Rex Krueger
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Begin with a Goal
🕑 Added 2021-04-30 13:12:58 +0000 UTC(This article is part of my monthly newsletter Fabrication First. There's no reason for Patrons to subscribe to Fab First. You already get all the same content, but you get it early.)
How many videos or articles have you seen on woodworking techniques like crosscutting or planing? Dozens? Hundreds? Another question: how much time have you spent researching furniture styles or influential designers and builders? For many of us the answer is, very little. Many people—even some woodworking enthusiasts—have spent literally no time learning about styles or design movements.
This is really weird. Even some knowledgeable woodworkers spend all their time thinking about howto pursue the craft, with little thought given to what they will make.
But I’m exaggerating, right? Many of us have produced a piece of “Shaker” furniture or perhaps something in the “Mission” tradition. Those are styles.
Fair enough, but terms like “Shaker” have become broad and generic. They refer to a large family of stylistically simple furniture. How many woodworkers know that the Shakers were a fringe religious movement with apocalyptic leanings and a curious obsession with chastity? How many craftspeople understand that the Shaker’s religious beliefs directly created their classic, unadorned style?
For lots of folks, these details seem dull and disconnected from the work. Who cares what the Shaker’s believed? They made nice furniture. Let’s build some. I mean, it’s all woodworking, right?
Unfortunately, no.
As I’ve written before, there’s no such thing as woodworking. There isn’t even a single craft of furniture making. A chair-maker will likely never cut a dovetail. A cabinetmaker does not need to buy an ax. Even in the craft of joinery, there are very few universal skills. What you learn must be guided by what you’re going to build.
Consider a popular designer and content creator like the Chris Salamone . He’s a talented craftsman who builds mostly in the Midcentury Modern style. Chris’s shop is like a small factory, filled with machinery and optimized for an efficient workflow.
Midcentury furniture is machine furniture. It was mostly conceived by architects and very much designed for mass production. Working in this style requires machine tools. You could build these pieces by hand, but Midcentury’s compound angles, flowing curves, and unusual joinery make it masochistic to build with plane and chisel. In Chris’ shop, he’s basically recreated the 1960s furniture factory on a smaller scale. The pieces he builds are clean and precise, emblems of machine perfection that fit his style.
You could follow Chris’ example and make some lovely furniture but pick a different style and your whole shop would change.
I like American Craftsman furniture in the style of Gustav Stickley. These designs suggest tradition and solidity while slyly nodding towards the modern. They’re beautiful. But Stickley was a businessman and even though he loved handwork, he also wanted economical furniture that people could afford. Stickley’s factories combined machine work with hand-cut details and hand-woven chair seats. The Craftsman style gives you the clean lines of the machine along with the thumbprint of the joiner. We might say that Stickley was the first “hybrid” woodworker. If we want to work in his style, we’ll need basic machinery and traditional hand skills.
No matter what you build, the product controls the process. I mostly build Early American country furniture and I do it by hand. I love the variations in the final product. My pieces look handmade because they are. You could plunk them right down in the farmhouse and they wouldn’t look out of place. I make my pieces the way they were originally made and I get authentic-looking results.
But that’s a recent thing.
Like many of us, I came to woodwork as a hobbyist. I wanted a break from intellectual work that chained me to a desk. I wanted to work with my hands. I wanted to makesomething, damnit.
As I set up my first shop, it was the process that engaged me. I enjoyed the precision of machines, the discussion of horsepower, and the careful placement of each new tool. Discovering hand tools didn’t change much. Instead of carefully setting up my band saw, I lovingly restored vintage hand planes. The point wasn’t so much making something as it was “getting in some shop time.”
My goal was to spend time in a tactile, mechanical environment and do things with my hands. Since that’s what I was after, that’s what I got. Considering all the time I spent in my first shop, I made a shockingly small collection of actual things.
And they were “things.”
I wasn’t very interested in furniture. I liked woodgrain and sawdust and setting things up with a dial-indicator. I built a couple of guitars and made my wife a desk. But the desk, and the guitars, and the replica film-props that I produced were all the same to me. They were all just “things” that I made. I could sort of make anything. That was thrilling.
But because I made anything, every project reinvented the wheel. How would I handle big lumber on such small machines? How could I cut that exact curve? Perhaps I should stop and build a jig. Very often, I didn’t have the right tools. But that was okay, because my ingenuity could save me and I could brag about making a turned part even though I didn’t have a lathe.
Looking back, it was all a hodge-podge, an endless series of hacks and jerry-rigged solutions. I had no process because I had no goal.
I think many of us wander through the craft because we have no goals.
Historically, this problem was unthinkable. To enter a craft, you apprenticed to a master and your master taught you to make the objects of your profession. If you apprenticed as a house joiner, you knew that you would make sash windows, doors and moldings. If your master the wheelwright taught you a certain way to split a log, you could be absolutely sure that his method would lead you to a functioning wheel. In each craft, every tool and every action was relentlessly directed towards an efficiently produced and saleable final product.
