Some very profound words of Christopher Schwarz…
Working with wood has always seemed like it’s something more than just refashioning dead vegetable matter into useful items.
Unlike metal, wood has a way of reminding us of the time it took for every stick to grow. Pick up a door stile and look at the end grain. Count the annular rings and you know it took 40 years to make that part for a cabinet door. A door panel might take 100 years to grow. I have a piece of slow-growth huon pine in my shop that is about 4” wide and took more than 300 years to grow.
If you respect your elders, we all need to tip our hats to the scrap bin every day.
But I don’t think of time and lumber as mere linear things. Perhaps it’s my affinity for Buddhism, but I have always suspected there is a circle behind the work I…
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