My Favorite Tool

Howard Rheingold asked what are our favorite tools and materials, and offered up his favorite tool for wood working, a low angle block plane by Lie-Nielson (#60 ½). I had a strong (and typically contrarian woodworkers response) that “I prefer the Lie-Nielson #102 low-angle bronze block plane (the #102 is significantly smaller, lighter, and more streamlined). Let me add that the #102 is one of the few tools I tell my wood working students who want to start a tool set that they should "just get this one new, go ahead and pay full price." I was in a class once with my teacher, and another student was asking about planes, my teacher, Gary, was (unusually) at a loss for words about why this was the “one,” he turned to me, “It’s just … sweet…” was the best I could come up with. Gary nodded, not satisfied with our explanation, but in agreement with the sentiment.

I have another problem with Howard’s question: Do I really have to pick just one tool? Unfortunately one of the delights of woodworking is the chance to have and use tools.

I have several of my grandfather's tools. Each of those has a special place in my heart as I carry on a tradition. I absolutely LOVE having my father’s father’s Brown and Sharpe combo square in my had. But there is such a patina on the blade, that it is hard for my aging eyes to read, so most often, I have a current era Starrett in my hand. The tools is smooth, and confident in my hand. I use it much more often these days, so which is my favorite?

All the time, I reach for and use an old Stanley #5 Bedrock that I upgraded with a new Ron Hock blade and cap iron; It cuts like a dream. I got it to emulate my teacher because his favorite plane is an old Stanley #5, though he dismisses the Bedrock as a bit over designed. How much of my affection for that plane, is the affectation of wanting to be more like my famous teacher? My all bronze Lie-Nielsen #4 is a delight — too precious? Perhaps. But it should be my best plane, and right now, it is making the smoothest most lovely finishing cuts! 

I have a #6 that was my grandfather's, and I use it, and I treasure it, but it is a bit too big for most tasks in the shop.

Maybe I’m not thinking about what favorite means correctly. Could favorite be related to that which I most covet? I have one hand-made Japanese Blue Steel laminated bench chisel made by Shizego Matsumura — I want more! They are constructed in very old, traditional style, the hard cutting steel fused to softer iron, and this is the chisel I reach for when I need a perfect cut. The one I have is about 9 mm. It is only slightly more efficient to have ones both smaller and larger, but I look forwarded to my next windfall, so I can add that delightful convenience to my workbench.

Another way to measure perfection (which isn’t linguistically equivalent to “favorite,” but which is a convenient benchmark in regards something as utilitarian as “tool.”

Certainly there is no better way to mark a measurement on a board than Glen Drake’s Tite-Mark marking gauge.  I think I have five marking gauges at my bench, including one that is considered “Highly Collectible”. Yet there is no doubt that the Tite-Mark is the one I want when I want to make a really good mark.

My current focus is on designing and making solid wood furniture. Fundamental to design is a sketch book. My current book was a gift of paper from my wife for our first anniversary. I’ve carried a notebook for years; and for many of the years pathologically. I have five or six feet of shelf holding years of my journaling in 6”x8” unlined books. That size fit well into a leather shoulder bag with room for a pen, a wallet, and a this or a that. Beginning in high school, and through college I most often wrote with a Staedtler-Mars drafting pen .25 mm most often, but sometimes .3 or even .35. Tight, thin, dry lines of ink scratched across the page  (though the jewel tipped nibs had a much smoother flow—and were twice as expensive). 

Today, for a similar sensation and effect the Sakura Pigma Micron has become popular, and I keep quite a few of them around (I generally prefer the .02).

But the “tool” this train of thought is leading to is precious, not disposable. In graduate school my lover, also a writer, revealed to me the joys of a good fountain pen. I splurged on a weighty, brass barreled Waterman: strong, confident, bold. Graduate school led to a career as a teacher, and the wherewithal to get a Pelikan 400. Resin bodied, light, deft, a rapier to the Waterman’s broad sword. A gorgeous tool with which to unveil the right word or phrase.  (As a side note, I return often to the once ubiquitous Bic Cristal ballpoint. Solid. Clean. Reliable. Accurate. Classic.)

