The dock floats in a small cove off Douglas Lake in eastern Tennessee. The banks are steep and covered with trees; birdsong fills the air. An occasional breeze brings the trees to life, and they whisper to each other with rustling leaves.
I’d been fishing for a couple of hours when I realized that the dock was just the perfect height for dangling tired feet in cool water. The fish weren’t hungry, and by then I wasn’t really interested in feeding them any more of my bait. Off came the shoes, into the water went the feet, and gone was any intent to catch dinner.
I started looking around, taking in the beautiful shades of green and brown that surrounded the cove. Most woodworkers at my level buy their stock in home improvement centers. With the wood already milled and planed, all we have to do is cut to size, assemble, then sand or plane the mill marks out of it and apply our finish of choice. But before the wood is stacked in the aisle of our favorite store, it is felled, dragged, de-branched, dragged some more, loaded onto a truck, maybe floated down a river, de-barked, cut, sliced, sometimes peeled, planed, loaded on a truck or rail car, hauled again, and finally unloaded at the dock in the back of the store.
How many people, I wondered, have touched or worked on any particular board before it reaches my shop?
Early in my attempts at woodworking, I avoided hand tools. I simply thought using them would be too hard, and that power tools could do just as well with much less effort. I was wrong on both counts.
Early last year I attended a class taught by Lonnie Bird in Tennessee. Lonnie’s approach to woodworking combines power and hand tools, using the strengths of each to complement the other. Under Lonnie’s guidance in the six-day course, I started down the long road to learning the proper use of hand tools. That’s when wood started “speaking” to me.
With a table saw or router running, my total attention is focused on cutting or shaping the wood safely. But with hand tools, I’ve found time to pause and let the wood I’m working tell me its story. True, the story flows from my imagination, but I like to look at the wood and picture the forest it came from − the trees standing tall and proud, the birds singing from its branches. This forest of my dreams is full of mist and secrets, and the only sound of man to be heard among the chorus of the woods is my breathing and my footsteps. Occasionally a strong breeze flows from nowhere, and the trees seem to join the birds with a song voice uniquely beautiful.
And now, I’ll also take time to think of the men and women who have taken this gift of the earth, and brought it to me so I can attempt to make something beautiful and lasting. Many calloused hands and aching backs worked this piece of wood from log to board, and many miles of pavement or rail passed under the watchful eyes of truck drivers and railroad workers to bring this board to market. I suspect many of them were underpaid, and I regard them with silent gratitude as I plane a shaving from this board.
We woodworkers tend to be tool junkies. Our magazines reflect this. Many of the articles focus on tool reviews, jigs for working with tools, step-by-step projects listing the tools to use, ways to improve and tune our tools, how to sharpen our tools, and on and on. How many of us, given the choice of reading about a great woodworker or checking out the latest reviews on a table saw in a new magazine turn to the tool review first?
But woodworking is so much more than that. When you can, turn off the power tools. Pick up a hand tool. Pause to listen and reflect; let the wood speak! This hobby has lots of connections the wood would speak of, such as to the many workers who have touched the wood on its way to the lumberyard and the forest, with its cool breezes, deep misty shade, leaves falling from branches high above us, and trees whispering to each other.
And to us.
— Larry Brown is a network administrator for an Ohio utility company. His favorite hobby is reading woodworking magazines and dreaming about all of the great stuff he will one day make in his shop. He lives in Trenton, Ohio.