But now we are our own masters and the apprenticeship never ends (if it even begins at all.) Like me, most of us meander through the craft, spreading money around, accomplishing little, and never realizing that we’re actually dabbling in dozens or even hundreds of distinct wood-related professions. If I paint a depressing picture it’s because of all the depressed woodworkers I hear from. They lack direction. Many of them have pursued the craft for years and can’t get rid of a nagging feeling that they haven’t accomplished much. The shop full of tools somehow hasn’t created a house full of useful objects.
I understand. I’ve been there.
Over the decade I’ve been woodworking, I have slowly given up the idea that I’m a “maker” or a “fabricator”. I’ve settled on calling myself a furniture maker, or occasionally a joiner. I think skill comes from specializing and efficiency comes from having a system. Rather than a million options, you need a small set of useful solutions to common problems. You need a kit of tools to handle any situation; not because the kit is so enormous, but because the problems are few and easily understood.
Maybe I’ve painted an attractive picture, but how do we get there?
For a little while, you must walk out of the shop. Close the door behind you and go find a comfortable chair. You’ll need some books.
I know many people aren’t big readers, but that’s okay; there are lots of pictures. You’ll need to read at least a few books on furniture history and furniture styles. You should know the big names. Not just Maloof and Nakashima. I could make you a list, but you’ll find your own list if you take a little time.
If you’re dying for a place to start, here’s a list of styles and periods that I think every woodworker should know about:
Mannerist/Jacobean
William and Mary
Queen Anne
Federalist
Shaker
Mission
Craftsman
Mid-Century Modern
It’s a very short and incomplete list because my own knowledge of furniture history is just getting started. It’s only in the last few years that I even discovered the Craftsman style. Turns out, I adore it. I hope to make some in the years ahead. Of course, changing goals will mean adjusting my tools and techniques but it won’t throw my shop into a flurry of chaos and new purchases. The list of tools will be short and definitive. How do I know this?
I know because I understand where I’m going.
Comments
Gerald Eddy
This is interesting! While I have certain fabrication goals in mind, I have another goal more pressing. In a couple of years Both my wife and me will be retiring. My wife wants to locate somewhere else... as in another country! There is no way to transport my power equipment with me... but, a bundle of hand tools my easily be shipped somewhere and I would have something to do besides exploring my new home ( which my wife thinks will keep us preoccupied but I am more realistic... don’t tell her). So learning to work without power tools well IS my goal!
Ton Wanten
Thank you.
Rex Krueger
You can take the boy out of the country....
Rex Krueger
Your English is just fine. Thanks for sharing your story!
Ton Wanten
In other words... Ton
Ton Wanten
Hi, I'm T. Retired Marine (pension age 60). My home is The Netherlands. In December last year I started woodworking. I didn't know anything about it (I'm Dutch Duhhh :) ) And neither about English as you can read ;) Anyway, I started, of course, the wrong way. My shop is too small. I have no budget. When I started I used my grandpa's tools... (and hey "girl" I'm 60) But after ..... 2 days I bought new :) I was hooked, but had no idea where to start. So I started to watch Rex and Jonathan and many others. Since that day ... all ... I keep my wood in the bedroom. (I know my English isn't good.... but I mean "Wood" - "Wood") I have a YouTube channel... but I don't know the link. Kind Regards, Lr-Cpt. MarNed. Cross.evt. Wanten.
Will Shattuck
I love this story. I started by building a poorly made but sturdy bookshelf with adjustable shelves for the homeschool materials when my wife did that. That was about 3-4 years ago. Just got my first #5 plane. I have the Japanese pull saw. Going to work on a shelf for my wife’s medical equipment.
Jeff Stuart
I'm new here, probably typing in the wrong place. Sorry about that. I backed into this sport, needed to make a frame for a leaded glass panel. The recipient was to provide the frame but couldn't. A custom frame was out of the que$tion. So I made the frame. It was simple, unadorned, but solid. This was January 2020. I enjoyed making the frame, so I gathered a few more tools and made a table for the entry way. Then I made a taboret to hold up a plant, and assorted tool boxes. Right now I'm finishing up a six-drawer tool cabinet. All these are steps along the way, the Mercury missions to my Apollo launch, which is to make two large free standing cabinets with, of course, glass panels in the doors. I'm enjoying the handwork immensely. I grew up around farm machinery, did some factory work, and I learned nothing bores me more than fixing, tuning and feeding machines. So I'm doing everything by hand, including ripping & resawing 8/4 lumber with my trusty 24" Crown handsaw to make drawers and such. I didn't expect it to be so satisfying. Without tangible goals I wouldn't be doing any of this.
