Will you have enough time to accomplish all your career goals? Will you have time for interest for things outside of career? These were questions that I pondered in my earlier years.

Could I share with you how I found my answers to these questions?

My ideas of career were shaped by the Victorian mentality which were still pervasive in my youth. You worked hard, stayed at the same job and when you retired you got a gold watch and that was it.

The first inkling I had that this was not so was as an employer. I was always having to hire personnel to work in my office. I found that forever was about five years and a long time was about three years. Some only lasted weeks or months.

Transcending Time and Becoming More Productive

In 1975 I had an eye-opening experience. I learned the TM technique. I was dubious about the time commitment it required. I was a very busy practicing medical specialist and I was already too busy. Where would I ever find twenty minutes twice a day to sit quietly and meditate? Yet I was so curious about the benefits that I decided to try it, if only for a few days.

Six months later, as I began to use my intelligence more creatively, I made some changes in my work schedule and immediately started doing 20% more work each day in less time that it had taken formerly. That means that every day I made 20% more income in less time.

Enough Time for Hobbies

That increase in creativity took another direction as well. I had always liked to carve on wood with a pocket knife but had never done anything significant other that win a model airplane contest. I found my interest and my skills beginning to explode in the area of woodworking. Several years later I found myself making 18th century museum reproductions without any apprenticeship or study other than what was available in books.

I can’t tell you how much satisfaction my interest outside of my career brought me. After using my deductive and analytic powers all day, it was pure bliss to let the creative aspect of my nature loose in the wood shop in the evenings.

Looking back at all this from my current perspective I realize that what hems us in is boundaries. I am busy with my career, I have no time for outside interests. This is a boundary. I have to stay in the same career until I retire or die. This is a boundary. Well, if we create boundaries, we can uncreate them. I have learned that at our center we are unbounded. We represent all possibilities. That is how some can accomplish so much.

Letting Go of Boundaries

As I began to let go of boundaries, I found a wonderful field of health care that I had overlooked. It used natural means to recreate balance in the body and mind and was not only effective but free of harmful side effects. So I embarked on a second career in my chosen field of health care.

The more I learned about this the more I wanted to share it with others. I always had a fondness for learning and the academic life so at age 47 I left the private practice of medicine and became a university professor, researcher and director of an alternative medicine clinic for the faculty and staff. Several years later I became a teacher of the TM technique and started on another teaching career.

Eventually I left the university to teach in the field and then was asked to start an alternative medical school. As I approached retirement age I decided to return to my native city and just teach the TM technique and do my woodworking. After a year of this I decided to turn my passionate hobby of woodworking into a small business. Now whenever I am not busy with one thing I love doing I am doing the other.

Your True Nature is Free of Boundaries

My point with all of this is that there is great value to getting to know the unbounded nature of the inner self. Without the technique for quieting the mind, I was completely unaware of my inner nature. Had you told me at age 26, the year I finished my academic training, that I would have so many careers and do so many different things, I would have laughed at you.

So, if you feel that you don’t have enough time for what you want to do, if you feel trapped in a career path that is no longer in your best interest, then I suggest you get a technique for becoming unbounded. TM is that technique which worked for me. The important thing is that you find one that works for you. Otherwise you will be absolutely correct. You will not escape from your self-created boundaries and time will run out.

In the recent blog entry I posted on saws it might be fun to amplify the central idea which was discussed. That was how do you make sense when there are so many different facts to consider. The world is awash in data. We double the amount of knowledge every few years or so and to some it seems like every few weeks. Now with the internet giving us access to knowledge from all over the earth, the task of making sense of it all is a bit daunting.

I was extremely fortunate to have been introduced to Vedic wisdom by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who founded the TM movement. In earlier blog posts I credited my starting the TM technique for my explosive increase in interest and capability in woodworking some 34 years ago. What I learned from Vedic wisdom, which is the oldest tradition of knowledge in the world today, is that if there are parts there has to be wholeness. Without the concept of wholeness the idea of parts would be meaningless. Parts only have meaning if understood in terms of being parts of a greater wholeness.

You have often heard that saying: “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” In some way wholeness is quite different than a collection of parts. It is a transcendental value. It can be described with terms like infinite and unbounded. Wholeness is infinite, more than the most, and that is a transcendental value. It goes beyond the boundaries of lists and collections. If it is a transcendental or non-material value, what is its practical value?

