There was a lot of stupid macho bullcrap in the shops where I worked, likely because of the stupid macho woodworkers who worked there. (Hiya, Meatfart! Remember me?)
The basic flavor of the crap: “If you can’t do this operation as well as I can, you ain’t a real woodworker.”
Sadly, we see a lot of students here who torture themselves when they plane up boards or chop dovetails. They want their parts to look like they came off the cover of a book or a video on YouTube – even though that level of perfection won’t affect the look of the assembled piece.
This blog post seeks to help you forget a few things – parlor tricks, mostly – that aren’t important. And perhaps it will help you enjoy the work a little more.
Sharpening
We all know there’s a sharpening cult that preaches that your edges should slice newspaper or shave your arm hair (I think the cult’s goal is keep us hairless and uninformed, like mushrooms). I honestly never have tested my edges with these methods. Instead, I just go to work.
If the tool does its job, then it is sharp.
Just remember the mantra of Tony Konovaloff: “Grind, hone, get back to work.” Sharpen and work. Sharpen and work. Do both, and you will get better at both.
Last week I watched two carpenters repair old double-sash windows at Larry’s, our local dive bar. One of the carpenters ground the bevel of his chisel on the pavement and then polished it off on the granite step of the bar with the help of a loogie. Then he went back to work, doing a nice job.
Inspecting the Garbage
When you cook a fine meal, do you judge your success by the quality of the scraps of food in the sink and compost pile? Nope. Neither should you judge your woodworking by the thinness of the shavings from your handplane. Instead, focus on the work, not the waste. Take the thickest shaving you can manage while still having the wood’s surface look good.
Thin shavings are for occasional situations where the wood won’t behave with any other treatment.
Want to work five times faster? Shoot for a .005”-thick shaving instead of a lacy, lighter-than-an-angel-fart .001”.
Inside, I’m a Wreck
I have never understood why people get so worked up about a little torn end grain inside a dovetail joint. The inside of a joint is a personal matter between you and the furniture conservator 300 years in the future.
When you chop out waste, and some of it is unsupported, you’ll get some torn-off chunks. It happens to me all the time. Sure, I could pare and pare and pare to get my insides looking as good as my outsides. But it’s pointless.
Knock out the waste, assemble the joint and spend all the time you saved making the show surfaces look nice.
Shimmering Meaninglessness
When you get a little skill with a handplane, it frequently becomes a game to make your boards look perfect right from the plane. Sometimes, the wood behaves, and this is an easy task. But most of the time, wood demands the following regimen, which has been practiced for hundreds of years.
- Plane the surface until you cannot make it look any better.
- Scrape any surfaces that need help because of tear-out.
- Briefly sand all surfaces with a fine abrasive to blend the planed and scraped surfaces.
Yes, planed surfaces look beautiful without finish. But after you put a finish on, things change. A well-sanded surface looks indistinguishable from a planed one.
I love my handplanes – they are faster than sanding in most cases. But I have no desire to plane a tabletop for two hours. That’s madness. Plane, scrape, sand and move on.
Piston-fit Nothing
This is perhaps the king of the parlor tricks: piston-fit drawers, lids and trays. People get goofy-eyed when you close one drawer and another drawer is forced out by the movement of air.
Quite frankly, I have found that this is usually an indicator that the drawers are fit too tightly and will stick when the humidity level rises. Drawers should move smoothly, but there are many ways to avoid the piston-fitting nonsense.
French Polished Drawer Bottoms
I don’t finish the insides of most case pieces that are hidden during use. The inside carcase of a chest of drawers doesn’t have to be finished. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be sanded. Put all of your effort into the surfaces that will be seen and touched by the user. The remaining surfaces can be left pretty rough – right from the jack plane or the electric planer.
The Caveat
I know that some woodworkers will object to this blog entry because they are doing woodworking for pure enjoyment or therapy. So they are happy to sharpen to 10,000 grit, treat every surface like a show surface and generally go overboard.
And that’s great. Please go right ahead. Godspeed, even.
But a lot of us have limited time in the shop. You might have children or grandchildren. Plus a difficult job. And you still want to get that dining table built by Christmas. In that case, the above “shortcuts” are perfectly acceptable in my shop and in the shops of many fine professionals.
