Working with wood is a mixture of emotions wrapped up and bubbling over. The biggest one is now total attention. Embarrassingly it wasn’t always that way. Here is the memory of the day that all changed.
I was raised in an era where D.I.Y. did not exist. It didn’t exist because everything was do-it-yourself. You didn’t pay someone to come in and hang your draperies; you did it yourself. You didn’t go to the store and find that cute little home-made looking item; you made it yourself. And what, buy a machine to sand your wood? Absolutely not! You sanded that wood as fine as you wanted it, but you hand rubbed it yourself. You could use hand tools for larger areas like a tabletop or a long railing.
I can remember watching my uncle when I was pretty small. I would sit for hours and watch him steadily make progress on sanding an item so smooth that it had a shine to it. There weren’t any rough spots or splinters when you ran your hand across it. An essential part of the work would be to stop periodically, run your hand across the item, and find a spot to hold it up to see if the surface was level.
One of the hand tools my uncle frequently used was called a planer. This was a long rectangular tool with a flat bottom, except for the recessed cutting edge. You would hold this tool on an uneven surface and move it in a straight line. When you reached the end of the refinishing piece, you picked up the planer and brought it back to the starting point. Eventually, you would end up with a flat surface. It literally shaved the surface of the wood as it moved. It would not make deep cuts. This was a very time-consuming practice but totally worth every moment.
Through the years, hand tools were becoming less popular as the projects being worked on were becoming much more extensive. Portable power tools were now being seen on construction sites. Master craftsmen were still taking great pride in their work, but everyday reality demanded faster work.
Electric powered sanders ranged from small enough to fit in the palm of your hand to the larger table models that had a belt sander, plus a disc sander as well.
The planer was a tool that had also evolved. Now there were bigger machines that you could put a large cut of wood in and it would plane it in mere minutes!
When I had started to work with wood, it was later in life. I began with small pieces, and using a burning tool, I would carve out an image I had traced on it. Then I would sand the work and apply a clear coat of polyurethane. The uniqueness of wood-burning was enough to satisfy me for a while.
My husband and I were at a boat show of all places when my woodworking life was about to change drastically. He was a few feet in front of me as I wandered through, looking at the different boating booths. These were vendors selling items to enhance your boating experience, craftsmen of the boating and fishing industries.
As I walked by this one booth, I spotted a few people watching a gentleman sitting at this odd-looking machine. He was bent over the table and intently watching the piece of wood he was moving around on the table. As I came closer, I saw a blade going from the arm of the machine above the table through a small hole to the underside of the table. Darned if it didn’t look like a sewing machine! I stayed and watched this man with the other few people who had gathered there. It only took him a few minutes to finish what he was cutting. When he released the saw blade, moved the wood slightly over, and reinserted the blade. I could now see a tiny hole drilled into the center part of the wood. I realized two things simultaneously. (1): This man was cutting from the inside of the wood. And not entering from the edge and moving towards the center. And (2) this was a SCROLLSAW!! I had just discovered this machine online. At one of the woodworking sites, I visited frequently.
Talk about timing! And of all places, a boat show?? I didn’t care. This was a rare experience for me. The moment I discovered this online, I loved the whole concept of cutting out sections. Making single line cuts, basically drawing a picture using a saw blade instead of a pencil or paintbrush. Once again, I felt inside that this was not a coincidence. I was meant to see this machine in action. They are expensive; this certainly was not something that I wanted to spend money on only to find it isn’t what I thought it was.
I stayed long enough to see the man finish his project. It depicted a bass being reeled in at the end of a fishing line. The scene showed a fish in mid-air with droplets of water around it. There was what looked like a splash of water below. The detail was incredible. I asked him a few questions about the brand name scroll-saws on the market and why he picked the one he had. He showed me some features this one had that no other brand offered yet. What an education I received that night.
