Mechanisation vs Soulfulness

Does a handmade item have more soul to it than a mass produced item? An object has soul if we feel a strong emotional connection to it. Soulfulness can develop in any object that we connect a story to. Certain objects are easier to create stories around than others. Many of the objects I consider to be soulful are handmade. But not exclusively so. This also isn’t to say that a ‘soulless’ object is necessarily bad. I don’t consider my smartphone to be very soulful, I use it a lot and it works extremely well but if it stopped working I wouldn’t mourn the loss of it as an object.

I find that soulfulness is easier to develop in hand made objects. This soulfulness comes from the fact that a person spent a lot of hands-on time crafting that item. They were making decisions on what to do during every step of the process and if the end result is a high quality product then it will serve as a undeniable demonstration of their skill and capability.

With a high degree of mechanisation there is a lot of skill and effort put in at the beginning of the process. Setting up various machines to accurately and consistently reproduce a design isn’t easy. The effort is often put into the machines more so than the product itself. The whole point of mechanisation is to reduce the thought and effort required to make each individual finished product. This can result in the end product feeling a little soulless.

The effort that goes into a task often correlates with our appreciation of the outcome. This is something we’ve all experienced ourselves, as well as recognising in the work of others. We tend to be happier after completing a task that was difficult for us, compared to finishing a task we perceive as easy. Owning a product made by a craftsperson who we perceive as putting a lot of time and effort into it increases our enjoyment of that product.

As a maker this provides a bit of a dilemma. Soulfulness, the ease at which people can create create stories around objects, decreases with how removed I am from the making process. However, the more mechanised the process is, the higher output can be. Figuring out the tipping point where mechanisation erodes soulfulness is an important task.

In pre-industrial society, the quality of an object depended on how much skilled labour went into making it. Today, high quality objects can be made through methods of mass production, but this association between quality and skilled effort persists. ‘Handmade’ continues to be valued over ‘mass produced’. Especially if the products are roughly equal in quality. We’re social creatures, so naturally gravitate towards objects that make us feel connected to others. Seeing the marks made by hand tools shows that the object was crafted by a fellow human, and reminds us of the skill and precision we are all capable of.

Is it enough to just create some surface marks as a reminder that the object passed through the hands of a person?

There are certainly parts of the process that I feel can be given over to mechanisation without sacrificing soulfulness. I get all my wood in log form. So using a chainsaw to cut logs into rounds the correct length is something I’m fine with. I own a bandsaw and will sometimes take split billets and bandsaw out rough spoon shapes before hand carving them. I don’t think it saves much time compared to axe work, but it outsources effort to the power grid and can be a little more efficient in terms of material wastage. I really enjoy working with an axe, so I will probably keep it as part of my process since it’s so much fun.

For the birch bark boxes I make, I have a belt and disc sander for shaping the lids and bases. There’s a lot of precise shaping that requires cross-grain cuts, which isn’t the most fun. Besides, the focus of those products is the birch bark, and there isn’t much opportunity to display hand tool marks on the wooden lids and bases. Aside from that, I don’t currently own any other powered tools. There are some other powered tools I’m thinking of adding to my shop, but I’m still in the process of figuring out the benefits they’ll bring and how they impact my values as a craftsperson.

I’ve yet to come across a power tool that leaves a surface on wood as high quality or tactile as a knife does. The superior finish and the precision that hand tools provide means it’s unlikely I’ll be finishing my products any other way in the foreseeable future.

Does the method of production matter if the outcome is more or less the same?

I’m often surprised when students in my spoon carving classes that have a lot of experience working wood with power tools fail to demonstrate an understanding of wood any deeper than beginner students. By allowing a machine to provide the force behind a cut, a craftsperson is less able to take notice of what is happening in the material. Grain direction, knots, and other changes in the material are overpowered by the might of the machine. Ignoring these peculiarities in the material can result in an inferior product.

The entirety of my woodworking career has been focused on hand tools. As such I’ve developed a deep understanding of what goes on in a piece of wood. The feedback from the interaction of wood fibres and a hand tool’s edge contains a lot of information you need to listen to if you want your cut to work. When trying to apply these same principles to power tool work, you have to be a lot more conscious of what you’re doing. A knife will fight you if you try to carve against the grain. My bandsaw blade hardly blinks at changes in grain direction.

With a lot of concentration, it is possible to respect the core principles of wood while shaping it with power tools. In terms of output and ease of use, power tools offer a lot of benefits. But they don’t spark the imagination in the same way that hand tools do. I carve while I sell during the summer farmers’ markets, shaping billets with an axe and adze, drawknife and twca cam. People respond extremely positively to this process. They will often buy something, then ask if they can take a photo of me while I work. They’re using my method of production to begin their own story around the item they just purchased. Hand tools make it easier for people to create an emotional connection to the item they chose to bring into their lives.

As my business continues to grow I face a choice: stick to solely using hand tools and manage increased demand through price increases or incorporate power tools to increase production without moving my products out of the price range of more and more people. Somewhere in the spectrum of ‘expensive soulfulness’ and ‘cheap mechanical production’ lies a balance that is right for me and, more importantly, will still let people imbue these creations with soulfulness.