Do the best work you can – just don’t make a clock out of everything.
— Christopher Schwarz
Hear hear!
I love hearing this type of thing as someone who lets his perfectionistic tendancies get in the way.
Thanks for the breath of fresh air! The shimmering meaninglessness resonates most with me. I first picked up handplaning because I hated sanding so much. But using a plane and scraper gets things ready for finish sanding, and hitting all (show!) surfaces with 400 grit takes next to no time at all and really helps. It’s so much faster than the coarser grits.
“French Polished Drawer Bottoms”… that’s priceless!
Perfection as hobbyist therapy is fine and something I do if a project has no urgency. Perfection as self-torture is pointless (unless you’re a masochist, in which case it IS the point). Perfection to put down others is not a good thing, to say the least.
Thank you for this post, Chris. I find that one of the hardest skills to bring into the shop is self compassion. Very often it feels like competition with an invisible opponent. Maybe that’s why I like making chairs – they are very forgiving.
Rusty
This article mirrors my attitude about woodworking. I have one more thing to add. One’s shop builds do not have to be perfect or pretty. Pretty things should come out of the shop always but don’t have to live there.
May peace, health and shavings as thin you need ‘em reign in your shop too.
I really enjoyed this read.
And with the piston-fit drawers…I imagine it would get old very quickly if every time you had to close a drawer, it took a couple of extra seconds as you had to overcome the air-resistance. It was cute the first ten times but I just want to put this pen away!
May the gods bless you Mr Schwarz! You’ve given those who read permission to do their best, not do it perfect.
I believe that perfect is the enemy of good. Is it a crime to try to exceed good? NEVER!
I hold that you should not fail yourself, and others, by refusing to accept that circumstance may demand “good enough”.
Chris Brown
“Ripping and tearing and happily swearing!”
Thank you Chris. As informative and instructional YouTube can be the pressure for perfection it can cause has been crippling. Thanks for the pep talk, I’m going to go make something!
-Heath
Best. Post. Ever.
I used to obsess over perfection and stress out, producing very little work. A few years ago, I started taking taking the approach you described. I spend most of my effort on the show surfaces and do a minimum amount of work to the insides. I also learned when to stop and say it’s good enough. Now, I get a lot more done in less time and the quality of my work has actually improved.
Thank you. Excellent and entertaining advice. Your words are as efficient as your woodworking.
Amen, times 100. A piston-fit drawer may be fine in parts of the country that enjoy consistent relative humidity, but that is a rare and enviable condition. A drawer that fits too tightly ends up being useless in the humid months.
I do this for a living week in and week out. And I teach all my interns, mentors and employees the same thing. Places you touch and horizontal surfaces have to be fabulous. Vertical surfaces less so. Inside drawers? Don’t snag the fabric of things you put in there. And the inside of the cabinet or underside-inside of the table – I’ve seen original pieces from the 1700’s that still have the bark on. I treat them similarly.
This is a very helpful post.
I mainly carve, so I need really sharp tools, but I have tried to learn to do that efficiently without fetishizing the process. And to know when to stop carving, instead of endlessly working and reworking, without real improvement to the work.
One unfortunate thing that many woodworkers are guilty of is pointing out any flaws in their work. I have tried to stop doing this and mentioned it to my woodworking daughter when she started doing it. It is good to have high standards and try to improve but our work is still the product of a human being.
Luckily I never succumbed to any of your examples above, suppose because I was self employed at ww at a young age and needed to make money! Well, none of the above except maybe the sharpening a little. I think because I had a hard time learning to sharpen (no jigs) in school – I spent hours, I still have my Robert Sorby (now retired) chisels the 1” is at least 1”- 1.25” inches shorter than it should be. Funny timing I just last night touched up my chisels and plane irons and didn’t even check them, I think thats the first time. I will say there is a satisfying feeling when you can get a whisper thin shaving…
Oh yea, no tear out on the inside of a dovetail joint is a thing? This is the first time I have ever heard that folks would worry about that…
Spot on!
Tanx!
