A few of my favorite non-woodworking, woodworking books

When I opened my first shop, I spent most of my time doing laps; futzing with this, fixing that, wondering where the time went, and why I hadn't gotten anything done. I compared that to my time at school, and it occurred to me that there was a lot more going on in the school environment that I hadn't really been seeing clearly. Like most well-executed details, all of the supporting elements were pretty much invisible, and streamlined enough that they did what they needed to do without calling attention to themselves. We had a machine room and bench area, with instructor supervision and tutelage, carts and machine room jigs, etc, and all I really needed to do was work.

In the pursuit of learning to be a better woodworker in the real world, I've had to reverse-engineer a lot of the supporting background details that I took so much for granted. But the process of learning how to build and run the rest of the machine takes a while to figure out. Making sure that I have what I need, where and when I need it, so that I can just focus on working, was a lot more involved than I thought, and these books have helped me to find my way.

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-The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker

I'm not producing cars, I'm not in mass production, and I'm not doing anywhere near the kind of business that Toyota's doing. But this was still a great book that helped me become more productive. The core of Toyota's method is about slow, steady progress, and improving the end product by improving the process. Refining the process may involve procedure, shop flow, product design and design process... there's so much support work that goes behind any particular step. And I think that there's a lot for small woodworkers to learn here.

Woodworking is manufacturing. I don't think hobbyists want to see it that way, because who wants an industrial job for a hobby? But while many of them have a lot of fun shopping for new tools, I think a lot of them also end up spending a lot of time in the basement or garage futzing, and straightening up, and trying to clear off the bench, rather than actually working. I know I did. And I've seen a lot of pictures of benches... and shops... that were so clogged up with bits and pieces and half finished projects that there was no hope for any actual work to get done. It may feel counter-intuitive to apply a large-scale production mindset to a guy with basic tools in his basement. But the careful evolution of work habits, work space, and design is critical for lone woodworkers if they're going to get better. Setting up and maintaining a smoothly operating shop space is an ongoing process, and not just a series of attempts to fit 10 pounds of crap into a 5 pound bag.

This is a radical departure from the feeling I used to get from reading the glossy pages. ("Buy this machine, and you'll be able to build... THIS! In a weekend!") I really don't feel like there's a quantum leap to be made in the human ability to produce, no matter what the ads and articles are trying to sell you. Everything requires proper technique and procedure, and an appropriate amount of time. The tool store can sell you new toys, but they can't necessarily tell you how to incorporate those tools into your work flow and your shop in a way that will make sense. And that's the kind of problem that Toyota helped me to solve as things went on.


-The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam. Back of the Napkin is a treatise on visual problem solving. A picture is worth a thousand words, and the human mind's ability to interpret a well thought out illustration can provide insights that those same thousand words still probably wouldn't inspire.

Problem solving is part of the process of gradual refinement. Sketching things out is a normal way to solve problems, especially for jigs and procedures. But it's easy to get carried away and draw things that look remarkably like the things you've seen before... even if those solutions aren't that great. When I started redesigning my crosscut sled, I found myself redrawing it again and again, and listing what I really needed, and what was really critical as I drew it. I went through 5 or 6 pages of sketches before I really started wrapping my mind around what was going on. I'm still a novice when it comes to visual problem solving. But I've learned a lot from it so far.


-The Gantt Chart, a Working Tool of Management, by Wallace Clark. Despite a technical background, I wound up with an English degree. None of my classes taught me anything about time or project management. They just made the papers longer, and assumed we'd figure it out. This book presented the most straightforward way to plan larger projects that I'd ever seen. While my engineering friends all know about Gantt charts, I'm pretty sure they generate them by computer. This was written in 1914, and everything was being done by hand. And that's generally how I use them, since I don't have a computer in the shop. I can generally compile a pretty decent procedure, or at least figure out what's next. But that doesn't really tell me much about how deep into the woods I am, or where I am in those woods. This is a tool that gives me a much more visual, intuitive way to actually see just how much more I have to go, and where I am in the context of what's left to be done.


-Getting Things Done by David Allen. Gantt charts may help me plan out a project and keep track of where I am in the process, but I still need to actually get into the groove and make things happen. This book is more about how to form more productive habits. The way he wrote it, this really is a book about how to manage paperwork in an office, so it took a while to adapt to the way I work. But he makes some very good points about storing ideas in places where you know they'll be safe, and organizing a work area so that it doesn't get too stagnant. For instance, I used to lose an hour or two a day to some side-track project that was tool or jig-oriented, because I just felt like I had to get it done, or it would be lost in the cloud of things that never get followed up on. Now I keep a notebook handy to write down those little side track tasks, so I can immediately regain focus on the task at hand. It helps me keep track of those side projects, so I know they'll get done, and in the meantime I can remain focused on what I'm doing.