To answer this, let’s come back to the concrete example we discussed in the blog entry about saws. Think about a single saw. It has a motor, a mechanical drive to connect the saw to the blade. There is a way to adjust the depth of cut of the blade. There is some sort of table to hold the wood being cut. There needs to be some sort of stand to hold the saw and it may be mobile by adding a base with wheels. The motor is made on innumerable parts. There is an armature, windings of copper wire if it is an electric motor. There are switches to turn it off and on. If it is gas powered, then there is a piston, connecting rod, gas tank, oil reservoir and housing. Don’t forget that saw blades come in a dizzying array of widths, thicknesses, number of teeth per inch, arrangement of teeth, types of steel used in the teeth, the set or rake of the teeth, etc. The list could go on but you get the point.

Now consider how many different manufacturers of saws there are. Some are no longer made but still work today. Every manufacturer may make many different models of saws. There are different sizes and different price ranges.

Saws are designed for different purposes. Some cut thick wood, some thin wood, some cut straight cuts, others cut curved cuts. Some cut at right angles and others cut on a bevel.

What we have here is a point, in this case the saw, expanding to an infinity of parts. In the concept of a saw we see that it gives rise to innumerable parts with dizzying speed. How can we ever make sense of all the parts? We just get overwhelmed.

Yet we don’t need to know about all saws and we probably don’t need to know all about any particular saw. What we need is a wholeness point to begin. In my last blog post I tried to explain how my collection of saws allow me to take advantage of a valuable resource. namely, found wood. This is wood discarded by others as it has no value to them. Yet what I see is beautiful bowls and utensils hidden beneath the shabby exterior.

So my approach to saws starts from the wholeness point of converting found wood into wood I can use in my shop. The saw used first is the chain saw. This can cut big chunks of wood into more manageable size pieces which can be lifted without heavy equipment. It can also be used to cut rough dimensional lumber with the proper attachment or by freehand.

The next saw is the large bandsaw. This allows me to dimension the rough wood into more carefully dimensioned pieces and also allows me to cut curves. If I need to cut smaller radii then I use my smaller bandsaw. My table saw comes into play when I need precisely dimensioned wood for furniture or pieces for spindle turning when I make many copies of the same thing. If I have a very long plank that needs to be cut into shorter pieces, I use my cut off saw with its long table. If I need some very small parts then I may use my scroll saw which can cut thin wood into amazingly intricate and complex shapes.

So, all my saws play a role in leading me to the one goal of making use of found wood. Of course some of the same saws work fine on commercial dimensioned lumber. It is just that I rarely have occasion to buy any of that. Everything fits together nicely and nothing is redundant or unneeded. The parts make the wholeness of my woodworking goal.

Now, when I look for a saw, it has to fit into the wholeness of my shop goal. I don’t get confused about saws that don’t fulfill my specific purpose. I don’t need to check out every model and every manufacturer. I don’t have to have one of everything. I don’t have to have an infinitely large shop. It is big enough as it is, thank you.

So how do you figure out what is the wholeness part? The secret I found was to allow my attention to go inward. For that I have a technique which is the Transcendental Meditation program. I have leaned that at my source I am infinite and unbounded. I am made of wholeness. Everything I could ever want is there. As I regularly contact that field of wholeness I begin, over time, to bring that wholeness with me when I come back out into activity.

This gives me two fullnesses. It brings infinity out into the boundaries of specific parts. Now I can operate among all the parts without getting lost in the specific parts because I always have my eye on the wholeness or the infinite. This is the best of both worlds. I can operate in the parts but not get lost in them.

This ability to see wholeness while immersed in the parts can be developed by anyone. Even I learned how to do that. I just wish I had known how to do that when I was a medical student studying anatomy. Talk about being lost in the parts, that was the quintessential experience.

So, trying to operate without wholeness is to be equipped with only half of what you need. Perhaps this is why for so many, life is a struggle.

Here I am doing one of my least favorite jobs. What you see is one of my scroll chucks, and a very good one at that. This is the large chunk of metal that facilitates holding wood on the lathe. To accommodate different sizes and shapes of wood to be fastened on the lathe it requires that many different types of jaws be fixed to the chuck. Some will hold a large spigot of wood and some a small one. Others are the flat metal discs that grip the wood with the plastic buttons seen in the previous essay. Still others are made to fit into a dovetail recess that has been turned on the bowl or platter blank bottom. These different interchangeable jaws greatly extend the usefulness of the chuck and this in turn increases productivity. This is very exciting when you are starting out because it opens up so many new possibilities. So in this picture I am in the process of changing jaws on the chuck.

