What is Living Trade?

[Lowell Holmes]

Well, I Googled guato pine and it led me to your web site. I found the answers to my questions. :-)

[Paul Kierstead]

Me too dumb to know. Master, will you enlighten us?

Paul "Computer Twit" Kierstead

[Patrick Olguin]

Yeah - normally you have to go to the trumpet player's forum for that kind of discourse. DAMHIKT.

O'Deen

[Lowell Holmes]

Has D.A. ever posted pictures of his woodwork?

OBTW, what does D.A. stand for? :-)

[D. A. Clark]

The topic is, What is Living Trade?

A good answer, for not knowing the question...

Collectively, we do so as a civilization, but real progress is individual effort, wouldn't you agree?

Not a fully concise assimilation, but lots of emotion. A good statement in favor of seeking an answer to what is living trade.

This is an answer that I am not satisfied with. To work wood is not just an inherent condition, there is no such thing as a naturally born woodworker. The ability to truly work wood comes through the acquisition of knowledge and understanding. Skills, the assimilation of tools and techniques are the by-product of time spent in apprenticeship, whether at trade or in your own shop.

This is where your thesis breaks down. If you give it some thought, I believe you will see that you are straddling a pointy fence. Well, bridger, for not wanting to play, you made a fine contribution. daclark

[D. A. Clark]

Grasshopper? What do you see? Does man work wood? Or does wood work man?

[Andrew Barss]

: The topic is, What is Living Trade?

Here's the problem. YOU made the term "living trade" up. As a result coming in here and asking what it means is contrary to how things usually work (here, and elsewhere). When one invents a new term, it's to describe something that ALREADY exists, or already is a focus of discussion. You don't make a term up and then wander around trying to get people to help you define it. That's just ornery.

-- Andy Barss

[Larry Jaques]

On 17 May 2004 05:25:26 -0700, [e-mail] (Conan The Librarian) brought forth from the murky depths:

I'm finding a lot more green doug fir up here. It's nice to work when wet (soft) and hardens up to oaklike density without twisting. All we had in LoCal were birdseye SPF (mostly waaavy pine) with some nice spruce studs at triple the price. Feh! Anyway, some day soon I'll make that sheet-goods cart out of the 2x8 DF. It's raining to day so I'll be spreading the last of the Weed'n'Feed tomorrow, opening another 1-sq/ft of space in the shop. It's garage sale time. Why do so many little projects always seem to get in the way of real wooddorking stuff?

lighting? It looks stained in that pic, and you know how I get...

Mesquite? I totally missed that in the original post, and the photo is uncommented, so Excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me. I honor your gloat now, suckah.

In nature's infinite book of secrecy a little I can read. -Shakespeare ------

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[Rob Stokes]

We do it tomorrow because we did it today, and there's the natural challenge to make our next product better than our last. The trade lives because as intelligent as the human race is, a true craftsman can always make "it" better than the last guy choosing only to use the highlights of what he's learned through passed on lessons, choosing to improve on that which he feels justified. The resulting new innovations though many, are simple derivatives of circuitous technology. Tools, means, methods, efficiencies...all are simple but plodding enhancements yet the core of the technology still lies with rudimentary tools, rudimentary materials and rudimentary physics..... such as it is with any trade that continues, such that it is that any trade plied today can trace it's ancestral roots to trades of yesterday, all of which were required to provide basic food and shelter. As long as the race shall live, so to will the trade....

Rob

[D. A. Clark]

As self-appointed moderator for this public facility, you should read your own FAQ, then give it a good flush. Just for your information, Charlie, I am recreating.

Since I originated the thread, as I was free to do, it must be my party. It's BYOB, Charlie...(Bring Your Own Brain)...and you didn't have the good manners to do so. But, you are welcome to stay, Chuckie...maybe somebody else will say something intelligent for you.

[bridger]

9of course individuals will want to claim credit for what they do, but none live in a vacuum. technology is cumulative, and when it reaches critical mass type threshholds it makes quantum leaps. the individuals involved are *almost* irrelevant.

