SAM DINGMAN: In a woodshop in downtown Phoenix, just off Seventh Avenue, there are three rules posted on the wall, under the heading “Raul’s Rules.”
RAUL RAMIREZ: Number one is hold your work — so when you’re workin’, you don’t want the piece movin’ around on you, it’s dangerous for that to happen. And then sharp tools — sharp tools are safer than dull tools. And then: patience.
DINGMAN: That’s the eponymous Raul.
RAMIREZ: My name is Raul Ramirez. My former career was as an aerospace engineer, my degree is in physics. And my love is in woodworking.
DINGMAN: Raul got his start as a woodworker back in the 1960s — he’d just bought a house, and it didn’t have any furniture in it. So he taught himself how to make his own tables, chairs, cabinets, beds and desks.
Sixty years later, he’s still woodworking, and in 2013, he helped launch the Southwest Woodworking School, where I visited him recently. On the wall when you walk in, not far from Raul’s Rules, there’s a mounted display of vintage tools: saws, clamps and hand-cranked drills.
Raul calls it “Antique Alley.” He showed me one of his favorites — a molding plane with an elaborate handle.
RAMIREZ: This here was made in like 1820. But you see the decorative touches and all that? It really doesn’t need that to be an effective tool. But the old masters, they just took the time to make it look really good.
DINGMAN: My theory about doing things by hand is that it forces you to care, because if you didn’t care you wouldn’t do it the way that takes longer and where it’s easier to make a mistake, or there’s gonna be imperfections or something. Does that resonate with you?
RAMIREZ: Oh, God, yes.
DINGMAN: Raul insists that his students start by doing everything by hand.
RAMIREZ: Our first fundamental course is strictly hand tools, teaches students how to make different pieces using strictly hand tools. There are certain things you cannot do with machines. I like to do it the old ways — so that’s what we teach.
DINGMAN: One room of the school is a gallery dedicated to showcasing work by Raul’s students. He showed me one of his favorites: a wooden podium with a sloped top.
RAMIREZ: That’s called a standing desk — and this was made in the really old style, several hundred-year-old techniques. No measurement tools were used to make this
DINGMAN: No measurement tools?
RAMIREZ: No rulers, no tape measures and so on. It was fun for them to learn how to do that.
DINGMAN: Yeah, that’s fascinating — and I have to ask you what I’m sure is going to sound like a very stupid question, but: if you don’t have measuring tools, how do you make it so that — like, you know, all the legs on this desk are the same length?
RAMIREZ: Yes — and that’s a consequence of using the module.
DINGMAN: The module, Raul explained, is one of the oldest units of measure in woodworking. It’s defined as the distance between the thumb and the pinky of the woodworker's open hand. To measure wood for a piece of furniture, the woodworker cuts a stick that matches that length, and then uses the stick as the basic measurement for the piece they’re building.
RAMIREZ: And that will translate to proportions in your body.
DINGMAN: So for that standing desk, the woodworker starts with their elbow, which is where the top of the desk should be. To figure out the length of the legs, the woodworker figures out how many modules it is to the floor, and so on. The result is furniture that isn’t just handmade — it’s customized to the size and shape of the person who’s going to use it.
DINGMAN: What’s important to you — what do you like about doing it, as you put it, the old way?
RAMIREZ: It’s a skill — a skill that you build. For me, it’s a feeling of accomplishment, of doing something really fine with your hands. It’s just kind of a satisfaction of being able to do that, and do it well.
DINGMAN: As much as Raul loves hand tools, over the years, he allows a limited amount of machinery into the woodworking program.
RAMIREZ: We have three saw-stop table saws. These won’t cut your fingers off, so that lets me sleep at night. [LAUGHS]
DINGMAN: Oh — those are the ones where if it hits the finger, it turns off?
RAMIREZ: Yeah, it falls down below the table and stops spinning.
DINGMAN: Safety was a running theme throughout my conversation with Raul — it’s something he takes very seriously.
RAMIREZ: We’ve been running since 2013, we haven’t had one serious injury.
DINGMAN: Wow.
RAMIREZ: I pretty well keep an eye on the students.
DINGMAN: After a tour of the workshop, Raul started telling me about his life. For decades, woodworking was just a passion project, something he found time to do when he wasn’t doing his actual job.
RAMIREZ: My career was in, uh — it’s hard to say. My career was in missiles and so on.
DINGMAN: Hard to say?
RAMIREZ: Well you know, it sounds kinda funny. My training is in atomic physics, and I worked as an engineer working in missiles and things of that nature.
DINGMAN: Did you have conflicting feelings about that work?
RAMIREZ: Oh no, it’s not conflicting feelings — I loved my job. I could not wait to get up in the morning and go to work. When I said it’s hard to say, it’s: people look at me as a woodworker and say, “You did missiles?!” But no, it was very satisfying work.
But the woodworking just was just … such a contrast. It was just … peaceful. You can get some tranquility out of doing that.
DINGMAN: Raul told me that the average age of students at the school is around 35. He doesn’t often get to work with kids - but when he does, those classes are his favorite. A while back, he had a group of 7-year-olds come in, and he helped them make a chess board for their school.
RAMIREZ: You can see them, in their heads, saying, “I made that.” God, just to see their faces, you know? It’s worth its weight in gold.
DINGMAN: That seems like it has a profound effect on you, that sense of —
RAMIREZ: Oh, God, yeah. When you see the lightbulb come on, you say, “God, it is so cool.”
DINGMAN: After we talked for a while, Raul asked if we could go back to the gallery — he wanted to show me something. When we got there, he pointed out a painting on the wall. It’s an ocean scene. In the distance, there’s a warship. And in the foreground, there’s a missile, with a plume of smoke trailing behind it.
RAMIREZ: Most of my career was working on this missile — it’s called the standard missile. This shows the missile being launched off a ship and going toward a target.
DINGMAN: So as you were just saying, we see it being launched, we see the arc of it flying through the air, we see it locking on to the target. Which of those parts were you focused on?
RAMIREZ: Mainly I was focused on what’s called the warhead and target detector. ... That’s kind of a big contrast, you know, between that kind of technology and the woodworking. A very big contrast.
DINGMAN: Do students ever notice it or ask you about it?
RAMIREZ: Yeah — yeah, someone will ask. They’ll be pretty surprised at the way we focus on woodworking and that I did this before, you know?
DINGMAN: Yeah. What do you make of that surprise?
RAMIREZ: Um, contrast. People have notions, you know? They see you around here and they think, “Well, maybe that’s all I did.”
DINGMAN: On the other side of the gallery, one of Raul’s pieces hangs on the wall. It’s a circular sculpture he calls “Transformation.” He says it’s a depiction of the wheels of time. Raul pointed to the left half of the circle, which is copper colored, with flecks of deep red.
RAMIREZ: This is when the Earth was forming, and things were kind of in chaos …
DINGMAN: The other half of the circle is bright and metallic.
RAMIREZ: And then you transition through time to the silver part, where it depicts the age of enlightenment.
DINGMAN: As he talked me through the piece, Raul had this unmistakable twinkle in his eye. He asked me to look closer, and when I did, I noticed that there were some silver patches in the red chaos section — and some red spots in the silver.
RAMIREZ: You’ll see that you got some enlightenment comin’ through chaos. And then here you’ve got some dark spots even during the enlightening period.
DINGMAN: And was that intentional?
RAMIREZ: Yes. Yes.
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