Before I go any further, I want to register my protest to the term consumer. I had this funny feeling in the 70s, when this term became the default, that we were losing touch with our humanity. There are so many terms that could be used, like people! Calling people “the consumer” places them squarely at the bottom of the commercial food chain. They no longer have any role in society but to consume for the greater good of economic growth.

But I digress. The question I posed is who is going to educate people? Who is going to make them understand that a piece of furniture made of wood solids is not the same as a piece made of solid wood? Who is going to make them understand that melamine is little more than sawdust compressed into a panel and covered with the thinnest of veneers? Who is going to teach them the value of things made by human hands, something our grandparents understood well?

One thing is certain: industry is not going to be doing this teaching. The industry is far too deeply invested in new technology to have any interest in alerting people to the fact that most of what they have to offer is an illusion. That pretty much leaves it up to us. Somehow we are going to have to get people to understand that there are no custom cabinets at the local big box store.

D.D.

The article continued, “according to the Labor Department, the construction industry slashed 2.27 million jobs from its pre-recession peak to the trough of construction employment in January 2011. Just 95,000 jobs have returned, or less than 5 percent of those lost.”

That is a whole lot of people looking to fix broken chair legs and rehang sagging doors. I have resorted to this kind of work myself at various times, relying more on ads on the service page of the local newspaper classified section. I actually did generate a respectable amount of work. But it seems that the screws have tightened a bit since the initial burst of the housing bubble and many who had hoped for a quick return to “prosperity and growth” have adopted a more realistic attitude and have entered the fray, competing for these small jobs. Guys who were getting 30 or more calls a week are now feeling lucky to get a couple.

The article also brings up a problem with going online to find work in that (my own words here) there are a lot of nut cases hanging out on the internet. And, like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, you can never be quite sure what you are going to get. Of course, for the most part, we are large men with big hammers and pretty much capable of defending ourselves. So the concern is not so much about that as it is about running into people with some pretty weird agendas. I had a few of those, too, and while I will not go into detail here, I will repeat what an old friend once said: “Sometimes it’s not about the sandwich; it’s about what comes with the sandwich.”

D.D.

Roof framing is one area that has changed radically. Roofs used to be stick framed and there was always at least one guy on every crew who understood how to use a framing square to layout all of the hip and valley rafters. If it was not an art, it was at least a science and the guy who knew how to do this was well respected. Now, more often than not, the roof arrives on the back of a flatbed truck in the form of pre-fabricated trusses. Hips and valleys are “California-ed” with the rafters simply laid down on the sheathing of the intersecting roof. Even the blocking between the rafters is pre-cut.

A book could be written on this. I still remember the first time we installed a fiberglass “uni-tub”. Five-year warranty and installed in a manner that totally precluded replacing it without cutting a hole in the wall (or roof). How long is that house supposed to last? More than five years? Ya think?

Later, I was doing work in multi-million dollar “mansions.” All of those huge looking corbels and crowns that were supposed to make it look like a European castle? Cement coated Styrofoam!?!? Be careful with that stick … don’t want to punch a hole in that porch column! What a joke!

Next to my shop was an outfit that did doors and interior trim for development houses that sold for three to five hundred thou. Truckloads of trim packages went out of there every day. All cheezy primed particleboard.

We used to use hammers. Big hammers. And we laughed at the guys that were framing with guns. Sixteen penny cement coated sinkers set with a 28-ounce waffle-faced framing hammer. That was how it was done. The frames they built were loose and sloppy. Ours were tight and neat. And we had the muscles to show for it.

I have often been accused of being old school and maybe I am. At the same time, I am also very open to using technology and I appreciate the many ways in which our lives have benefited from it. But when it comes to the quality (or lack thereof) of new home construction, I cannot think of a better example of the idea that new does not always equate with better.

D.D.

Most people are right handed. Some are left handed. And a few are ambidextrous, comfortable working with either hand. (Ambidexterity is a great asset in woodworking.) I am what they call none of the above. Or maybe they would call me bi-polar. Or just strange. I am comfortable doing certain things right handed and certain things left handed. This was a disaster for me in little league because I throw and catch with the same hand. I’m sure this is why I never became a star Major league baseball player. In woodworking, this was more of an advantage than a disadvantage because I was more able to switch hands than someone who was strictly left or right handed.

One of the things I did instinctively with my left hand was to grab my tape measure. This meant that when I pulled the tape out with my right hand, the numbers were always upside down. (Ahh, you can see it coming, right?) Since my tape was always upside down, I was always at risk of reading sixes as nines and vice versa. So most of the time, if I made a cutting error it was invariably a three inch error.  One day, while trimming doors, I cut a piece of casing an inch and a half too short. Without thinking, I went right back to the saw and cut off another inch and a half, thereby setting the world right again.

When I used to build a lot of melamine cabinets, I really liked the very simple side/bottom mounted white enameled glides. These glides are inexpensive, operate smoothly and are pretty robust and there is little that can fail on them. I cannot recall ever getting a callback. They also have a ‘detent” that allows the drawer to self close in the last few inches of travel.

For heavier drawers, I have always relied on the steel, ball bearing glides offered by several manufacturers. There are cheaper versions of these glides but I lost faith in them pretty early on because there were a few instances where the little ball bearings went skittering across someone’s kitchen floor, a problem that never occurred with the better quality glides.

