Woodworking

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry…. Both are very hard work. Writing something is almost as hard as making a table. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood. Both are full of tricks and techniques. Basically very little magic and a lot of hard work… – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, interview, The Paris Review, 1981

Woodworking is a most satisfying pastime, so varied and multifaceted you will never complete the twin processes you have undertaken: acquiring tools and learning how to use them. You have begun a lifetime pursuit. – Michael Dunbar, “Essential Tools”

The feel and beauty of finely crafted wood – the refreshing smell of your workshop – the absorbing joy of cutting and joining that makes the hours race by – These are the reasons you love woodworking. – Jack Neff, Make Your Woodworking Pay for Itself, 1996

The best carpenters make the fewest chips. – English proverb, c.1500s

The civil law cannot provide but by common measures… all their rules are made by as common a measure as they can, and they are the best rules that have the fewest exceptions: the best Carpenters make the fewest chips: but some there must be. – Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, or The Rule of Conscience, 1659

For a craftsman like my father, nothing is more exasperating than to witness tool abuse. In particular, I remember a steel tape measure he gave me after I had somehow managed to lose the first twelve inches of it. – Richard Menzies, “If I Were A Carpenter,” RDMenzies.com, 2011

I think objects made of wood by children, left to their own devices, if such there be, will assay ten percent wood, ninety percent nails. – Robert Paul Smith, “Where Did You Go?” “Out.” “What Did You Do?” “Nothing.”, 195

[E]dged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt. – Agnes Reppllier, “Wit and Humor,” 1892 [A bit of context here: “Wit is the salt

Blunt tools are sometimes found of use where sharper instruments would fail. – Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge [plain-speaking, candor —tεᖇ&#55

The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp… – Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Leaves of Grass

Woodworking minus patience equals firewood. – Author unknown

Woodworkers are knotty. – Author unknown

A bad day woodworking is better than a good day working. – Author unknown

Split your own wood, and it will warm you twice. – Old New England Saying

Put your soul into your work, not your hand… – State Safety News, September 1916, published by the University of Arizona Bureau

What is a workman without his tooles? – Proverb quoted by Heywood, 1546

Men have become the tools of their tools. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Good workmen never quarrel with their tools. – Lord Byron, Don Juan

Are the tools without, which the carpenter puts forth his hands to, or are they and all the carpentry within himself; and would he not smile at the notion that chest or house is more than he? – C.A. Bartol, The Rising Faith, Chapter XI: Personality, 1873