Synopsis: Hand-tool woodworking helped Giuseppe Deepak Benti control a deep form of anxiety called anginophobia.

Hand-tool woodworking is my medicine against anginophobia. This unusual course of medication started a few years ago, during Covid-19, here in Bergamo Province, Italy, which was the European center of the pandemic … tough times for anyone.

I had a job in sales then for a U.S. multinational company, and during the pandemic, when I had to stay home from work for months, anxiety arrived. And then my anxiety turned into a deep anginophobia, something I had never heard of: It is the fear of choking while eating. I lost around 20 kilos in a few months.

Then, by chance, I discovered hand-tool woodworking. I knew nothing about working with my hands, but reading books by Paul Sellers and Tom Fidgen completely changed my life. I started with a few basic projects made with softwood, like the workbench I am using now.

By the end of 2021 I decided to leave my job to try becoming a full-time hand-tool woodworker. It’s pretty crazy, leaving something certain for uncertainty. But I realized during Covid that I needed to do what makes me happy. So, I am trying my best to learn the craft and to make woodworking with hand tools a full-time job. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll search again for a 9-to-5 job; but I want to have no regrets.

My approach to learning? I read lots of books and then practice, make mistakes, and learn from them. I am still definitely a newbie, but I am trying to build more complex furniture now, like an inlaid end table made with mahogany, cherry and maple, and a walnut workbench for a friend of mine.

I don’t have a shop yet. I work in a small corridor at home that is a little less than 10 ft by 4 ft. Not much, but it’s better than having no space. When the weather is good, I work on the patio behind the house. My own current bench shouldn’t really be called a workbench. The first project I made, it’s more of a worktable with drawers. But it does the job, though with lots of limitations. I recently bought some planks of beech so I can build a proper bench when I have a proper workspace.

I work mostly with hardwoods now, and every project gets started with rough boards, so I prepare the stock entirely with hand planes. I don’t use a single power tool. I don’t think woodworking should involve just pushing a board into a thickness planer. I am afraid that by 2050 woodworkers will not even touch the wood—machines and AI will do the job for them, and woodworkers will just be pressing buttons, like we do today with smartphones. The skills of an artisan aren’t required for that.

I want to contribute to the craft by learning the hand skills that the best artisans master, and by passing on the knowledge to others in decades to come.

As I say, hand-tool woodworking is my medicine against extreme anxiety, which I am still fighting. Luckily for me, my medicine is a lifelong learning process. I’m hoping its effectiveness will never fade.

—Giuseppe Deepak Benti lives and works in Bergamo, Italy.

From Fine Woodworking #306

	Benchmarks: Mary May—Carving really isn’t that scary How do you get past your anxiety to venture into the foreign world of curves and decorative carving? We all have to start somewhere.
	Recipe for success If you have a plan, your time in the shop will be more fruitful.
	Working through pain It may feel like moving mountains, but ‘doing the work’ despite the pain is what keeps Nancy Hiller in this game we call life.

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