Both the Pelikan and the Bic are satisfying to use.. I had a moment this week of almost surreal satisfaction, when I was working on a table of my design, and the wood got a bit squirrelly: the answer was a high-angle smoothly plane.

I’m sure that in every “kit” there are tools that don’t get used that often. I’ve read that very few people ever use a 6 Iron, or  a 1 Iron. I never use a 5H (or a 4B) lead. I have an Ulu knife (which was a key goal of shopping in Alaska) in a holder next to my block, but seldom rock it’s arc through flesh or vegetable. A high-angle smoothing plane falls into this category (like a Basin wrench -- a tool I NEVER want to be without when I need one, but the make and model of which I am prepared to be quite flexible with). 

Don’t get me started on how many fly rods I own. I don’t need a different 5-weight for the Deschutes than for the Blitzen, nor a 4-weight for Fall Creek, AND an 8-Weight for trips to Alaska. But each rod makes more of a joy when wielded in the right place at the right time. I’m not a great fisherman, but I am good enough that I like to choose the right tool for the day, time, and place, and I can feel a difference. Whether or not I catch more (or fewer – or any) fish is not really the point here.

I happen to have made my own high-angle smoothing plane. In the Mastery program I am pursuing we were required to make a hand plane for a critique. As part of our instruction we all made one built around a narrow block plane blade that we had the joy of tempering ourselves. But for our independent work, I went with a massive Hock iron and cap iron and black Mesquite, and wanted to create a plane that would fill a void in tool set. A high angle plane is designed to deal with the unpredictability of figured wood (e.g. Birds’ Eye Maple, etc.) What makes it suited to smoothing difficult wood, also makes it harder to push, hence, a tool that plays a vital role, but which sits on the bench until clutch time.

This week I was working through making a nightstand. The drawer front is figured ash, and was consternating to work with my “go to” planes. After I switched to the plane I had made from a block of wood, glass smooth wood, grain, rippling and reflecting and refracting light emerged. The wood and done what I wanted, reveled it’s magic. And I had made something with a tool I had made. I won’t try to label the meta, but the sense of potency was supreme.

I love my mesquite plane. But I think, I will be even more attached to the next plane that I make. Two summers ago, I was at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, I was most eager to spend time with the Ship Wright’s and was delighted to find them working on an huge heirloom Live Oak log that been shipped up from South Carolina after falling in a storm. My original post tells the story with more photos. In this photo you can see the Master watching them work from the background. 

He and I spoke, and talked about entering my own apprenticeship. The master presented me with a great gift: a piece of quarter-sawn live oak to make a plane with during my program. Live oak is twice as dense as white oak; the USS Constitution “Old Ironsides” is clad in live oak. I feel ready, now, to imbue this marvelous gift with a task in my shop. It will be a block plane, something between my beloved #102 and Howard’s favorite #60 ½. But it will be a tool that I made. I think, at least whenever it is in my hand, that my Live Oak block plane will be my favorite.

I worked in the world of thought and theory for years. I was a skilled Politico. I took a liberal education, at a rigorous college, and played the academic games well enough. A half-dozen years ago I found myself working so hard in the abstract and interpersonal realms that I had no time to go fish, no place to go to calm my mind, and seldom inhabited my body.

I decided to learn to make things out of wood. I had pounded nails into lumber before, and cut things with power tools (I’d even had a work study job in college making painting stretcher material). I thought I’d have no trouble figuring it out. A year later, I took lessons from a Master. By the second day, I knew that something special was happening, though it took me years and a divorce to see just how fundamental the change was. Then I was an English teacher in high school; today I teach construction, and woodworking. My goal is the same: I want my students to understand that the world is malleable. That THEY can form it into the shape and vision that they see (don’t tell anyone, but apparently I believe people are basically good). Our hands are tools. Our minds are tools. Make a tool. Use a tool. Use a tool; make a tool.

"What the Smoke Makes Clear"

What the Smoke Makes Clear

My eyes were burning, my throat scratched like a deeply marred record, my nose is caked with dried mucus.