It is the nature of man to always look for more and more. People are restless moving here and there looking for something better. This is what motivates growth. I am no exception. When the novelty wore off of having so many exchangeable jaws on my chuck, which enabled me to do so many more things, the reality set in. To change the jaws takes unscrewing a minimum of eight metal screws that hold the jaws to the chuck body. So, unscrew eight screws, remove the jaws and use the eight screws to reattach a different set of jaws. This task is time consuming and not very uplifting and not creative in the least.

I would much rather use my creative energy and skills in turning the wood itself. It has occurred to me that it would be much more efficient to have many scroll chuck bodies with the different jaws already attached. Then I would just have to exchange different chucks on the lathe for different jobs. This takes a lot less time than removing the chuck, unscrewing the jaws and then refastened the new jaws. I would have reduced my labor steps to two rather than four and I estimate that I would save between ten and fifteen minutes each change. In an average day in the shop I estimate that I would change jaws at least three times and sometimes more. Now there is a lot you can get done in thirty to forty-five minutes of uninterrupted work time.

So we start out in life not knowing much but with a desire to know more and more. As we learn more we learn how to employ technology to increase our output and creativity. Each new technology offers advantages and drawbacks. At first we are so excited to have the new capability that we are not critical of the time it takes to employ that technology. After all it is already saving us lots of time and energy. Yet after we work with it a while we begin to wonder if there is some better way to extract more efficiency from the technology. We begin to fine tune the use of the technology to make us more efficient. In this case fine tuning would be having as many chuck bodies as I had separate interchangeable jaws.

This solution comes with a price tag. The chuck bodies are fairly expensive ( at least $200 apiece). I have at least eight different sets of jaws and there may be more that I would like to have. Soon I would have more invested in jaws than I did in the lathe itself. So I think further. There are just a few jaws that I use most of the time and if I just had two more chuck bodies, it would still save me most of the wasted time. Now I figure what my time is worth per hour and see how long it would take to pay for the extra chucks and see if it made sense from an economic standpoint. Somewhere in here I would find a formula for maximum time and creativity saved with the least expenditure of cash.

So, we are never done growing. It is the nature of life to grow towards more and more. Thus we remain dynamic and do not become static. We keep thinking on ways to improve what we do. We try to minimize the dull routine work and maximize the creative part of the job. This brings us more and more pleasure because we are becoming more and more creative day by day.

Another point comes to mind. Time is the most precious thing we have. Past is past and is forever gone. We can never bring it back. The future is always the day after this one. So the present moment is all that we really have. That is why it is so important to use the present in the most efficient and uplifting way possible. Then we see that we are progressing on our road to have more and more, whether it be creativity, wealth, security, love or whatever.

How have you become more efficient in your work or play?

I have my own philosophy about tools. With some crude ones I have done some good work. It is not so much the tool that you have but the use to which you put the tool. Japanese master builders put together the most complicated joints requiring no nails, either of wood or metal. They accomplish this with a couple of hand saws, some chisels, a mallet and use their knee and the weight of their bodies as a vise. Those tools they do use are of the highest quality but they have learned how to get the most out of them.

I started my turning using a second hand inexpensive Sears and Roebuck lathe sold to me by a former patient. By the time I moved up to a the lathe I have now, I had learned to get the most out of the lathe I had been using. So, I suggest to someone just starting out that they get the tool they can afford and learn to use it fully before investing in more expensive equipment. If you get that tool used, then you will not be investing very much. Look in free papers that list things for sale or look in the classifieds in your newspaper.

Once you have the tool, it is good to get a book on the proper use and care of that tool so that you become knowledgeable. There are excellent books written on every commonly used wood working tool in the shop, replete with photographs and easy to follow text. It was not like that when I started working wood.

As an inexperienced turner I wanted to show my children my new found skill. I had a very uneven piece of wood on the lathe so I made a note to turn the wood at the lowest speed. I adjusted the belts accordingly and then with my children standing on either side of me, I turned on the lathe.