Absolutely a perfect Christmas gift.
Thank you
I read an article in a magazine some time ago that was just about piston type drawers. I never built one because I knew the project would seize up in the summertime or rattle in the wintertime. That’s about the time I cancelled my subscription.
I’ve been doing this for a year now, small shop in my garage. I find that when I come into the house I’m happier than when I went into the shop, whether I’ve screwed up or not. The attitude you express Chris is exactly why. Thanks! BTW, Skyline > Gold Star, hope you agree.
Dixie Chili > Skyline, and just say no to Gold Star…lol
Oh here we go….. I’ve been eating the stuff since the 1980s. Started on Dixie and Empress. I pretty much like them all – especially the neighborhood joints such as Pleasant Ridge Chili.
I miss Covington Chili. Lucy’s grandma used to eat a cheese coney, glazed donut and a beer from there every day for lunch.
As a newbie doing all of my leaning online, i needed to hear this. Thanks Mr. Schwarz!
Thank you for practicing pragmatism …
Love it! Realising where attention to detail is needed and where it just doesn’t matter was the biggest speed boost in my woodworking.
Yes, I do test irons on my arm hair, but only because I am still learning and it is faster to do than assemble everything, test plane, take apart and try again. I long for the day I have sharpening dien pat and can trust my results blindly.
Thank you for this post. Being a relatively new woodworker and having found the satisfaction in using hand tools, i hate it whenever I get upset about some of these things. Thank you for setting my mind straight.
Excellent post, Chris. When I first took up woodworking as a hobby, I spent time in a workshop that had guys who had family money and didn’t need to work for a living. Many had gone to a fancy woodworking school, as well…lucky them! They had almost every tool in the catalogue. They also were nuts about the degrees of bevel on plane blades, type of tools used, turning a plane on its side when putting it down, etc. A lot of “rules”. But now, 50 years later as I toil in my basement workshop, I take Paul Sellers’ and Rex Kreuger’s advice, along with yours: Do the work, don’t worry about the little things, and you’ll get better each time, . So thanks again for your comments. I love being relaxed as I work.
Thanks for the fresh air! a very Merry Christmas to you and yours.
I sometimes have to remind myself that I’m not building a satellite….
Thank you Chris. This is one of your most useful posts, and that is to reinforce end result practicality over unnecessary perfection. You have said this before in various ways, but not as succinctly as this time. It reminds me of the quote by Joseph Joubert which says, “ Never cut what you can untie”.
Happy Holidays to you, your family and the LAP team.
Cheers,
Michael O’Brien
Alabama
Great post! I hope the new folks read it and listen to it. They’ll be a lot more satisfied and at peace.
Peace!
Martin
Piston fit = parlor trick -> right on! Thanks for this Chris – Merry Christmas and Merry Woodworking to all
Best post ever!
thanks! I have found myself getting frustrated with getting things “right” (especially with finishes!) and in my frustration give up and let the piece sit for a few weeks until I’m ready to go back. Recently finished a cabinet which I knew (from my “right” perspective wasn’t done correctly. The purchaser however found it to be perfect and thanked me for the piece many times.
Thanks again!!
Common sense is not common.
“Always do your very best. Even when no one else is looking, you are always there. Don’t disappoint yourself.”
Colin Powell
He said ‘do your best’. Not someone else’s best.
Happy woodworking brothers and sisters.
This may be the single best blog post I have read from Lost Art Press. Or at least the best one in recent memory. Thank you for being down to earth and realistic. I think there are many woodworkers who look up to you, like I do, and hearing realistic expectations of your own work is a liberating idea. No Botox or social media influencers in the thought process.
That’s it! exactly what I’ve been thinking for a few months. Do your best !!
At the Colonial Williamsburg 18th Century Woodworking Conference a couple of years ago we were shown the roughness of the back of a beautiful tall case decorative clock head: “rough” is a kind word for describing its completely unfinished condition! Cabinet workers of the era wasted no time on anything that no one could see, after all they were expending as little labor as possible in an effort to turn out work and make a living. They cared greatly about the quality of what was seen and virtually nothing about what was unseen. Nor did they waste the finer woods on the interiors as long as as what they used was structurally sound and functional. My 18th c. cherry corner cupboard has unfinished pine boards nailed onto the back, tightly fit but not jointed. As you point out, Chris, if a craftsperson has the time and the personal wish to finish every surface to perfection, one can only admire the dedication that demonstrates!
