Earlywood: Tools of Freedom or Oppression

Publisher’s note: It’s the weekend, which means it’s time for Earlywood, a free excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. This is a mashup of a post that originally appeared on the Lost Art Press blog in 2014, and an excerpt from “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” which, as of a week ago, is now available as a free PDF download, now and forever. We hope you enjoy it.

My first woodworking job was at Therma-Tru, a door-making factory in Arkansas. For eight hours a day, I cut rails and stiles for fireproof doors on a sloppy and unguarded radial-arm saw.

To say I hated that machine isn’t a fair measure of the word “hate.” I was scared of the machine, and I would have a close call almost every day when the saw would lurch or bind.

But when I inherited my grandfather’s tools and machines in 1993, I was thrilled to obtain his sloppy, unguarded Craftsman radial-arm saw (aka the “radical-harm” saw).

For me, whether or not I like a tool has nothing to do with whether it’s powe…