The "Plan"

We moved the workshop last weekend. No, the new space isn’t done, but for reasons I can’t even remember, the timing was right. I put the word out for help and got a wonderful crew of 17 strong backs to show up in the snow and help me heave, hoist and shove my shop from one location to another. Here’s a gallery of images from that day.

Thanks to everyone that showed up and made this happen, I can’t begin to express the depth of my gratitude. There is space in the inaugural C-Arm class on May 5th, check out the details here.

With all this chaos, leading to what will be a well organized workshop, I can’t help but think about how far this is from the truth of my way of doing things. I am definitely a reactor. I start moving in a direction, take notice of what’s happening and adjust accordingly. This workshop plan unfurled as options arose and slipped away. My master plan was a napkin drawing and the barn had ideas of it’s own as to how it would or wouldn’t comply. I often wish I was a better “master planner”, but I’m not. I think this is why I gravitated to hand tools and work that is more sculptural. I think one misconception about making things is that the intention and result will or must match. I never start by having a fully formed idea upon setting out to make something, be it a chair, a drawing or even lunch.

The reason I’m stressing this is because I believe this is a hang up lots of folks have when it comes to doing creative work. It’s a natural impulse to control ourselves and the process to ensure a result that reflects well upon us and guarantees success. But this can be very stifling. The most interesting parts of anything I’ve ever made have come from noticing something unexpected and being willing to let that guide me forward. I hope not to offend, but I find the kind of woodworking where the end result looks just like the computer rendering incredibly boring. It often seems so lifeless.

Last week, Follansbee taught at my shop. Yes, his patterns are fully knowable and can be drawn, but the action, dare I say violence, he brings to the execution brings them to life.

Zoom in on this to see the aggressive nature of a native New Englander!

He struggles as a teacher to get the students to act with the same boldness that he brings. If his carvings were “perfect”, his lively boxes would become coffins. He wrote a great piece about this last week on his substack (I think it was the struggle to get students to HIT the tools that inspired him).

Lately, I’ve been drawing every morning. I’ve been using a brush pen that has ink in the handle. I prefer it to a pencil because I can’t control the results the way I can with a pencil. This let’s in way more Bob Ross “happy accident” moments.

the pen arrives with a red ring in the middle, remove it, tighten the handle and the ink starts flowing

The process of drawing stops being about intention and becomes more about doodling and free styling until something unexpected catches my eye. It’s been a lifelong goal to bring this kind of spontaneity to my woodworking. I was talking to Aspen about our bench as we were developing it and told her “we should set our expectations to observation” for a particularly gnarly issue we were trying to solve. In the end, playing around solved it, not knitted brow thinking.

One of the ways I help free myself when it comes to drawing, is to have a ridiculous amount of paper on hand. I prefer card stock, 8 1/2” by 11” that I buy from Staples by the ream. It has a great tooth for grabbing ink or pencil and is heavy enough to feel substantial. By having hundreds of sheets on hand, I’m willing to move fast and either dismiss an entire filled page filled with marks, or stop after after one pleasing line and move on to the next page. Then, after a session, I thumb through the dozen or so pages and find anything that catches my eye to continue exploring or preserve. Think how different this process is from most woodworking, where the drawing is meant to be law, the results are predetermined and the materials are expensive. I always tell my students they can explore and even fail when making a part because the materials in chairmaking are free, which is much closer to the truth. Even a chair that sells for thousands might have $75 worth of wood in it. The value is in the action brought to the wood, not the wood itself. Switching out of a scarcity mindset is vital to getting comfortable exploring.

Nothing is cheaper than a little ink or pencil lead, so maybe set aside a little time to doodle, and observe. Don’t worry, everyone feels intimidated by the empty page. Just go ahead and defile it, make a mark, then another, you might find that once the concern for the page is gone and your self consciousness fades, you stop being tied to your intentions and you begin to trust yourself and just react. That’s the plan.