I’m in the woodworking-as-therapy camp, but that’s why I enjoy posts like this. The last thing I need is a hobby that encourages me to not finish things because I’m obsessing over details that no one else will notice. I need reminders that some things I might waste time obsessive over simply don’t matter.
Hi Christofo! Sometimes I feel it necessary to put paint/varnish whatever on the inside. Not to look pretty but I worry that if I don’t the wood will warp from the tension provided by the finish on the outside. Is this fear unfounded?
You don’t have to finish both sides of a board to keep it from warping.
Don Williams (former senior conservator at the Smithsonian) once said: I’ve examined 10,000 piece of antique furniture. When I see one that has been finished on the inside, it will be my first.
Related to that: Received Wisdom is that one must veneer both sides to keep the board from warping as it moves with humidity. (I’ve seen people insist on doing that even with plywood, which is already all veneer and doesn’t move significantly.) Is one-sided veneering really that much more of an issue than any other one-sided finishing?
when it comes to the unseen parts I tell my students that only dogs’ cats and spiders see it so why worry about it. as for sharping I tell my students you can spend hours and lots of money on sharping a tool or you can spend that time being a wood worker.
Chris,
Thank you for this post. I have struggled with dogmaticism (?) all my life. I am 53 now and still struggle with it but I am getting better.
Once, when finishing a pre-made table, someone asked me why I didn’t stain the bottom. I asked them if they were eating on that side and I got a constipated face from them. Generally, I eschew dogmaticism when it benefits me to eschew dogmaticism…
When I was having some remodel work done around the house, a carpenter once told me that trim work is to hide mistakes and a good carpenter knows how to hide his (or her) mistakes. He also taught me how to install crown molding.
There is someone else, in gardening, who reminds me of you. He doesn’t follow the “rules” either and I like him better for it.
You’ve said all these things before and I’ve proved them out. Good teaching is timeless and good writing is fun to read. Put them together like this and it’s just a joy. Thanks for making my day more enjoyable.
Merry Christmas Chris, John, Megan and all the others who make LAP.
I will often say, “We ain’t making pianos here.”
My grandfather was a master carpenter, and one of the things he’d say most often when we were working on projects was “We’re not building a church organ” – which was his way of teaching us that good enough is good enough.
A friend posted this on Facebook and I love it. I am not a woodworker, but I sew and make things a lot. This attitude prevails among many makers of all things, that the inside must be as good as the outside. Well I have yet to encounter someone who examines the inside of a garment I made (and am wearing) to see if it’s up to their standard. I have on occasion done impeccable finishing on a very fine garment but that is not my usual way. I’d rather use the time making another item! Thank you for this.
Good advice for anyone building furniture or anything else in wood though the specific standards should depend on the use and the recipient’s expectations. Storage shelves for the garage are different than high end furniture which will be a show piece.
“The Caveat” is a reflection of the destination vs journey dichotomy in amateur woodworking. For many, probably most, amateur woodworkers the finished product is the objective. For others working with wood is the objective and the finished product is secondary. As with many dichotomies some on one side have difficulty understanding the other.
Thank you!!!! This is incredibly important! Who wants to be the owner of the «perfect store» with «coming soon», «nearly there!» and «opening to be announced soon!» signs all over? Next to the «good enough store» that advertises «new inventory coming – all old stuff 30% off!!».
I’m building a boarded book case (TM?) for my son and am trying to get it done for Christmas. While I was processing the pine for the back boards I screwed up and resawed them wonky and too thin in a few spots. I resisted the urge to scrap those pieces and start fresh due to time and money. The line of discussion in this article is why I was able to carry on. Those defects will be facing the wall and won’t be visible. There are many other mistakes and I am not sure I’ll be able to apply the lipstick to hide all of them but we’ll see.
Thanks for the honesty and real talk.
