The Adaptive Workshop

I wrote in my last post about the direction my workshop is heading in towards one that features new innovations in technology and equipment rather than one given over to historic methods. I just finished reading an article in the International Society of Organbuilders quarterly journal about the restoration of a Renaissance pipe organ in France. Of course the original instrument was constructed without the use of any powered equipment, but it appears that hand tool methods were used in much of the rebuild process also.

I have always wanted to someday learn and employ hand tools the way woodworkers did in the past, but then it looks like my workshop heads in the other direction. I am reminded of something the German organ builder Gerhard Brunzema once said to me when I asked him why he didn't build instruments more directly in the historic style. He said that since he lived and worked in our time, it would make sense for him to build organs for our time, and not build in the past.

I am reminded once again of this, and therefore am more content at the direction that my workshop and the work that I produce within that shop is taking. Perhaps someone will look at my work a hundred years from now, judge it as something built during its time, and hopefully find validity in that.

More than just modern tools though, I also employ a number of them on tool stands rather than workbenches. Tool stands are usually associated with, and really designed for use on, the job-site rather than in an off-site workshop. My shop is actually space constrained relative to the number of tools I use to accomplish the growing number of methods I now use in my work. I therefore use portable tool stands to set up an occasional job-site within my workshop based on some particular process. The tool stands allow quick set up so that my workshop is able to adapt quickly to some operation, and then adapt back again to another configuration depending on the particular course of a project.