With a little help...

Not exactly from my friends (save in the indirect, diffuse way in which just having friends helps with everything), but my Greenland paddle shows progress and that's in great measure thanks to the help I'm having. It comes mostly from two sources. First, the Kayak de Mar Forum, where kind, knowledgeable souls have posted what amounts to very useful tutorials on tool tuning and use, basic woodworking in general and making of Greenland paddles in particular. My paddle-in-the-making and I are living proof of the practical value of the wisdom to be found there, as that's pretty much the only instruction I've ever received in those matters. One of these days I'll ramble about the forum in greater length. You've been warned





Then, major help is also coming from the tools themselves. Without any further experience, I might not be the best judge. I'm sure a connoisseur would take issue with the edge of my planes and spokeshaves, but I can tell that I'm doing things I doubted I could. At least, not without lots of suffering and frustration. Things so basic and simple that it'd be embarrassing to recount them here, yes, but for me it's substantial advance. The time spent properly conditioning the tools seems to be paying off now. We're definitely building a relationship here and it is allowing me a glimpse of the roots of the respect and care true artisans show to the instruments of their craft.




Using tools and watching them consistently do what they are supposed to do is proving quite rewarding and a vivid reminder of our dependence on them. I'll leave further elaboration on that to cultural anthropologists, but I have now experienced first hand how good tools can really make your day as much as poor ones can totally ruin it. And that's for just a hobby. When tools are employed to produce the means of earning your livelihood, I imagine your interest in them becomes something quite deeper than my idle wonder. I suppose that the attention European woodworking tools appear to have attracted from Inuit carvers may be related to that.





The Inuit produced ivory carvings to trade with westerners. Besides native themes, the carvings frequently reproduced foreign objects, often in minute detail. The diversity of those objects is truly notable and that includes woodworking tools. While not so abundant as the very numerous model riffles and knives in my admittedly hurried and unsystematic glance through online materials, models of tools seemed, nonetheless, reasonably common.