There was (and is) smoke in Portland. There are tremendous fires — killing some of those who try to stop them; burning homes, towns? (Does Troy, where I ended my three day trip down the Grande Rhonde two years ago still exist?); and dramatically altering the landscape of hundreds of thousands of acres — burning across the Pacific North West. Yesterday the winds shifted and blew the debris of this destruction down the Columbia Gorge and over the Cascade Range into the Willamette Valley blanketing us here in Portland.

It is less bad today, this time yesterday, two hours after sunrise, the early morning sun was a deep orange-red; today it is just a a pale amber. It is less bad today than it was yesterday, but the amelioration has nothing to do with me.

I have had struggles this summer; painful bouts with disappointments, loss, and grief. I have battered my head against disappointment, unwelcome surprise, and my impotence to affect or even ameliorate my own suffering.

August 22nd, looking North on Mississippi Ave. Normally

one clearly sees the high rises of downtown Portland.

Living and breathing inside this blanket of smoke is irritating and uncomfortable. The air has been declared unhealthy, and I worry about my partner breathing it, I want her happy and healthy; my own health, the lungs of most of my friends are being harmed, too. But there is nothing that I can do in the face of the west burning. My home is safe. My lungs will not be scarred, but still I struggle with my impotence. For years I engaged with every obstacle as an adversary. I worked to vanquish every foe, and to conquer each objective. The word disaster comes to mind. Some events are beyond our control. One day in the next week or two centuries, the Cascadia Subduction Zone will slip, and we will bounce up and down for a couple of minutes, we will be crushed and burned, and much of our urban comfort will be shaken apart. Today we just breathe less easy, our eyes feel the itch of of fire, today I hear the universe say, “There are some things you can not control. There are some things you must accept.”

What Comes from Not Speaking

Dudley: In Which the Narrator Discovers that the World Pokes Us for a Reason or “If the universe really is taking care of me, then the universe really is taking care of me.”

Dudley: In Which the Narrator Discovers that the World Pokes Us for a Reason

 or

 “If the universe really is taking care of me, then the universe really is taking care of me.”

       With only a couple of disconcertingly painful exceptions, the universe has been taking very good care of me. At a time and place when the real estate market has been crazy, I found the house of my dreams the first day I was looking. I have wonderful friends, a loving and supportive partner. My puppy speaks both Greek and Latin (though she can only read Latin)… Ok, so that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

       So much is so good in my life that I must acknowledge that I’m being helped.

       So what’s up with the exceptions? A incredibly challenging teaching year, a brutal divorce, a challenging crises with a best friend? Yesterday provided me with an answer.

      

       Mr Sparkles, my puppy, needed a vigorous evening walk. We headed to the park, where I can let her run to the end of the flex-leash so that she bounds and prances, and generally expends her bountiful puppy energy safely.

      As we neared the park, she was excited, and I was perhaps a bit distracted by two attractive young women walking across the grass. And then there was an unleashed husky mix bounding across the park right at Mr Sparkles! I couldn’t see the owner, but the husky didn’t look to be in predator mode, so I waited for Sparkles to greet the strange dog.

       Mr Sparkles didn’t see things quite the same way and she bolted (Mr. Sparkles is a female; the pronoun may seem confusing at first, but that is a topic of an essay for another day.)

       Mr Sparkles went so hard and so fast I lost my grip, and the husky tore after her. Next I knew, Mr Sparkles was running out of park, and she dashed into the street, her retractable leash alternatingly trailing and catching up with her as the husky bore down on her like a cheetah on the nature channel. Sparkles’ screams were such that people were coming out of their houses and yards, but her fear couldn’t propel my feet fast enough to catch up with the dogs.

       Then Mr Sparkles ran into a car and out of room, and she turned to face her antagonist. The husky was right on her, the long blue cord and handle of her leash trailed far behind. I could see her in the jaws of the bigger dog, I could imagine the leash crashing into her small body. I was terrified and helplessly far away. The husky and the retracting leash were closing. And then the handle of the leash hit the curb, and bounced and hit the husky in the head!

