Woodworking in Rwanda, without my power tools, has been time-consuming and tiring. Yet I do have to say: I am learning a ton and actually honing my craftsmanship. In the States I became power tool dependent and never really learned the craft of using hand saws to cut, planes to flatten and shape, and other hand tools to work wood. Crosscutting a piece of wood at exactly 90 degrees was a two second exercise on my compound miter saw. Now it is marking the wood on all sides, slowly cutting along those lines, and shaping it up with a rasp and plane. Multiply that by many and it takes a fair bit of time to do something relatively simple.
But what I’m realizing is that what I thought was simple before, really wasn’t. It’s just that I took woodworking for granted because it wasn’t so much me doing the work, it was the power tool.
So here’s some pics of my woodshop and the results of drying my own wood, cutting lengths of pine for table legs, and the shaping process of getting the table legs ready for mortise and tenon (by hand, of course). Good things come to those who wait (or work at it for awhile).
