Motes of luminous honey in the air

My shop is infused with the sweet smell of freshly sawn fir. Prairie elevators were constructed with large quantities of the stronger softwoods, most always spruce and douglas fir. Of the bracing boards I am using for the altar legs there is some of each. But it's when my Japanese ryoba handsaw finds the old-growth rings of a piece of fir that the aromas start to hit me. There is just something about smelling the aromatic oils of ancient fir. As I cut the wood I am reminded of Ross Laird's beautiful book 'Grain of Truth':

"Most people think of Douglas Fir as junk wood, good enough only for roof trusses and plywood. But most people know only the lumberyard fir. What lies here, its sawdust drifting like motes of luminous honey in the air, is the pristine rain-forest fir: bright, diverse, beautiful." (1)












It is such wood that is certainly fit to become an altar, wood having served out it's calling of holding grains which have travelled onwards to feed the world. Based on a look at the tree rings and doing the math, these boards are from trees which have germinated nearly five-hundred years ago. Some of the wood in this altar was very possibly just starting to grow as Luther was posting his 95 theses.

As I finish up the legs the altar project is drawing to a close. I have been relying almost solely on hand tools, the wood being too irregular from the decades of grain-sculpting to go anywhere near the straightened precision of a power tool's angry sharp teeth. Approaching the fir with a bevy of specialized hand tools for working wood is the only way to proceed. One can never have enough tools however, and short of running out and buying all of these, (I'd love to) I get along with many of my old handplanes and saws. A few of these have even been in the family for three generations now. Like the worn-out hardworking fir of the Herschel grain elevator lying on my workbench, not all of these tools are perfect but they are certainly a joy to use when guided by my hands.













(1) Quote from "Grain of Truth: The Ancient Lessons of Craft", page 145. There are perhaps thousands of books published on the how of working wood – this is likely the only treatise on the why. A gorgeous book about the spirituality of craft and the creative process.