I touched on failure in my previous blog entry, and I think it’s an important subject that doesn’t get discussed very often. What I had previously intended to spend a paragraph or two reviewing turned into this essay; seems like I’ve had my share. For me, failure is not the first thing that comes to mind when envisioning the next idea; so it can be pretty difficult to accept when an undertaking results in failure.
Failure is something everyone has experienced at one point in their lives. In this sense, it presents a shared experience for everyone. Not in the sense that everyone will experience the same technical failures; more that everyone will experience the feelings associated with failure. These shared experiences should form the kernel from which we can use to empathize with others who may be experiencing some form of failure. If you’ve never failed; you’ve either never tried anything or are lying to yourself; change that.
That said, failing is generally not something lauded by others or society at large and would normally elicit negative stigma. These strong pessimistic emotions and perceived judgement can create the compulsion for people to try and gloss over or even attempt to conceal failure. Yet it is something we all share in common. So much so, that it is usually openly acknowledged that failing at something provides fertile circumstances for personal introspection and development. Personally growing from these experiences is applauded. This presents a bit of a paradox around failure. Having failed at something in the past is considered positively; when used as an opportunity to better oneself. Whereas, currently failing at something is usually not or viewed positively and can even evoke ridicule or harsh criticisms from others who can speak with the clarity of hindsight. This is in spite of the potential for future positive effect.
I have a number of failed projects that have all but been abandoned or discarded over the course of my woodworking. I keep two of them in the shed, tucked away as a reminder to be judicious when thinking about what to do next and not stretching the current realm of your abilities too far. They reside there as a salient reminder of some lessons needing to be learnt the hard way. In the interest of transparency and the hope of imparting this hard-learnt knowledge; let’s look at two early projects I abandoned, the reasons I did this and why I class them as failures.
Dirty Laundry Storage
I pulled them down to write this article and the essence of the original idea has clearly taken form. There has been enough progress made for them to be discernible as to what the finished product would be. Ultimately, it was process and material understanding mistakes that doomed them to purgatory.
I’d like to clarify a clear distinction between a mistake and a failure. Mistakes are something to be anticipated and avoided or overcome. Compounding mistakes result in failure. Knowing how to identify and nip mistakes in the bud early is an integral part of being good at that something. Making a mistake sucks; making further mistakes while trying to fix the initial one is even worse. It’s quite easy to recognise a mistake, get frustrated and be tempted to try the quick fix. This usually results in a new, different mistake being made or the original mistake being worsened. Don’t get angry; get smart. Take a breath, repeat this mantra;
Once is an oversight.
Twice is a cockup.
Three times; well that’s just fucking stupid.
N.B. – Don’t repeat the same mistake thrice.
Let’s dive right in to example one - The Bar Stool Tops
Exhibit A – Almost finished stool tops (also from my previous entry, bit of a Metallica fan)
If you’re following from the previous post the first larger project I took on was a bar I decided to build in my house. These stools were to go at it and I started them straight after finishing the bar. These tops could almost pass as a completed project but I just could never be happy with them.
For the tops I laminated decking boards together and made mistakes that were too obvious; I just didn’t realise until the glue had set. Chiefly, the factory edges were left on the boards for lamination. This was a problem because they are never perfectly straight or perpendicular and it left the pencil rounded edges on the boards; creating a groove at each lamination in the stool top. I honestly don’t know what was going through my mind but the groove issue didn’t click with me until I took the tops out of the clamps after they had cured.
The visible grooves left from the pencil round edges. Also, joint has de-laminated at the end.
This was also the first time I tried laminating multiple thin boards together. The issue with leaving the factory edges on compounded, as I had to do the clamps up very tightly to bring the edges together. I also put all of the clamps on the top side of the stools which had the effect of creating a cupped surface for the lamination.
This could have been avoided by machining the edges correctly and using cauls on the joint to keep everything planar. It is also good practice to clamp both sides of the joint to apply balanced pressure. With these mistakes now baked in I decided to try and keep working with it by sanding the tops back to flat to allow the inlay work to progress.
The boards had a grooved bottom and this is the underside of the lamination. The remaining variation is how much material I had to remove to get them ‘flat’.
These inlays were far more intricate than the ones I did on the bar. Looking at it again now there is only one word to describe them; sloppy. Due to my inexperience and the fiddlyness of this task, when trying to fit the pieces I was removing material from the stool tops and the inlay piece at the same time for expediency. This made everything fit faster but the pockets ended up being pretty sloppy. Exceptional inlay work requires honed skills and good preparation but most importantly; it takes great patience. I adhered the pieces with epoxy also using it to fill the annular space around the inlays and the grooves from the pencil round. At the time I wasn’t too upset with them; for mine now though; they just don’t cut it. I ended up completing two of the ‘M’ logo tops and one of the skullboy tops.
