Jesus Woodworker and the Decision to go CNC

After reading the last 2 posts you're probably wondering what a "Jesus woodworker" is.

My friend Lee Weitzman and I jokingly coined the term many years ago to describe a type of individual who would sometimes come into our employ as cabinet-makers.

It has nothing to do with religion.

To hear Lee describe it, a "Jesus woodworker" is a person who is so caught up in the craft of woodworking that they are oblivious to the notion of producing anything in a timely fashion. Taken to the extreme this type of artist/craftsperson will consider it their sacred duty to spend countless hours in meditation with a tree in order to intuitively discover what the tree wishes to be made into. Upon discovering this Truth in a moment of Zen the artist/craftsperson will then embark on a painstakingly long and time consuming process that will one day (hopefully) result in an actual piece of furniture being made.

If this happens to be the kind of furniture making process that stirs your gravy - no problem.
But do it on your own time, and don't pursue it as a vocation on someone else's dime.

My definition is a little simpler than Lee's because it simply acknowledges the Biblical Jesus of Nazareth as a woodworker who had the ability to walk on water.

In that context a "Jesus woodworker" is a person who feels that they too have the ability to walk on water - if only because they too are woodworkers.

Over the years I have met more than my share of cabinet-makers who suffer this affliction. Sometimes it comes from one who is older, and already set in his ways.
Other times the attitude would come from one of the young bucks - fresh out of school.
With diploma in hand they figure they already know more than I ever could.

In my lifetime the greatest archetype of a "Jesus woodworker" to ever cross my path showed up at my shop in late 1994. For the purposes of this post I'll refer to him as "Tom" (acronym for The Omnipotent Master).

By late 1994 we had so much work coming in that we were compelled to hire more people.

Tom was one of the applicants who showed up looking for a job as cabinet-maker. His resume seemed to check out, because he had worked at some of the better shops in the area. I still remember the interview, because my heart went out to him as he told me his sob story about being out of work for so long and not having money to buy Christmas gifts for his kids. I too had young kids and had suffered the downturn, so I decided to give the guy a chance.

Tom had more than his share of trouble getting up to speed. At first I tolerated his mistakes in the belief that our processes were new to him and he simply needed time to adjust. But even the simplest of tasks were tripping him up.

One day we were making Concerto Tables, which have a round wood top set into plywood rings. The grain pattern of the inset tops were diamond matched (as illustrated below) and in order to make them round we used a brad point bit to partly drill a 3/8" dia. hole into the underside of the top at the point where the veneer seams meet. This hole was then used to set the top on a pin, where it would be spun on an overhead router to make it round.

I gave Tom clear instructions on what to do, and left him to complete the job.

Upon my return a short while later I was shocked by what I saw. Each of the tops had a 3/8" dia hole drilled clean through the face.

"What the heck did you do?" I asked.

"Oh, I thought it would be easier to drill down through the face rather than measure from the underside" was his reply.

"But you drilled a hole clean through every top. What are we supposed to do about that?"

"Umm, maybe we could just putty it in."

"Are you nuts? This is high end stuff. You don't putty that in. And besides, where did you get it into your head to do it this way? I clearly explained what to do, and you didn't do it. Why?"

(What comes next is Tom's answer to this question, and I am not making this up)

"These tops getting screwed up are actually YOUR fault, because nowhere on your drawings does it say NOT to drill a 3/8" hole through the face."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He was blaming me for his own incompetence.

At this point I had to take a deep breath because in this moment of clarity I found myself fully aware of the fact that I live in an egalitarian country where it's not against the law to be stupid.

However, it is against the law to slap someone upside the head for being stupid.

With that in mind my thoughts suddenly raced to the world of mathematics. I knew how much I was paying Tom per hour, and how much his drug, dental and medical plans were costing me. Add in the statutory holidays, sick days, EI insurance, EHT, pension plan contributions and all the other costs of keeping this guy in my employ - and when my mental calculator punched out a total I suddenly realized that the hourly cost of giving this guy a paycheck every week was virtually identical to the financing costs on a 5-Axis CNC machining centre.

It was not difficult to figure out what my next decision would be.

