood you want to turn (if is is plentiful and easy
to turn, it can't really be good, can it?) and put the finishes on it
you want.

And while I am at it here, I am pretty damn sick and tired of all the
baloney going on with the design experts. The self appointed design
experts want everything to look like the forms they see in all the
magazines and the stuff they see at Pier One or Pottery Barn (or Target
for that matter). My most common peeve? "Well, that looks a little
thick in through there... I wonder if you could have made the foot a
little smaller..."

Worse? "I dunno... I'm just a little uncomfortable with the way you
handle the curve in through here... " Uncomfortable? Probably it's
his hemmorhoids, nothing else.

And who made all those rules up? Yet they are now the standards for
hollow vessels. Nothing but ginger jars.

Large bowls/platters need to have sidwalls no thicker than 1/4".
Smaller ones, 3/16 to 1/8". Anything else is greeted with a tolerant,
polite smile, and a patient pat on the head while receiving the
encouragements of "keep after it!" and "like the wood" and "I think
you are getting the hang of it!".

Someone in the group passed around a large burly piece of "found" wood
he turned, and since it was so gnarly and fissured, he decided to make
it a massive piece. It wound up almost round (no foot!) at about 10
inches in diameter with a large natural opening and the walls about 3/4
inch thick. It was gorgeous, just stunning.

I am not kiddin' here... half the club was confused with this as this
guy always turns to the club norm. They looked at it, teased him about
not finishing his hollowing, and wondered if it was a club for
burglars. He told me later that night he never realized how
unimaginative our little club had actually become. As one of the clubs
most respected turners, I wonder how they would feel if they knew that
his "hollowing system" is a 1" piece of plumbing pip with a slot cut
into it to hold the old car spring he has welded into it to make a 48"
scraper...

Robert

very similar to bowlers... 2 kinds of (serious) bowlers, in my experience, the
people who make the ball work under most conditions, and the "tool guy" of
bowling that goes to the pro shop and buys a new ball, wrist support, shoe
surface, magic potion, etc. every time they roll a bad game... *g*

When you see 2 people walk into a bowling alley, one with a bag and the other
with a hand truck with 3 or 4 plastic ball holders, you can usually tell which
is which..
Mac

https://home.comcast.net/~mac.davis
https://home.comcast.net/~mac.davis/wood_stuff.htm