Above - typical finish of the inlays in the stool tops.
Below - what I would now class as acceptable inlay tolerances
After some time I then had troubles with the edges de-laminating. There are a couple of reasons for this but ultimately, it comes back to the lack of edge preparation. It would have been far better off to spring these joints with adequate edge prep which would have avoided this. At the time I would have just looked with a blank stare if asked what a spring joint was.
‘Finished’ top; pencil round filled with epoxy. Another end has de-laminated.
Not a real good outcome all around. From above it can also be seen that the majority of issues experienced all share the lack of good joint preparation as the root cause. Every subsequent problem compounded from this initial issue.
Let’s take a look at example two; The Guitar
Exhibit B – One partially finished guitar
This guitar was doomed before I even started. As hard as it might be to admit; this was totally due to ignorance and overconfidence on my part. The guitar was a cool project I wanted to make that worked in with what I originally envisaged Timber Tone would do. The skill and understanding required to pull this off were just way out of my league at the time; probably still are to some degree.
I bought a pre-laminated body that I designed the guitar’s shape onto and a pre-fabricated neck with designs on inlaying new fret markers over the existing dots. I didn’t really understand timber as a material very well at this point and FYI; it does not like being fashioned into a sharp point across the grain. All I had to cut it out with was my jigsaw and plunge router. I roughed it with the jigsaw, then had to cut from top and bottom to get the depth with the router. The resulting cuts were poor and not symmetrical. I also ended up with bulk chip-out on the short-gained areas. The guitar was going to be painted so I tried to overcome this by laminating poly-carbonate sheet over these areas and epoxying broken parts back in. This was pretty rough and just not good enough. I had planned on filling the areas up with epoxy and re-shaping but it was just never going to get there.
Scene of the crime
Moving onto the neck. I actually bought a Dremel to do the inlay work on this and managed to get one marker in; poorly. I remember trying to work around the fret wire was pretty difficult and turns out this is completely the wrong way to do it. I just thought I’d have a crack and she’d be right.
She was not right.
A lack of material understanding and skill was the real stem of this failure. While this project didn’t suffer a large cascade of errors like the previous; accepting that it was too far outside my knowledge and abilities was the coup de grâce for this project.
Despite these two projects being abandoned at different stages of completion I still class them both as failures. The stools could almost pass as a finished project; which raises the question regarding the evaluation of failure. What counts as a failure? Is there always a quantitative benchmark or it is more of a relative & subjective criterion? At the balance of it, are all failures really just equal?
I guess the true yardstick of this will sit with the individual’s ideals, their skill level and current understanding; failure is in the eye of the beholder as it were. Each individual’s benchmark also may or may not change over time. I learned some valuable lessons progressing as far as I did on each of the both projects. They were hard learnt lessons but I have not repeated those errors again.
Where I’m at
I currently have a project that has been on again/off again for over a year (about 16 months) as I write this. There are multiple reasons for the drawn-out timeframe and multiple issues have arisen or been exacerbated because of this. As the frustration level builds with this project I have contemplated abandonment on a number of occasions; but have tried to keep cool and slog it out. Even now, typing this sentence, acknowledging all of the above, it is still hard to accept that the time already invested may be wasted and the time required to make it work may be just throwing good after bad.
When I started out this post I wasn’t sure exactly how it would pan out. Failure definitely possesses negative connotations and it can be a bit of a downer reading negative things. I would also say I was a little apprehensive about sharing these abandoned projects but ultimately, they form a crucial part of how I have developed my skills upto this point. No-one wakes up one morning, decides to start something and is an expert by the following morning. Perhaps the fleshing out of this article has really been a cathartic exercise for me to rationalise one avenue of how this blog may go. Perhaps there was some food for thought or a lesson or two in there for you, dear reader aswell. Ultimately, I think the recognition of our own failures is good; as you’re being honest with yourself. Without that honesty, any endeavour can shift from enjoyment to blame, frustration and resentment.
Final thought
For the number two entry in a woodworking blog I’d say this was a little bleak and tangential. I may have also raised more questions than answered in my ramblings. Oh well, failure is always an option; but there’s also usually a next time.
Until then,
Kind Regards
Walker
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