The Age of Decline

No capes! Or maybe: More capes!

When I first met Norm Abram at a woodworking show, it was like meeting a rock star from the Age of Aquarius. Every kind of 60-year-old white guy was lined up at the convention center to shake Norm’s hand and get a signed portrait of the man.

Norm is, of course, an important figure in the history of home woodworking. I consider him to be perhaps the last of the big names as our craft evolves into something different.

During my time in corporate woodworking journalism, I got a glimpse of what things were like for the generation before me. Stanley Works used to award a golden hammer (well, they said it was gold) to the woodworking/DIY writer who had chugged a sufficient quantity of Stanley cock to earn it.

The golden hammer was bestowed during a posh lunch at the National Hardware Show in Chicago. I got to attend a few of these ceremonies as a young cub, and I ended up going out drinking (and sometimes karaoke?) afterward with this old guard of woodworking writers.

The drunken conversations …