About
Four years pointed at somebody else's bench. You learn things.
Scottail Studio · Portland, Oregon · one person, one shop, one jointer that owes me nothing.
I came into this trade sideways. I was hired to run a camera, and running a camera at a woodworking bench means watching every single operation from eighteen inches away, in focus, repeatedly, for years.
That's an unusual apprenticeship. I never had to guess what a chatter mark meant, or how a finish behaves in the third coat, because I'd already filmed it forty times from an angle nobody else gets to stand at.
What I also learned — and this is the part that eventually made me want my own shop — is how much of this industry happens in the edit. Which mistakes get cut. Which numbers don't get said out loud. How much of a "flawless" piece is flawless and how much is a soft key light at four in the afternoon.
None of that is dishonest, exactly. It's just editing. But once you've done it professionally for four years, you develop opinions about how the work should be sold, and it turns out a camera is a poor place from which to express them.
So there's a second studio in this town now. It publishes its prices. It quotes lead times it intends to meet. It tells you when something went wrong, in writing, without being asked.
That's the whole pitch. It's a low bar and I'd genuinely rather it weren't.
Also true
Over roughly two years, with a trainer, unglamorously and slowly. It has nothing to do with furniture. People ask, so it's here.
I still cut my own videos. I will not cut yours. I've been extremely clear about this with several people.
Every pass. Every time. There's a reason and one of my tables is one inch smaller than it was designed to be.
I learned the trade there. Most of what I know about finishing came from filming it. The rivalry is a bit — the published prices are not.