Back in the early 1930s, when I was just a tyke, my grandfather Adams (Apa) traveled to New York City twice a year for 6 week stays. He had taken up traditional furniture making just before he arrived in the spring of 1937 shortly before I turned 5. Days before Apa came trunks full of antique tools had been delivered, along with piles of wood.
At first during that visit I would just watch Apa shaping pieces of wood with hand saws, planes, draw knives and scrapers. Slowly Apa started letting me use the vice on the other side of his workbench to shape scraps. I am sure Apa paid more attention to my safety than to his own work. He told me that when he was my age, before the Civil War, he would help his grandfather and uncles in their furniture factory.
During subsequent visits, Apa gave me more responsibility, letting me shape parts for actual furniture he was building. Between his visits I would practice using scraps of wood. I was 9 in the autumn of 1941. On nice afternoons Apa would work outside on the roof of the adjacent building. He had been telling me for years, "Carroll, let the saw do the work." One Saturday morning I clamped a 2x4 to a sawhorse and started a crosscut using an especially sharp Stanley saw. I make enough strokes that the saw would stay in place. Then I left it there while I had lunch. Apa came in to ask me what was going on. I laughed, "Apa, I am expecting the saw to do the work."
Apa was at his California photo studio in December 1941 and could not get train tickets until WWII ended. In the letters we exchanged we kidded about saws doing the work. In the spring of 1946 Apa was able to get train tickets. He brought with him a B&D electric drill and an early Skil circular saw. He told me those tools actually could do the work on their own, but they still needed a craftsman to guide them.
Apa was still vigorous at age 98 in 1952, with his furniture shop a block from his home in Long Beach, California. By then I had been living in Burbank for 2 years as a young movie studio executive. Every other Sunday I would drive to have lunch with Apa. Apa would be wearing his beloved leather work apron and would be contentedly standing at a workbench hand shaping a piece of exotic hardwood, surrounded by tools made before 1815. On the far side of his shop were then state of the art power tools. Apa told me those were used by craftsmen working for him. He still got his joy woodworking by hand with traditional tools. An oil stone and strop block were always close to his hand. Apa could really sharped a plane iron or chisel.
In December of 1952 Apa took what for him was a routine assignment, taking landscape photos of a railroad. He was 100 miles north of Edmonton, Alberta in deed snow where he had carried an 8x10" view camera 2 miles when we lost him to a heart attack.
Like Apa I have earned my living doing a lot of different tasks since I was a child actor. Yet always I reserved time for woodworking. This has been the calming part of my life. If Apa made some money selling furniture he made, that was spent on more tools and fine wood. I have always felt the same way. My satisfaction comes from making cabinets that satisfy my standards of workmanship. If clients share my vision and pay for my cabinets, then I have more money for additional tools and wood. Apa had loyal craftsmen working for him the last 20 years of his life. His goal was to help each of them gain the skills to be in business for themselves. All of the many businesses I have owned since 1954 have been organized the same way. I tell people when I hire them I hope as soon as possible they will be so successful they can buy me out. This is the plan for my new cabinet shop. The difference between Apa and me is that I prefer programing the CNC routers and saws, where the machine really does the work under my command. This provides the real craftsmen working with me the time to build projects to their standards of craftsmanship, while we all make a living.
By the way, both of my sons preferred working in my machine shop rather than wood shop. My daughter loved electronics. When she was 9 nothing gave her more pleasure than sitting at a bench with a soldering iron fabricating microphone cables. Or using a Tectronix oscilloscope to diagnose a problem in a circuit. One son is a professor of chest surgery, the other a computer scientist. My daughter is a partner in a law firm.
The thing is that just because woodworking is my bliss does not make it their joy. Each of us has to find our bliss. Apa inspired me. I introduced my kids to people who would inspire them.
