Reading Material

Wood has grain — the orientation of fibers from when it was a living tree. Cut across the grain, it’s strong and clean. Cut with the grain, the fibers separate and the knife wanders. Split along the grain, a single tap divides a log. The material has preferences. The craftsman’s job is to read them.

Every material has a nature to learn. Steel is ductile — it bends before it breaks, warning you. Cast iron is brittle — it shatters without warning. Concrete is strong in compression, weak in tension — hence rebar to carry what concrete can’t. Bronze work-hardens — becomes stiffer as you hammer it, until you anneal it soft again. The properties aren’t arbitrary; they follow from atomic structure, history of processing, conditions of use.

Reading material is mostly tacit knowledge. The sound of a plane tells the woodworker whether the edge is sharp. The color of steel tells the blacksmith its temperature. The feel of clay tells the potter its moisture content. You learn this by handling, not by reading — the body accumulates what textbooks can’t convey.

Beginners fight the material. They force wood across the grain and get tear-out. They bend metal past its yield point and can’t bend it back. They push clay too wet and watch it collapse. The material always wins these fights. Experience teaches you to work the other way: find what the material wants to do, and arrange for that to be what you need.

Materials are not infinitely forgiving. Each has a working range where it cooperates and a range where it resists. Wood moves with humidity — plan for expansion, or the joint will fail. Steel fatigues under cyclic loading — limit cycles, or it will crack. Concrete creeps under sustained load — account for deflection, or the structure will sag. The material has a memory and a future; the present cut is just one moment.

The master reads material the way a tracker reads ground. Signs everywhere, if you know how to see.