James Anthony
If you find one, let me know
Jonathan Musselwhite
Rodale's Illustrated Cabinetmaking is a great start. Not a pretty coffee table book, but it covers many furniture forms with nicely detailed exploded diagrams, and often points you to a more in depth source on the piece of furniture. The beginning of the book gives you a quick overview of furniture forms, styles, joinery techniques, and wood movement approaches.
Pete seddon
Rex, in addition to Henry Disston, Peter Nicholson is a fascinating figure to investigate. After all, he’s the founding father of the Nicholson work bench, also known as the English Joiners Bench!
Pete seddon
Rex, I have been interested in your content because you investigate the forgotten history. I too have become very interested in the very things you profess in this article. In fact, I just read the biography of Henry Disston, and found it fascinating. This is a great subject area, and it needs much more attention. Thank you for putting the necessary thought into our important history.
David Coxon
A very thought-provoking read Rex. Like many of us, I have always enjoyed working with my hands as an escape from my desk-bound IT job. This probably started when I was at university studying electrical / electronic engineering, and I took up building electronic gadgets as a hobby. I made, among other things, a stereo amplifier , an alarm clock, and a darkroom timer. Then I ran out of things I needed, so stopped, although the now 45 yo alarm clock still tells me the time every night. For a while my escape was renovating my first home, then after a break, building decks to landscape our new home. Now I am doing woodwork and metalwork and have been building things I need for, or to repair, my 4WD. My current projects are all around building the storage solutions I need for my expanded workshop (my younger daughter is finally vacating the bedroom / rumpus room beside the garage and I can claim it back for a woodwork shop, leaving the garage for metalwork. What I will build once I have the shop set up I am not sure, but with retirement coming and my wife and I loving backroad touring, I suspect renovating a small caravan will be next on the list. I suppose that my focus is on having a useful project rather than specialising in a specific genre or style. This has the disadvantages that Rex mentioned, but it also provides me with ongoing challenges that I enjoy
Bill Snyder
Rex, great article. Here’s your next book. I too gravitate more towards fetteling rather than building. I started woodworking as a hobby to save me from you guessed it a desk job. At that time I couldn’t justify spending much money on a frivolous hobby at the time and spent about sixty bucks (2008 dollars lol) on a HF Japanese knock off pull saw, a cheaper smoothing plane I couldn’t use and some firmer chisels. I’m handy as most are as a country boy from Appalachia. I read a lot of old books from the library and on the internet. I’m self taught so I only know what I know with lot’s of empty in between. I really love Haywood,Schwartz is good as I’m a well read history nerd I love the backstory. My people have been making do with little or nothing here for two centuries I would guess it’s in the gene’s by now. Making your own thing with your own hands for your own satisfaction or necessity is almost lost to us now. I honor my ancestors doing these small things.
Jerry Kingzett
"Begin with a Goal" you say, but I struggled to figure out why I was doing this "woodworking with hand tools"? I needed a hobby that gave me the same problem solving experience that I loved from my job as a technician! But without the cost and noise of power tools a sustainable source of supplies. I still use my power tools but my new tools are hand tools. I have always used as much reclaimed wood as possible. In fact my greatest accomplishment in wood was building a muffler for a supersonic nozzle teaching experiment was using plywood from an old theater set background. The only new parts were the acoustic deadening materials. The biscuit cutter cut through the face of the plywood to make the six sided enclosure and looked bad, but it did not matter since it eventually went to the landfill after we moved to the new building. So no new lumber was used for this muffler and that made me very proud. The same is true of Rex's tool tote that I built out of a severely cupped board with no metal fasteners, which I am also very proud of. So I guess my goal is serotonin and keeping my depression at bay.
Mike Hourahine
Thanks! I'll check out the Austin School. You make a good point about the ADB and to be fair, I'm only just beginning to digest it. I'd recommend the book to anyone and I'm a big fan of Chris Schwarz. Comments was just more of a personal style preference (which will no doubt evolve as I learn more).
Russell Gough
Excellent essay, Rex. Truly excellent. Having been a philosophy professor for so many years, I especially identify with the need to “break from intellectual work that chained me to a desk” and the need “to work with my hands....to make something, damn it.” The great irony of course is that, by writing this essay—by writing “Fabrication First”—you are engaging that great intellect of yours, which is wonderful, because you can have your cake and eat it too! As regards furniture styles, your point is very well taken, and I know precious little about styles. Since I am one who does learn by reading, may I suggest (if it’s not too much trouble) that you (please!) whip up a bibliography of books you’ve read and/or recommend? That would be VERY helpful.
Travis Veazey
Rex, Thank you for taking the time to write such a personal letter to me. I had no idea you had gotten to know me so well, but you have described me with an accuracy that rivals what my wife of 15 years could.
