She grew up on a ranch outside a small Nevada town. She had four brothers and two sisters and all of those kids contributed in some way to the running of the ranch. The boys knew how to drive by the time they were ten and before their ages could be counted in teens, they were running tractors and bailers.

The girls worked hard preparing meals for the family but also canning and preserving food grown in gardens and orchards on the ranch. Old-school roles for the genders to be sure but things were a bit less complicated then. The point is that this family worked together to make the business a success. There was no question about this. It was assumed. Survival meant that everyone did their part.

My youngest son worked in my shop from the time he was old enough to chase me out the door when I headed to work. My older son was never interested in woodworking. He was an early computer geek and took an entirely different path. Growing up in his time, he had this option. There was no pressure on him to participate in the family business. And he has prospered.

I never put pressure on my younger son to work in the shop. It’s just what he wanted to do. So he and I ran the shop. Since I did not have seven kids, I had to hire additional help. Made me think that having more kids might not have been such a bad idea.

D.D.

If the family business was blacksmithing or tailoring, sons grew up leaning blacksmithing or tailoring. The torch was passed at the appropriate time to the sons and then to their sons, generation after generation. Children grew up in the family business and were well prepared to take the reins when the time came.

Some of my relatives grew up in such families. My brother inlaw is a rancher/farmer. He took over the farm from his father who took it over from his father. But times have changed a bit and he had a rough time competing with the commercial food production system. His son will not take over the farm because he is now an agricultural engineer who works for big food.

In the same way, my son will not be a woodworker. He grew up working in my shop and could certainly run the whole thing. But it’s not so easy to maintain such a business when so much inexpensive woodwork is readily available from large commercial sources. Besides, these days, the tradition of the family run business does not have the same panache it once had.

I’ll have some more thoughts on this later in the week.

D.D.

Local businesses also produce much less waste and environmental pollution that the big chain stores due mostly to the fact that transportation and packaging plays a much smaller role in getting product into people’s hands.

This is a good selling point for any local small shop. It means that more of the cost paid by the customer can be put into product quality which is, in itself, a good thing for the customer. So even if the customer is acting from a position of enlightened self-interest, it is better to buy from a local shop than from a large manufacturer.

We are seeing a much higher level of concern for these issues now that we saw ten years ago. Some might suggest that it is a case of too little, too late. But, even so, there is always room for additional motivation when trying to convince someone that it is better to have their work done by a small local shop than spending their resources on manufactured products made overseas and shipped into this country.

D.D.

The primary reason is that they were long ago determined to be less than desirable for one reason or another. Many of these trees don’t reach a size to yield enough lumber to make large scale harvesting practical. And the wood from others is simply not that attractive. Some species throw off some nice looking material but are not stable and are subject to excessive warping and checking. Others are abrasive and difficult to work.

The only exception I am aware of is Lyptus, a genetically modified species of eucalyptus that is being plantation grown in Brazil by Weyerhaeuser. This makes it, technically speaking, a tropical hardwood which sounds very desirable.

I have used this wood for several projects and I am only mildly taken with it. It’s not bad looking wood but a bit on the unstable side. Since these trees mature in only 12 years plus or minus and since they are grown under very closely controlled conditions, they do not have much chance to produce wild figure or burls. But it is more or less sustainable, apparently very well managed and not all that expensive.

D.D.

Sometimes the plan is absolutely specific in every detail. The location of everything, the profiles of all of the moldings, the sizes, everything is spelled out. And, as a general rule, the author of plans like this tend to think of them as being worthy of placement on the top shelf, right next to the Bible.

But, I have always tried to see the plan as being more of a set of guidelines than a sacred document. Kind of like the Ron Popiel rotisserie oven. That was accompanied by an incessantly repeated statement that you could “set it and forget it.” But if you ordered one, the first thing you noticed were the big yellow warning labels plastered all over the box informing you that “set it and forget it” should “not be taken literally.”

What happens, more often than not, is that we come off the line with a great deal of enthusiasm for the plan. Then, as the project progresses, inevitable, unforeseen complications arise and these usually require some modification of, or deviation from the plan. A.K.A. changes.

Of course, if you are building from your own plan and there is no client approval involved, these changes can be made with impunity. In almost every other case, changes require the approval of at least the client and possibly (probably) an army of architects, designers and contractors. And that’s not even considering all of the additional persons of influence who may have an opinion of the subject.

The demands of reality can also have a big effect on the plan. Sometimes I find myself saying, “What was I thinking?” After spending hours talking the client into a detail I thought would be great, I end up looking at what it’s going to take to make it and then at the budget I have to work with and end up trying to talk them out of what I so enthusiastically talked them into two weeks back.

D.D.

