Thread: Quotable quotes

Build the New Instant Boats
HAROLD "DYNAMITE" PAYSON

APPENDIX II.
AUDEL ON QUARTER SAWING LUMBER
I have taken the accompanying illustration and a portion of the text from my 1923 edition of Audel's Carpenters and Builders Guide #1.
(...)
Don't let that date of 1923 throw you. Of the four volumes Audel published, I consider myself lucky to have only the first. It covers a great deal of what any good carpenter should know or should learn. It is loaded with excellent information with clear illustrations and reflects the excellence of craftsmanship that Audel expected of every professional user of tools. He heads the page describing the contents with: "By hammer and hand all things do stand." And in his Foreword he says:
"When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! This our father did for us.' " (*)
To be sure, Audel is speaking of houses, not boats, but I like to think that those same high standards still apply. Houses or boats, when we talk of lumber we are talking about understanding the fundamental characteristics of wood and the tools we apply to it.

(*) It is a quote from John Ruskin apparently.