Some are drawn to cloth, some to jewellery, some to paint — others to wood. I've long been pondering why. What is it about wood that makes it so special? I've concluded that the short answer is this: aside from the almost infinite variety of colors and textures, you can see and feel the entire journey from tree to finished object, first hand. The word enduring comes to mind.
The process begins in the forest — cool and moist even in the heat of summer, sheltering and somehow warm against the wind in the cold of winter. Forests have always been, in their towering stillness, magical places. People love forests and people love trees — in their yards, lining their streets, filling their parks. Trees are a constant in our lives.
Most people don't differentiate much between trees. Occasionally there is a special one — «the maple in front of our house» — but generally speaking, it is another level entirely to begin to see trees not only as trees, but as lumber. No, more than lumber. Every species has characteristics all its own. Perhaps that is where the inspiration to become a woodworker begins. After I started working with wood, the forest also became its individual trees — the gnarled oak, the smooth beech, the quiet regularity of a straight ash.
In my earlier years on the farm, I used to spend hours in the dead of winter deciding which tree to fell, imagining future projects in oak, cherry, or walnut. Felling and skidding logs across fresh snow at a crackling cold 0°F is exhilarating — it is the transformational moment from "tree" to "wood." It is also hard work.
Then comes the sawmill, an exciting place of sight, smell, and sound. Sight, when the log is opened up and the figure is revealed. Smell, the overpowering sensation — particularly with a tannic wood like oak, where the scent stays with you for days. And then the ring of the blade — before, during, and after the cut. Those are long, hard days, as green hardwoods are heavy and the stacking must be done carefully to produce straight, true boards.
And then we wait. And wait. And wait — and dream. We wait for years, because air drying takes time and patience. We are not talking about construction studs. You often hear people complain about crooked and split lumber bought commercially — fast-growth fir and pine, tossed in a kiln and rushed to market. Our wood is something different, something we respect and are willing to wait for. And so we wait, imagining different possibilities for its use, changing our minds again and again.
Over the years I have accumulated many special pieces of wood. Much of it still waits for the moment when that tree in the woods becomes a chair or a table, while the perfect use for other boards has not yet been conceived. I have, for example, been sitting on some rare and beautiful plum wood for well over a decade.
The realization of an object is a culmination — the end of a process that began more than a hundred years ago.