As the lathe cranked up to its maximum speed the large chunk of wood came spinning wildly into the air and crashed into a metal bucked on the floor putting a large dent in it that served as a reminder to my folly for many years―I realized that I had adjusted the belts for the maximum and not the minimum speed. I had insufficient knowledge about my machine, and my error could have injured my children or myself had any of us been hit with the flying wood. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so learn all you can about your wood working machine before you ever turn it on. Don’t operate in haste and repent in leisure.

As you use your starter machine you become aware of what it will do well. In time you notice that it won’t do some of the things you want and you begin to make mental notes of the features you will require when you upgrade to your next machine. Then when you do make a purchase of the newer machine, you really appreciate the additional features it offers.

It is not a bad idea to approach life in a similar manner. Get as much knowledge as you can before you start out on any venture. Learn to do the very best you can within the framework of that venture as you make mental note on the new features you would like your next venture to embrace. This is called growth, and that is the nature of life.

Ever notice how many different kinds of hands there are? I have come to the conclusion that there is a hand type for every purpose. One of my favorite quotes is that an artist is not a special kind of person but every person is a special kind of artist.

My own hands are not suited for many purposes. With wide stubby fingers, I cannot type on a notebook computer or use a cell phone with ease as I hit three keys for every one intended. My wide hand will not fit inside a quart jar to clean it easily. My handwriting was never a thing of beauty earlier in my life and now I cannot even read it myself.

Yet the strength in my hands serve me quite well in working with wood. Using a chain saw, holding a carving knife or using a wood turning gouge all day gives me no problem.

Since each hand is different, it is nice to be able to make your own tool handles to fit your hands best. Once you know the basics of wood turning, making your own handles is quite simple. Blanks from most any hard wood will do quite well. I start by turning the diameter for the ferrule to fit over where the tool steel joins the wood. Once I have determined the inside diameter of my ferrule, usually just 3/4 inch long piece cut from a scrap of pipe and deburred on the grinder, I transfer this to the wood on the lathe using calipers.

Once I have the wood the that accepts the ferrule the proper size, I take the wood off the lathe and tap the ferrule over the turned end. I then remount the wood on the lathe and finish turning the handle, sand it and apply finish while it is still spinning on the lathe. Decorations can be added such as grooves to suit your individual taste.

In this day of mass produced tools, there is something very satisfying to pick up a tool handle of your own design. You can make it out of a very pretty wood. This will give you a sense of being uplifted every time you put it in your hand or your eye falls on it. A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Craftsmen of the past took great pride in the appearance of their own, hand-made tools, as they felt that their tools were a reflection of their own craftsmanship.

There is also a practical aspect to this. At my wood turning club meeting last week, one of the senior turners admitted that he had over one hundred turning tools. While I am not in that league, I must have thirty or forty and every time I see a new turning demonstration I find that there are several more tools that I need. Now, if all the tool handles are identical as supplied by one manufacturer, just try to pick out the special tool you need from that stack.

On the other hand, if some have ash handles, some cherry, some beech, some walnut, some maple and each is a different design and length with different numbers of grooves in the handle, it is much easier for the eye to fall on the one you need. When you add to this the fact that you made it just the right diameter and shape that fits your hand best, then you develop a real fondness for the tool.

If you strive to create beauty, then you should have beautiful things around you. What you see you become is an old proverb. When you are surrounded by beautiful things then it is easier to create beauty in the project you have selected.

Now it is not much of a jump to go from making your own handles to making the shape of the metal tools you use. Every professional turner on the teaching circuit has the tool catalogues cary his specialty “signature” tools. There is a different tool or grind on the tool for every purpose. As you use your tools you will find that there is a special need you have for which you can not find the proper tool. So the solution is to make it yourself. Scrap steel, masonry nails, old files, etc. can be ground on a bench grinder to make that special shape for that special job.

When you make a special project using a cutting edge you designed yourself mounted in a handle of your own design, you feel the meaning of the word creativity. Wasn’t that the reason you went into the wood shop? You wanted to express your own creativity, whether great or small. What you put your attention grows in the awareness and creativity in one line of thinking begets creativity in other lines of thinking. The next thing you know you are regularly thinking outside of the box.

I had a wonderful patient in Newport News, VA, when I practiced medicine. He was very bright, but coming along in the Depression, he could not afford to go to college. He became a watch maker instead. World War II came along and all the watch makers were grabbed by the defense department to make Norden bombsights for airplanes. So he ended up eventually working for NASA until he built his own successful machine shop and retired to manage his own business.

