A common thread that will likely develop though these blogs is references to the CNC machine. It’s an expensive robot that cuts things… we covered this in a previous blog. If you need a rehash, click here and get your read on.
One of the main things we build are exterior doors. If you’ve never built an entry door, it’s not as easy as watching a YouTube video on how to cut and glue wood together. Building a barn style door to roll around on barn door tracks inside your house is child’s play compared to actual functional doors that are exposed to wide ranging temperature differences between the inside and outside of the home it protects.
Coping, is relatively common term in the carpentry trade. It can refer to what we carpenters do when we grab a 6-pack or tall glass of whiskey and suddenly disappear for hours at a time into our workshops or it can be used to describe a trim joinery method. You might hear some old-timers refer to it as a saddle joint. The premise of this joint is to cut the piece of trim with the exact contour of the trim you’ll be butting it into. Get it… saddle… butt… Carpentry humor. There are all kinds of reasons people prefer a coped joint over a compound miter. No, we are not going to get into those reasons at this juncture.
Regardless, if a compound miter seems like a foreign language, you can begin to understand the complexity of coping the edge of a piece of trim. Again, there are carpenters everywhere that will tell you it’s easier to cope the ends than miter them. We’re not talking about those freaks of nature in the carpentry world. Oh wait, yes we are…
The CNC machine in our shop can cope the end of any piece of trim at any angle in about 2-3 seconds with the proper tooling. Before you ask, yes, that’s incredibly fast. A good portion of the old-school trades people out there are not huge fans of technology and innovation because of this very thing. They see it as a threat to their livelihood. It’s not. I can prove it.
Which is more valuable, a full size, crystal clear, blemish free, color copy of the Mona Lisa or the actual painting? Not everyone can afford the original work of art, but the more affordable option for people who want it would be some sort of replicated image produced by some sort of technological innovation.
What the CNC does is functional. What the craftsman does is art. I have been a carpenter for over 30 years and I still have no idea how those old-school guys with a few more decades of experience do it. It really is an art form. Find someone who has a hope chest, a courting bench, table, or chair that has been passed down for 5 or 6 generations – hand-made by a craftsman with no CNC machine, no computers, no fancy DeWalt or Harbor Freight tools, nothing other than forged hand-tools.
The artisans of the past were the innovators of the day. They took pride in their work and it shows with every detail and with every generation it is passed to. You don’t see many things made like that anymore. Ikea has cornered the market on “disposable” furniture and we love them for it.
We have gotten so used to getting what we want immediately, or at least 2 days with Amazon Prime, we are losing the ability to appreciate the value of art in our lives. We are learning to live without it and that is not a good thing. We have bought in to the idea that fast is better. Getting it produced quickly is more valuable than producing something that will tell a story for generations to come.
If we aren’t careful, our lives will reflect the same story. Get rich quick. Find fame online. Me, me, me. I need to be validated now! The pseudo connectivity of the internet allows us the opportunity to have thousands of “friends” and still be utterly alone. Keeping up with 100’s of Facebook and Instagram posts on any given day is a very functional way of finding out what’s going on in a bunch of people’s lives. Congratulations, your legacy will live forever in a server somewhere in Paducah, Kentucky.
Investing time, engaging in other people’s lives creates the stories that will be passed from generation to generation. Artisans work for decades to master their craft, but every single one of them started on “Day #1.” The functional Twitter feed is really fancy and easy pickings. It’s time we started getting our hands dirty and have our own Day #1 towards becoming relational artisans.