Moving forward a few years, I had purchased the same brand scroll saw, learned how to use it, and had some fantastic fun creating some very unique pieces. I found that even though the images and “drawings” I was making were not my designs, they were undoubtedly my creations. The cutting, sanding, and finishing of these pieces is where I found the ‘art’ truly started to come alive. Picking the correct type of wood and making sure the grain is going in the right direction to enhance the picture created was just a couple of the steps in creating a work of art. I had found a new passion.
One day my husband surprised me. He took me for a short drive to the center of the small town. I had no clue what he had in mind when he turned down a side road that had about 3 houses on it. He drove to the end of the street, turned into a dirt driveway, and drove behind the vacant house to a barn. By this time, I am asking him what we are doing here. He smiles and tells me to come and take a look at something inside.
As I got closer to the barn, it was clear that there were no animals, and it even looked like it had been used as a garage of some sort. We walked in, and I still didn’t have a clue. The inside was sheet-rocked, the floor cement slab, with windows on two sides of the room. The area was roughly 30ft x 30ft of nothing. The place where we walked in was smaller like it was meant to be a reception or waiting area.
As I am beginning to turn to ask him again what this is all about, he says: “I thought this would make a great workshop for you. I just rented the place yesterday.” I believe my jaw hit the floor as I turned back to this vast empty room! Only now, as I turn to look around, I can see a workbench built up against and traveling around three of the walls in this room! On it was my sander, all kinds of sanding paper, it also had my drill press with the tiny drill bits neatly put in their different draws inside a metal box, based on their sizes. I could see a couple of those high bar stools at different sections of this extended workbench. I saw sketch pads, tracing paper, and my scroll-saw books and drawings.
My husband very graciously built me that workbench. There was so much room that even with the tools I had, it barely took up any kind of room at all. My husband was always very supportive of any crafts I had wanted to try. Woodworking was no different. He took me to a woodworking show held in the same place as his boat show. It was here where I discovered how the planer had evolved.
You could now take a rather large piece of wood and ‘feed’ it into this machine. What would come out the other side was a level piece of wood. The surface would be just about baby smooth. Man! What I could do with one of those. I had been acquiring many small pieces of raw wood from some of my husband’s contractor friends. Leftover bits of whatever they had been building. I had pieces of cherry wood, some oak, walnut, maple, and birch, to name a few. Some were more significant pieces, some were the size of a sheet of writing paper but thick, others were smaller. The larger pieces would be great to use in this planer. Without studying it any further, I bought one of these large machines.
When I got it all set up, I was pleased to see there was still so much room left in this large workshop that I could put it in the center of the room, and nothing was anywhere near it. The man at the woodworking exhibition showed me how to use it. Did I read up on this machine? No. Did I ask any questions about what kind of wood would be best used in this machine? No. I had this beautiful piece of curly maple that wasn’t level. The piece was roughly 36in x 36in and 3/4in thick. I set the wood upon the flat table surface that would feed into the machine, went to the side of the machine where the power switch was, and turned it on. I am very thankful to God for keeping me out of harm’s way once again. I had absolutely no clue what was about to happen.
I was so fascinated to see the wood being drawn into the machine that I never moved from the side of the device. As the wood was drawn in, it suddenly started turning sideways. It was flung out of the machine and halfway across the room within a split second! The height of it was about 4ft off the floor. This all happened at speed was so fast that there would have been no time to move out of the way! I learned later that planers do not work well with figured wood. Curly maple happens to be one of those kinds. In my woodworking gallery, you can see a picture of the face and head, including the cocker spaniel’s ears. The wave of the grain on this wood really enhanced the curls in the cocker spaniel’s hair.
Needless to say, I shut the machine off and never used it again. It sat there for months, and finally, I sold it to a friend of my husband’s that would use it on his construction sites. I learned my lesson about using power tools I knew nothing about. I had a newfound respect for all of the power tools I had acquired over the few short years. I also learned how to use one of the best gifts God had given me. I call it the ‘work around’ gift. If I don’t have what I need to finish a project…I find a way to work around it and come at it differently. You would be amazed at what can be created as a piece of art when what it started out to be isn’t what it ends up to be. And all because of a mistake.