Working in wood offers the opportunity for lots of contrast and continuity. Much of the wood I use for spoons, spatulas, bowls, and even minor signs start as part of someone else’s waste stream. This morning, a piece on my bench came from a flooring maker who sold the shortboard ends cheap rather than throw them away.
A pallet of cherry sits by my back fence; I’m slowly thinning it out as I convert it from salvaged firewood to lovely spoons and small bowls. The teak I am stacking in the woodshed began life as an outdoor porch rocker. After it deteriorated, I salvaged about half the wood. It’s rough to feel now, but after I plane the planks it will be smooth again with just the right sort of lustrous tones that older teak has; it would have been such a shame to waste.
While working wood, you have opportunities for sitting while you plan and think of projects. Later you have much standing, and doing as you select, plane, saw, and then carve the projects.
A well-regulated shop wastes little. Even scrap has a role in warming the house via the woodstove, and the woodstove ash fertilizes the garden in the spring.
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