Eight years ago or so I completed my first chair, a custom design Adirondack chair from some very nice mostly oak dumpster wood and various scraps. It used my preferred methods – no screws, dowel and glue joinery only.

There turned out to be a big however, however. Thankfully it was I who experienced the failure of the chair. It had been serving outside for several years and sitting in it one evening, I guess the weather had wrought rot to where the front legs adjoin the seat joists, kr,kr, kerplomp! Not far to fall and nought really but the indignity of failure as the injury. Learning, ah yes learning, that’s how to look at it. I’d discovered yet another thing that didn’t work. Good at that!

I did not want the story to end that way. The pieces quietly taunted me in the barn. Eventually against the grain I went – “Screw this” I said to myself. And so indeed I did. Everywhere a dowel had been, or nearabouts, I placed instead screws.

Sanded it down again, painted the default blue/purple

and while all may not be right with the world, at least this crinkly corner is corrected.

I’d call this an example of patience and perseverance. Of course larger questions always hover, as to whether what is it that is worth being patient and persevering about. Such questions edge toward being imponderable, though avoiding them is at ones own peril. I follow the feeling of the thing, as if things had feelings. I can ponder now in chair replete with lessons.