People would come in to see him with a complex request for some machine or apparatus. He would listen patiently as the prospective customer outlined what he wanted made. Usually it was something that had not been done before. At the end the customer would ask if it would be possible for something like that to be made by the machine shop. My friend would say: “Sure, we can do that for you.” However, he confided in me that at the time he had no more idea how to do that job than a jack rabbit. He said he would think about it. He would sleep on it. He would continue to turn it over in his mind. Before long he wold come up with a way to make the job work. He said he never turned down a job because he did not know how to do it.

I learned a valuable lesson from that man. Not only was he a great friend but he was a great teacher as well. I had another great teacher. He is my son. At the age of three or so, he told his Montessori teacher that his father could make anything. In fact, I could hardly make anything. Soon the school was asking me to make everything for them from missing map puzzle pieces to storage cabinets. I just said yes to every project and stayed on the steep end of my learning curve for many years.

So, life is like that. Even though you don’t know how, you can do anything you really want to do. Just say yes and then let nature show you how. Mother nature is hovering in the wings ready to show you anything you desire. She just needs to know what you want, and you must be alert to her help because it may not be what you were expecting. Of course it really helps to have someone have complete faith in you. How can you let a person like that down?

Sharpness, whether of mind or of tool is a very important quality. While I always was interested in knives, whittling, and model building as a youth, my efforts never seemed to head in any particular direction or produce any significant product. At age 37 I happened to learn the Transcendental Meditation technique and things began to change. I became more efficient with my time in my medical practice and was able to do twenty percent more work in much less time. What this did was free up time for me to pursue other fields of interest.

The result was an explosion in my interest and abilities in the field of woodworking. I ended up being to make museum quality reproductions of 18th century antiques after several years of spare time work in my garage/shop. I was able to do this without apprenticeship or long hours of study. I simply picked it up out of books.

What I learned later is that this mental technique enables you to use your whole brain. Our educational system teaches us how to use parts of the brain very well but other unused areas begin to become less functional. The brain is analogous to an old fashioned PBX switchboard with cords that plug into a board to complete a call circuit. If you are not connected to the board, your call cannot go through. Like that all of our one hundred billion neurons are connected to hundreds or even thousands of other cells in the brain. These make a neural pathway. Each time we use that pathway, the stronger it becomes. When we don’t use it at all, the neurons disconnect from each other just like pulling the cord out of the PBX board. So, not using part of your brain over time causes loss of what that part of the brain can do for you. Use it or lose it, is the saying.

So whether it be the practice of a profession or a hobby, you need to use your whole mind. As I began to use more of mine, I was delighted to discover hidden potential in the area of woodworking and it has brought me immense pleasure. Now my woodworking had a direction and a functional and useful product.

Most woodworkers work with wood because they prefer it over metal. Yet working wood involves the use of metal tools and that requires some knowledge of metal. Metallurgy has made tremendous strides in the past several decades. Now it is possible to make gouges for bowl turning which will last three to six times longer before needing sharpening compared to the old high carbon steel tools. HIgh speed steel and powdered metal technology produce very hard steels and this is why they last longer. Yet, due to the hardness, the old methods of sharpening using water stones and other soft sharpening stones will no longer work. The steel is too hard and wears away the stone too quickly. So power grinders and diamond hones are now required.

There is still a place for the old high carbon steel tools, however. The softer the steel, the finer you can draw out the cutting edge before it breaks. Hard steels are brittle and soft ones are more ductile. You may remember the high carbon steel kitchen knife that your grandmother had. It would take such a keen edge but she sharpened it after every use and maybe a time or two during the cutting. So if you need an extremely sharp tool, high carbon steel still fills a need.

Every one wants to plunge right in and do something. A teen ager wants to drive before he knows the rules of the road. A medical intern wants to do the procedure before he knows the indication. Woodworkers are ready for their first cut as soon as the get the tool home. Later they say the tool no longer works and they will have to get another one. I had an old fishing buddy when I was in medical practice. He was a surgeon and money was not a great object to him. He had a lovely boat on which I spent many pleasant hours off of the Virginia and Carolina capes. On board one day I was inspecting his knives and remarked that they were dull. He said he knew it, and had to get some new ones and throw those old ones out. “Why not sharpen these?”, I suggested. He replied that you can never get a sharp edge on them like when they came from the factory. I told him I thought I could sharpen them. He said to not waste my time because I could never get them really sharp.