Considering that I have always been an equal opportunity employer, I decided to give all the other employers an equal opportunity at Tom's services.

To use a sports analogy, Tom was now an unrestricted free agent.

How Things Get Made in My Shop

Before explaining how a "Jesus woodworker" can be detrimental to a shop such as mine, it is first necessary to explain how things actually get made around here.

Most woodworkers doing the kind of custom work I do tend to function as a one person shop. This kind of arrangement works well if you're making furniture as a sideline or hobby, and not depending on it as your primary source of income. Ideally this kind of set-up also requires an extremely low to non-existent overhead, which usually means working at home out of your basement or garage. Under this latter arrangement it would be difficult, but not impossible, to eke out a living in most circumstances.

In my own situation the economics of being a full time furniture maker requires me to operate on a less than tiny scale. This means I need to have people working with me to help defray the costs of running a shop such as this.

In 1992 I was working with a staff of 5 people, namely 2 cabinet-makers; 1 helper/machinist in the woodworking area; 1 finisher; and 1 finisher's helper (who also did polishing). Although I was tremendously hands on with all pieces being made, my day to day reality involved many distractions including telephone calls with customers and suppliers; dealing with quote requests; creating/revising drawings; ordering materials; and general day-to-day trouble-shooting.

Although the 5 people working with me were doing their various assignments independently, they were not really doing things on their own as much as they were doing things by extension from me. For example, let's say I was looking to build a custom dining table. I would make drawings and give them to one of the cabinet-makers - explaining how I wanted it made; what wood to use; how to run the grain; where to put mortise and tenons, etc. Typically this cabinet-maker would already be familiar with most of the nuances of what I wanted done, so he could pretty much proceed on his own without too much hands-on direction from me.

The helper/machinist wouldn't report directly to me. Instead he mostly worked by extension from the cabinet-maker who was himself working by extension from me. I would oversee the cabinet-maker, and the cabinet-maker would oversee the helper/machinist.

My finisher also worked independently, but also by extension from me. I would explain to him what kind of colour/finish/sheen I wanted and he, in turn, would work his magic to tangibly create whatever it was that I wanted to have done. His helper, in turn, would work by extension from him - often to sand and prep things as required by the project.

Collectively the 6 of us functioned as a team, which meant that I effectively had 6 pairs of hands creating my work, instead of just one.

Over the years this type of dynamic has usually worked well for me, provided I could maintain a shop size of roughly 7 people. This number always seemed to be the proverbial sweet spot for some reason, and I invariably learned that once that magic number of 7 got exceeded speed wobbles would usually appear somewhere in the shop.

During the 1980s when we were extremely busy we often had as many as 20 people working in our shop. Although the extra manpower did result in higher output I also found that the larger staff size created inherent inefficiencies. For example, a productive cabinet-maker who could easily manage one or two helpers could quickly be overwhelmed if he was called on to manage a small crew. With large numbers of projects being in the shop at one time details would sometimes fall through the cracks and mistakes would inevitably get made. These mistakes then required either me or one of my more experienced people to make things right again.

Finding a happy balance was always difficult during these times, because there was never any way to accurately predict how much work was coming in. Although we did occasionally not take on work, turning customers away was always something I tried to avoid as much as possible.

When we were at our busiest in the 1980s I began to explore the idea of integrating some CNC equipment into our shop. CNC is an acronym for Computed Numerically Controlled, and this is essentially a machine that utilizes a computerizer software package to generate code the will accurately cut and/or rout parts to particular shapes and sizes with extreme accuracy and efficiency. The precise logic of CNC appealed to me immensely, because the only mistake it could ever make was the one you programmed into it.

For me to admit thinking about CNC, let alone using it, is considered heresy and sacrilege to many in the studio furniture community. However in my mind a piece of CNC equipment is merely the latest advancement in the evolution of tools used by an artist or craftsman.

Today, for example, there are many studio furniture makers who feel quite comfortable using hand chisels to craft their work. To the furniture makers of ancient Egypt, however, the iron chisels of today would seem like advanced technology compared to the crude and soft copper tools they had available to them. In a similar way one can look at a table saw as a major technological advancement compared to the old way of hewing wood by hand with an axe.

