What is the Value of Woodworking?

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

There is an old book we used to print called “How to Make $40,000 a Year with Your Woodworking.” Years ago I dubbed it our only offering in the fiction category. Sure, there are enterprising woodworkers who pocket this and more, but there are countless others who don’t even get close.

For years now I’ve returned to the same questions about the lack of prospects even talented woodworkers have. Why can’t a wood craftsman earn what an independent electrician, plumber or garage mechanic earns? Even the guy who ran a small crew that washed the windows at my house told me he earned close to six figures, and in Cincinnati, that’s seasonal work.

As a society we don’t value well-made furniture and cabinets. Is that because we don’t recognize good from bad? Why is there no status attached to a one-of-a-kind dining table, unlike those $50,000 luxury cars we see everywhere? Why do we find “run-of-the-mill” furniture in all those half-million-dollar McMansions? Are the manufacturers of inexpensive furniture that good at making poorly crafted work look good?

Do we not value objects of lasting value? In our disposable world, we’ll take a big loss on one of those expensive cars after just a few years. We’ll spend a thousand dollars on some electronic device and replace it every two years, leaving the old one at the curb once new technology makes it worthless.

By all measures, woodworking as a hobby enjoys great popularity, on par with golf. Millions of people are captivated by the sight of Norm Abram building a project on television, and they tune to “Antiques Roadshow” to learn about the value of objects that have endured.

Good antique furniture, now worth a small fortune, was built by individual joiners before the start of the Industrial Revolution. Today, most furniture is fabricated in a factory. We’ve had a century and a half to lose sight of the value of custom-built woodwork. Most commercial shops busy themselves doing the occasional custom kitchen, bath vanity or fast food restaurant interior. Better shops working the “carriage” trade find more upscale projects. But even among these, the bidding wars to win contracts hold back wages and benefits while signaling to buyers a willingness to value their work less and less.

Perhaps all woodworkers, hobbyists included, need to think more about the value of the work they produce and promote nicely crafted work as having value far beyond the purchase price. Perhaps we need to find ways to produce better work at less cost, making it affordable to those who aren’t the wealthiest among us. Hobby woodworkers who “don’t need the money” shouldn’t sell their work below market value because it undermines commercial craftsmen who are trying to run a business, feed a family, and pay living wages and offer decent benefits to their employees.

Many more questions remain than there are answers.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the August 2005 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine.