Perfection

[Bill Wyko]

Something else that happens after years of repairing mistakes is, a different mentality towards planning. I guess I reflect on mistakes more now before the projects begin rather than after. It allows me a clearer plan of the small steps. For instance, I made a big mistake on my box for the contest. I applied my glue to my sub straight and stuck my veneer down. I then put it in the vacuum bag, veneer face down on a piece of 1/4" thick aluminum. I had sanded some glue off the aluminum plate earlier so it had the scratch marks from the sanding. When I went to remove my piece, the glue had bled through the veneer & stuck to the plate. When I tried to separate it, it split down the center of my sub straight leaving 1/2 the veneer broken & stuck down. I now know the next time to cover the plate with aluminum foil before putting anything like this in the vacuum bag. A high price to pay but a lesson well learned.

[paul cottingham]

I build for the sheer joy of building. I am sure that many people here would recoil in horror at the imperfections in my work, and at my blase attitude towards them. Do I always try to improve? of course. Do I care if it is perfect as long as it is functional and reasonably good looking? Not a chance.
This keeps woodworking fun, inspirational, and relaxing for me.

[Russell Sansom]

I have written software for 3 decades. Sometimes life and death ( The design and execution of cockpit displays for research aircraft) were possibly in the balance. Perfection has been there for me. Once in a while it had to be. One way I have thought about it is that I'm perfect to a certain resolution. It's a handy way to think about the puzzle. Using this point of view I can talk to a test pilot and describe where HE and I ( mostly men. Not all ) have had to make compromises. Where the failings are. Where to two of us have had to sweep a paradox under a rug. I guess it's really a case of heightened awareness of picking one's battles.

Writing real-time, state of the art software is very similar to wood working. The steps are similar. One thing is conscientiously registered against another. When two things don't quite line up, something has to be shaved off one of them. And like that. Perfection often requires an infinite regress and one has to draw the line somewhere.

In my case, it's a great question. Dealing with it sometimes makes my life go 'round. In woodworking, I pick what I want to be perfect and I let other parts be less so. I guess it's one of the reasons I've built musical instruments over the years. As a rule, cosmetically they need to look perfect. My earlier instruments, for me, needed to sound fantastic ( I'm calling that a kind of perfection ) and I was willing to let their appearance take a back seat. These days I want both aspects to be as perfect as I can make them. Then I can sit back and see what has to give ( as an example, one of the casualties can be longevity ). If that isn't acceptable, then chuck that violin into the fireplace and build another one.

One last thought pops out of all this. Once we really have the chops and our technical ability isn't the limiting factor, isn't it a time-vs.-results equation?

About as coherent as I want to be at midnight on a Sunday.
Cheers,

Russ

[Jamie Lynch]

I used to be worried about my mistakes, then a wise old woodworker told me the only difference between an amateur and professional was how well he hid his mistakes. I like to call them "design features". There's no need to get upset, it's just another challenge to work through.
FWW has a good article on fixing common joinery mistakes in the current issue.

[John Piwaron]

Whether or not it is a mistake depends on whether or not there are any witnesses. If there are no witnesses, it may be joinery research or it may be an architectural enhancement

Funny but true

[Jason Roehl]

As a longtime friend relates one of his seminary professor's admonitions, "Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good."

Cheap, fast, good; pick two.

Russell, I'm curious as to what you might mean by perfect software (such as the cockpit displays)? Did you write thousands (or more) lines of code, and have them perform flawlessly the first time? Or was "perfection" the end result of many iterations of the code after countless hours of debugging, simulation and testing? (No disrespect here, just trying to get an OT handle on your perspective.)

As for woodworking, I think "flawless" is a nebulous term related to purpose of the item. Does the little speck of dust in the finish in the corner on the underside of an end table matter? If it's for personal use or built as a present for a relative or one of a run of dozens, probably not. If it's a $100,000 commissioned piece by a world-renowned artisan, then it probably does.

[Jeff Duncan]

I don't believe in flawless, there's a lot of stuff that looks flawless, but that just means you have to look harder I view mistakes as lessons, each one makes me better at what I do. I've never completed a project and walked away thinking that is was perfect...or even close to perfect. There's always some little details that most people would never find that I'm not happy with. I know there are guys out there doing better quality work than me, and there are guys out there who can't match what I do. At then end of the day my clients are happy and that's what counts

JeffD

[Russell Sansom]

Russell, I'm curious as to what you might mean by perfect software (such as the cockpit displays)? Did you write thousands (or more) lines of code, and have them perform flawlessly the first time?

Jason,
My style has been to start with a tiny first program that worked without flaw. I then "grew" it like an onion, adding layers. I would build "models" by separating sub systems and running them by themselves using the same idea. I always thought of this as an organic method. I shudder when I hear programmers say they wrote the software then they put it through the "debugging" phase. I just always preferred to write software without bugs in the first place.
I sometimes ran into a problem as I added to the previously flawless core, but I rarely had a "bug." I could put my software in the cockpit and fly it at any stage of development from the first day to the last and expect it to operate without question. The philosophy and the design behind these research displays was just too mind-boggling to have "bugs"on top of that.