I spent many years ruminating over the idea over going CNC, but it was never with an eye to automating my work. Rather, I ultimately viewed this technology as merely another tool that could also be utilized as an extension of my own hands.

Given the nature of the work I do, there always has been and always will be a considerable amount of hand work required in the making of one-of-a-kind custom pieces. These aspects of craft can never be automated cost effectively on a one-off basis. And having said that, I really don't think that using CNC to cut a table top into a perfect elliptical oval shape is in any ways compromising the integrity of the work just because the same shape wasn't created using the old school string and pencil technique.

Times change and we need to change with the times. Otherwise we as a species would still be hunkering down in caves, grunting back and forth in debate over the relevance of rubbing two sticks together for fire.

But I digress...

I ended up spending the better part of 5 years agonizing over the thought of going CNC.

Thanks to a "Jesus woodworker" I finally saw the light.

The Journey Continues (Pt. 12) - Ramping Up Again

Having experienced the severity of the economic recession of the early 1990s I had surprisingly mixed feelings about the surge of new work coming in from places like Brueton. Although one part of me was thankful to be busy once more, there was another part of me that dreaded the thought of ramping back up to warp speed again.

When we were at our busiest in the 1980s I was constantly working long hours, including evenings and weekends. This made it difficult to do simple things, such as spend time with my young family. Although it was tough to decelerate the business as orders dried up, it was also a welcome relief in some ways because I was simply burned out.

During these down times I began to sketch out all kinds of ideas of furniture concepts I wanted to have made. This became a surprisingly enjoyable exercise and it had an almost meditative quality for me. Deep down I loved the creativity of it all - conceiving ideas; sketching them out; then figuring out how to go about making them into reality. The latter part was easy because the science of making was something I had down to a fine art already - after years of taking other people's ideas and transforming them into finished product.

The first prototype I ended up taking from sketchbook to bench was a Biedermeier style desk - very similar to the Rainforest Desk shown below.
An old bundle of Myrtle Burl veneer that had been stored away for years was used to make the inset of the top, while offcuts of Macassar Ebony were utilized to make the apron, legs and plinths. Not long after the desk was completed I was fortunate to have it sold - to an author who was looking for an inspiration place where he could write his books.

The success and sale of this first piece - especially one that was wholly of my own creation - actually inspired me to consider scaling my shop down even smaller, to focus exclusively on making and selling my own designs. This fantasy, however, was short-lived because the economic reality of the situation had its own facts and figures.

For one thing I was now the father of 3 young children, and as much as it might be righteous and honourable to pursue the path of the starving artist - also starving one's family in the process was not a viable option.

In addition, despite how cool I thought my furniture pieces were, the marketplace as a whole was not sharing my enthusiasm. Aside from the initial desk sale, three consecutive years of displaying at IIDEX did virtually nothing to stimulate any interest in my designs although, to be fair, the recession going on at the time wasn't conducive for sales either.

Around 1992 or 1993 there was also a Call for Entry for furniture designs to be submitted for an upcoming book entitled "Conservation by Design". This was a collaborative effort by W.A.R.P. (Woodworkers' Alliance for Rainforest Protection) and the furniture design program at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) to select tangible examples of sustainable furniture designs. I was thrilled beyond belief at this opportunity to be published, and felt certain that my Rainforest Desk would be one of the pieces selected.

Sadly, of the 76 furniture makers accepted for publication, I wasn't one of them.

About a year later there was another Call for Entry - and another rejection - once again from RISD. This time it was my "Tower of Power" that bit the proverbial dust.


It was shortly after we started ramping up with Brueton that I had a lengthy discussion with J. Wade Beam on what my business focus should be. Wade advised me to abandon my efforts to develop my own pieces and focus, instead, on being an OEM supplier to companies like Brueton. At the time this seemed like sage advice, for a couple of reasons.

First, given the rejections I was getting it seemed obvious that my furniture pieces weren't resonating with the more knowledgeable design academics of the world. Second, thanks to the recession there was now a seismic shift under way in the way in which companies had their pieces made. Making things in-house was now falling out of vogue as more and more designers began to outsource rather than invest in their own production. (Of course, taken to its extreme this ultimately led to the almost complete offshoring of production that we now see today).

