One Pesky Millimetre
When you tell people you are learning to make furniture, they want to see something amazing, and pretty quickly. When I showed some folk back home my first project, it was hard for some to hide their disappointment.
"Oh...that's...erm...lovely"
"What is it?"
"What does it do?"
Well the answer is...nothing*. Except that is not quite right, because in doing it, the skills I learnt were fundamental.
My first effort was going so well. I had gotten to know the plane I had been allocated, a Clifton 5 1/2, and had got my little piece of walnut nice and flat and square. I had pared off the rough ends using a bevel-edged chisel very nicely, and had chopped it in half. I had used a block plane to square the other two ends. Everything had been checked and OK'd by my tutor, Jon. It came to cutting out the centre join and I was, well, a little eager. Too eager to the tune of about 1mm.
One pesky millimetre. The pieces should press tightly together and hold fast. That extra millimetre that I had hacked off meant the two pieces did not fit tightly. I put the two together and with a jeering little wobble one fell out onto the bench. I had to repeat the exercise. It was hard not to view this mandatory second attempt as anything other than punitive discrimination against the cack-handed, but distancing myself from the event I can see that it was actually very useful indeed (I'm fine now Jon, don't worry about me, really, I'm fine...)
Tight, accurate paring** is an essential skill in making fine furniture. Dovetails should sit tightly together; recesses for hinges and inlays should be perfectly square. And this high level of accuracy is just expected here, from the get-go. Second time around I planed the wood square and true. I used the chisel to pare all four ends, to give myself extra practice for the join. I pared the join taking off mere fractions of a millimetre each time. Moment of truth, I pushed it together. It held - just! There was a gap in one of the pieces where I had still pared too low...but it held!
At the end of the day my wrists ached from all the paring, but I had learned a great deal. Starting to get that muscle memory that is so essential for this level of work. Most importantly, thought, I learned that in cabinetmaking one pesky millimetre is actually a fairly gaping chasm.
-sh
*The piece is a cross-halving, a simple ‘plus sign’ made accurately in wood. David Savage wrote about this piece, outlining the skills taught, calling it a 'pretty useless object'. Most of us use it as a coaster on the end of our bench. Ha - not quite so useless after all, David!
**Paring: rhymes with sharing. In this context it means to carefully peel off little bits of wood from the end of a board, down to a line.