Woodworking in Vietnam

Introduction

Vietnam offers visitors a rare opportunity to see traditional crafts and agricultural still practiced on a national scale. Minutes away from Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport, you can see rice paddies farmed the traditional way, with plows pulled by water buffalo and farmers bent double from the labor. A motorized plow is a rare sight indeed in the Vietnam's green rice fields.

Power tools are also unusual sights. Hand tools are used throughout the country for all kinds of woodwork, even in large, professional workshops. Once in a while you'll see the odd primitive circular saw, or an electric drill. But these are the exceptions. Most work is done by hand, using the same tools and the same techniques that existed in Vietnam for a thousand years.

That having been said, Vietnam is changing rapidly, and these observations about the country may not hold true in five years. What is most interesting is how similar Vietnamese workshops, tools and practices are to what existed in the West before the invention of stationary woodworking machinery (around the time of the American Civil War).
Many of us in the West tend to be more familiar with Japan's rich woodworking traditions than we are with China's, and we may tend to assume that Japanese tools and styles are found everywhere in Asia. I could immediately see that in Vietnam this is not the case. The country's woodworking tools, technologies and especially its crafted products (such as its ornate furniture) show the influence of its powerful next-door neighbor, China. But Vietnam's strong cultural traditions make its woodcraft its own.

Vietnam is an impoverished country, yet one with strikingly high levels of literacy and employment. The "traditional" methods and tools of farming, woodwork and other professions are either antiquated or classic, depending on one's perspective. But one thing that is certain is that such tools and methods demand a high level of participation from the workforce. "You will never see harder-working people," commented one tourist from New York City.


The following exhibit, "Woodworking in Vietnam," may raise many more questions than it answers. I speak no Vietnamese, and the guides and travel books were of limited assistance in translating the technical vocabulary of woodworking. Because of this, I could not gather information about every tool or craft style that interested me. But despite these limitations, "Woodworking in Vietnam" may be the most comprehensive exhibit on the subject ever published in English. I hope the exhibit will intrigue its viewers and inspire further research in the future.

I would like to thank Jonathan Bloom for encouraging me to travel to Vietnam and for use of his woodcarving in this exhibit. Thanks are also due to Annett for her acute visual and technical skills. Finally, I would like to thank the many people in Vietnam who extended their hospitality to me.

The Tools

In Vietnam, labor is cheap, wood is plentiful, and tools are expensive. As a result, craftsworkers make a lot of their own tools and only buy what cannot be made. Most of the planes I saw in use were made out of scrap rosewood. In use they are not of top quality,but they do the job. Working tropical hardwoods is difficult and the planes are set heavy with wide mouths to cut as fast as possible. Since most Vietnamese furniture is either painted or carved, there isn't a need for a pristine surface. Heavy planing, even if it tears out, is fine.

A Fine Woodworking profile of a Vietnamese woodworker that appeared in the 1980's made a similar point. The article noted that the woodworker's tools had "wide throats and poor-quality-steel irons" that didn't cut very cleanly. But this did not present a problem because, "[his] ordinary furniture didn't require highly finished flat surfaces, and the frame-and-panel construction of his ornate pieces was carved and embellished with split turnings." According to the article, the Vietnamese woodworking tradition used planes were used to "rough out the framework and panels, and to cut moldings. When flat, unblemished surfaces were required, they were scraped." ("Vietnamese Planes: Cong Huy Vo Turns Scrap into Tools," Fine Woodworking, March/April 1982).

Dovetails are seldom used in Vietnamese furniture. Instead, mostly mortises and tenons are used. Consequently, the beveled bench chisel that is so common in the West is nowhere to be found. What woodworkers use instead is what we would call a firmer chisel, with straight sides that taper from the width of the cutting edge to the bolster. On the better chisels, the blade also tapers in thickness, much like a carving firmer.

The quality of the metalwork on Vietnamese tools is very good. This makes a lot of sense. If you earn your living carving, you need a carving set that works. You may not be able to afford fancy, but you do need good. However, since everyone makes their own wooden parts, I found it impossible to buy any wooden tools of even usable quality. In the shop in Hanoi where I purchased several fine sets of chisels and plane blades, the pile of plane bodies were all unusable. In Hoi An, where I met with a toolmaker who did extremely fine quality metalwork, the handles he supplied were pretty bad and the plane bodies he supplied were unusable.


http://www.antiquetools.com/viet/index.html


The Toolmaker's Forge

About a kilometer down the main road from Hoi An, heading towards the beach, is an unassuming shed which is the forge of a toolmaker. When I arrived the shop was closed for lunch. However the arrival of an American not en-route to the beach provoked immediate attention from the schoolchildren in the area who went to fetch the master. I speak no Vietnamese, the master spoke no English, and a generic phrase book filled with hotel and restaurant chats was totally useless in this context. After an long exchange, drawing pictures and making gestures, the master realized that here was a tourist who wanted to buy every tool he had around. This was big news.