Also remember that in this field, as in most arts, the “audience” is looking for what you succeeded at, not to criticize. They will be quite willing to overlook minor flubs. I think it was The Devil’s Dictionary that defined Critic as”a man who boasts himself hard to please because nobody is really trying to please him.”
Make it work, make it good, make it great. In that order.
But if my tail socket endgrain doesn’t look completely immaculate, how will I ever become a Youtube/Instagram content creator and tap into that lucrative plastic jig shilling market? All that primo walnut isn’t cheap you know, wouldn’t want to be caught dead with p*ne like some peasant.
Thank you Chris! It makes me sad when I read about what is the best way or product to sharpen woodworking or turning tools. Pick one, cheap or expensive, learn to use it. My kitchen knives I use a $15 CBN pocket hone and a $9 leather strop (to lazy to make one). My wife is happy and that is all that matters. I have a $600 knife sharpening setup and I use it, but not on my personal knives, because I don’t have time. I’m hungry and the veggies don’t chop themselves.
Perfection is the enemy of the good- Voltaire. my Dad, God love him, told me more than once, “you have to know when it is good enough” and my personal favorite, ” Finish the Damn thing!” LOL
Bookmarking this for future reference. And YES! Plane, scrape, sand! I keep telling people this and the hand toolers don’t want to touch sand paper and the power toolers think hand tools are slow. Hand toolers, this method was described in a Nicholson book. You can use it too. Power toolers your wrong. Pick up a blade, it won’t bite – usually.
you’re* (I know, I know)
I printed this article up and will hang it on the bulletin board in my shop to remind myself now and again to LIGHTEN THE HELL UP!
Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Worse, it can discourage trying, for fear of not achieving that ideal… and the only way you get closer to your ideal is to keep making mistakes you can learn from.
(Corrolary: if you can do it perfectly, you’re no longer learning and should probably try pushing yourself further.)
Thank you for these words of sanity when chasing the white rabbit carrying the perfect chisel/plane/saw/sharpening system is no longer worth the effort or reward. Just make the best piece of work you can and stop pointing out the mistakes you made in the process. Chances are most people won’t notice or care and you improve on the next one. Most of the pieces we see are not the first iteration of the idea or the first execution but it’s a false reality we actually beat ourselves up to achieve when most of the satisfaction is in the making.
My work chisels are mostly for destructive purposes, but I remember the first time I used concrete to fix a turned edge and then nicer window sill concrete to make the tool usable for my purposes. Liberating.
With limited shop time and energy after work, I’ve come to much the same conclusion, though unfortunately to LAP’s detriment. I found myself in Lee Valley with some money burning a hole in my pocket, looking through Chris’ books. And then I said to myself – do I want to spend money reading about woodworking, or doing woodworking? And promptly bought the dovetail saw I actually needed.
Best wishes
I love this post. It amazes me that just about every enthusiast hobby I’ve ever done has this obsessive-perfectionism-as-sport element to it. I think part of it is that, as hobby-amateurs, few of us have had the benefit of apprenticeship level training, or any professional experience at all, so we fixate on the things we deem the markers of accomplishment/skill.
But mostly I just think it’s that people love to show off and everything eventually turns into a big peeing contest. I bet when primitive humans first picked up sticks day one was like “cool – let’s kill food’, and every day after that was spent polishing, customizing, and making sure your stick was more bad-ass than all your ape friends.
Anarchy! this is Anarchy! Oh, wait, that’s a good thing here. I appreciate the focus on where we should place our focus–I fit that exact too little time/space/talent, but loves/wants to do more category, and just getting dovetails that hold–let alone look good–is the point many of us are at.
Related: in the music and music gear world, there’s definitely a focus on the new shiny pedal/doohickey that will maybe finally make everything right. But the answer, as always, is to just play your instrument. In the same vein, the way forward for people like me (more hope that skill): just build something, burn if it’s not safe, build again.
Thank you!
This perfect advice for the perfectionist (in us all!) We all need to understand that there is a “Let it go,” moment. That is where you remember that only YOU will know where the mistakes are!
I need clarification. What grit is loogie rouge?
Asking for a friend!
