To the Editor:

I’m writing in response to Frank Palmeri’s column titled “TV shows about woodworking leave a lot to be desired.”

I think that Mr. Palmeri’s comments about the various shows he mentions are reasonably accurate as far as they go.

It is a well-worn trope in the woodworking community that Norm Abram loves his power tools. And I think Palmeri misses the main point of Roy Underhill’s project on the Woodwright’s Shop, which is to explore the ways that craftsmen went about working wood prior to the advent of most power tools.

At any rate, Mr. Palmeri’s chief complaint is that these shows are not targeted specifically at him as an avatar of the “normal woodworker.” Here he describes someone who is arguably a “novice woodworker” — someone who has just a few basic tools and some fundamental skills.

I think that he underestimates what “normal woodworker” means. I know plenty of woodworkers who have shops with machinery and hand tool collections similar to the shows he’s criticizing.

He does mention this idea, and counters that such people “shouldn’t be watching these shows anyway.”

This is where Mr. Palmeri gets to his second — and perhaps more important — criticism: Many of these shows are not depicting the actual operations involved in woodworking that would actually be educational for the viewer like him.

He mentions that he would like to see the process of adjusting the power tools for making various cuts, rather than just seeing the actual cut being made.

He envisions a show that depicts how to make things using only a very limited set of tools. But he seems not to grasp that a limited tool kit and limited skills will only allow you to make a limited number of things of limited quality.

I think he misses the point of these shows, in that they are not intended to be “instructional” in a traditional sense. Any show that’s on TV has to be considered as entertainment. We watch these shows because they inspire us and perhaps teach some tips or special techniques.

If Mr. Palmeri truly wants to find classically instructional videos, there are numerous folks offering excellent DVDs or streaming videos of a wide range of woodworking techniques. There is even a series from Popular Woodworking called “I can do that” that is almost an exact match for Palmeri’s dream show.

Palmeri ends his piece saying he’ll be impressed when there’s a TV show about building a nice Shaker cabinet “using only basic tools and a couple saw horses.” That’s just a pipe dream.

Ultimately, I think Mr. Palmeri is disillusioned by the fact that doing quality woodworking might actually require specialty woodworking tools and skills. 

Wesley West

Anoka, Minnesota