Books
The Manual Manual: Your guide to learning creative handwork
This book started from what I have experienced as a woodworker of 40 years. It grew from talking with friends, acquaintances, and people who practice a wide range of crafts, their experiences, and their understanding of what they do, how they do it, and what they get out of it. I spoke with people who don’t practice a traditional craft, including musicians, photographers, cooks, and teachers, as their work still speaks to important elements of making. The long quotations are from interviews. I’ve preserved the ebb and flow of those conversations, cleaning them up in some cases, but not wanting to lose their voices (don’t we all sound strange to hear our own voices?). That craftsmen have analogous experiences, with similar hurdles and similar satisfactions, speaks to just how core of a human activity making is, and therefore how accessible it is. That we all aren’t makers, frankly, baffles me sometimes, though I know perfectly well why we are not. Survival in the modern world requires we take the work on hand. The modern world needs lawyers.
Available on Amazon
This book is a companion to any and every hand craft, widely including any creative activity that requires thoughtful handwork. Whether for a profession or a hobby, this book will help you make the best decisions as you grow and learn. It will help you understand what goes into thoughtful handcraft, and help you get the most out of what you do. It will help you learn faster, show you what to expect, avoid blind alleys, and help you appreciate what you find as you learn. It will help you forgive yourself your worries and mistakes, sort uncertainties and find the same joys that generations of craftspeople have found in this kind of work before you. It will help you find your tribe.
Craft therapy is known to fight depression and anxiety, but mastery of creative work remains our ultimate, authentic joy. Mastery is the simple result of joyful persistence in making beautiful and useful things. Its attainment comes when the work itself is guided by joy. I don’t delve into craft therapy, for there are already many good sources for it. How to master a craft, however, is too often advertised as hard work, requiring sacrifice and dedication. I disagree. It is only possible when the work is joyful, the sacrifice easy, and the dedication takes no effort whatsoever. How to find that is the trick, and what I explore here.
The last chapter, on beauty and usefulness, explores what makes objects meaningful to us, and how to develop an eye to see them and a hand to make them. I hope you come away seeing that the mastering of a craft is analogous to mastering anything, for there is usefulness and beauty to find in so much more than the objects we make. In all, this book will hopefully help turn you onto your natural inclination, and find more joy in the inherent joy of workmanship.
So, if work is a four-letter word, leisure your escape, and neither satisfies, then this book is your antidote.
Before industrialization, making things for the people in our lives was how our species survived and thrived. Hand work was all work, and it was the central, joyful process of life.
Today, we work because we must.It can be hard to find purpose or value in our jobs when they are insignificant contributions to giant enterprises. Driven by necessity and fear, we believe that success, or that the idle leisure it buys, will eventually make us happy. But instead we pay for our modern technology with increasing rates of depression and anxiety.
Because pleasure is the original motivation for work, feeling fully alive its reward
We can’t all quit our day jobs and survive in the Digital Age. But we can access the joy of workmanship--and truly pursue happiness--by finding creative work that fits our inclinations.
Doormaking: Materials, Techniques, and Projects for Building Your First Door
Useful, clear, with anecdotes and digressions on the role of hand-made things in our lives. Linden Publishing, 2017.
“Making a door is easier than you think―here's everything you need to know to build a door that will last for years and you'll use proudly every day.
Few pieces of furniture, save perhaps chairs, work as hard as doors. Building them to last, especially exterior doors, takes knowledge and experience that don’t come from making other types of furniture, such as tables and bookcases. Doormaking: Materials, Techniques and Projects for Building Your First Door by woodworker Strother Purdy gathers all the information and guidance that both beginning and intermediate woodworkers need to be successful making their first door.
While covering the construction of the eight most popular doors, Doormaking starts first by addressing the fundamentals: the basics of good design and proper construction technique, the pros-and-cons of common materials including wood and sheet goods, interior and exterior finishes, hardware and the fine points of hanging doors.
Once those key elements are covered, Doormaking offers project chapters that walk the reader step-by-step through the construction of eight essential doors, explaining design and material choices in specific contexts, tool options and other considerations. The first four projects are easily accessible to a beginner while the remaining projects offer up some more challenging details for the intermediate woodworker. Also included are sidebars containing amusing anecdotes and mistake stories―each delivering tips as well as details for hanging a door―and an inspiring gallery of doors that are sure to inspire.
Doormaking: Materials, Techniques and Projects for Building Your First Door is a must for any woodworking hobbyist, professional craftsman, or DIY homeowner.”
Traditional Box Projects
Very straightforward and useful. Taunton Press, 2010, but currently in publication limbo (Taunton Books now owned by Abrams, and they’re not answering my calls).
Box making has always been one of the perennial favorites of all wood projects. And because wooden boxes make such meaningful gifts, this collection of beautiful, durable, and functional box projects is sure to please. All of the designs are based on traditional boxes, historically inspired by Shaker, Arts & Crafts, and other popular styles. But this is not a book of exacting reproductions for master craftsmen only. These are attainable interpretations of some of the most enduring box designs, all presented in a step-by-step format, with photos and detailed instructions. The author, a fine-furniture maker, offers tried-and-true tips for avoiding pitfalls as well as alternative design and construction options. Most of the boxes are easy to build, though a few offer challenges. A wide array of design styles and the consistent high level of detail in the projects will appeal to a range of woodworkers.
Türen selbst bauen: Materialien, Techniken und 9 Nachbau-Projekte
My Doormaking book in German, HolzWerken, 2024.
That Precious Ghost in Glass
A fragmented novel of ideas, self-published, 2017.
Finster Gummiboots is a not a nice man. He likely has insulted you already, and for no good reason. Living alone, his thoughts tend mostly to what is wrong with this world, and in great depth of detail.
But in his solitude, Finster has also spent much of his life contemplating the one meaningful thing he does not have -- love. In fact, he has thought so much about the value and beauty of love, that he realizes he understands it better than anyone else. On the bus, one day, he recognizes his singular responsibility to teach the rest of the world about the importance and usefulness of love.
So, he writes a novel about love.
That Precious Ghost in Glass is a novel of ideas set in an infinity of absurdist worlds. It explores how beauty and life can spring from the despair of solitude, given a childlike imagination. A suspicious cat named Behemoth, the actual Porky Pig, and an artificial intelligence named Mr. Information help many characters navigate their fates as they seek love and understanding.