Robert Howard: The Fine Art of Nesting

Robert Howard's workshop in 2008

Words and photos:

Nesting is the art of creating a working or living environment that feels good _ and the emphasis is heavily on the ‘feels’. It is directed at our emotional response to our immediate surroundings. I do not believe it is possible for someone to be immune to his or her surroundings, and I suspect that many who claim to be simply don’t know how to create a space that they feel comfortable in.

But most woodworkers probably just don’t think about it. Their workshop is what it is, as much by accident or necessity as by design. However, I believe there are important reasons why we should take some notice of the place where we do our woodwork. These reasons apply as much to the professional as they do to the hobbyist, but I want to direct my comments primarily to the latter as they, in a sense, must ‘volunteer’ to do it. The professional has to work, whether he or she wants to or not. But the hobbyist only has to go to the bench when he or she wants to, and must resist all competing distractions to do so. So whereas a comfortable environment might improve the working hours of the professional, it can be critical in determining whether any work happens at all for the hobbyist.

Think about it. If you are a hobby woodworker, sitting around on a weekend afternoon, and your thoughts turn to woodworking, which mental picture is most likely to get you making sawdust: a small space you must first clear in the midst of the mess in a gloomy corner of the garage, or a brightly lit, well appointed and organised space that you can just walk into and commence work?

It is easy to imagine such a space, or to find one we can copy. Woodworkers the world over are fascinated by other people’s workshops. If we can, we love visiting them. Or we love looking at photos of them. We love the smell of them, and we love nosing about in them, checking out the tools, machines, gadgets and jigs. Nesting, then, is the gentle art of creating one of these ideal working spaces.

The first and most important requirement is a dedicated space. It can be mobile (perhaps a bench you move outside the garage or into the middle of the living room) or permanent (a corner in the garage or under the house or at the end of the balcony). It can be large or small. It might allow you the luxury of doing any work you like, or you might have to tailor your work to fit the limitations of your space. You might have room for machines, or you might have to confine yourself to hand tools. But it will be your space, and it will allow you to do some woodwork.

It might seem trivial, but I think it is psychologically important to ‘own’ this space, because once you have assumed this ownership you will be able to begin planning how to make the best use of it. It will tie your dreams to a specific place.

If your available woodworking time is very limited, it might seem like a waste to spend any of it arranging your workspace. However, the gains in efficiency alone will soon justify it. Doing good work is difficult enough under ideal conditions so there is no point making it harder by attempting it without a proper vice, good lighting and a decent bench surface. These are bare minimum requirements, and up here in sunny Queensland I have added reverse cycle air conditioning. It is a wonderful thing to be snug and warm in my workshop on a cold, rainy day, or cool and comfortable when outside it is unbearably hot and humid.

A useful bench and vice need not require much space. My most used bench is only 700mm square, and is mounted on an old dentist’s chair pedestal, and it could easily have been made smaller. If you don’t have access to machines, 18mm or 25mm sheets MDF or plywood can be doubled up and glued together to make a very effective bench surface (I ‘clamp’ them together by screwing the bottom sheet to the top one, working from the centre to the outside so the glue is not squeezed into a big pool in the centre of the sheet). I also have a number of excellent bench lights that cost $46 each at Ikea.

Once these necessities have been taken care of, the much more neglected part of nesting can begin. For this, I am going to assume you have a fixed, and not a mobile space, though the differences are not great. A mobile bench simply requires mobile tool storage areas, etc.

Let us say then, that you have staked your claim to a small corner of the garage or your under-house area. The first thing you will need to do is to defend this area against intruders such as general household junk, garden implements and broken appliances. You should also ban any work that is rough, or oily and/or greasy. You do not want to have to clear or clean up your space before beginning work. Rough household work also tends to destroy both your bench and your best cabinetmaking tools.

If you want to be able to use this space to do the best work you are capable of, in addition to your basic bench and lights, you will need a range of tools and materials. These tools will need to be of good quality, and be tuned for optimum performance. To help them stay this way they need to be well stored, and this is where we come to the fun part of
nesting.

There is no one, or right, way to nest. It can be carefully planned, but it does not have to be. It must be deliberate, but light hearted and fun. It is a time to play. About the only thing that is banned is drilling holes through tool handles and hanging them on nails. Nails, in fact, should be rarely used, and then only with care and deliberation.

Nesting does require space. If you don’t have a suitable wall material, think about fixing a sheet of, say, 12mm plywood to your wall. It needs to be thick enough to take screws, and can be of whatever size you have room for. When you fix it, try to integrate it into a plan for your entire work area. Two small sheets might work better than one big one, for example. Laying out your space is as much a design problem as making a piece of furniture, and you need to ask the same questions. What looks best? What feels best? What works best?

Then, take a tool – any tool – and ask yourself how you can hold it in place on this wall board. Your solution can be simple, or as outrageously complicated as you want, so long as it is specific to that tool, and deliberate. Some of my solutions are shown in the accompanying photos. Remember, this isn’t rocket science: there is no ‘right’ way to do it. But by keeping it on the level of play, you can just have some fun creating interesting and effective homes for all your tools out of any scraps of wood you find lying around.

As you make these individual homes you can screw them to the wall board. Here you need to accept that the arrangement of these homes is going to evolve, and you need to be prepared to endlessly rearrange them as your tool collection grows, or as better layouts suggest themselves. So, don’t glue the homes to the board.

It does not need to happen all at once. The most important thing is to begin, and, hopefully, you will find that once you get a few tools in place you will get caught up in the process and it will get easier and easier. You might even reach a point where your earlier attempts no longer satisfy you, and you will go back and redo them. It will become a work in process, that over time will evolve into its most efficient, comfortable and pleasing form.

Small but obvious details can occur to you. For example, being partly deaf, I have a great deal of trouble locating my mobile phone when it rings. I can hear it well enough, but, lacking stereo hearing, I cannot tell which direction the noise is coming from. It finally occurred to me to make a home for my phone so that I always knew where it was. I also have homes for my iPod music system and the remote control for the air conditioners.

My nesting activity is driven by a constant dissatisfaction with some aspect of my workspace. I never get ahead of my tool buying, so there are always tools waiting for homes. There is always wood to be stored, or other materials. Or something about the general arrangement of my space that does not yet work as well as I would like. So every now and then I stop and take stock, and ask my favourite question: do I like it, and, if not, why not? Sometimes this can be tricky to answer, but once I know what it is, I change it to something I do like. And so the process goes on.

Colour and surface texture also need to be considered. We all have colours we like or dislike. I like warm colours, like the yellow base colours we find in wood itself. Splashing a bit of this around can change a workshop environment enormously. I also like the surface texture of wood, rather than the plastic of melamine, for example, which I find much too hard and cold.

 The goal of all this nesting is to end up with a workspace that feels good, a space that you enjoy being in and want to be in. I am sure that this relationship to our workspace is always there, and operates mostly at a sub-conscious level. You will know that you have succeeded in creating a good space when, without making any conscious decision about it, you find you are spending more time in it. You should not have to force yourself into your workshop. You should have to force yourself out of it.

A good workshop is the equivalent of a good artist’s studio, or that old fashioned American concept of a ‘den’. It is, in the Australian vernacular, our shed: our private space, designed to suit ourselves. With some effort and a little imagination it can become our favourite place in the whole, wide world.

First published in Australian Wood Review issue 58, March 2008

Robert Howard is a woodworker and teaches from his Brisbane workshop, see roberthoward.com.au