As the 1990s wore on our base of OEM clients expanded to include not only Brueton but also Vladimir Kagan, Rick Shaver, Monroe Sherman (Sherman Designs), and Lee Weitzman. To keep up with the growing influx of work we were soon compelled to expand the size of our staff.

Although I was never keen on having large numbers of people working for me, in many ways I had little choice if I was going to keep my customers happy.

But it was only after I hired a "Jesus woodworker" that I decided to go CNC.

Contemplating: Who Reads This Blog?

When speaking with other bloggers the comment I hear most often is: "I can never tell if anyone is even reading this thing, because no one makes any comments."

I am no different when it comes to questioning the level of interest in my writing, because after 17 posts (not including this one) only 3 people have bothered to comment so far.

Although I could be disappointed by this, in all honesty the lack of response doesn't really bother me at all - for several reasons.

First, my underlying reason for starting this blog really had very little to do with how popular it might become. In reality, given my son's interest in doing what I do for a living I wanted to document as many of my experiences and life lessons as possible in the hope that this might somehow be of benefit to him. After all, to paraphrase Winston Churchill: "Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them."

Second, for a long time I have wanted to write a book on the trials and tribulations of making a living as a full time furniture maker. Writing this blog has forced me to take a major step in that direction, because I am now compelled to sort through my memory databases, paperwork junk piles and photographic archives to assemble my thoughts and experiences into some kind of (hopefully) coherent story.

Third, despite the lack of actual comments this blog receives I am helped by the fact that I have installed a widget called Lijit here. What is Lijit? Lijit is basically a piece of software that provides metrics on what people see and like about the blog. In essence, it tells me a little bit about the type of reader who does visit, and why. (You'll notice a tiny map with flags in the top right corner of the main page, which highlights the location of recent visitors).

Lijit is actually pretty cool. While it doesn't tell me specifically who my actual visitors are, it does tell me what location blog hits are coming from - and why. For example, I know there's a reader in Denmark who has checked out my postings a couple of times because they Google searched "Furniture Society Faculty Selects". I have a couple of readers in Mexico, including Oaxaca; and two new readers from Germany and Argentina, respectively. Plus there's also someone in Kathmandu, Nepal who has checked in once or twice.

Nepal? Who would have thought that anyone in Nepal would be reading something here?

A number of hits have also come from Google in Costa Rica, plus others via Google engines in Australia, Brazil, Dubai, the Netherlands and UAE. Lately it seems that Google searches for the term "500 Cabinets" is one of the biggest drivers of interest.

Perhaps the biggest thrill of all came a couple of days ago when I suddenly found my Lijit page lit up with hundreds of hits. This happened just after my post about the New York Yankees boardroom table, and my first thought was that maybe I hit a literary sweet spot that piqued reader interest.

Upon further investigation it turns out that what really happened was that someone in California posted a link on a forum saying, in effect, that this was an "interesting blog". Thanks to that shout-out alone I have received well over 400 hits (and counting) in only a couple of days.

While none of these new readers have posted any replies, the coolest thing for me is knowing that my writings are actually resonating with people outside my immediate circle.

And, so, to the reader in California and to everyone else who have come here to check out these writings, I say: "Thanks". Your interest is an added boost that encourages me to keep writing.

The Journey Continues (Pt. 11) - The Call From Brueton

When I was told that J. Wade Beam from Brueton was on the phone I thought for sure that someone was playing a practical joke on me.

Brueton at the time was one of the world's elite high end furniture companies. Wade was both the chief designer and Director of Sales and Marketing for them, and for the past five years I had been trying (without success) to meet with Wade each time I travelled to New York. Each effort made at their showroom in the D&D Building was rebuffed by the same reply: namely that Brueton did their own woodwork and didn't require outside vendors.

After confirming the call was for real I asked why he was calling. Wade told me that Brueton's primary focus was stainless steel, and they had near zero in-house woodworking capacity. They were looking to expand the wood side of their business with some new designs, but to do this they needed talent. Apparently he'd heard of us through the industry grapevine and was calling to see if we were interested.

Were we interested?

Let's put it this way: If you're a car maker and a guy named Enzo Ferrari calls to see if you want to build some high end cars with him, what do you say?

