This is a personal thing, granted, but you can’t go 2 videos on YouTube anymore without seeing someone doing the simplest tasks with a CNC.

I hate CNC. The whole reason I’m working with wood is because I want to use my hands. I spend all of my days working on a computer and woodworking is one way to get away from that. I want to actually craft the wood into something worthwhile.

Screw the CNC.

I’m not saying that using a CNC makes you a bad person or a bad woodworker, but for me, I have no interest in using a CNC or a laser cutter or, maybe even a 3D printer. No interest at all. I want to make things by hand. Now I’m not a hand-tool purist by any means, I like my power tools, but the last thing I want to do is program a thing and then walk away for a while and come back and it’s done. Where is the woodworking? Where is the craftmanship? What did you actually do to earn it?

Yes, it is theoretically faster and more precise, but it takes no skill. You can download plans from the web, plug it into your laptop and make things that you didn’t do anything to create. It’s fundamentally lazy. All you’re doing is creating a tool path and as the software gets better, a lot of that is done for you. If I wanted it done for me, I’d just go out and buy it. The whole point of woodworking, at least in my opinion, is doing it myself. It’s forming the wood, creating something that is useful, and putting my own personal stamp on it. It’s not perfect because people aren’t perfect. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be mine.

That’s really the problem I have with a lot of this, people are trying for fast and perfect, but that requires no skill. It requires no time. It doesn’t take effort to learn how to do a thing. It’s just lazy and I am not that. Never have been and never will be. If I am building a piece of furniture, I don’t care how long it takes, within reason. If I’m on a deadline, I give myself plenty of time. I know my skills and limitations. I’m not one of those people that you see delivering Mother’s Day gifts 6 weeks late because they had no concept of time. If I’m building something difficult for my wife, I’ll start on it months and months and months ahead of time because birthdays don’t change date. Christmas is at the same time every year. It doesn’t take you by surprise. If I’m going to give her something, I want it to be hand-crafted. If I didn’t want that, I’d just order her something off of Amazon.

CNC is the easy road. I don’t do the easy road. I’m not upset if others want to, that’s entirely up to them, but I have no interest in watching someone stare at a router doing it’s thing. If your hands aren’t on the tool, I don’t want to consume your content. I want to see you do a job, not a computer. That means I’m being a lot more selective over what videos I watch on YouTube. If you’re making things with a CNC, I’m usually clicking away. I just don’t care.

The only exception I might make is for a 3D printer, where you’re making components for shop projects, maybe? I don’t have any interest in general, but I can see the utility for making dust ports and the like. However, I saw a video not long ago where the guy was making one of those useless boxes, where the mechanism just turned itself off over and over and for the box, which is a really simple thing, he was making it out of plywood, but he went to the CNC. For a box. Really? I clicked off the video after that. If you’re that lazy, I have no interest in your content. It’s not like we’re talking about complex joinery, it was a couple of rectangles that he glued together with butt joints. Give me a break!

Meanwhile, I’ll be out in the shop, making things out of wood. It’s not as fast or as precise,  but at least I’ll be enjoying myself while I do it. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters to me. You do you. I’ll do me.