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This is by no means an exclusive list, but this post is already getting too long.

Getting it together

About a month and half ago, I started keeping a log book that contains entries every 30 minutes to track where my time actually goes when I'm in the shop. And at the end of each day, ideally, I've been logging how many hours I've been putting in at the shop, where they go, when I'm slacking off, etc. The general idea was that if I can see what I'm doing on a given day, and how many hours I'm really working, it'll give me a better idea of how I can improve.

About a week ago, I looked at the accumulated list of numbers, and realized that it wasn't really telling a story. It was just raw data. So, I pulled out a book that I found a few years ago on Gantt charts. It was written circa 1930's, and published by a British publisher... and it's straightforward, to the point, and incredibly usable.

Most of my engineering friends know about Gantt charts, for planning work, and tracking progress. I'd never heard of them. But then again, I was an English major. We weren't really taught much about project planning... which is a shame. I really could have used some help in planning out some of my longer papers.

For the uninitiated, a Gantt chart is a straightforward visual way to track machine or personnel usage, track project progress, plan out projects, etc. In short, it's the solution to the problem I was having... at a glance, I can see how my work habits are improving, or not. But there's a lot more. It's also going to be a huge help in keeping things on track, because it provides something that all of my 30-minute logging doesn't do: it shows where the time is going, on what part of the project, and it will show whether or not I'm actually on schedule. If I fall behind, or something takes longer than planned, I can see just how far behind I am, which will help motivate me to work even harder. And in the future, I'll be able to look at previous charts, and use them as experimental data, to see where my time estimates matched up with my theories, and where I was way off, so I can get better at providing an accurate time estimate to myself and my clients. Small adjustments, gradual progress... good stuff.

Friday afternoon, I sat down with the book, and planned out the remaining parts of the project I'm currently working on. The project has been winding down, but there are a lot of details I've been trying to corral and pin down to get this thing out the door. I didn't realize I had about a week's worth of work left, but I do. And now I have the tools to see what's going on, and try to keep it on track to be done in a week.

The joy of being self-employed is that I get to be my own boss. But it also means yelling at the employee when he's not working. Now it also means making sure the shop foreman has a clue about what needs to get done, so he can keep on top of the employee and make sure he gets everything done on time.

At least I have other people to talk to when I'm working. 

Strange things are happening...

Three years into this whole small business thing, and a slew of supporting side jobs later, I've started to understand something... the challenge of being your own boss is that you actually have to be the boss... and that this isn't as freeing as it sounds.

For the past 3 weeks or so I've been following the advice of a book I've been reading, that said to stop every  30 minutes to log down what you just did. I've been doing that. It's been a little disheartening, because there were days when I forgot to do it, or days that I've been home in the middle of yet another snowstorm. But tonight I transcribed some of what I had logged down, and broke down just how much work I've actually been getting done while I'm in the shop.

Even on days when I've been actively doing something for a solid 9 hour day, it looks like I'm generally able to focus solidly on the job at hand for about 50% of the hours that I'm putting in on some days. Some of the rest of that time is going to organizational stuff like coming up with a checklist of what to do next, do I don't have to think while I'm at the table saw. (I find that trying to simultaneously plan and execute a project leads to a diminished ability to do either one well.) But there are other times where I spin off completely and feel the need to do on the spot maintenance, repair, or refinement of a machine or process, or construction of a jig that I need to do whatever it is...  and almost immediately I lose anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.

Typically, times like these are when a good boss is needed, to grab you by the collar, call you something unprintable, and tell you to get the F!!! back to work. But since I'm self employed, I need to be my own boss. And after a few weeks of charting where my time goes, I'm pretty sure that my employee needs to be grabbed by the collar a little more often.

It's an evolving process, but I felt the need to share.

Gratitude

It's been an interesting month.

Since the last entry, I've met with an interior designer, and it looks like there's the potential for work there.I'm currently working on projects for friends and friends of friends, which is fine. Work is work.

Lastly, but certainly not least, I've been going through a lot of mental changes, which are being reflected in the physical layout of the shop. In essence, I'm still struggling with how to work most efficiently, and how to reduce the level of clutter. And I'm trying to be brutally honest about just what kind of work I'll probably be doing. I'd love to be an ongoing laboratory dedicated to evolving styles of work. And I'd love to really sink my teeth into hand tool skill development. But a small business needs money to survive. And that means being able to produce.

