woodworder

It was a surprise, though it shouldn't have been, when it was revealed that our latest plumber is also a certified electrician. You really have to be, he said, otherwise how would immersion heaters get installed?. The thing with tradesppl is that they often have to work together all hugger-mugger and sometimes the 'prentice calls in sick. Who's going to hold the far end of the carpenters snap-line? The sparkie! Soon enough, if they pay attention, are respectfully curious and make really strong tea, youngsters can learn how to cut a 2 x 4 into 3 equal parts; lay a row of bricks not too shabby; snake a wire and connect the socket. All building contractors started in one trade and became competent in the others. At least so that they could recognise crap workmanship.

One of the most important things I learned in University was how to hold a handsaw: use your index finger to point, you'll cut straighter. I was helping make flats for the lunchtime theatre club and the college carpenter kindly came to lend a hand supervise the gilded youth. I've made tables, chairs, boxes from unlikely materials but my standards are low on aesthetics if adequate on engineering.

I've given up browsing in the library. My reading list works heavily on recommendation, so my library trips are confined to when books I've reserved come in. That and Borrowbox which delivers [earbooks] to the sofa. The Beloved operates more old-style and throws herself on the mercy of the shelves. Last week she took a punt on a book for me, by and about a philosophical carpenter from NYC. I romped through this memoir of a life dealing with flawed [aren't we all] people and the  material world. It's like Lewis "LOTC" Thomas and Robert "ZAMM" Pirsig mentored Ernest "Fighty" Hemingway.

The book = How to Build Impossible Things: Lessons in Life and Carpentry. A carpenter's notes on life and the art of good work (2023) by Mark Ellison The title subtitle subsubtitle is quite meta because, like the interminable The End of the LOTR film, there is Final Chapter, then an Epilogue, then a Further Thoughts before we get to the Acknowledgments . . . there is no index. Random House produced a Editor for the book who might have been tighter, hmmm? Ellison produced the illustrator - his son Martin Ellison.

Typical of the f[l]ights found in the book is this: "One and a half trillion dollars [for the F-35 fighter plane program] is coincidentally enough money to send every high school senior in the country to MIT for four years. Now, MIT wouldn't take them: it's highly selective, and most seniors wouldn't go anyway, having lost interest in education way back in grade school when the teachers couldn't even come up with serviceable blackboard erasers. But it's interesting to imagine what might occur if we lived in a country that put as much value in educating its populace as it did on eliminating the perceived threat that foreign populations represent".

Ellison is a skilled carpenter and is no more qualified to opine about government spending than my cat any other chippy from the Rust Belt. Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man. That paragraph in a book about design, materials and shitty clients smacks of Dunning-Kruger and poor editorial control. But then again, Nobel Prize winners do this alll the time [looking at you Vitamin Linus], so why not master carpenters? . . . and my cat says miaaow. I can't resist having a snipe at another unintentionally funny editorial lapse. One of Ellison's perfectly designed spaces is "The Knave of Chartres Cathedral" - you can see his foot [R].

If you've ever been in the midst of a renovation project [like us for 8 months 1996-1997] you know that the chaos mounts as the deadline approaches. A week out and the client sees wires blurfing out of the walls, the kitchen sink still in its packing, a hole where the stairs should be and believes their agree move-in date is shot. But six days later at tea-time the lads are sweeping the last of the wood-shavings and wire-strippings into a dustbin as they knock off for their final day on site. Proper craftsmen work fast and well: figuring it's easier to do it right as make a weeping hames of it.

Comparisons are made [during an interview in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, no less]  between carpentry and orthopedic surgery: each trade works with organic material and requires microscopic tolerance but not perfection. Because organic, finishing the project can be dynamic - doors warp, joints go osteoporotic after the fix has been signed off. I've cited this article because it gives a flavor of Ellison's voice, without having to buy the book.

The most disturbing aspect of this memoir is that, for decades, Ellison's clients were comically wealthy dot-com billionaires and hedge-fund managers with a sprinkling of pop and film stars. The material waste is colossal. Mistakes are made and fashions change and perfectly serviceable kit is ripped out and sent to the dump. The apparatchiks of power [architects, project managers, designers, decorators] are [not all] lazy and incompetent make-weights. It's unfair to be finding a wall for the super-rich when the revolution comes without making room for their enablers and parasites.