The Tool Trap

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I just finished reading Zachary Dillinger’s With Saw, Plane, and Chisel: How to Build Historic American Furniture with Hand Tools.  The book is truly excellent. Dillinger builds exquisite reproduction furniture using tools that seem primitive to even die-hard Neanderthals. Not only does he dismiss machines, Dillinger does all his work with wooden planes, square-edged firmer chisels and shell-bits in a hand-cranked brace. The man doesn’t even use auger bits to drill holes!

Reading the book was pure pleasure...right up until the last chapter, where Dillinger drops these lines:

“One of the things that amazes tool-obsessed modern woodworkers is that most of an 18th-century cabinetmaker’s kit can fit in a box with less volume than a modern file cabinet. Far from being tool hoarders, or to be nicer, ‘collectors,’ historical woodworkers owned just enough to get the job done.” (160)

The words are polite, but Dillinger punched me right in gut with “tool obsessed” and “tool hoarder.” The man is talking directly to me and he’s got my number.

I own way too many tools.

I have my reasons. I’m obsessed with technology. Even as a child I was fascinated by forks. The forks in my house were almost identical to the ones at my friends’ houses. The design of the common table fork is just that good. They’re all equally perfect.

When I discovered woodwork, I loved the tools as much as the craft. Maybe more. There’s just no end to the fascinating variations between tools. Each one solves a particular set of problems, but each maker has their own solutions, clever hacks, and decorative flourishes. The tools themselves are art. No one can deny it.

Recently, I got really interested in antique infill planes. Not the pricey name-brand ones that command thousands of dollars at auction. No, I got obsessed with the early, user-made tools. Did you know that it was once common for British and Scottish cabinetmakers to purchase a casting, lever-cap, and blade and then lovingly fashion their own wooden parts to complete the tool? Once you’ve seen a few, you’ll understand why I love them. Each tool tells a story while being shrouded in unsolvable mysteries.

With each of these planes, the timbers and tool marks and design choices tell you about the maker. A rosewood infill spells money, while walnut  suggests a more common workman. An iron casting probably came from a hardware store, while a brass body was likely cast at the railway or shipyard foundry where the carpenter worked. Set your hands on the plane and you immediately know the man. Some of these fellows had tiny hands and others must have been giants in their time. A few were left-handed. Most had a deft command of wood that would shock you. The infills fit the plane like a hand in a glove. The contours are glass-smooth. The transitions between body and tote are sharp and crisp like a part from a mill; everything folded exactly together without the slightest margin.

And even as I unravel the little details about each tool, so much is out of reach. Most of these planes don’t have owner’s marks, which should be standard. The castings are all lovely, but they’re also very different from each other. How many foundries were making these things? How many cabinet-makers and coach-makers sat at home squinting in dim candlelight while they slowly eased these parts together? What kind of work did these men do? How old are these tools really?  I’ll never know the answers to these questions, but there’s a bigger problem with these tools.

They’re a massive waste of time.

I’ll get a lot of push-back for saying this, but even the loveliest and most graceful tool is just more stuff. Sure, you might buy one of these and use it, but probably not. Several of my lovely old infills are fine workers, but they don’t compare to a good Stanley smoothing plane. With its quick adjustments and lightweight body, the Stanley is faster, less tiring, and more versatile. It leaves an excellent surface. For all its humdrum looks, the Stanley is simply a better tool where most of these vintage infills are mere affectation.

And I know, many of us are Collectors. We’re historians. We’re keepers of valuable artifacts from the past. I get it. I’m one too. I own several genuine museum-quality tools and I expect them go into serious collections when I’m gone.

But is that what I really want to leave behind?

I know a few tool dealers and they make a lot of money by buying complete collections from aging woodworkers or their widows. A lifetime of hunting, restoring, and curating ends up parceled out and sold off to the highest bidder. It takes decades to lovingly assemble a collection but mere hours to tear it apart. So what has that collector really left?

For me, the problem is a little worse. I make my living producing videos about woodworking, mostly for beginners. My audience has an endless thirst for tool reviews, tool restoration, tool making, and tool history. These videos always perform well. They let me pay my mortgage.

My videos about actual furniture projects are often disappointing. Of course, my core viewers love to see me build a stool, a chair, or a table. They’re builders, too and they’re on the path to producing real, hand-made furniture. But my wider audience (who I value just as much) might build very little, or perhaps nothing at all. Many of these people watch me for entertainment or just out of curiosity, and that’s delightful, but many of these viewers aren’t really interested in seeing me build a linen chest.

On top of all this, tool-specific videos are quick and easy to make. I’ve crammed my head with so much trivia about old tools that I can point the camera at my face and just start talking. I bet I can review inexpensive saws and tell the stories of rare socket-chisels for the rest of my career.

But is even that what I want to leave behind?

No, it isn’t. I’m an artist and I get my thrills from producing creative work. I’m known as a woodworker, but I’m just as much a filmmaker and a writer. Before all this, I was a serious musician and a scholar of literature. When I’m gone, I’m not content to leave behind a stack of tools and a list of videos about them. I want to leave a house and a world filled with my pieces.

Sometimes, my furniture work is just reproduction. Sometimes, my designs are original and have few precedents in traditional furniture. Either way, the pieces are the real work.

And as much as I love my work producing videos, I can’t let the viewership statistics push me around. If the actual furniture-building videos don’t do well, I need to make better videos. If I have a knack for telling the stories of old tools, well, the stories of old furniture are just as good. I just need to get better at spinning the tale. And if my viewers aren’t that interested in building things, I’m a pretty convincing fellow and I’m going to have to give them a nudge.

Even if they don’t follow me into more furniture projects, it doesn’t matter, because that’s where I’m headed anyway. I’m still going to discuss and build and review tools, but I think I’m going to start doing a lot less of it. I know everything I need to about saws and planes and chisels, but my joinery could use work. I’m great at rabbets and dadoes, adequate at the mortise and tenon, and fairly awful at dovetails. I don’t practice enough. I don’t build enough. I’m too busy screwing around with yet another smoothing plane.

But that’s all going to change. It’s a whole new year and I know exactly what I’m going to do with it.