Woodworking as Culture:  

Question: How does one become an amateur woodworker? Among outsiders to woodworking, when observing craftsmen working on a project, like, say, routing the edge of a table top, or, simply using a plane to smooth a warped board, the almost universal question is, "How did you learn how to do that?" Sometimes, of course, these questions are easily answered:

"I just started, without any knowledge of the tools or skills, but slowly I became more proficient, and found that, with practice, I could do it."
 

In other instances, fewer than we would like, some amateur woodworkers have been fortunate enough to take course(s) in woodworking, maybe while in high school, or later, at an evening class in a community college. In still other instances, this same question cannot be answered easily. Instead, woodworkers have to fall back on responses like, "I am not sure, but …."

In my own case, while I did take a woodworking course in high school – I think is it was grade ten -- this experience was not enjoyable. Instead, I had little respect for my teacher, and really didn't get much out of it at all. My initiation into woodworking -- squaring a board with a plane -- was not sufficiently motivating, evidently. Likewise, the results of my other attempts at woodworking, i.e., working by myself at home, while more satisfying, and using the hand tools, such as an Atkins hand saw, a number 5 Stanley hand plane, and a Stanley adjustable square, were at the time disappointing, although not always. (Highlighted terms are defined in the glossary.)

These tools were given to me on my 10th or 11th birthday by my uncles, and I still have them, over fifty years later. Why was I disappointed in my initial results of woodworking? My results never matched my expectations. You soon find out that sawing a board with a hand saw takes much skill, skill that is not learned quickly, and for a teenage boy, one had to be resolved to accepting less than [good] results. (Further, years later, in retrospect, I have concluded that I am a power tool woodworker, that I prefer power tools over hand tools.)

Fortunately, unsatisfactory results did not kill my motives to continue woodworking. Maybe it was because still another factor entered the picture: economic need. Previously, I am convinced, it was from a response to my creative juices that drove me to woodworking. Still, I am not certain.

What are the components of woodworking? I can't put it better than Stephen Shepherd:

Only one half of the art of woodworking is in knowledge of the wood. The other half is knowledge of the tools and the ways of using them." From page 2 of Shepherd's Compleat Early Nineteenth Century Woodworker. Green River Forge G.S.L.C.,Utah, 1981

While Shepherd is a professional woodworker, his words of wisdom also apply to amateurs. http://www.ilovewood.com/

Green's Wood: Craft, Culture, History is the first book in my experience that looks at the "culture of wood", or maybe it's "the woodworking culture". Whatever, upon spying it, I realized a heretofore unrecognized truth about amateur woodworking: amateur woodworking is a "culture", similar to a "participatory" sport, like golf or tennis or racquetball, but -- at least in my experience -- has not gotten such recognition. Why? This neglect of observation is obvious, in my view, though, for the following reason: Woodworking is an activity engaged in by "insiders", who are not taken to introspection about their activities, while "outsiders" who may be looking in -- and possess the analytical skills needed to expose woodworking as a culture -- fail to understand the chemistry involved.

An academic book that includes sections on woodworking, and written by someone who betrays himself as an outsider is Hobbies: Leisure and the Culture of Work in America  Written by Steven M. Gelber. His book [more on this later]

(Sources: Stephen Shepherds Compleat Early Nineteenth Century Woodworker. Green River Forge G.S.L.C.,Utah, 1981; Harvey Green, Wood: Craft, Culture, History. New York: Penguin, 2006.)