For me, there is pleasure in rescuing the babies that were throw out
with the bathwater of mass production.
I shave with a straight razor, write with a fountain pen, use a vacuum
tube amplifier in my stereo, and smooth the surface of boards with a
hand plane, because I refuse to be in such a hurry that I squeeze the
aesthetic value out of everything to gain a few minutes of time - time
which will then just be filled with more rushing and more mass-produced,
soulless junk.
In the drive to achieve instant gratification, we have spent a century
trying to shorten the learning curve and eliminate the chance of error
in every human activity. There is much good in this, but something has
been almost lost in the process. The Galoots are the guardians of that
which was almost lost: the challenge of trying to master a skill that
can never be fully mastered, the creative freedom that comes from
intimacy with a medium as complex as wood, the sense of self-sufficiency
that comes from knowing that you can make a useful object with tools so
simple that you can make the tools too, and the peaceful meditation of
trying to bring eye, hand and wood together into harmony through finess
and understanding rather than brute force.
That is some of what I see on this list.
>>> Paul Pedersen 03/11/2004 8:10:26 PM >>>
Richard writes :
> There are many Galoots that always caution the rest of us to
> use nothing but shellac. And God forbid we would use any glue
> other than hide glue. Cleaning a tool? Never. After all, if we
> remove the sweat and grime that it's original owner put there
> we would lose the value of the tool. Of course that also assumes
> that the orginal owner never wiped down his tools or ever made
> an attempt to clean them. After all, it would spoil the patina.
> Like he had any concern about patina. Me thinks some Galoots
> take this a bit too far.
There seems to be a strange undercurrent in oldtools that
warps what people say, or how some hear it. I don't believe
I've ever heard anybody say "use nothing but shellac", or
"don't clean tools", or for that matter "hollow grind or
get off the list".
One of the list's goals is to focus on traditional ways of
doing things. And doing them in a traditional environment.
That using a tradition approach might get one closer to that
goal is only inherent. Two hundred years ago you could not
walk into a shop and see shiny tools producing polyurethaned
objects. And they're just as out of place in the environment
of this list.
That's not to say any of this is good or bad, only that there
are different places to go to enjoy different environments.
I'm sure there are many groups on the internet in which the
mention of wire-wheeling a tool wouldn't raise any eyebrows.
Oldtools isn't one of them. There are other groups in which
polyurethane is seen as a good thing. Again, oldtools isn't
one of them.
I think it would be easier if there was some way for someone
new to oldtools to 'look around' to get some idea of what
kind of place this is. Reading the archives may be a way,
but certainly not everyone is prepared to do that. Unfortunately,
I'm not sure that what this list was created to address is all
that visible anymore, day-to-day, so it's a bit hard for
a new person to get an idea of the place.
Perhaps one way to understand the reason for oldtools' existence
is to study the history of woodworking, from books or by stuying
real items like furniture or woodwork. In my mind the feeling
one gets when admiring a fine piece of old furniture is the
feeling one should get when one spends a few minutes in oldtools.
When one looks around the oldtools list, one should see old tools,
either being used in their original function to produce fine items
of woodwork, or just there to be admired for their own sake. One
should also see a whole bunch of very friendly people, living
a part of their lives together in this environment. As one of
the older members of this list put it, it's all a game. And we're
all having fun playing the game together.
Paul Pedersen
Montreal (Quebec)
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