I like tangible things I guess. If I can hold
it and touch it and understand it, then that's, you know, simple enough. You break it down
into steps, little pieces that make the puzzle. The work that I've been enjoying is green
woodworking where you work from the logs, so I get my logs, and I know the orientation
of the wood.
I know where it came from. When you rive it and split it right out of the
log while it's still wet, it follows the grain. It's a more natural, it's literally hands-on,
but I work it while it's still wet.
I always wanted jobs that
you didn't know were a job. I never really had anyone say, like, go to the zoo
and, "oh you're interested in this animal," like, "you could become a biologist
and make a career out of it." I don't remember that, if it even happened.
But I just didn't want to do something, you know, vanilla…boring.
With woodworking,
it's just you and what you make of it. I grew up in a small beach shack in Leucadia,
California. It is right on the cliff overlooking the ocean and there's always some maintenance
to be done, and we didn't have a lot of money, so we were always doing things ourselves. In high
school, I moved with my mom who lived in Tehachapi which is a small town at the base
of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Not much there…it's got the Tehachapi loop,
one of the seven railroad wonders of the world. Being an ocean kid in Leucadia growing
up on the surf team and stuff, then didn't touch a surfboard for four years in high
school. Instead started, you know, doing more dirt biking or things like that. Just started
tinkering with, you know, taking stuff apart out of necessity, but also you wanted to
ride it, so you had to put it back together.
There's a unique thing about, like, Japanese
woodworking, I think: they were very aware of where their material came from. They knew
the tree, and they know the orientation of the grain and typically, you know, if the tree is
growing up then they orient it up in the project. The people that were figuring these
things out, you know, 100 years ago, or these ancient technologies,
now, as they seem, are… There's just so much to learn from those,
you know, why they did things a certain way, why they use certain types of metals and
tools.
You get to make of it what you will. I was in Spain and I had been sleeping, you know,
in Barcelona which was great, but then I went to this town, Alicante, and I later learned it's
notorious for crime. And so I was sleeping in this patch of grass and at, like, 3:30 in the morning
the sprinklers came on I hopped up my backpack was gone. I had my debit card but all I had left
were the clothes on my back. I was wearing a plain white t-shirt that was no longer white,
you know, was like various browns and yellows. But it was kind of a liberating feeling,
also. Just a totally stripped-down feeling. With woodworking it's just you and the material,
and you're there, and you're working it, and you're understanding the way it wants to work. One
time when I was in college in Orange County, like, I was running food in a restaurant and then
the chef was, like, "Hey you're pretty," you know, "interested in what's going on back here
do you want to get behind the line and I'll like teach you how to cook?" That was the gnarliest
job I've ever had.
It's so brutal working in a fine, you know, establishment. It's fast-paced,
everything's hot and sharp, and everyone hates you. And you get, like, no glory. When I was food
running, I was making a hundred dollars in tips, easy, every night–on top of my hourly wages.
Then I went back to this job–but, like, it was fulfilling to me because I was learning something,
and it was brutal, it was really challenging. But then I was just making, like, $14 an hour,
and no tips, but it was more satisfying in a way.
My mom was dating this guy, he was a big old
cowboy guy, he was just like a stone. Like, his hands were so rough I remember like he… a black
widow crawling on me just go like that. Like. the gnarliest thing. But, anyways, I was telling him
I was looking for work I just, moved back from Hawaii. He was like, "Well I got some friends in
oil business," and I thought like, I was ready to go anywhere, like, I wanted to go to Dakotas or
Texas, or anywhere. And I got a job in Long Beach. We operated these machines that, through
loaded hydraulic simulation, created vacuum, and pulled on vapors. Say you're isolating a
pipeline to do some welding work, or something, we'd pull vacuum on it to pull all the vapors
out so, you know, things don't go "boom." We could be on a job where you're working seven
days a week, for a month, making prevailing wages, but oftentimes there was…
There's no jobs. We'd
get, like, a four-hour minimum to sit at home and wait. I'd get like so restless, I'd still
go into the shop. I'd be the only guy there, other than the people that were doing,
like, logistical stuff in the office. But I'd be the only guy in the shop
doing maintenance on machines and stuff. When it was good, it was good. But when you're
sitting home… I was, like, this sucks… …and so then, I had some free time. I had been, like, making a few things in my
garage, and I had no idea what I was doing… If you see a dovetail, and you think,
like, "Wow, that looks so cool… I'll never learn how to do that,"
and then I just got thinking, like… Well, maybe I should find out if I can
do that, and how. Someone can teach me. I don't know what I Googled, but I found
Cerritos College, which is a community college 15 minutes away from Long Beach in Norwalk. And so I took, like, you know,
the first classes that didn't require prerequisites.
And then
I, you know, got bit by a termite. I was really into it. I couldn't stop. Also, I
wanted to be there, I had some great instructors that really pushed the students that they
knew were into it. You know, I was making friends and a lot of opportunities were coming
from that. Just from people walking by my garage. It became, like, such a passion that I
was doing it on my free time. You know, neighbors started to notice and then
they'd ask for picture frames, or… and then it started getting more, and more…
larger projects, tables, and beds, and bookcases. My work, like, was just giving me
a really hard time about, like, taking two days off. I was a full-time student,
in two days, and I was working five days a week. They all were always saying, "Oh, this
big job's coming up," and it would always fall through. Or we'd never hear anything else
about it.
And I took on more responsibility by getting my Class A license and stuff, but nothing
really… I didn't get a raise for it or anything. I was too busy with work and school to get
to these jobs, and people would be calling saying, "Hey where's that picture frame,"
like, "Sorry I haven't had a chance," you know…
"Next week." The next week would
turn into next month. Full-time job, full-time student and then trying, you know, getting this
opportunity: people asking me to make them things for money. I was, like, "Hey, if I could
spend more time actually doing this, I think I could make money at it." I was,
like, "Well, something's got to go…" My last day of work was December 31st… I think 2017…2016? Maybe? There is a story of, like, a Japanese woodworker.
He just, like, disappeared and his parents hadn't heard from him. And I, you know–this sucks
that I don't know the exact number but–there's something, like, eight years in Japan they say
like, you know, it takes eight years to become a master at something. Whatever, don't sue me
if it's not eight years. But eight years later, after his parents hadn't heard from him, they just
didn't know what happened–maybe he was dead–they received a package and it just had like, this
perfect like, minutely, you know, delicate plane shaving in a box, and that was it.
No… he didn't
write a note or anything, just this perfect plain shaving, the full width of the board, just so
paper-thin… beyond paper-thin. Just a complete, full shaving of a piece of wood. And so they
knew that he had been away perfecting this craft. There is nothing else that I can even imagine
doing, or would want to do. I don't know if it makes me a sadist. I like the challenges.
I like the satisfaction from completing a puzzle, and I just like the way the material is.
I like the challenges of it.
I like the outcome…..and the possibilities
of what you can do with it. Which is why, like, I had to quit my job. Because
it's just it's gonna take me a lifetime to like… to scratch the surface… [super-cool hip-hop beat] [thanks for watching!].