Mistakes Into Design: A Partnership With Wood

In the seventeen years since I began working with wood, my relationship with my medium has evolved considerably. The recent advent of taking on a pair of apprentices has brought the magnitude of this evolution into sharp focus. I see in them the almost unbounded enthusiasm of working toward mastery of a new craft. Balancing this on the spectrum of experience, I see the absolute frustration exhibited when the wood chooses not to cooperate.

I recall my own beginnings in the craft. Not being one to tread lightly, I jumped in with both feet. My first project was a solid teak barrister bookcase. Armed with a radial arm saw, a hand held belt sander and a drill I was bound and determined to convince this pile of teak lumber what it had the potential to become over the next few months in my garage. Much to my surprise at the time, the teak apparently had a very different end in mind. No matter how carefully I measured that one time before a cut (God forbid I should measure twice! I know what I saw on that tape measure!) I would still end up with one cut here or there that seemed to be off by a sixteenth of an inch. Worse still would be the OOPS! of putting the dado ?? lower than it was supposed to be, or drilling the holes for the mortise closer to one side of the board than the other (who has scrap to practice on when it is your first project?!). Through this all, I could not fathom why the wood was choosing to be so obstinate. Wood chipping out at the ends of cuts, deciding to move a fraction just before it hit the blade, changing it?s actual dimension when I wasn?t looking??

In the end, the project got finished. The overall appearance was acceptable ? but not perfect. It looked almost identical to the photo on the cover of the plans I had used ? except for the putty fills and a slight change in overall dimension as a result of re-cutting certain pieces. I have my share of battle scars (emotionally) from the experience.

That old bookcase still stands ? a testimony to the ones who wrote the plans ? not necessarily the one who fought the battle of construction. This experience began a change in my approach to my craft. Not one that took place overnight, mind you, but one that has gradually grown into a partnership that continues to evolve. One of the most significant transitions of thought I have undergone relates to the adherence to plans. Although I design most of the furniture myself now, rather than following the plans of others, in either case I no longer have a driving need to make sure that everything goes according to plan. Success or failure does not hinge on whether or not the final product is exactly like the picture. Having a table that ends up 28 ?? high instead of the prescribed 29? doesn?t invalidate the end result (that being said, however, when building custom pieces to fit into a specific location there may be some measurements that ARE critical ? identify those before beginning a project and stay true to them. The rest are variables). As I move through the phases of building a piece, I often encounter pieces of wood that do not lend themselves to the specific design. Perhaps the grain runs in a manner that would weaken the joint the way it is originally set-up, or I accidentally planed my whole batch down to ?? and did not save out the wood I needed to be 7/8?. Whatever the case, these things come up. There are two ways to deal with this. Either get absolutely frustrated and ruin my day and buy more wood??.or accept the circumstance and explore alternatives to work with what I have.

I spent 10 years working in restaurant kitchens where the pace is frenetic and problems are the norm. Solutions must be derived and applied without the luxury of time. Following this experience, I spent 9 years in the navy ? working with nuclear power on submarines. Once again, an environment where events happen quickly and in rapid succession ? problems arise and must be solved?NOW. These experiences have shaped my entire thought process as a woodworker. I don?t spend an overly extensive amount of time hammering out every detail of my designs before I tackle the actual construction. Rather, I get a rough outline and some baseline measurements and then jump into a series of creating problems for myself and solving them. In the end, a piece emerges which has become a product of my initial vision, the character of the wood and its response to my advances and the various solutions I derive for these problems.

I offer two examples of how this process works and the end results. I recently designed a ?wishbone? sofa table. The first of its kind I chose to build with a blood wood top and legs made of a bent lamination of eastern maple and Brazilian cherry. The legs were to be of a wishbone shape, joining at the top into a post that would penetrate through the top to become part of the table surface. When I cut the mortises in the blood wood top to accommodate this leg penetration, in spite of using a backing board, the blood wood splintered dramatically around the edge of the mortise on the top side. I was devastated. I couldn?t exactly make the legs bigger and thereby be able to carve out the splintered surround of the mortise and blood wood is not exactly inexpensive so making an entirely new top was out of the question. I proceeded with securing the legs to the top and decided to think about it for a while. When I returned to the shop the next morning I had an epiphany. I decided to route a channel around the post where it came through the top. This channel would barely cut into the post top and would extend out into the table enough to eliminate the splintering that had occurred. The channel would go half the depth of the top thickness. After the router work, I would square the sides with a chisel and inlay the channel with a small frame of ebony. The end result was stunning. I could not have designed it better if I had tried. You can view the finished product on my website at www.joshuatreedesign.com.

The second example is from one of my apprentices. He was using the plans from one of my Woodsmith magazines to build a long and low bookcase to go behind a sofa. He got to the step of cutting the top to length and forgot to account for where he had placed the biscuits when he glued up the panel. As Murphy would have it, he cut through the biscuit on one end. He was crushed. He saw no alternative than to make a new top, since the plans didn?t provide any options. I suggested he reconsider and try to find an alternative that may enhance the overall design. After some discussion, he went the route of cutting the top even shorter and adding a breadboard end to each end of the top using a contrasting wood (the case was built of western maple, he chose to use black walnut for the ends). This problem solved, we then tackled that of the dados on the bottom of the sides that were cut to accommodate the bottom of the case. He had inadvertently cut the dados all the way from front to back rather than stopping them. This resulted in the dado showing plain as day on the front and back of the case. Rather than trying to putty this in (which was his first inclination), we discussed the problem further and devised a plan to continue the walnut theme. We placed a strip of walnut from top to bottom over the joining of side and front frame. In addition to covering the dado problem, this strip also served to cover the seam between side and front which, being less than perfect, had been filled in with putty. These changes had brought about such a transformation in the character of the piece that he further decided to add strips of walnut to the front and the back of the shelves in the case, thereby adding a horizontal component of the walnut that tied all this added ?detail? together. The final piece is wonderful. My apprentice has a sense of ownership in the design of the piece that he would not have had if he had followed the plans to the letter. On top of this, the ?mistakes? very literally do not exist to anyone who looks at the piece.

All this rambling to say that I am a firm believer that it is not possible to make mistakes in woodworking ? instead, you are opening the door to design opportunities.