Jonathan Musselwhite
The Austin School of furniture has been doing online zoom lectures and seminars, many of them focused on furniture design and history. They aren't terribly expensive, and the ones I've attended have been worthwhile. Since you mentioned the ADB, Chris Schwarz has published lots of blog entries about his design process and the historical threads that different pieces have pulled. What I love about the ADB is that all the pieces are design mules. With different wood, fittings, finishes, and edge treatments, a staked table could be fit for a renaissance fair or at home in a modern office.
Will Shattuck
I’m just starting my tools. Just got a stanley#5. I have a set of chisels somewhere in the garage. Some carving and wood turning tools somewhere else. But coming up with WHAT to make has been challenging. My wife just suggested making a shelf/night table to hold her medical equipment. A ventilator. A humidifier for the ventilator. A suction machine. A cough assist machine. So not only do I need to make sure everything fits but most importantly what is it Going to Look Like? It needs to be presentable and not just 2x4s joined together. So here I start my journey into what does furniture look like. Thanks Rex. I could hear your voice in my head from watching your videos. And your facial expressions. I think this would make a great video for your channel too. Similar to the “how to buy tools at a swap meet”.
Cody Roach
On another note: I would love to have a decent coffee table-style book that has like... A good photo on one page, and some diagrams/explanations of its joinery and construction opposite. Ideally it'd cover a wide selection of styles. Maybe I'm thinking more of a textbook, actually. Any recommendations?
Cody Roach
This post hits home in an odd way. My tool collection is largely one of circumstance. Either I got it in my one single big lot purchase, or it was amongst the things gifted to me by mom from my late granddad's collection. As I've started doing slightly bigger projects, I have found my process at every level (from getting materials, to designing, to construction) is heavily influenced by the tools I've got. I love doing round, wedged mortise and tenons because I've got a lathe, and I've got a good set of forstner bits. I try to work with smaller pieces of wood because my power tools have barely any indeed/out feed. I like getting cedar 2x4s from lowes cuz they're usually already squared on 2 faces and I've got a planer that can do the rest. I hand saw cuz I've got a decent ryoba and I can never get my grandpa's '50s miter saw to zero properly. When I consciously design with these limitations in mind, I end up enjoying my projects far more and they come out better because I've actually gotten good at these skills.
Tom Manseau
I'm going to simply add a name to look up: Wharton Esherick. He was a "Modernist" from last century whose woodworking was more of an expression of vision rather than an end to itself. His workshop shows whimsical & fantastical shapes everywhere. It's an eye opening experience viewing images of his work. If your library has a book on him, definitely check it out.
Derick Siddoway
Surprisingly, I am slightly ahead of the game here. I have books on early american furniture, and I have a book on order specifically on Shaker style furniture. I have been reading up on the differences between mission and shaker (not tons of information on the internets here, but some), and on the more subtle differences between generic craftsman and specific mission-style furniture. But I hadn't put together how the machine tools and the styles were linked in this way. Thanks, Rex.
Michael Coolidge
This is a “problem” too many of us never even see. Just as with your “day job”, you have studied long and hard to do it well. Why not the same thing with our hobby? People will ride their bikes for many years. They will build and paddle canoes/kayaks. They will “master” a musical instrument. Why not do the same thing with this hobby. Yes. Building furniture or turning bowls si fun and rewarding. But why not strive to build the best one you can? Churning out something people will recognize as a chair or table is OK. Why not wow them with one that is SO much better than anyone else’s? That should be a goal well worth attaining.
Mike Hourahine
Thanks Rex! Another article that hits home and is timely for me. I'm about 2 years into learning "woodworking". My goal was always to have a minimal set of tools that I could use to make the widest variety of "things". But I feel like every time I see something cool I'd like to make, I end up needing a bunch of new tools. I enjoy your approach to keeping things focused and minimal. As for styles, I love mid-century modern style and love Chris Salamone's work but I don't love power tools (nor do I have the room for them). It had occurred to me that it would be hard to do what he does with just hand tools (which you confirmed for me). So I had been wanting to learn about other styles. I recently got the Anarchist's Design Book. Love the book but not sure I love the style of all the end products if I'm honest. The small list you provided seems like a good starting point. Some of the names are familiar but only on a very surface level. Do you have any books or videos you'd recommend to get started?
Kenneth Sumner
Rex you have many talents. The writing is the best !
The Deaf Maker
This is a brilliant article Rex and makes a lot of sense. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts
John Hiemstra
Thank you for such an enlightening article. It causes me to pause and re-evaluate my goals as a "wood-be" hobbyist.
North Road Woodwork
This is a great article, Rex.
Sean McGown
This works on a lot of levels. This could be a psyche major's opening page for their doctoral dissertation. It could be an allegory that a philosophical leader gives to their students. It could be a sociologist's essay on a particular ill that we all are too familiar with in modern society. A good companion to the article you did about GAS. Really worthwhile article, Rex.