Depends on if you have a gizzard or not. Some of the rocks in there are quite coarse.
So, to get rid of the coarser rocks, you recommend choking the chicken first?
A few years back I took a woodworking class and at the end of the class the instructor asked us to rate our work. After a few minutes I told him that all my things I make are museum quality work because after 300 years that is where they will be, or be recycled to the burn pile
Great post Chris.
(Although, “ lacy, lighter-than-an-angel-fart” shaving is kinda fun to make.)
Like this blog. It is too easy to get stymied by the perfectionism idea and forget to enjoy the work, learn and continue learning and in=mproving with time and repetition.
like many above, thank you for this sanity…
When I chiseled out dovetail waste I was always getting tearout in the middle – the woodworking book chapters on making dovetail joints never mention this happening, so I thought it was me screwing up. Relieved to know this tearout is not unexpected, thanks.
at work I regularly sharpen planes and chisels with 120 and 220 sandpaper Too many broken stones. I always felt inferior because I didn’t have a 4000 stone .Fixed hundred of doors and windows .
I’ve heard stories of carpenters sharpening chisels with belt sanders.
The fancy ones do! As does Marc Adams and a whole bunch of good woodworkers.
Hm. Yet another if too many good options to dither among…. It’d be interesting to know if they have any comments on good belts for the purpose beyond obvious grit grading.
I watched a video of come guy in a third world country making shoes out of old truck tires. He was sharpening his knife on a rock and the thing was slicing through truck tire tread like butter. Made me feel bad that I needed a honing guide to get my $300 in diamond plates to get that sharp.
I am far along with a black walnut farm table right now. I find that to be an exceptionally difficult wood to plane. So the process for the top was traverse flatish then thin shavings with a number four, scrape, palm sand to 180 grit and done. The bottom shows five levels of various process going back to the lumber yard. I considered running it down to the amish lumber yard to run through their drum sander for ten bucks but that would have been ten bucks I could never get back. It is hard to know where the balance is for tooling up for speed. Lately I have been thinking more about what it means to industrialize for the purpose of making money. I figure I have the spoon making and sloyd as a non power process and it will staybthat way. As I get into chair making I could see a lot of that process maintaining a handtool approach because the parts are smaller.
Back when I was a pup, a petrified old (read: skilled and efficient) woodworker would admonish me with “We ain’t building goddam pianos.” Now retired to do as I please, I mostly build nailed “boarded” furniture with simple rabbeted and housed joinery, and milk painted, sometimes soap finished. Liberating.
This is why I’m going ahead and building the boarded tool chest instead of fussing over whether to build the anarchist’s – because the good is the enemy of the good enough – or because the kids will get into the chisels if I just leave them on the bench.
I built a Dutch tool chest because it takes up less room in my tiny garage workshop. It has more flaws than a $12 engagement ring, but no one gets past the Eddie Van Halen paint job. Perfection is overrated, Dan—aim for utility and esthetics.
As a young man I worked around a few guys like that. They did nothing to build my confidence and then I was fortunate to find work with the type of carpenter that sharpened his chisel with spit and concrete and got back to work. Forty seven years later, I’m still working at it.
This is one thing I have learned from following Richard Maguire’s video projects. Spend time on the show faces where it matters. Sometimes some tricks and shortcuts actually make it easier to get a “perfect” joint on the show side.
Do you think Larry’s chili has a high enough grit to be used as alternative to diamond paste?
Who wants perfect? How will you ever learn to fix your f#$&ups?😉
I find it deliciously ironic that Mr. Vernacular Furniture his own self is advocating the traditional work methods that Fancy Lads commonly used to build all of that upper-class furniture – high boys, pie crust tea tables, etc. – that he rather dislikes.
Regardless, I rather suspect that the historical makers of vernacular furniture furniture used exactly the same methods – only more so. After all, they needed to knock out that stool, chair, or table as quickly as possible, so that they could get back to farming, blacksmithing, etc., and make a living. It didn’t have to be purty…it just had to work.
Great post, and thank you for the timely reminder to concentrate on the things that matter, and to not waste time and effort on those that don’t.
As Patton observed: “A good plan now is better than a perfect plan next week.”