Now, I had been sharpening knives since I was old enough to carry one and it sounded like a great challenge to me. I brought my grandmother’s old Arkansas stone on the next trip out to sea, and set to work. The edges on these knives were completely rounded over so that when you looked down with the edge pointing towards your eye, the edge was shiny-bright and rounded, the hallmark of a dull edge. It took a while but I was able to produce an edge which would shave hair, the mark of a very sharp knife. My friend was completely amazed as he really believed that you could not restore the factory edge.

So if a tool is made of steel, you can find a way to sharpen it. To do it properly you must know what kind of edge you want . This just takes time and trial and error. The important thing is to start. You will make some mistakes at first but in time you will master the skill. Working with a dull tool takes more force and this can result in injury. It also takes more time and gives inferior surfaces. There are many books on sharpening and many jigs and tools to make the process easier and more foolproof. There are lots of little things you will learn along the way. At the grinder, when small sparks begin to pass over the top of the tool instead of just passing under the tool, then you have reached a sharp edge. I learned that from a book. It makes perfect sense, but I would never have figured this out on my own.

I never had very good luck using a skew chisel. It is one of the hardest turning tools to master. My chisel would dig too deep and leave divots where large chunks of wood had been torn out even though this tool is supposed to produce the smoothest edge possible.

Almost a year ago I joined a local wood turners club in my area. It was a good move on my part because now I was surrounded by people with lots of skills and a desire to openly share knowledge and techniques. One of the functions of our club is to bring nationally known turning experts for a demonstration. The first one I attended focused on using the skew chisel for spindle turning–that is, turning with the grain of the wood running parallel to the bed of the lathe. Chair rungs and tool handles are examples of spindle turnings, as opposed to wooden bowls, which are called face plate turnings. Face plate turnings get their name because they are mounted on the lathe by a faceplate, which fastens to the headstock of the lathe.

The first thing the demonstrator did was to emphasize the importance of having a very sharp skew chisel. He proceeded to show us his diamond hone. Even though the tool had been sharpened on the power grinder, it was not ready for use. He made several passes on the 1200 grit side of the diamond hone and then showed us a piece of soft wood with some dirty marks on it. Actually it was wood to which a fine diamond paste had been applied which was of much finer grit than his hone. He stropped the chisel on the diamond impregnated wood several times. The dirty appearance of the wood was due to steel that had been removed from the skew.

He then showed that the skew would shave the hair on the back of his hand as neatly as a razor. Next he proceeded to turn a flawless spindle reproducing the model he brought with him. It seemed so effortless. I still had my doubts and went up to him after the demonstration and explained my problem. He said it was probably due to my skew not being sharp enough from the grinding wheel. I returned home and acquired the diamond hone and diamond sharpening compounds and went to work on my skew. While I am still not as good as the demonstrator, I am getting much better results than before.

So to be good at this, or any other thing for that matter, sharpen well. Get a technique to sharpen your mind because that influences every thing you do. We all have many skills but if they are covered up by stress, we will never know we had them. In wood turning, get the techniques to make your tools very sharp. The beauty of techniques is that, when used as directed, they work for any one.

Welcome to a blog for those who love wood.

I fell in love with wood and woodworking when I was very young. I used to love to “twiddle”.

Today, my wife calls me the “wood magnet” and my whole family seems to agree. I simply, unabashedly love wood of all kinds, sizes and sources and I seem to gather it everywhere I go.

I especially love to find a use for wood that would have otherwise been abandoned or been burned.

Local woods, often in a neighbor’s back yard, are the ones I like to favor. No shipping, no rain-forest destruction, just enjoyment of the final gift a tree can give.

In fact, I love every stage of a tree’s development. I love to plant trees, and have planted many fruit and nut trees in the many places I have lived. I love to watch them grow. And it’s a joy when they flower and give fruit. I love the shade of trees, and I love to wander in the woods.

When a tree falls or needs to be taken down, I love to cut it and discover the beautiful pattern of its grain beneath the bark. And of course, I love to shape a bowl or a useful kitchen implement from the wood.

I hope you will enjoy this blog with me, as I share my appreciation for everything about wood.