Re: Building kitchen cabinets - any cost savings?

[Patriarch]

"Swingman" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

That, and bad knees.

Patriarch, glucosamine and Advil...

[nospambob]

[Tom Watson]

Let me start by saying that your kitchen is positively immaculate, Swing. Well conceived and well executed.

But, I did not get out of the game for a lack of appreciation, I got out for a lack of stamina.

I wasn't old but my knees were, and my back.

I'd have stayed in if they had.

I've been sitting on my ass mostly for the past eighteen months and my joints don't hurt much anymore.

But my gut and ass have gotten bigger.

I probably carry twenty pounds of fat that I didn't have two years ago.

When I first went onto the shop floor at my new job to look at work,checking for conformance to specifications, the mechanics hid from me, like they would from any clipboard carrying sonofabitch.

Now they call me up and ask me for advice.

I'm pretty satisfied with that.

I reckon it's a sort of appreciation.

As far as actual cabinetmaking goes, I've cut out the parts for my Goddard-Townsend Kneeholes, and selected the appropriate curly cherry for the drawer fronts, which shall be carved, with great trepidation and joy, into a simulacrum of the shells that I have seen in my dreams for years.

And I don't have to worry a lick about when it gets done.

I didn't even tell my wife that I was working on them.

My sense of appreciation comes from inside of me, as I suspect it does in all good mechanics.

When I was a carpenter, I didn't expect the contractor to tell me what a nice job I'd done on cutting in the Baldwin lock and hanging the entry door; I knew that the cheap bastard had hired me because I was one of about four people that he knew who could do the same thing.

And I happened to answer the phone first.

I loved and revered my trade as a carpenter and I did the same as a cabinetmaker. You ask Tommy Plamman about this and he will say the same.

The world has moved on. You are right in saying that we do not have as large a base of people who can appreciate good work - but a good mechanic has already solved that within himself.

He knows that he is doing it good and right and that is how he was taught and that is how he does his work.

It is not really the appreciation from outside that drives a good mechanic - it is the memory of those that he learned from, and the desire to earn the respect of those mechanics who are no longer even alive, that drives them.

To be accounted "a good mechanic" by those who still know what that means - is enough.

I mean that - even if your judges are long dead - their approval is enough.

Tom Watson - WoodDorker tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (email)

(website)

[Patriarch]

Tom Watson wrote in news: [e-mail]:

My son courted and married a wonderful young woman, the daughter of an old school union carpenter in the commercial construction trades, in and about Oakland, CA. A skilled man, whose work had been hard on his back and knees as well. Seems falling from a roof will change your stamina some.

What Mark knew about me at first was that I was a necktie wearing management type who drove a fancy pickup truck, and he was a bit suspicious of management. When he got the chance to see some of the furniture I'd built (none of it in the Goddard Townsend class, but still...), he figured I was probably OK. When he started talking about low angle adjustable block planes, and I gave him one of mine, LV's best, he was pretty sure I at least knew tools a little.

Last fall, he brought me one of his father's old Stanley #7 handplanes. I guess I passed his test.

Our shared grandaughter is three months old now, and as cute as any I've ever seen.

Thanks for the post, Tom.

Patriarch