I'll get into the physical details of the alterations later. But for now, the spiritual adjustments are taking the most effort, I think. I've been spending a lot of time digging through old notes, and remembering how I envisioned the business when I first got set up. It's pretty funny in retrospect... I was terrified from the start. I would spend days reading and studying organization techniques, and time management, and so on. I'd spend half of a Sunday sitting in a black recliner writing up outlines of all of the things I wanted to do, and how I was going to get them all done, and organizing my efforts to get organized... and making a lot of work that kept me doing just about anything but work. I think I knew, even then, that I wasn't really ready. That was back when I was still working in Medford.

Since moving to Lawrence, I've been grappling with how to chase the dream. I've spent a lot of time outside of the shop at other jobs, working in various composite materials, while I got used to the idea of doing business. And this morning I was clearing out and organizing the piles of lumber in the racks to make it all more accessible, and I noticed something.

Up on the top shelf, I'm storing a lot of the 'interesting' lumber. I have a slab and a bunch of shorter pieces of brown bird's eye maple, all cut from the same tree. I have a few pieces of tap-hole maple. (Maple, tapped for syrup. The boards have holes in them.) I have Cocobolo boards I've been carrying around since the summer of 2004. There's some pieces of quarter-sawn oak. And a small pile of Hawaiian Koa, most of which is 3-4 feet in length, that I picked up for a song. And then there's the big and tall section, populated by beams and planks of 3-4" thick stuff. And so on. Most of the lumber I picked up at a pretty decent discount, too. The problem is, I have ideas for all of it, but no solid plans.

As a woodworker, I know I'm not alone. As a businessman, I'm ashamed. I have a pile of inventory that has been mentally labeled 'to be used... but not now.' It's not that I can't come up with ideas or designs for these pieces of lumber. It's simply that I'm intimidated.

I got into woodworking because it inspired me. I wanted to be creative and productive, and make really cool things. But as soon as I hung the 'business' label on all of it, it strangled me.

I feel like I've been carrying around a huge debt, owed to potential that has yet to be realized. I'm finally learning to put that down and just do the work. And I'm trying to set up the space in a way that is more about what works, and less about how it should work. I'd like to get my head wrapped around doing the work I want to do, without beating myself up about how it's supposed to look.

Basic Assumptions was the beginning of a lot of soul-searching for me, around woodworking, business, life in general, and being tired of living in almost constant fear of my own decisions, and whether they (or I) would measure up. Since then I've come to realize that I still own a shop. I'm still a small businessman. I'm scared out of my mind about all of that sometimes. But it's a whole different world and way of viewing things that I never would have had the chance to see. The land of small business is not for the small of the weak or the fearful, and it's been a brutal couple of years while I've tried to catch up and grow into the role I aspire to have. And while I'm still shoveling my way through the shifting sands of my own insecurities,  I remembered something important about all of it this morning.

Regardless of how intimidated I am sometimes, I'm very, very grateful to be here.

From Failure we learn

So, the old shop is officially no more. What you see here is the shell that remains, with a bit of conduit sticking up where my table saw used to be.

It's a weird feeling. This was my first shop. It was originally supposed to be a 2 year lease... and a much longer-lasting enterprise. The up and coming lab space was part of the reason I'm leaving, as was the solitude that I mentioned in previous posts. But at the end of the year, it feels like this shop was a failure for me. As I was packing up pallets of lumber and plywood and bits and pieces, there were so may unfinished projects that were sitting on top of each other. In some cases, it was lumber that was to have been one thing, on top of lumber that was intended to be something else, and half-finished jigs and fixtures... so many fits and starts and thrashings around. It's been a learning year, that's for sure. And while I learned a lot, I didn't actually finish very much. So, in a sense, I'm closing the doors on a failed enterprise, while simultaneously setting up a new one. I'm changing some of the things that I knew contributed to my having a hard time, but I'm very much aware that there are other possible factors that I haven't identified yet. The lease on the new place will run for 3 years. A lot can happen in that time.

The quote that comes to mind is from a recent favorite movie of mine. "From Failure we learn; Success, not so much." The challenge for me right now is to allow the failure part to sink in, so that it's appreciated properly. Blindly going forward with my chin up and a can-do attitude is all fine and good, but I really need to figure out a few more things to make sure that this next try doesn't end the same way.

Plodding along.