       And I got to Mr Sparkles, and grabbed her up, and then we cowered on the other side of the street. The two young women arrived, and leashed their husky, asking if my dog was ok. I wasn’t, but she seemed to be. Then I realized we HAD to go back to the park so she could see it wasn’t a bad place.

       And here begins the REAL story.

       We walked tentatively again in the park.

       A man, about my age, one of the people who came out of their houses at the sounds, walked across the street into the park with a small white dog trotting along side. They came like angels to make sure that Mr Sparkles had a good memory, and frankly, I think to show me that I wasn’t a bad owner, that I hadn’t failed in my duty to Mr. Sparkles, that the attack hadn’t harmed us, and that the universe is in fact, taking care.

       Dudley is a mature and mellow half poodle half schnauzer; and SO well mannered. The man had Dudley just lay there so Sparkles could sniff him, and the man, was GREAT. He crouched down and drew Mr. Sparkles to him with love and with calm. I don’t remember the man’s name. But I can feel his energy dancing throughout me still.

         So, the husky chase was terrifying, painful. But maybe it’s not that the universe had abandoned me just then, maybe the universe couldn’t send Sparkles and me the angel and Dudley without the chase having happened first. I’m trying to believe that as much as the universe has been taking care of me; even the unpleasant bits like the divorce which liberated me, and the even the painful difficulties with my friend are good.

All Things Old Get New Again (We Hope)

All Things Old Get New Again (We Hope)

The summer of 1983 I turned 17 and spent my last summer at “camp.” My parents used to send my brother and me away in order to enjoy the New England island where we lived and others came to for summer vacations. Climbing was not yet wide spread, but I spent a summer, in a van climbing rocks and mountains discovering I did not like heights; it was a glorious trip.

I went west for college, in no small part, to the glories I experienced in the North Cascades and Yosemite (and ok, yes, there was a girl involved, too). My college had a break in October, and I had enough cash to buy a rope, climbing shoes, and a harness. My new friend Eric and I were headed for the mountains to climb.

But my tendonitis came back with a vengeance. Even the thousands and thousands of milligrams of ibuprofen that had gotten me through much of high school wouldn’t put out the fire. I went to a specialist, and he put me in a brace, I’d be on crutches for months. I sold Eric the rope so he could go, and the next spring my still unused shoes were someone else’s great deal.

I went through two bouts with my knees in college, the struggle to be mobile, the struggle to let the inflammation subside, and the inevitable fight to regain strength after months of immobility. I broke my leg telemarking at age 24, and got most of my strength and stamina back after that fall as well.

Then I went to grad school and got a professional job. I’m nearly 50 (ok, I’ll be 49 in a month), and for most of the last decade I spent both the principal and interest a jocks youth deposited in my body, and I went into debt. I worked two professional jobs, one to earn a living, to provide health care for my wife and for me; and one as a leader of a social justice movement. Every time I didn’t go to the gym I thought, “next time”, and called on my reserves.

I left leading the movement. The toll five years of 60-80 hour weeks was too much. And then I left my marriage. Some folk would be driven to the gym. I struggled through an epic divorce, and though I often took long walks to drain the anger from my body, I haven’t lifted weights or worked my body to exhaustion in too long to remember.

Two days ago at dinner my friend Risa told me I had to go to the climbing gym with her. I said sure, confident that it was a date for the “future.” Yesterday she told me we were going today.

I hate doing things I’m not good at. I’m a gone soft nearly 50 year old man, who once stood on top of a glacier, one of the Needles in South Dakota, a rock face in Yosemite, and on top of an arch in Utah. But who now prides himself on taking two or three flights of stairs rather than the elevator.

The idea of trying to press, pull, and lift myself up a wall of artificial rocks alongside lean and lithe young men and women felt uncomfortable. 

I signed the waiver, then Risa said, “at our age we ALWAYS start with stretching,” and we did.

Then she put herself up on the multicolored holds and did a traverse across twelve or fifteen feet of wall. Then I followed her. And again. And then up a wall.