[Sandy]

On Mon, 17 May 2004 19:56:08 -0700, Larry Jaques posted:

With me, it's becuase I'm anally retentive wrt efficiency. If there is a big juicy job to do, I can't start that until I do this small job that makes another small job down the line more efficiently handled, and before I do that, I have to move something else coz that will make another small (to-be-done-before-the-main-job) job "more efficient" The bottom line is that I'm still doing precursor jobbies six weeks later. Story of my life.

[Conan the Librarian]

I can understand you not being too gung-ho about that sort of thing. I know if the only wood I ever saw was the Borg "pine" stuff, I'd probably give up woodworking.

I dunno, Lar. I don't seem to have that problem. :-)

No stain there, just shellac. What looks like blotching is actually some curl. Here's a photo of a different project that shows some of the neat grain the stuff has:

The panel in that picture was about as heavy as a maple panel of similar size, and the wood *scraped* beautifully. Not your granddad's pine for sure. (Well, actually it might be more like what he could have gotten.)

Tendjew. You were starting to worry me. I was wondering if you normally burned the stuff when you lived in lowCal.

Thanks. Beeyoootiful grain in that section of log.

Chuck Vance

[Jeffrey Thunder]

In article , [e-mail] (Conan The Librarian) writes (to D.A.):

On the contrary, Chuck.

OB on topic (for D.A.): I first heard of the Living Bra as an impressionable child, and had this cartoonish image of a brassiere that went around chasing you.

Oh wait ...

Sorry.

[D. A. Clark]

Hello Rob, In seeking an answer to living trade, I cannot accept the 'just because' or the 'natural challenge' thesis as the whole of understanding. And while common sense and manual dexterity can enhance individual accomplishment in pursuit of trade, I do not adhere to a belief in the natural craftsman's ability for improvement. Knowledge is not collective per individual, like books on a shelf; but rather cumulative in the subconsious of experience...and this is derived through time in apprenticeship, which is a lifelong pursuit.

I agree, the core of technology is based in the physics of the material; yet, the innovations of modern technology are not circuitous...they are destined for obsolescence and have failed to provide such enhancement of product, that may be derived only from the assimulation of a human eye and the articulation of a man's hand. Therefore, man is the greatest technological force at work. As man returns to the basic material, so too must he return to the first principles of working the wood...to cut, to shape, to fasten...to find an answer to what is living trade?

[D. A. Clark]

So, what is the Dewey decimal point for pissant, Chuckie?

[Yahoo]

Ahh so you are the professor who will assign value and quantify what constitutes 'results' kinda arrogant

[Larry Jaques]

On Tue, 18 May 2004 08:23:32 -0500, Conan the Librarian brought forth from the murky depths:

Yeah, you finish a project or two a year, don't you?

Yeah, the larger pineywood forests they had 70+ years ago prolly were nicer than the borg-a-matic pretzels they turn out now.

No, those who used fireplaces ordered oak (sigh), avocado (sigh), or yewcallapeetusez. I saw manzanita growing (small) out in the wilds of the deserts we knew as the "California foothills". Y'know,

4-6 INCHES in diameter and 8' tall. Veritable dinosaur teeth. The only mesquite I saw was in bags: soak 'n smoke BBQ chips. =:0

-- Remember: Every silver lining has a cloud. ----

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[Rob Stokes]

[Conan The Librarian]

Sometimes even more. Or at least I did until I got back into flyfishing. I've been working on a hutch for SWMBO for months now. In the meantime I've been doing smaller projects for special occasions, but this darned hutch is my albatros now.

It's unlike any pine I've worked with before or since. I just wish I had an idea of what it's real name is so I could try to track some more down.

What we have now is tree factories. No comparison whatsoever.

Every once in a while I'll see some mesquite in firewood bundles they sell in front of convenience stores around here. Ironically, mesquite was usually considered a trash wood until us yuppie wooddorkers got a hold of it and drove the price up.

Chuck Vance