Polite Dissent

When I can on the weekends I tune to my local PBS station to catch “Master Carpenter” Norm Abrams on The New Yankee Workshop. On this show, Norm showcases his incredible talent for carpentry by building some absolutely beautiful wood furniture. Usually, he creates a reprodruction of an antique that has caught his eye, but sometimes he builds something more practical like a workbench or gardening equipment.

The show features everything from glued pieces to wood pieces to turned pieces. Norm clearly knows his stuff. Still, I wish I had half the equipment he does. He has this incredibly large workshop filled with table saws, band saws, jointers, planers, lathes and drill presses. Someday, I aspire to owning just a small fraction of the equipment he uses every week. I wonder how many people can actually build the same furniture he does, even with the plans he provides.

His sense of color worries me too. He’ll build this wonderful wardrobe or china cabinet and then paint it a godawful green or red. Why paint over wood at all?

Still, it’s worth watching just to see how much effort can go into a single piece of furniture.