In this episode, Joshua and Mike talk about how it is that we learn new skills. They contend that we have to get over a reductive and mechanical way of looking at human life and action. We are not machines and we don’t learn new skills by “downloading” information. Instead, we practice. Through sustained work, we begin to embody these new skills in a way that make it look easy – because, in a sense, it actually becomes easy. In this episode, Joshua and Mike bring together several things that rarely appear in the same conversation: downhill skiing, hand skills in relation to intellectual comprehension, Aristotelian ethics, ancient Hebrew cosmology, parenting, and installing a kitchen sink, for starters. SHOW NOTES...
Nobody I’ve ever met wishes their shop time was more like Henry Ford’s assembly line. Most of us seem to pick up saw, plane, and chisel as an act of independence and individual creativity. We want to cultivate the ability to make our own stuff. Author Matthew Crawford has argued that manual crafts are “a natural home for anyone who would live by his own powers, free not only of deadening abstraction but also of the insidious hopes and rising insecurities that seem to be endemic in our current economic life.” But we’re mistaken if we think we can shortcut this cultivation of skill with a new app or “life hack.” As we strive for agency, we can easily overlook...
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” – Gandalf the Grey, The Fellowship of the Ring I often think about Bill Coperthwaite’s description of knitting as “the finest of them all” in comparing means of handcraft production. He uses a unique framework to reach that conclusion. Knitting is the most portable of crafts; you can tuck all your tools into a little bag and carry it anywhere. Knitting is quiet and doesn’t disturb anyone around you. You can take it up any time your hands are idle and you want some creative enjoyment – any spare minute can be utilized for making progress. Coperthwaite calls it “one of the most efficient...
This next installment in the “Setting Up Shop” video series takes a look at joinery planes: rabbet planes, dado planes, routers, and plow planes. Hand tool beginners often assume these are for specialty work, but they’re not. These are fundamental tools for enjoyable hand tool work.
The driving of a nail is a vivid illustration of the kind of skill and agency that is often underappreciated in our time. No one comes out of the womb able to swing 16 ounces of steel on the end of a stick to a precise location with a precise amount of force. This is an acquired skill that, once gained, becomes a mindless and simple task. When a confident craftsperson is absorbed in hammering, there is no consciousness of the features and characteristics of the hammer. The only thing that would bring attention to the tool itself would be if something went wrong – the head came loose, the board split in a weak spot, etc. When all is...