Hell, yes !!

For months on end we worked intensively with Wade to develop a wide range of new designs, which were eventually unveiled at NEOCON in Chicago. It was during NEOCON that I finally met the company's owner, Leo Fromm.

Mr. Fromm was a successful publishing magnate from Germany who owned several companies. His interest in owning Brueton seemed to stem from his absolute love for fine furniture. I got the impression that, for him, owning Brueton was akin to why some men own professional sports teams - for the love of what the franchise represents, and a passion for excellence.

In the photo above Mr. Fromm is reviewing one of the new Concerto Table prototypes. He especially loved how the 4-way box match of the Crotch Mahogany top formed a pattern that, to him, looked like a butterfly's wings. I was astounded at how something so seemingly simple could move this man so deeply.

It wasn't long before company president Howard Chapman sat down with me to write out a slew of orders. With several strokes of the pen we were suddenly very busy again.

The ensuing years turned out to be an especially exciting time for us, because many of the designs coming out of Brueton really pushed the envelope of our woodworking and finishing capabilities.

The Virginian Credenza was probably the most difficult of all the new prototypes. Maybe for that reason it was also one of the most satisfying pieces we have ever produced. The main body was comprised of two half shells - each made of an inner and outer kerfed ply filled with epoxy resin, which was then vacuum formed around an elliptical plug.

The back shell was fitted with shelves and dividers, while the front was cut into doors. The top was center butt matched Crotch Mahogany trimmed with ribbon sapele. The stainless steel detail at the floor is actually convex in shape, to emulate the curve of the casework. All exposed woodwork was finished in high gloss polyester to accentuate the grain.

The Virginian Table presented some challenges of it's own. While the elliptical base was easy enough to make, shaping the bottom of it to match the freeform curve of the stainless steel plinth as challenging to say the least. The box matched Crotch Mahogany top was encased in a 3" band of solid ribbon mahogany, which needed to be step routed by hand with custom carbide to achieve its deep elliptical profile.

Concerto Tables had quirks of their own, especially in final assembly. The holes in the stainless steel ring had to align perfectly with the leg bushings for these tables to be symmetrical.

During its peak years Brueton was a magnet for creative talent such as Mitchell Pickard - shown here testing out his new Melrose Chair. In subsequent years we would collaborate with Mitch on on many of his furniture designs, including the Angeline Console which was recently featured in "500 Cabinets" by Lark Books.

As a testament to his creative range Mitch is currently designing and building some very cool custom motorcycle wheels and parts at his own company, Pickard USA

Our collaboration with Brueton allowed us to produce some exceptional custom furniture pieces, including this 22' long boardroom table for the New York Yankees professional baseball team. What isn't apparent in the photo is how we managed to subtly blend 3 elliptical spline segments into a functional ergonomic shape. This table would otherwise have been "pointy" at the ends had a pure ellipse been used.

Prior to shipping we stuck a Toronto Blue Jays sticker to the underside of the top.

I never heard if George Steinbrenner found that funny.

How I Became Green - Thanks to Captain Planet

In the 1980s there was a small but growing awareness of environmental issues in the world, thanks largely to groups such as Greenpeace with media campaigns that spoke of clearcutting in the Amazon rainforest. While I was basically aware of what was going on down there I didn't pay it much heed because, frankly, there seemed to be very little I could do about it.

At the time we were buying wood from a fellow named Andrew Poynter of A&M Wood Specialty. Andrew imported exotic woods for custom woodworkers such as myself, and although our volume of wood use was small we did know we were playing some kind of a role in the problem.

In tandem with fellow pioneers such as Scott Landis of the Woodworkers' Alliance for Rainforest Protection (W.A.R.P.) Andrew ended playing an instrumental role in educating woodworkers such as myself on what the problem was, in the hope of finding a solution.

The dialogues and grassroots efforts of groups such as Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund and W.A.R.P. inevitably led to recognition of the need for standards development which, in turn, resulted in the creation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in 1993.