The only problem with these glides is that they are ugly. Even the low load rating glides are fairly conspicuous. And because they are side mounted, you have to leave a half to five eighths of an inch gap per side to accommodate them. I ended up making rabbeted drawer sides that would conceal most of the hardware when the drawer was opened.

I also like the under-mounted glides, even though they eat up a bit of drawer depth. These glides allow a minimal side clearance, usually no more that an eighth of an inch which gives a more furniture-like appearance when the drawer is opened. When these glides first appeared, they were made of heavy steel with no plastic parts at all. Now that they have become somewhat ubiquitous, the construction has suffered a bit and there  are lots of small plastic parts and little springs and catches, all of which are subject to failure. Plus they are ungodly expensive and that cost must be passed along to the customer.

Skill is part understanding and knowledge, which can be taught by reading books, watching videos and attending demonstrations. But there is another component that cannot be taught. For lack of a better word, I will call it “feel.”

You learn how the tool feels when it’s cutting right. You know how it feels when you are taking too big a bite. You can feel the grain starting to tear right through the handle of the tool and you understand how to correct for it. The only way to acquire this feel is to work with the tools. How much time it takes to develop the necessary feel can vary wildly from person to person.

Skill should never be confused with talent. Skill is measurable and definable; talent is not. Skill can be acquired; talent is inherent. A talented individual can produce a beautiful object with apparent ease, regardless of skill level. An increase in skill level may allow the talented individual to accomplish this more easily or in a more refined manner, but the talent will come through regardless.

Some people have loads of talent, while the rest of us make do with what we have.

D.D.

The most blatant version of this is when they say “Bill and I are building a house.” What “Bill and I” are actually doing is paying someone else to build the house for us. But we never put it that way. We want to imply that “Bill and I” are actually the ones swinging the hammers and cutting the timbers. We also want the world to understand that “Bill and I” designed the house, engineered all of the structural elements, laid out the mechanical systems and did all the landscaping too. Never mind that there were probably a hundred or more people, none of whom were named “Bill and I” who actually did all of the above. In truth,  “Bill and I” did little more than write the checks.

There is a reason for this. People want authorship of whatever is being built. They want to be the ones who did all of that designing and engineering and building. They want and need us to do this work but they don’t want us to claim any authorship of our own. They would prefer that we simply and quietly evaporate after the work is done.

It might sound like I’m coming down pretty hard on “Bill and I” but I’m really not. I realize that this is human nature. We all have a need to create, to build, to perform productive work. And there is very little of that need that is satisfied by writing a check. So part of the job is to be able to allow “Bill and I” to have the visceral satisfaction of convincing themselves that they were the ones who actually did your work. It might just be the most important part.

Keith Rowe related an incident involving a hotel room furniture project in which the designer objected to some color variation in the grain on some edgebanding. After rebuilding most of the pieces and being out of time, in desperation, he simply switched the location of the remaining pieces. The ploy worked and the designer was satisfied.

This story reminded me of when I used to make chess boards and shipped them out by the dozens all over the world. Being made of real wood, the boards had some variations. They were returned occasionally because the dark squares didn’t match exactly or for some other real or imagined insignificant flaw. At first, I would try to correct the issue.

One day I had a flash of inspiration, similar to the one experienced by Keith. I simply swapped out the boards, sending Bill’s board to Joe and Joe’s to Bill. Without exception, everyone who received someone else’s board was completely satisfied! Of course they were unaware of the ruse and I was not foolish enough to reveal it. In the end, everyone ended up happy and I limited my pain to some extra shipping costs. Eventually I built it in to my pricing structure, figuring that it was simply another expense that had to be factored in.

D.D.

The problem with this stuff is that it is dependent upon little gizmos. That means lots of little springs and plastic parts that are always accompanied by the reality that it’s not if they will fail, but when.

Every time I get a customer who insists on having self-closing hardware, I try to talk the out of it. I point out that the life span of the parts needed to make this work is inevitably shorter than the expected lifespan of the rest of the hardware, not to mention the cabinetry itself. And I also point out the substantial increase in job cost this hardware will carry with it. More often than not, they are not persuaded. The lure of being able to watch their drawers and doors slowly retract into their openings with a whisper is simply too great to abandon, especially when the soft close feature is included.

I don’t want to believe that we have become too lazy to even close a cabinet door or push a drawer back into place. And I don’t believe it’s a question of time because most people will stand there and watch the thing close.

For cabinet doors and drawers, I have drawn my personal boundary at applying felt bumpers to soften the sound of closing. So far, I have not been too successful at convincing anyone else.

D.D.

Psychologists call this a block. There are specific blocks like writer’s block (boy do I know that one!) and then there are more general categories like mental block. I have never heard of a specific woodworker’s or an artist’s block but I am sure there has been a study done somewhere.

Sometimes my block comes right in the middle of a specific project. When that happens, the best thing is to put the project down for a bit. Since this is a very specific block, it can be circumvented by picking up a different project for a while. This might be a project that was put down due to a previous block or simply something that got sidelined for some other reason. And we must hope that the blocked project does not carry a heavy deadline!

There are times when my block is much more general. I can’t get my mind to focus on any project at all. I feel like George McFly in “Back to the Future”. In times like these, I simply have to go do something else totally unrelated to woodworking.

I learned long ago that you cannot force your way past a block. You just have to let it go and focus on some mindless task until your brain comes back on again. My neighbors always know when I am in the middle of a block because that’s when my yard looks its best.

D.D.