Noah B Woodworks

Does spending more time and energy make the work more valuable? Depends on what you’re creating. Spending time on work that nobody wants is not time well spent, unless you aren’t planning to sell the work. In todays day, there are plenty of precision tools that speed up the mundane tasks such as jointing and thicknessing. These tools make work more efficient and precise, however it cheapens the experience for the creator. My lunchbox planer is one of my favorite tools but feeding boards into it is quite boring.

Do the machines that make woodworking quicker remove the soul from the craft? Milling a board manually with hand planes leaves an exquisite texture on the wood, especially if not smoothed with a no. 4. Old furniture has this texture that screams into the room “I was handmade!”. Not to mention, hand planing with a sharp, well tuned plane is a fantastic experience and good exercise. If you’re experienced, you do not sacrifice a whole lot of time as compared to the faster, modern methods of milling. However, getting experienced takes a lot of time. Learning to sharpen, true and thickness by hand can be a frustrating and tedious process.

Last year, around this time, I purchased a very nice CNC machine. It was not cheap, but not industrial. Pro-sumer grade. These machines take precision, quickness and repeatability to the next level. I can’t help but think that everything that comes off the machine is rather lifeless. I’ve made some things I’m really happy with: Whiskey smokers, wood trays, and some other miscellaneous trinkets that I’ve made specifically for my own needs. The CNC comes with its limitations. For example, you can’t carve the underside of a ledge, and it is recommended for the average user to use average bits: Quarter inch end mill, miscellaneous vbits, etc. I have been working to innovate with my machine, which is quite capable. Use it to carve something useful, such as a lidded box, and then inlay that box into a piece of wood I can shape or carve in a unique; soulful way.

The Shaper Origin router is a really great compromise, expensive as it is. It is a CNC router that you can hold in your hand that uses an external grid, almost like a QR code, to know where it is in space. It feels like woodworking, not manufacturing. You can clamp, rout, unclamp, move, then rout again. It is like using a tool to shape something special rather than making 15 semi-special things in one go on the CNC bed. I don’t own one, so I’m sure it has its limitations and annoying tendencies.

If you work slowly, and put more of yourself into the work it will always feel better, no matter who the owner of the work is in the end. In todays day though, working slowly feels like you’re falling behind. Taking 15 minutes to thickness a board by hand makes less sense when the job can be done in 3 minutes. Efficiency vs soulfulness. I attempt to find balance. Often, it is much easier said than done.