In woodworking I strive for a similar approach. There is a cascade of implications to this. My notion is that I start with boards that are "jewels," for example. This means my workbench has to be free from knots and bumps to avoid embossing or scratching the boards during construction so they require very little finishing at the end (not always ; depends on the project ). I work with precision. I try to perform operations only once ( tenons and mortises don't need a lot of paring ). When something is new to me I make a scale model or practice, say, one corner of a box which I then discard.

Having said all that, I do pick my battles. I don't over-engineer things that don't need it. I don't waste precision ( my precious time ) unless it's for the sake of looking pretty or satisfying somebody who doesn't know any better ( it was the same with management as an engineer ). Leaving things unfinished or rough, though, is a sort of iconoclasty, which, really, is a sort of arrogance. Plenty of tasty riddles in all this.

I hope this is an answer to the question you were asking. As you can tell, I am very fond of the subject and very happy with the success it's afforded me.

[Carl Beckett]

I just throw out the 'Wabi-Sabi' term every time someone notices that deep router gouge that transcends directly across the middle of the table top......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi


yep, I am a Master at the school of Wabi-Sabi.....

[John TenEyck]

Like many others, I've never built a perfect project, but I've built quite a few that I'm very proud of and never grow tired of looking at. A combination of good design and clean execution during the build process gives a sense of deep satisfaction. The ones that don't quite look right on paper, look even worse after completion and I brood about them for a long time. Same with mistakes during the build and especially the finishing process. I am rarely satisfied, but I don't find that unhealthy. Too many people accept "good enough" in all things; I'm not one of them in most anything. I haven't reached the point yet where my skills have peaked; I'm still learning and trying to make each piece better, cleaner, crisper, simpler, more complex - whatever is required to achieve the look.

A few years ago I was installing a curved balcony balustrade which I had designed and fabricated for a new house build. One day when I was about 2/3's done the owner's father comes in to see how the house is coming along. There were at least 4 other tradesmen there at the same time, all within earshot. This guy's father looks at my work for at least 10 minutes, walking around and inspecting it from a distance, up close, from all angles. The other tradesmen start to notice how carefully he's looking at it. I didn't say a word, just kept working. After another 5 or 10 minutes he says to me, loudly enough that everyone can hear, "Sir, you are an artist.". I'll never forget how good that made me feel.

John

[Chris Padilla]

Wow. I'm not looking forward to when I finally mess up up a project. So far, they've all been flawless and perfect.

...then I woke up....

[Ellery Becnel]

"Flawless", "Perfection". Two things I always want to accomplish. Chances are I will never master it. Always doing my best
keeps me striving to get there. Always learning from others, and from common mistakes helps to improve my skills. When I
hear from family and friends that something I have created looks great or beautiful, I am humbled. It makes my effort worth
it. It makes me want to do better work. Not for acknowledgement, for self satisfaction.

Ellery Becnel

[Jeremy Hamaker]

Everything to me is like a balloon. If you squeeze it too hard in one area, it bulges out in another. I aim for balance.
I figure I'll get some features that are "best-possible" and the rest will be "good enough". Sometimes it's the appearance that has to be in the 'best-possible' category... Like an artistic bowl or box or shelf or whatever. Sometimes it's the sturdiness that has to be the "best-possible". As others have mentioned, I don't believe in perfect so don't try for that. In some areas I'm capable of delivering "flawless" as my best-possible. And if that area is one of the ones that needs to be "best-possible" in my project, then the project is not done until that area is "flawless". But, the whole thing will never be perfect...

[Erik Christensen]

I have yet to build anything that is even close to my own sense of perfection - but for the most part I have fun anyway and those I give things to that do not have my skewed sense of acceptable quality tell me they like it (it could go into the fireplace as soon as I leave). What i have learned over the last year or so is how to logically build projects in stages, check my work and adjust the plans for downstream parts based on the deviations of parts already produced. So I have plans for a complete cabinet set, I can buy sheet goods & hardwood off my build list but I don't even think of cutting door/drawer parts until the cases are built & finished. Yah I know this base cabinet was 'supposed' to be 24" wide, but guess what it came out at 23 13/16" - big deal - I have yet to cut drawer stock so I just adjust those plans as necessary. NOT like my auto & metalworking days where it was "get it all together - then assemble".

One of my latest projects was a mobile kitchen prep station with and end grain top. Case & top built, got the drawers built but discovered that when i decided to upgrade to heavy duty undermount slides they required more space behind the drawer and I could not get the drawer inside the cabinet far enough to make it an inset drawer front. OOPS. I had glued up the door front stock slightly oversize and had not cut it to width nor length so it was "I guess this sucker's going to be partial overlay then". Wife loves it and thinks it's perfect - I KNOW it should have been inset but lesson learned to check plans for any impact of hardware changes.

I am amused that the WW articles I read most carefully these days are on how to fix mistakes because that skill has made the biggest improvement in my final build quality. Unless you work in a production commercial operation everything you do is one-off & being human says that is going to have an error rate. Not getting pissed (speaking as a reformed long term tool thrower), figuring out how to adapt to the 'new' design, remembering the mistake for the next time and taking it with a bit of humor seems to turn out the best stuff for me.

[Alan Lightstone]

At work I need to bat 1.000, as patients' lives are at stake.

Doing woodworking, I get to relax. Yes I refinished the last table top I made 12 times until I was happy with the finish. Was it perfect after the 12th time? No. But it was awfully nice.

This is supposed to be an enjoyable hobby. I try to keep it that way. Which means, close enough.