My father had done some woodworking once, so I went back to that old house of ours, and into the shed behind it, and gathered up some of his tools. I didn’t know yet what they did, but one of them I figured out quickly. It was a mallet, made of a shaped piece of wood for a handle and a rolled-up piece of thick leather for the head. The mallet wasn’t too heavy, but it could make a sharp chisel move grandly through a piece of wood. The handle had a light touch of red and tan paint on it, so it also had some charm. My new mallet.

I began on my own and with some books to teach myself the craft. I learned that this was the long, slow method, and with an ignoramus for a teacher. Fortunately, his student was just as slow as he was. So we worked well together. My learning time was done in a basement, away from the prying eyes of the world.

The wood I used schooled me about grain; the machines I bought educated me about accuracy and danger. The hand tools of my father’s, and those few I could afford, taught me the value of sharpening. But making joints go together precisely showed me only frustration. My hand-sawn tenon would stick, but only halfway into my chopped mortise. Gaps in the shoulders of the joint wounded my pride.

I don’t remember the piece I worked one grim day, but it finally got the better of me, for not agreeing with my demands for it to be perfect. I took that mallet of my father’s and slammed it into my bench as hard as I could. I wanted to break the world. Come over some time and I’ll show you the dent in my bench, which I still have many decades later, and which you can see here (on left, where it sits in my shop, and then in its still-dented glory on the right).