Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop

by Nick Offerman

In many cases, those of us who catch the obsessive bug for crafting things from wood have been left to our own devices to find instruction and sources for tools and materials. Of course, the advent of the Internet has made all of this much easier to accomplish, but even if one gleans a great wealth of information from the online community of makers, woodworking can still be a lonely pursuit.

Learning the skills

“It’s frustration that is actually the mother of invention. . . . If it starts to go off the rails, we are forced to be creative

Mother of invention is not necessity, but frustration. We learn from mistakes.

“Don’t use a computer. The computer cannot make art or craft, it can’t do it . . .” He goes on to say that a world run by technology is what Ruskin and William Morris feared, and that we may be on the verge of such a takeover even now. The interviewer asks him, “What is it you feel we’ll lose?” Garry holds up two prodigious, calloused and crooked hands, crowned by nine and a half fingers, and says simply, “These.”

Craftsman Garry Knox Bennett warns that using computers to make art risks losing our hands, or perhaps our own handmaking talents.

“I know you. I know your meaning.”

Tolkien quote? Ha!