I’ve never been a woodworker. Shoot, I was never even a handy man. For the first 35 of my 38 years, I never owned a tool more “tooly” than a hammer.
So why do I have a dream of one day running a shop making furniture and teaching woodworking?
I think part of it is just from the excitement of discovering a new hobby. Another part of it is from living in a country where woodworking doesn’t exist as a hobby. Not only is woodworking not a hobby, it doesn’t even seem to be a job. I have yet to find furniture in this country that wasn’t either mass-produced or imported (or both).
Of course, I still have no idea whether I even have any knack for woodworking. I’ve only made a couple things (very average, at that), and am still working on my first project (my bench) since pulling the plug on power tools. It’s fun, but I’m not fooling myself – I have a long way to go if I want to be experienced enough to go into the business of woodworking (even if I have zero competition!).
Until then, I’m just going to enjoy myself. Because if you can’t do that, why bother?
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March 25, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Gye Greene
I think it was on the OldTools list that a few people pointed out that in some countries — as you’ve observed — woodworking is an occupation, not a hobby (kinda like plumbing, I guess). Germany was one of them, IIRC.
An informal measure of this is to see if they sell woodworking (or even “home handyman”) magazines at the local newsagent’s. I’ve noticed that I can usually find a woodworking magazine in American and Australian airports (I live in Aussie-land, but am originally from Seattle) — but when we had a layover in Korea, I couldn’t find any.
–GG