It is surprising how many of those things I've done in my life. All humour aside I think that if you are a woodworker, you work in wood.
If someone asks me to make something, in wood, if I have the time I say yes. That is how I got into making cutting boards, a cutting board is not a difficult project, but it is one that people need. It would be lovely to make reproduction period furniture but...I don't know anyone that wants any.
Recently I have been wood carving and my most recent carving project was a commission to carve beads from aromatic cedar.
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| the feature piece, for a musician, no surprise |
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| the little fish and graph paper are for scale |
The long bead is a chicken bone, (a famous east coast hard candy) and the bead in the foreground is just a standard old bead. If you go to a craft store wooden beads are made in China of ???? wood and perfectly manufactured by machine, they come on strings of 6, all identical. Sometimes people want hand made, one of, instead of machine perfection, by the bushel, lucky for me.
I feel that a "woodworker" should make a serious effort to explore the many sides of woodwork. Certainly there will be some aspects of woodwork that a woodworker will enjoy more and execute better but until those things are tried the person will not know. As you explore the craft you will be able to include those new skills in all your projects, nothing personalizes a project like a bit of carving or pyrography.
FOOT NOTE: you can never have too many push sticks.
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