Risa was applauding a gorgeous lithe, toned woman who was practicing a cartwheel without hands on the soft pads beneath the walls. We ended up talking, and when she went back to her practice I saw her focus was on where she wanted her head NOT to end up, rather than on her feet which needed to shot skyward in order to make the maneuver strong. 

I tentatively offered her the observation, and Liz’s next attempt was much stronger. I explained what my Kung Fu teacher has explained to me about a kick thirty years ago, proud that I remembered, proud that I could see what Liz wasn’t doing.

As we all moved about the gym we bumped into one another and kept talking. I resisted (as much as I could) being deprecating, and Liz was very encouraging. 

Much of how to move on the rock came back to me. But when Risa explained why one particular route was laid out the way it was, it was as if she were speaking Sanskrit. I don’t think we knew those things in 1984.

Risa and I are not young; she has been keeping herself fit on the rock for a while now, and though she is like me a bit wider than we might like, less strong than we once were she seems smoother and more fluid on the “rock” than I am.

Liz, is long and lithe, and moves with a confidence and grace I never achieved as I climbed rock faces in mountaineering boots in the 80s. But even Liz seemed clunky next to a 8 year old girl who moved up the walls as smoothly as an octopus gliding through the sea. Her four limbs,  small hands, tiny feet lifted, pushed, and balanced her from floor to roof as if the only work her body did was to breathe.

It took two days for my muscles to remind me that the work I had done at the Rock Gym was new and difficult. But I have a vision of being like the little girl, or at least a bit more more like Liz, or maybe Risa.

I haven’t bought a new pair of climbing shoes, it’s only been a few hours since I left the gym. But I think I might.

The Rat and the Murder of Crows

The Rat and the Murder of Crows

Last week Gaby noticed large crumbs of insulation in a pile underneath the siding at the base of the foundation. A few days later I saw a tail disappear up under the siding, and two nights ago, during dinner outside, I saw the rat run across the back steps into a bin of firewood. We found something club like, and began moving chairs and tables away from the bin. Then I started lifting the chunks of wood out. Suddenly the rat leapt out, and was under a chair, then off across the patio into the shrubs. That evening after our puppy’s last pee of the night, Gaby set a large plastic rat trap with peanut butter. 

I woke in the middle of the night, not to our puppy pawing her crate to go out pee, but to the scratching and knocking of the rat in the trap on the patio. It was painful to see half of a body of a living thing thrashing in the spring loaded jaws. I grabbed one of the firewood scraps, but there was no clear way to give a decisive coup de gras. I did the best that I could, taking the scrap of 2x6 and quickly and firmly crushing as much of the rat beneath it as I could. It twitched once, and I hurt for it; it twitched twice and I began to panic, and mercifully it spasmed and I knew it was dead.

There is a crow in my neighborhood. The morning after our rat invader was expelled I saw it on my walk with the puppy. Mr Sparkles was, as most 12 week old puppies are of everything new, frightened by it as it walked along the road next to us. The dog, did not recognize the wing held cock-eyed, and the failure of the crow to take to the sky at our approach.

There are many semi-feral cats in our neighborhood. A month or two back as I walked out the front door to leave for work a coyote sauntered up the street. As I walked with our puppy, trying to help it have the experiences that would let it learn not to freeze and cower every time a car backfires or a crow caws, I took solace in imagining that the crow would be gone soon. Something would recognize its weakness and take advantage of it’s misfortune.

It’s four days later. On our walk this morning Mr Sparkles only froze once (ok, twice, but for large, barking dogs both times). Coming back home I saw the crow with the broken wing, just as I have for the last four days. And just as one has every day, as I approached the corner where the broken winged crow walks another crow up on a wire, or in a tree caw’d caw’ caw’d, warning of our approach.

There is a major rookery in the park two blocks away. The crows come from miles every evening at sundown to roost together. In the morning they disperse to forage and feed across the city. But there is always a crow in over watch of the injured bird. The murder won’t leave their fellow on it’s own.

How a society treats its wounded, it’s dying, it’s vulnerable says so much. Let us take our cues from a murder of crows.

Epilogue: The crow with the broken wing lived for four days.