IF I WERE A CARPENTER

Theoretically I Have Some Mad Woodworking Skillz

I’m just too clumsy to make use of them

Some of the models my dad built. Personal photo

My dad was an engineer by profession, but he was also a skilled woodworker. When he was a teenager in the 1920s, he earned money by selling antiques to tourists who visited what was then a bit of a resort town for better-off Bostonians.

The antiques were fake. My father created them by copying furniture he probably saw in his own home and at the homes of friends. He was quite proud of that and never expressed any shame for his duplicity.

He did go on to more honest work, but always built furniture, mirrors, picture frames and the like for family and friends. Many of those hang on our walls today. He remodeled our childhood home, and built at least two other homes by himself. The smell of sawdust was always present in our house.

I learned a lot from him. I learned how to hammer and saw, how to plane, how to use a lathe, a router, and more. I watched him use fiberglass on the hull of a dilapidated boat he bought; that was very new technology in the early 1950s. I learned how to steam wood to make the curved rail for that boat. We used steam again for other projects where curves were needed. I watched him build rigging so that he could erect a barn without other…