Most of us started out because we liked making things out of wood. Seemed like a logical move to begin making a living by doing so. And at first, that’s exactly what happens. But then you start to grow your business and before you know it, you are spending more time watching others make things while you make phone calls and create designs.

As things have gotten tighter and tighter economically, many shops have reduced their workforces. Some have reduced them to the point where the guy that owns the shop is doing more of the work. That’s a mixed blessing because it means less work and fewer jobs for other people. But it also means that you get to do some actual woodwork for a change.

A couple of guys I know are in exactly this position and are finding that, even though they might not be completely happy about the state of their businesses, they are getting more hands on time in their shops which is really why they went into the business in the first place.

D.D.

The Internet is flooded with blog posts about how to make your own laundry soap or how to blend a hair conditioner using vinegar. The motivations for doing it yourself are widely varied. It might be that we suddenly become aware that products we use every day may not be healthful and, if fact, might be harmful. Or we might just feel like being more autonomous. Or, it might be simply that we feel the need to save some money.

That brings us to the point because, while some things might be a simple no brainer, woodworking projects require skills and knowledge. And each of us, as makers, are repositories for these skills and knowledge. That makes every one of us a potential teacher. We function as such when we hire a new employee. Even if we get lucky enough to find someone who already has a good skill set, we still need to teach them how things are done in our shops.

At various times, I have taught classes and the level of interest is always stronger when money is tight. Then I see lots of guys who would otherwise be calling me to make their coffee table suddenly wanting to make it themselves. I have always encouraged this because I have always felt that people should know how to make things and not think that everything should be store bought. Teaching others our trade can be rewarding in many ways and frustrating as well.

D.D.

We may have been acting from enlightened self-interest but we managed to convince ourselves that this was the right thing to do. But then tax time rolled around. Suddenly we realized (duh) that this was going to cost us some money. We knew this going in, but that’s not the same as having to deal with actually forking over the dough.

The result is that, once again, business has seemed to evaporate right before our eyes. People who have to pay more taxes don’t have as much money to spend on things like new dining tables or upgraded bathroom vanities. And what seemed to be a small extra burden has left people feeling much more pinched that they might have thought.

Pinched is a relative term. People who earn a working wage might have a whole different interpretation of pinched than those earning a few hundred thousand a year or more. Nevertheless, when one is feeling the pinch, discretionary spending decreases.

Something to think about if your state is considering imposing increased tax burdens on “the wealthy.”

D.D.

In answer to this comment, I must admit that 90 percent is an exaggeration. But I know of many installations that were demoed when new owners wanted to put their own personal stamp on their new digs. This was not so much due to working in the style of the day but working in the style of the client and their entourage of designers and architects. That’s the deal when you do custom work. I had many projects where I was the designer and these were done more in a style of my own making. Even so, there is no guarantee that new owners are going to have the same aesthetic sensibilities as those who commissioned the work or see some intrinsic value worth preserving.

Over the years, I also made many pieces of furniture and these, it seems, have a much better chance of long-term survival. They can be removed from their current environment without being destroyed. They are much more likely to be sold or given to another and, therefore, might have a somewhat longer life expectancy.

My whole point was the wasteful attitude that has become the status quo. A kitchen is not demolished because it is no longer functional or has deteriorated beyond the point of usability but simply because it might not conform to the style of the day. I have personally seen many perfectly good, fully functional kitchens torn out for exactly this reason. But there is no consideration given to the idea that this represents an appalling waste of resources and might well be destroying work that would have far more inherent value than that which replaces it.

D.D.

The last time this came around was in the 60′s when the counter culture began to zero in on the inherent wastefulness of our obsession with convenience. The icon of this new awareness was the venerable Mason jar. You would see people walking around drinking their coffee out of Mason jars and that was their way of letting you know that they disapproved of your disposable Styrofoam coffee cup. It would seem that the Mason jar has once again taken its place as the embodiment of the rebellion against impermanence. A recent visit to my son who works for Apple confirmed this. At least half of the people drinking coffee in the cafeteria were drinking that coffee from mason jars.

OK, I can hear you. What the does this have to do with woodworking? Simply this: woodworking has been subject to some of the most egregious examples of the throw away mentality. I would be willing to bet that at least 90 percent of the work I have done over the last 40 years has ended up in the Dumpster as homes change hands and the new owners want to replace the existing with something else. The waste of resources this represents is appalling.

One of my favorite examples of convenience taking precedence over sustainability is insert tooling. The days when every maker had to know how to keep his tools sharp have all but disappeared. Now, when a blade gets dull, you just swap out the dull tips for new ones. And the old ones? Toss them in the trash. Makes perfect sense from a work flow point of view. But how long can we keep this up?

D.D.