For the growth of it.

I'm taking a slight break from the lathe where I've been turning small samples of Arkansas hardwoods to place in the reliquaries of wood. Add it up. Five reliquaries, 25 hardwood species in each, and that's a lot of time on the lathe. They're small, but require intense concentration. Each has to be checked carefully to be sure the bases fit the holes where they're to be placed in the boxes.

I received a nice email thanking me for the inspiration offered by my books and youtube channel. The sender was a retired MD and medical specialist. He included photos of his excellently crafted work. He also had a question about how to sell his work. I get that question a lot.

You’ve probably noticed that the world is overrun with way too much stuff and that folks in general do not recognize any particular monetary value in things made by hand. Medical services are particularly in high demand. Woodworking is not. So we find other reasons to do it. My wife shops regularly in my office for things she can donate to one charitable cause or another. In charity auctions the work brings only a portion of what I would think of as their value compared to what I’ve invested in them.   I do sell things occasionally on DougStowe.etsy.com. I also have galleries in the state and local area that sell my work and I used to sell my work at craft shows, which are a tremendous amount of work and often disappointing.

I will point out that selling things is work. I have a friend that sets up at the farmer’s market each week. He has the process down. He quickly sets up the tent and arranges his merchandise and occasionally sells a few things… mainly  toward Christmas. He likes seeing the folks and seeing them admire his work. But his prices are so low that he can’t make much money if that was his objective.

Make a plan to give away as much as you can. That will clear the decks for making more work. And we must recognize that the best reason to do woodworking (or other crafts) is not to make money from it, but to grow from it. There are so many things to learn from it, and there are no limits to how far one might grow.

If you are recently retired from making the big bucks, a crafts practice like woodworking might be a way to continue to learn and continue to give back.

While away from the lathe for now, I'm hand sanding the bases for the reliquaries. Because they have a 30 degree table sawn angle around the perimeter, hand sanding with a sanding block is the best approach. Machine sanding would round the edges and remove the crisp lines that accentuate the design. 

The sanding block is a piece of birch plywood with a piece of self-adhesive sand paper applied.

Hand sanding is work I look forward to as it can be done as I sit on the front porch and as golden doodle Rosie rests near my feet.

Make, fix and create.