Would You?

I ask the question and then ask, 'Could you?' I believe that most people could and can if they were to want to and then train for it like I did, have and continue to maintain my body and mind every day for eight hours of my full-time woodworking. Some say I am privileged. I am, but not by accident. This wasn't happenstance, it was a calculated, you see. I didn't want conveyor belt, consumerist production. It was my utter and absolute intention, and I spent a day on it. I'm not 'lucky', as some might say, neither do I indulged myself like an amateur, but I do what I do from my intentional amateur status. Always have and always will. Anyway, no matter, I enjoyed the minutiae of even the most undemanding elements, and when it was done, I told myself it was good.

That's how it is with amateurship, you see, there is nothing you need to prove if you are truly an amateur. The love of it is enough. You volunteer into it altruistically and though reward of satisfaction becomes a payment, you didn't do it for even that because you didn't even need pay nor did you do what you did to that end. You just went out there, on your own (on your tod), picked up a tool from a clustered group of favoured hand tools and made a wastepaper bin from some cherry and some quarter inch plywood and magic begins to happen by such things, just like that.

I know that they don't understand not using the machines, but to be honest, nothing I could have done by machine would have given a better result in quicker time or easier fashion. And, hey, this is just the practise run...the prototype. The wood and plywood were nothing more than short offcuts of scraps I was about to give away to my friends who come twice a week for a bagful of firewood for the stove on their narrow boat on the Thames, a quarter of a mile away from where I'm working.

My shoulders to small tenons are all perfectly cut to dead-on angles using only an ultra-sharp knife, a small but significant vintage Starrett 6" combination square (all of my hand tools have qualified to become vintage now), a vintage sliding bevel that's served me for over sixty years, but it's another sixty years older than that and then too a fine-toothed dovetail saw which I only allow myself to sharpen and have done so on this particular gent's saw along with my other half a dozen saws throughout six decades thus far. Imagine this though, it takes me four minutes to do that, and the same for setting the teeth. In no more than eight minutes, I am back in the saddle and on with the task. It seems I need to do it about every two months per saw, or so. I like too that I don't need a £250 fancy saw with Bubunga handles to achieve first class work. Nothing prissy, exclusive or snobby about ordinary joinery with my own choice of working man's working hand tools here. Facts are facts, I've been selling off anything fancy of late. The tools I don't use just clutter the place and distract my thinking and my work. Usually, that means they were too big, too heavy, too oversized, too clunky.

Not much to it, saw sharpening, for me, not these days, nor was it ever. I sharpened my first saw with George looking over my shoulder (laughing) when I was 15 years old. Never was much to it, really, so I am not much given to it when you think about it. I just find my shop stool, the one I made a long time ago now, with my hand tools, the one with the scalloped seat, sit myself down, position my saw at the bench, my body to the work, my hands to the tool and start filing away the slightest dullness. Remember this if you remember nothing else. I learned it with my first saw sharpening over sixty years ago; light cannot shine of a sharp edge. When you are sharpening anything, you are simply filing or abrading off the light that reflects dullness.

Before I know it I'm using the saw and I have the finite crispness that cuts the pristine shoulders and cheeks to perfect levels of sharpness. I move with the action of a locomotive using the locomotive linkage between hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder. My brain and body link and synchronise to perfection, and the saw glides through the cherry effortlessly. What am I feeling in my now living confidence? Well, for decades now, I am not thinking, 'I hope I can get those right.' I'm living the confidence and security of knowing it will be perfect every single time.

I feel the smoothness of the finished cut that leaves no need for chiselling to trim and fit and look good. I've lived a long time now through changed times. Sixty years ago, I knew many men who did such things and got paid less than a £1,000 a year working 45 hours a week to feed and clothe a family of four to six people. My family was eight people. Good old mum and dad; an amazing provision through a team-pair who never knew a day without working and raised me the same way and never knowing a single day without work. I doubt that I know a single so-called carpenter who can or has ever sharpened a saw in their lifetime any more. Funny thing is, though, I have taught and trained many an amateur to do that and know amateurs who do do it with confidence and without hesitation. Doesn't that seem odd to anyone else?

And here's another funny thing too. I now know more amateur woodworkers who use handsaws and planes, sharp chisels and such than I do so-called professional carpenters and yet, many professional carpenters speak disparagingly of amateur woodworkers. I watched this trend happen, worked with men who were proud to offer their chisels to a belt sander to get a sudden fix to their over-dulled chisels and planes and thought that they had the smarts. Somewhere in the mid-nineties, these men started losing something and within five years they just thought that they knew more and were smarter than the retiring makers when they had lost everything but didn't even know it or recognise it. Along comes the amateur, takes himself off into his shed, her basement, the garage, pulls out their few hand tools and makes a Windsor chair from some riven oak, or a spokeshave they needed to fashion it with.

So I spent a good day making a wastepaper bin in my self-proclaimed claiming back of my amateur status, and now shamed by anyone using the term carpenter to describe me. Fact is, I no longer stand for it. It's too loose and meaningless a term and means less than it should. Woodworking is not standing roof trusses and hanging prehung doors in a framed wall or atop it and air-nailing them in place. That's carpentry. When someone, anyone says, "This is Paul. He's a carpenter." I say, "No, I'm not, I'm a woodworker or a furniture maker or joiner or whatever suits me in the minute."

I have worn the same shirts and jeans in of plain denim, Wrangler jeans bought in the USA and Superdry short-sleeved shirts and not one of them has the white smudges of caulking that seem to be the qualifying badge of merit construction workers wear today. I bought ten pairs of jeans and ten shirts that year. I found what I liked and decided I didn't need to change my work clothes for a different style every day. I'm relaxed without wearing a tie and suit to prissy up for work. Where oh where, and when did we make the distinction of going to work as a fashion model? I understand, wanted to look nice for a celebration. I went to my neighbours' funeral last week. Brian passed away and he was such a nice person. I wore the suit I went to Buckingham Palace with to see the King of England last year. I enjoyed both events because they seemed to me at least to declare success. Brian was 91 and lived an exemplary life. My suit wasn't to strut out in in any way, it was to mark the day of celebration with respect.

My wastepaper bin design is complete. It was an idea, really. A mere thought the day before, and then I made it so simply with my usual combination of hand tools; an ordinary cluster if you like. Imagine this, though, I used the all-powerful power tool woodworking of complete human effort without any electricity inserting itself between me and my tasks and nothing I did would have come any the faster or more efficiently using any kind of machine. I needed no protective equipment; no dust extraction and protective headgear. I breathe the same air as my team working alongside me and the music plays in the background, we are all free of dust masks and breathing fresh, clean air, we need no eye protection, hearing protection, such like that, and we continue discussing anything we like as we are working alongside each other.

In the north-west of England, I might have said to my mates, "I'm dead chuffed with that!" My wastepaper bin is standing on my bench with the tools around it, a few shavings nestling above my and around and in my hand tools. This is a work of art. What I am looking at and living in is art in action. It's as pleasing to me today, aged 76 as it was back in 1963 when I first encountered shavings and sawdust from my tenon saw and bench plane.