Dead Ends

Kale Vogt,
December 10, 2024

Some of the hardest learned lessons for me as an apprentice have been less about technicalities and more about broader themes.

Lessons such as: Less is more; know when to say no; and wood hates you are just a few that come to mind.

As much as I thought learning the ins and outs of my block plane would help me along my woodworking journey, it turns out these broader themes have have been of more use to me as a woodworker (as of now.)

And if there’s one thing about these lessons, it’s that you never know when a new one will come along.

A couple weeks ago our friend Rudy Everts was in town. While here, he taught a two-day block-printing class at our Willard storefront then stayed an extra week to shoot a green wood chairmaking how-to video with Chris and me.

Everything was going smoothly and according to plan. Rudy is an experienced green wood woodworker. I watched, hypnotized, as he hacked chair parts from the logs Rudy and Chris had scavenged from a questionable location. (A graveyard. It was a graveyard).