ALL WOODWORKERS HAVE A SUPER POWER

(Including you!)

By Robert Porter

From the sense of smell to the smallest whispers of certain sounds. We are built differently. We see things before they happen. We read grain like a roadmap taking us to a wild undiscovered destination. We use every sense available with the refinement only we understand.

Running your finger across the surface of a board in multiple directions is like reading brail to a woodworker. We are letting the wood talk to us through the finest touch. Feeling the alignment of two pieces of a butt joint is something only a woodworker can really feel with insane levels of accuracy. 

Woodworkers can see things out of alignment without the aid of a tape or any other measuring tool to astonishing levels of accuracy. Bill Clark was known to call me “Eagle Eye” because even with his 60 plus years as a machinist he had to break out indicators and micrometers to find center on parts. Me being a bit of a bull in the china shop, I’d jump in and eyeball it. Usually the result was alignment of within .002”-.003”. I’m not special or super talented, I'm a woodworker!

A woodworker can see the slightest difference in color or grain. Why? Because we are built differently. Those details matter. Most of the rest of the world CAN’T see it. Keep that in mind when you are producing your pieces for your customers. We are also our worst critics by a mile. We see the “flaw” in our work. They don’t. I had one of the best teachers you could ask for and he constantly yelled at me for telling on myself. I still do it…. I guess that's what stubborn folks do… 

Carl Ciesla loves to tell me about my “Super Powers” as a maker, which always makes me chuckle because I learn something everyday in the shop that blows my mind. As a Master Machinist just like Bill Clark they are the pinnacle of what I’d love to become. They however are not woodworkers. So maybe to them I do possess some sort of super power. I told Carl “Guessing is a unit of measurement” as a joke, but eyeballing is sort of guessing by taking in everything and measuring it with your eyes. 

Learning a new industry is very difficult…. Unless you are a woodworker. Woodworkers invite challenges almost to the point of masochism at times. We love the problem to solve almost as much as the final result of the solution. My ability to learn how to program machines, engineer parts and produce tools come from two things, the silence of working alone and the lifetime I spent solving problems with a material as alive as wood is. Metal moves when you machine it too, however wood moves just by looking at it too hard!

If you can woodwork you can use your super powers to do anything! 

Use your Super Powers to make something cool!

Rob