Paul's Apprentice

Tyranny: when a position of hierarchy is predicated on power rather than competence. I believe this has increasingly become the case in the last few decades with regards to woodworking hand tools, where engineering has fought its way to become the number one criteria for what constitutes a ‘good tool’, even when these ‘advances’ offer no benefits to woodworkers. You can check for yourself if this is the case by reading tool reviews and seeing what people generally value the most.

The incorporation of a vernier scale on the marking gauge above, which allows fine tuning to an impressive 0.2mm almost seems to have been done satirically; to show the absurdity we are capable of when we take a tool in an isolated context, away from the Craft (which is what gives it reason for being in the first place), and then we try to ‘fix’ it, improve it, update it for whatever reason…perhaps to keep up with the times?

Even if you needed a marking to be within one fifth of a millimetre, the width of the marking itself would not allow you to work to such levels of precision. And supposing that you even could, exactly which woodworking application could ever require such tight tolerances?

The problem

I should clarify now that I DO NOT have a problem with businesses designing and marketing these rightly-called over-engineered products. They are private companies whose goal is to make money so they do what they can in order to achieve it. For all I care, they can keep deluding those who would allow themselves to be deluded, and thus make their business prosper.

My problem is a personal critique of us amateurs. We have allowed the market to define the craft for us when it was never their place to do so. It should have been us all along, defending it primarily by defining it, to stop others coming along and saying “this is the craft; these are the tools you will need and these are the techniques.” I believe that even Paul, who has single-handedly done more for the craft than anyone else, need I say, in his quest to make woodworking accessible to as many people as possible, has probably overemphasised the budget issue (£300 vs £30 for the same tool) and not emphasised performance from a craftsman’s perspective enough. This allowed the market to sneakily infer that ‘the old Stanley and Record planes are for the common folk’, but if you’re serious about woodworking, you should go for the ‘high-end’ versions since they are far better. In reality, everyone’s first pick should be an old Stanley (if you just want to get working wood), and then, by all means each one should do what they like with their spare money.

Staying with the bench planes, at Paul’s workshop, there are a few of these so-called ‘high-end’ planes; Clifton, Veritas, Lie-Nielsen and Juuma -at least one of each. But aside from the bevel up jack plane Paul uses on occasion when truing up substantial amounts of oak end-grain, the rest are all stored away in boxes and have seen no use in many years. And that’s not because Paul is depriving himself from using them or doesn’t want people to feel they must go out and buy them…it’s because they all feel unnecessarily heavy when compared to the originals and offer no noticeable advantage. Quite the contrary, they feel burdensome to use, due to their increased weight, and there’s a whole lot more material to remove when sharpening due to the thicker cutting irons.

In Paul’s own words from an old post of his, after commending the quality of tools made by these modern ‘high-end’ plane manufacturers, he goes on to say, “I just wish that one of them wood lighten up and give me a lightweight alternative to heavy planes with their engineering standards. When someone does that I will be right behind them¹_.” This is the reason he continues to point people towards second-hand Stanley’s and Record’s or even new planes like the Spear & Jackson for less than a tenth of the cost of a ‘premium’ plane.

All this to say that none of this added engineering, at least in the context of bench planes, has managed to convince Paul. The alleged problems with the ‘budget’ planes (whiplash on the depth adjuster, thinness of the cutting iron, lesser-than-square sides to the plane…) have not proven to be real problems, and in no way do the ‘solutions’ help improve one’s woodworking. Therefore, we cannot say, from a woodworking perspective, that they are in themselves better tools, though they be greater works of engineering and have much higher market value.

Back to the Marking Gauge

Though I originally pointed to the cutting gauge pictured at the top because of the ridiculously precise scale for the type of tool, that very design of marking gauge is worth analysing in this current light, to see if all that engineering actually contributes in any way to the craft. The gauge pictured is one I found locally for close to nothing, brand new in its box, so I gathered I might as well give it a try it and have a good think before evaluating whether or not that type of gauge (mainly the actual ‘marking’ element) has a place in the hands of amateur hand-tool woodworkers today (I vow to post such an article someday soon). However, the fact that the design concept -though over a century old now- never hit the market whilst the woodworking trades were at their peak a number of decades back, may give us some indication of whether there ever was a problem that needed solving.

Bottom Line

Engineering has already become a tyrant, and is bound to continue to exercise tyrannical power in the context of hand tools. This is inevitable, since the market needs to add value to its products somehow, and the easiest way is to make tools more and more high-tech and apply ever-increasing engineering to existing designs (for they rarely, if ever, come up with anything new).

My call to you today, amateur woodworker, lover of the Craft -because of what the Craft has done and is doing to you as a person- is to take responsibility and do your part to take back what has been snatched from us. Some of you are already doing so by writing, blogging and contributing in whatever way you can, and I would encourage you to carry on. We need to be discerning more than ever and start working together to define the Craft for ourselves (since we are the craftspeople), rather than allow the market to carry on defining it according to its own terms and interests. By fixing our eyes on the Craft, we will be able to clearly identify anything that isn’t it, and we’ll have nothing to do with it. We’ll never again take the bait, since that has been one of the Market’s most cunning strategy; persuading us artisans that ‘we’re all working together to preserve the craft’.

I don’t think I’m saying anything different to what Paul has been working towards over the last few decades. As I’ve mentioned above, nobody could dispute that Paul has done more for the Craft than anyone else, considering the sheer volume of knowledge he has poured out for any and everyone to freely access from all over the world. I consider myself tremendously privileged to be able to work alongside him, in whatever influence I may have, and I hope many more will take hold of his vision and make it their own, just as I have made it my own.

¹ Sellers, Paul. WHICH SMOOTHING PLANE DO I BUY? October 2012