Working with wood: from hacker to craftsman

My journey begins to build furniture and develop some skills.

I used to play golf occasionally. I’ve no natural talent as a golfer. Indeed if there is a word for the opposite of “natural talent” then that describes me. The idea of golf appealed to me. I put in the hours, watched the videos and took lessons. When I married I collected a father-in-law who is a scratch golfer. He almost won the amateur French Open when he was 26.  For a couple of years he was an enthusiastic teacher. 

Now golf has a lot going for it. You get to spend a day in the open air, have a long walk with good company. But there is a reason I now spend my time working with wood and not hitting golf balls.

On the golf course, I am what is known as a “hacker”. I hit the ball but I have little control over where it goes. No amount of tuition or advice from my father-in-law has changed that. The ball goes directly up, flat, left or right.  Rarely does it go straight.

In my earlier woodworking years, that is before the age of 56, I was also something of a hacker with wood. When making something I had two criteria for success - how quickly I could build something and would it stay up. Form most definitely followed function. And there is a lot of function that can be achieved with nails, screws a hammer and a power drill. 

I reckon I can be excused for being incompetent at golf. Experience has shown that I’m physically not wired to take a long stick and hit a small ball a long way in one direction. Not golf, not tennis, not snooker. 

But with woodworking the barriers to competence are lower, or maybe they are just different. Not everyone can be a golfer, but with the right mindset I’m convinced anyone can craft something pleasing out of wood.

Golf requires the right mix of genes, but whilst I might be condemned to forever being a hacker on the golf course, woodworking is more forgiving. I realised a couple of years ago that if I could spend more time on my woodworking, I didn’t need to be a woodworking hacker forever.

Woodwork, I realised, can be deconstructed into a series of steps and processes. Making any kind of furniture with hand tools requires carrying out a series of individual activities. The same tasks are common across many projects: measuring out, cutting and planing timber and making mortise and tenon joints. The skill to do these well can be learnt. And it doesn’t need 10,000 hours. 

My father-in-law is the golfer, but my wife’s maternal grandfather was a carpenter. He died in 1962. I was married in 1996. A few years later my mother-in-law gave me a wooden chest containing her father’s tools. My wife claimed the tool chest, stripped off the paint and for a few years before we could afford real furniture it served as a TV stand. I may have been a hacker woodworker but I know quality when I see it. The metalwork on the tools had turned black but the corrosion was light. The planes, chisels and try squares were more dusty than rusty. They were clearly quite special.  But with a young family and a busy life my hammer, plastic disposable saw and power drill were good enough for a hacker needing to get some basic household DIY done.  The tools went into the attic until the day I would have the time and the motivation to bring them back to working condition. 

I’d previously discovered the teaching benefits of YouTube when looking for ideas to improve my golf.  My golf never improved but I can’t blame YouTube for that. One wet Sunday in 2022 I was thinking about how I would keep myself busy in my future retirement.

I typed  “woodworking” into Google. That led me to Rex Kreuger explaining on YouTube how to upgrade a cheap (£28) Spears and Jackson Tenon saw by reshaping the handle and resetting the teeth. It is still one of my favourite videos and Rex has proven to be one of my best teachers for basic woodworking techniques.   

Rex is not alone. Over the last two years I’ve discovered how good YouTube is for learning the new woodworking skills I need. It’s really quite extraordinary how much great free content there is.

Last year I brought my wife’s grandfather’s tools down from the attic. I’ve cleaned up the prewar Stanley planes: the no 5, the no massive 602, the block plane and the rabbet plane. I’ve finally discovered how to get the blades so sharp I can take shavings of the edge of a piece of paper. I’ve treated myself to a set of Narex mortise chisels and I’ve been making stuff.

In the last year my projects have included a workbench, two shaker tables, a benchpress table and a saw vice. All with plans from Rex Kreuger. I’ve launched an Instagram sight @this_would_work to track my progress and projects. A handful of people are following me. Now I am writing my first article for Substack.

My hammer and power drill are still in regular use, but at the weekend I’m more likely to be cutting a mortise joint or a dovetail than hammering in nails. I have no desire to own a table saw. I can saw in a straight line and square my edges with a shooting board. 

I have a long way to go to be considered a true craftsmanship. Maybe I’ll never get there but each week I move further away from being a hacker. I have learnt over the last year that I can master some of the basic woodworking skills, and by doing everything more slowly than I may find natural I am improving. I can even make passable dovetails (with a bit of help from sawdust and glue). As I learn I’m getting hooked on the deep satisfaction that comes from being a creator.

I still look wistfully when I pass a golf course on a sunny day. Maybe future retirement will give me the hours I need to discover my inner golfer. Or maybe I’ll just spend more time woodworking  

For now I take heart from the fact that when I am working with wood no one is recording my score, nor cares what my handicap is. And turns out my father in law is a bit of a woodworker too.