George always made me think for myself. He posed questions to me all day long and then waited for answers. And it wasn’t just about wood but all kinds of things. He would reinforce the need to query what we did, what was happening around us and what was happening in the world. “Always question authority.”
How much had been passed to him was never made clear. Owning knowledge for the main part was to take ownership of it when it was ‘given’ to you. This was the way of word-of-mouth learning, where seldom were things written down in text but perhaps a few lines in a drawing on a piece of pine you were working on or the inside of a cigarette packet, an envelope or whatever was close to hand.
Making an apprentice think was critical to ownership. “Why do we leave a gap at the bottom of a mortise hole, Paul?” or, “Uh oh, why is that haunch tight cut?” Thinking about the reasoning, reasoning it out, gave you better ownership of knowledge without being told the reason why. It’s different. Just different.