Mary Osa

09/10/2025

Planning tools
First stage
Starting out
Kick off begs
Delivery
And something
Comes from a
Pencil point
On a clean sheet
And so it goes
Until

09/10/2025

A drawing for a maker
Is a statement of interest
Is a statement of intent
A thought in process and
Leads to an action to create
And I made the four corners
Points of contact at the end
Of a maker's day in working oak
Content leads to contentment

09/10/2025

09/10/2025

75 years and three days ago I was born to make
this idea a reality so I made it
I didn't know that I would or if I could back then
But coming to 75 this month I decided to do it, make it
so it's done, made, used and working
Who could have known what this man was born to do,
born to be and born to leave behind to strengthen the
new generations yet to be born, yet grow, yet to inherit?…

09/10/2025

Allowing Determination

Nature closes in on the man-made––
Envelopes his efforts to conquer
To fence in with confined rigidity
To dominate that which refuses dominance
The slow swallow of cast iron
Takes decades and the enclosure
By a century and more never lets go.
So it is when stubbornness shifts
Rigid pride and patience becomes
The determination needed to consume
Poor character.
Five years passes slowly in the growth
Of a boxwood stem and no sign
Of a takeover shows
So it is with the character of a man
And a woman who let things go
The slow swallow of cast iron by a leaf-clad
Power takes the century’s growth
And an enclosure expands in surrounding
Denseness that never releases its hold
So it is when we release stubbornness
To change our status quo and
Allow determination to consume our past
With a forthright passage into a new future

09/10/2025

Some say you need a shooting board to plane end grain dead square, while others say a low-angle plane works better than a #4 basic Stanley. I say freehand gets me there in five seconds and five strokes every time. Real woodworking. Just do it!

09/10/2025

It's a small thing
Scrapped wood
Bits of beech, no more
A worn-out saw file
An over-worn flat one
Worn-down steel teeth
Tossed into a fire pit
Scrapped wood burning
Pulled out steel, cooling
Recut, refiled, shaped
By eye
Two hands, arms muscling
Pocketed time set aside
Necessity invents itself
Sunday afternoons allow
Casual things
In the hands of a maker
A lifted hacksaw
Drilled holes
Filed steel
Spokeshaved wood
There it sits
Clean cut, new
Uniquely made
Uniquely you

09/10/2025

It's my own
An octagon
Planed with a #4
Turned bits
Ferrule fitted brass
And square awl
From file steel
Filed square
Four-sided
Bird-cage awl
Is what it's called
Wouldn't be without it
Couldn't live without one
Nothing can replace it

09/10/2025

The diminishing return of bending dried wood.
Over 24 hours, wood's restorative memory
Takes a 15" radius to 24" but never flatness again.

09/10/2025

I teach things
Learned in the saddle
Mending fence
Shoeing on the hoof
as it were.
Riding fence every day

No degrees needed
But degrees of knowledge
at a saw's tooth
and a chisel's edge
A plane stroke can't be beat.

Two two-bys, no more.
Eighteen hand cut tenons
Imagine! And matched mortises
Loved it. Every minute.
Couldn't stop 'til done.

And then the seat
Another saddle to sit in
Pull on the reins
Left lean, right lean
Rein in on and stretch tight