Most everyone I know has some equivalent of a “junk drawer” in their house – it’s the place to go if you need to find a book of matches, a ball-point pen, or a USB cable. And recently, the junk drawers in our lives have become a final resting place for a growing pile of useless goods: obsolete digital tech. Who here still has their old Nokia “brick” phone from the early 2000’s, that device renowned for its ability to get run over by a train or dropped from the roof of a high-rise and still take calls (with custom ringtone)? Maybe you had a cool flip phone from the Matrix era, a sweet BlackBerry, or were an early adopter of...
Wood has always been integral to the world we live in, and it’s still the best material for many jobs. Consider the power lines held in the sky, suspended over our houses and streets by millions of wooden poles. Even things so seemingly disconnected from trees – concrete structures such as bridges and skyscrapers – depend on plywood forms. Many houses are made of wood, as are the cabinets and furniture in them. Wine and whiskey are still aged in wooden barrels. All of these are carryovers from the old wood culture that we mostly take for granted. Because of modern industrial processes and extensive international trade, it’s hard to imagine these products were at one time related to whole...
The pre-industrial emphasis of M&T never fails to generate puzzlement and questions in an age driven by technology, jigs, and devices. And as Joshua and Mike continue to interact with students and readers, they find they get the same sorts of questions over and over. This recurrence illustrates the gap between the conventional approach to woodworking and the one they spend their energies promoting. In this episode, Joshua and Mike tackle these common questions to try to fill out the bigger picture of what hand-tool work can look like in the 21st century.
SHOW NOTES
Issue Thirteen
2022 Craft Research Grant Recipients
M&T Apprenticeship Program
Because complex modern society is maintained only through specialization, most of us focus our career development in one narrow track. We develop skills in one area in order to get a job to make money to pay other specialists to make and repair our stuff. It is possible in the modern world to become a renowned expert in a particular discipline but be helpless in every other area of life. But it was not always this way. Before Americans turned to factory work in the 19th century, skilled tradesmen worked for the most part on their own or in small shops that offered diverse goods and services. Especially in rural settings, defining one’s occupation was tricky. Was humble Jack a...