“The sharpening cult”, The leaders of the crowd love to tell you that you can make furniture unless you buy their prescribed “kit”. I always wondered how did such nice furniture get built before diamonds, ceramics, ruler tricks were around? Then I heard CS say, “I don’t care what you use to sharpen your tools, pick a method and sharpen them and go to work” (or something to that effect). Best advice ever…
The woodwright episode w/ you and Roy fiending over the #4 was when I got this memo. Good to see it again.
Great Message! To reinforce, I heard a “furniture expert” at the Gamble House exclaim they were so disappointed when they x-rayed a piece of furniture built by the Hall brothers because the inside of the mortice was sooooo rough. Are you f****ing kidding me, I thought, the INSIDE of the mortice.
I was doing a carving once, at the school I was attending and had a guy come up, look at my carving tools and do a Tsk Tsk and shake his head because he had just “learned” the proper way to sharpen a gouge. I just smiled.
Ha! Excellent post! Great title.
Perfection may not be a good try, but doing better this time than last is the secret to not having to compare anything to perfection.
You have preached my practice.
Thank you Chris.
A nail squarely hit!
Hi. Can I share, translate it for french readers and publish on my website ? Of course all credits to you.
Love ( what ? )
Benjamin.
Of course!
Crap. There go the prices of pavement and granite….
Ok, I almost spit my coffee out with this comment. Thanks for the laugh.
Turners go to great lengths to ensure that the lid of a box is a snug fit. But when I made one that was a bit loose and gave it to my daughter and apologised she said ‘why would I want to have to use two hands to open it’. Practical as ever that girl.
One of my grandfathers was a spit and shave edge tester, because that is how he was taught in his first full time job working in a box factory around 1900. He used an ‘oil stone’ lubricated with kerosene – I have no idea what sort of stone it was, kind of yellowish and no visible grit structure – he never seemed to use a grinder, just that stone. He was an excellent carpenter and cabinet maker – no dovetailed joints in his drawers, just rebate and nails, maybe some sort of glue – the drawers are still tight and functional up to 90 years later. He graduated to an apprenticeship in confectionery from the box factory – he lost all the finger tips on one hand and 3/5 on the other to confectionery machines, I never knew him to get injured with woodworking machines (he made his own tablesaws from machinery boxes and junk).
I wonder how much of the able-to-shave-with-it comes from gentleman woodworkers in the age where most men were very familiar with stropping the edge of a straight razor. If that’s your definition of sharp every morning, it might be hard to accept that this is overkill for wood.
We should not sneer, after all there are fishermen who have casting competitions, shooters downing clay targets and millions of people shooting aliens via tiny screens. If woodworkers compete to get the thinnest shavings from their planes, the most hairs off their arms or the most confetti from a sheet of newspaper then that is their prerogative. Looking at a lot of people they are not plane users but plane collectors. Whatever floats one’s boat in my view. For many people it is just the joy of handling tools and generating some shavings and sawdust.
Thank you!! I belong to the rough innards school of thought and now I can show your comment to those who denigrate my lack of smooth and finished carcass innards and say “if it’s good enough for Chris then it’s fine for me”
Merry Christmas!
Jim
I grew up in New Mexico, and was exposed to the furniture of the “carpinteros” of the colonial era. They build sturdy, beautiful furniture using an adz, ax, auger, chisel and handsaw, in the 1700’s that is still standing strong today. Whenever I struggle with is it good enough, I think to myself would it be good enough for a carpintero? The other New Mexico tradition that has served me well is the story that Navajo weavers always leave a piece of the design that goes astray off the rug — a “mistake” that provides a path for the spirit of the weaver to escape, or some say a path for any evil spirits to leave the rug. Suffice it to say I have a house full of furniture that is at no risk of trapping evil spirits, there are multiple exits.
I always find it amusing how much a difference of a 32nd of an inch can make me happy or sad.
Work in metric, 1mm is bigger than 1/32”. At one time I did metal repairs on aircraft. When I retired I laid an 18mm (3/4”) solid oak floor and worked to 0.5mm, only then did I discover that there was seasonal movement of about 2mm!
Thank you