"I always fall back on Pye's concept of The Workmanship of Risk to help evaluate if something is woodworking or manufacturing. By his definition, it isn't woodworking."
I don't believe David Pye (The Nature and Art of Workmanship) defined woodworking. He did define various sorts of work such as rough, free, regulated, good, bad, risky and certain. He valued the diversity achievable by the workmanship of risk and practiced it in his own woodwork , but he made his living as an architect and academic. I think he would have called the process in the video automated woodworking, an aspect of the workmanship of certainty, and the result not particularly interesting. He was at least as interested in the visual and tactile qualities of a piece of work as the tools used to make it. An interesting writer, perhaps the most sensible on the subject.
"The workmanship of risk has no exclusive prerogative of quality. What it has exclusively is an immensely various range of qualities, without which at its command the art of design becomes arid and impoverished."
"The danger is not that the workmanship of risk will die out altogether but rather that, from want of theory, and thence lack of standards, its possibilities will be neglected and inferior forms of it will be taken for granted and accepted."
Once programmed, a cnc machine can make infinite copies to close tolerances, but anyone using a cnc router for one-offs knows that the process has considerable elements of the workmanship of risk.
Some examples of David Pye's work:
https://www.google.com/search?q=david+pye+bowl&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS763US763&t bm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjnup356Y LgAhVtnuAKHSiKCtAQsAR6BAgEEAE&biw=1680&bih=939
Last edited by Kevin Jenness; 01-22-2019 at 9:42 PM.
This makes me wonder if similar topics were discussed when power tools were becoming popular. I can visualize an old timer arguing that “real craftsmen” work with their hands and don’t use electric tools like routers and sanders. Who knows, maybe one day CNC machines will be as ubiquitous as table saws today.
A tool is a tool. From a $8 chisel to the likely $400,000 specialized piece like the one in the video. There's zero difference.
What there is a difference in is what you want to experience. I do this for money. I enjoy making money way more than making cabinets. Watching my router do a job in less than a third of the time it took me to do it brings me great joy. To others it's cheating. Less sweat, less blood, less handling, less sore muscles. More accuracy, more consistency, more profitability.
It's still woodworking, chisel or cnc, but to say one is cheating over another is ridiculous. If that premise is incorrect, then a line needs to be drawn, I draw that line at any tool.
See this is why I work for someone and don’t own a business.
I enjoy making the cabinet more than I enjoy money.
Way to much emphasis is put on money by us humans. It’s freaking infuriating that we can be so short sighted and simple minded to waste our lives away worrying for tomorrow while missing today chasing away the almighty dollar.
No way you will ever hear me call that Woodworking.
Forgive me for being confused but wasn't your original post "Using anything other than the fleshy tools God/Yahweh/Allah/Buddha/Zeus/Mother Gaia/Krishna/Peter Cottontail gave you is cheating. If you think differently, you'd be incorrect." So, to be clear, you enjoy making money more than making cabinets and you consider using any tool is cheating?
I would by all means consider that woodworking. Just as much as me pushing a board through a double sided planer or milling a mortise with a Domino machine. I think the keyword is "working". Seeing as how I do this for a living, I think that thing works. Maybe we need to stop calling it woodworking when its not a job. We could call it dallying.
I would definitely not consider that wood-dallying.
I'd call it woodworking. It's definitely not dust collecting!
"Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t - you’re right."
- Henry Ford
PP Mobler and likely all the rest of the Danes have similar equipment. They’re trying to compete and retain profits as much as anyone else. They keep the quality up and so I think it’s good for them to use whatever method is available to remain viable.
In the ‘golden era’ they had hydraulic copy lathes turning out the chair parts. In my opinion it is hardly different from cnc other than being more difficult to setup.
So the process has looked very similar for about 70 years now.
I differentiate myself from large scale manyfacturing or medium scale, but I still admire it in many ways. It’s interetihg to see how things are made in a production environment.
Last edited by Brian Holcombe; 01-22-2019 at 11:57 PM.
Bumbling forward into the unknown.
Whatever it is called, you wouldn’t make something with that machine and give it to your family memeber/friend/neighbor as a gift for a special occasion and feel the same pride/sentimental value type feeling.
But you think if the woodworkers or craftsmen of 100 years ago had access to such technology, they would turn it down or use it??
You're right, I should've phrased it differently. I've enjoyed building a business more than any cabinet I've built. Money just happens to be the fuel that feeds that business. You made way more than I did last year. I either reinvested, gave it to the employees, or gave it to the gov't.
See to you the challenge is cutting the wood. None of that is hard, it's just varying levels of pain with no consequences.
To me the challenge is keeping the wheels turning. That equation changes daily. Consequences ranging from oops to saying goodbye to 15 years of effort.
Last edited by Keith Outten; 01-23-2019 at 11:43 AM.
It's woodworking but it's just not what I would want in my garage.