But in the interim, and until FSC got off the ground, several rudimentary efforts were made to protect the Amazon. One of these initiatives was the "Guardian of the Amazon" program -sponsored by World Wildlife Fund. The gist of this effort was that with every purchase of wood made you would "adopt" an acre of tropical rainforest in order to protect it from clearcutting. In practical terms, support of this program was one of our first "green" initiatives as custom furniture makers. But our support at the time was a proverbial drop in the bucket at best, given the relative low volumes of wood we were actually purchasing.

The thing that really catalyzed my involvement with forest sustainability took place later in 1991, when my oldest son was about 4 years old. He was watching a television show called "Captain Planet", and in this one particular episode the team of environmental superheroes ended up fighting a bad guy who was destroying the rainforest with a giant machine - in order to make furniture.

Since my son knew I made furniture for a living he wondered if maybe I, too, was a bad guy.

Visibly upset, he asked me point blank if the furniture I was making was also destroying the rainforest.

That became without question a moment of truth for me, because in my desire to answer him as honestly as possible I came to realize that I really didn't know all that much about the wood I was using, or where it was coming really from.

This was the initial seed to be planted that later manifested for me as a passion for sustainability.

It wasn't until 1996 that the seed really took root with the felling of K'iid K'iyaas on Haida Gwaii.

The Journey Continues (Pt.10) - Hitting Rock Bottom

Although the recession was technically over by 1992, the reality of our order book was that things were not rebounding. On some days it seemed the downward slide would never end.

Earlier in the year the company reached a milestone - 25 years in business !
That should have been cause for celebration.
Instead I wondered if we could make it through another year.

By now I was also the father of 3 small children.
The photo (below) was taken in Thanksgiving of that year.
On the surface it shows me together with them - enjoying the changing leaves.

What the photo doesn't show is what I was feeling inside.

What I was feeling was fear. Fear, and a sense of complete failure.

Fear about losing the business, and maybe my home along with it.
Fear about what would become of my family if this happened.
I felt failure - both as a husband and as a father. How would I provide?
I felt failure also as a businessman; and as a boss.
After all, I didn't like having to lay people off for lack of work. They had families too.
And almost most painfully of all I felt failure as a son, to my father, for being the one at the helm as the place he created slowly sank.

Things were slipping from my grasp, and it seemed there was nothing I could do to stop it.

What made matters worse was the sense of feeling alone with it all.

Sure, I talked with my father to let him know what was happening, but despite his pep talks and words of encouragement I could also sense his disappointment and concern.

I was supposed to make him proud.
Instead, I was screwing up royally.

Teresa, meanwhile, had her hands full being a full time Mom to our 3 kids.
It seemed the last thing I needed to do was dump my problems on her.

So, I decided the best course of action was to simply suck it up, and keep my mouth shut.
In retrospect that probably wasn't the wisest thing to do.

At some point things spiralled down to absolute rock bottom for me.
One night I was sitting alone; mentally anguishing over what to do and what else to try. I had been going through this exercise already - night after night after night, for months on end, trying one thing after another after another - all to no avail.

On this particular night I had finally come to the realization that I was completely out of ideas.
There was nothing else to do; nothing else to try.
I had tried everything, and nothing I did or was going to do would make any difference.

It was humbling to say the least, because the smart guy who always had an answer for everything - who could always find some solution to any problem - was now totally tapped out.

It was done.

For the first time in my life I came to the realization that everything was totally out of my hands.
What happened next is probably the most difficult thing I have ever tried to describe.

Upon reaching this place of abject despondency, I found myself literally surrendering inside.
Somewhere deep within I simply "broke", and in that moment it felt as if my soul cried out for help. There is no other way to describe it - it felt as if I broke inside.

In that precise moment of feeling complete helplessness and surrender it felt as if this huge door swung open inside, and I just "knew" things were going to work out. I didn't know if, or when, or how; but somehow I just knew things were going to be OK.

Some people might describe this as a religious experience, and maybe it was.
While I have always believed in the existence of a God, or higher power, I've never considered myself to be particularly religious. So maybe the feeling was more spiritual, than religious.

Regardless of what that moment was, or wasn't, things didn't change for the better overnight.

But several weeks later the phone rang and someone paged me to say that a guy named J. Wade Beam from Brueton wanted to talk with me.

"Yeah, right", I thought. Someone must be playing a practical joke.