Dave Tinley
05-30-2005, 12:02 PM
I noticed an ad on another WW board for woodworking machinery for sale. Since at the time I was looking for a planer I contacted the poster to see if it was available. I was told it was, along with a lot of other tools. It seems that her husband was a woodworker and he had passed away, the equipment he had was her inheritance. I also asked if she had any hardwood for sale and she said yes, there was a bunch of mesquite, one of my favorites.
I made arrangements to make the trip to south Texas this past Saturday and hopefully score some wood and tools.
A friend of the family met me at the house, because MaryAnn had moved to Houston after her husbands’ death. Now I have been to other woodworker’s shops and been to other shops to buy tools and such, but this was a different experience.
Entering his shop, which was an add on to the house, I found it almost totally intact, as if he could be coming in to work on a project at any time.
His shop was relatively small and given all the tools he had it was kind of cramped. I was told by the friend that he had built two rocking chairs and then discovered turning on the lathe and that, became his habit of choice. The machinery showed very little wear, in fact there was a disc sander that appeared to have never been used.
Although a couple of the big tools had been sold and removed, like the bandsaw and lathe, everything was still pretty much in its place. There was one wall that had woodworking books and magazines, and another wall had shelves with rocking chair templates, some glues and various cans of stain and finishes. Pipe clamps were stacked in the corner and his lumber was stored along another wall.His scraps of paper were lying in various spots where he had made his notes. And there was some lumber laying on a bench with layout marks on them.
. I spent a large amount of time noticing all the small things in his shop, you know, all those things we seem to accumulate with the hopes that one day they will fill a need in a project we are working on, or a tip we got so we went out on bought this item to build a jig and have not gotten around to building. I was noticing these things, not so much to see if there was anything to buy, as more for the learning of what and how this man worked.
Now I am not saying that this was spooky because of the man being deceased but it was as if I was observing a craftsman’s domain
I would like to say that I felt this awe inspiring feeling, or wish I could say that I had felt touched by his ghost, but in truth and in reality it was a sense of camaraderie with a twinge of sadness. Here was a man that chose the same hobby as I, we use similar techniques to create objects out of wood, and we shared a kinship of learning.
I felt the twinge of sadness because the knowledge that this man now possessed was not available to us anymore.
There have been a lot of threads on why we do woodworking, and to many people it is for different reasons, but for me it is the learning. Learning new techniques, learning how to correct the stupid mistakes made, learning new types of finishing, but most of all, its so that I can learn enough that I can share and pass along what I have learned on to others.
I am happy to say that I end this story, not with a gloat of the wood that I got, but with having learned something new by visiting another woodworkers shop.
Thank you for letting me share this story with you.
Dave
I made arrangements to make the trip to south Texas this past Saturday and hopefully score some wood and tools.
A friend of the family met me at the house, because MaryAnn had moved to Houston after her husbands’ death. Now I have been to other woodworker’s shops and been to other shops to buy tools and such, but this was a different experience.
Entering his shop, which was an add on to the house, I found it almost totally intact, as if he could be coming in to work on a project at any time.
His shop was relatively small and given all the tools he had it was kind of cramped. I was told by the friend that he had built two rocking chairs and then discovered turning on the lathe and that, became his habit of choice. The machinery showed very little wear, in fact there was a disc sander that appeared to have never been used.
Although a couple of the big tools had been sold and removed, like the bandsaw and lathe, everything was still pretty much in its place. There was one wall that had woodworking books and magazines, and another wall had shelves with rocking chair templates, some glues and various cans of stain and finishes. Pipe clamps were stacked in the corner and his lumber was stored along another wall.His scraps of paper were lying in various spots where he had made his notes. And there was some lumber laying on a bench with layout marks on them.
. I spent a large amount of time noticing all the small things in his shop, you know, all those things we seem to accumulate with the hopes that one day they will fill a need in a project we are working on, or a tip we got so we went out on bought this item to build a jig and have not gotten around to building. I was noticing these things, not so much to see if there was anything to buy, as more for the learning of what and how this man worked.
Now I am not saying that this was spooky because of the man being deceased but it was as if I was observing a craftsman’s domain
I would like to say that I felt this awe inspiring feeling, or wish I could say that I had felt touched by his ghost, but in truth and in reality it was a sense of camaraderie with a twinge of sadness. Here was a man that chose the same hobby as I, we use similar techniques to create objects out of wood, and we shared a kinship of learning.
I felt the twinge of sadness because the knowledge that this man now possessed was not available to us anymore.
There have been a lot of threads on why we do woodworking, and to many people it is for different reasons, but for me it is the learning. Learning new techniques, learning how to correct the stupid mistakes made, learning new types of finishing, but most of all, its so that I can learn enough that I can share and pass along what I have learned on to others.
I am happy to say that I end this story, not with a gloat of the wood that I got, but with having learned something new by visiting another woodworkers shop.
Thank you for letting me share this story with you.
Dave