So, the second big move day came and went with very few issues. There are pallets of boxes and lumber and tools sitting around the shop, which is entertaining... it's amazing how quickly the space fills up. I can say that I've driven my fill of rental trucks for a while... those 26' Penske trucks are pretty simple to operate, but driving a big truck is still a pretty stressful thing, and there are some pretty air-headed people on the highways sometimes.

The big wall has been taped and filled with joint compound, and we'll paint it sometime soon, I'm sure.

All that aside, I'm starting to get antsy. The economy has its issues, but the bottom line right now is that it's time to start making money, and moving forward. That requires a functional shop space, with workable tools, and a steady head to wrap around everything that needs to be done. I won't lie, the last go around with the space in Medford was pretty rough. With noone around to bounce ideas off of, I was pretty aimless, and it was really hard to be productive. There were a lot of things I didn't get figured out right away. And between running a business, learning the differences between one-off and limited production work issues, as well as how to manage projects effectively and balance my time... it was a really rough year. As I was filling pallets with materials and tools last week, it was impossible not to notice just how many projects got started, but not finished. It's a real ego-bruiser, and a wake-up call. I've been in business for just over a year, and it's been a rough year. I might have had an easier time working for someone else. But frankly, even with all of my failures this year... all of them were learning moments. And as stressful as it is to do this kind of work and make it pay, I can't really picture many other options.

I have a few ideas that have been dormant for a while now, and a few more that need developing. I think I'm going to spread myself out a little bit, and do a few different kinds of work. In addition to furniture, I have ideas in mind for toys and puzzles. And maybe for some entry-level basic furniture that I can market to smaller, local chain stores.

But eventually it all comes back to where I am right now, and what needs doing next. Clean out the old shop, and get the new one up to speed... and get ready to start running when the ground is under my feet again.

Why I enjoy building custom furniture

I get to write letters like this:

[names have been changed to protect the innocent]

Dear Jane,

I want to thank you for your time this morning. It was very kind of you to welcome me into your home, and I appreciate that. And while I think it falls into another kind of category, I want to thank you for welcoming me into your project. One of the joys of building (or commissioning) custom furniture is that you’re allowed to design and have built exactly what you want, the way you want it built. I realize that this can be hard sometimes, and very intimidating, because the visions in our mind’s eye aren’t always as thoroughly detailed as we’d like.
If the image you have in your mind is of a wooden table with wrought iron legs, I’d like to help you flesh out that image, and help you fill in some of the details. I liked the sketches you had for the legs, and I feel like I owe you an apology if you felt like I was dismissive of the idea. It didn’t occur to me until now to ask or offer this, but if you’d like, we can sit down again (at your house, or mine) and play with the details a little more. I can sketch out variations on the design you showed me for the legs, with different curves and proportions, both on their own, and with a mocked-in top. That way you can see how different proportions work against each other, and with the table. It’s hard to offer a concrete “I want THIS,” sort of answer sometimes. But that doesn’t mean I can’t provide some options for you to choose from. It’s easier sometimes to figure out what you like or want by ruling out the things you don’t like or want, or which ones you like more. And once we have a better idea of what that is, we’ll have an easier time with the wrought iron guys, because I can give them a full size working drawing of the curves you decide on, for both tables. It gives us a better working position if we can give them all the details when they’re commissioned for their part. Please let me know how your meeting goes with them.
In a similar vein, I can come back with some corrugated cardboard pieces once your chair comes home from the upholsterers. We can cut the cardboard up to play with the angle for the wedge table, and figure out what shape you’d like it to be.
My hope is that we can arrive at designs that you really like. The way this is supposed to work is that with your inspiration, and my perspiration and know-how, we come to a design that really makes you feel good about the process. I’d really like to be able to build tables that are genuinely yours. If I build them, I’d rather deliver something to you that is made from your own ideas and decisions, instead of something you had to pick out of what was offered. I’d like you to be able to be proud of these tables, and happy to see them in your home.
Don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions.

All my best.

James

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This is the joy of the custom furniture builder... and of my life as a builder and educator. I get to help people to create elements of a life that they envision for themselves. For clients, I am the hands and the process that helps to manifest their ideas. As an author, or a teacher, I help people understand how to care for and use their tools to pursue a life or hobby where they are empowered to shape and craft the world around them as they wish to shape it. I get to be the link between the idea and the realization of people's desires. I get to help them find their way to making something that's theirs.

It's a nice idea that all men are created equal, but the truth of it is that we all have different strengths. I get to be the guy who helps people figure out what they want, and helps them to get it. It's a pretty rare gift, and I think it's pretty cool.

Happy Wednesday.