Popular Woodworking 2002-08 № 129, страница 87

Out of the Woodwork

A Lesson in Precision

After building a challenging project with a 'that's good enough' attitude, I learned how closely perfectionism and excellence intertwine.

When I saw a plan for a beautiful, solid-wood chess box, I knew I wanted to try to make one. It was a complicated project, requiring some skill and experience, but headstrong as any self-taught hobbyist, I dove right in to building it.

The chessboard is based on James Krenov's design of solid-wood squares, each dowel-joined to the others in a grid to compensate for wood movement of the different species. Two drawers below the top open to hold the playing pieces, and are flush to the corner blocks, nearly invisible when closed. I knew the project was going to be a challenge.

The biggest problem I had throughout the construction was a "faulty mindset." Too many times I was thinking, "It isn't exact, but surely that's good enough." This led to a compounding of errors that I was ready to shoot myself for later.

The start of my trouble was in thicknessing the lumber. If I had to have four matching drawer sides for two drawers, and one came off the planer Vie" thinner than the others, I called it good and marked the narrow piece to compensate forjoinery at the drawer front.

But when that happened at the backs of the two drawers, and they had to meet in the middle under the box top, a shortfall in thickness meant the drawer back wouldn't reach the support for a double catch, and I had to fill in with a spacer.

If my dados in the corner blocks were a little deeper than V2", I didn't worry. I knew a tongue would be glued in that space and it didn't matter. But it did matter, because the extra depth of the dado cut weakened the

outside of the corner block and it broke with simple handling before I got the sides glued together. It had to be redone.

When I thicknessed a board for the mitered top frame of the box, the entire length was just a bit thinner than called for, before mitering it in four frame pieces. They would all be the same, and I was running out of mahogany, so I decided to go with it anyway. But after cutting two stepped rabbets to receive the top, I didn't have enough edge left for under-carriage supports to cross the frame, and I had to cut them back to small blocks, out of the way of the drawer's travel.

This "comedy of errors" may sound familiar, and I know it's a recommended practice to produce a mock-up to work out such problems. If I do another one of these boxes, I'll know, and hopefully remember, the pitfalls to be avoided.

My biggest lesson though, after struggling through completion of the project, was in changing my faulty mindset. I had never needed to be a perfectionist, but in the end, this small carelessness had caused more problems than it was worth for what little time I saved during construction.

I once heard of an old man putting up a chicken coop with a novice woodworker for help. The young man lifted a beam and called down, "Is that the right length?"

The man hollered back, "Does it touch?"

"Yeah."

"Nail it then."

I'm not building chicken coops. I'm try

ing to follow directions someone has worked hard to make accurate on a fine wood project. I will now remind myself that it's just as easy to mark wood accurately to 2⁵/l6" as it is to round off to 2V4' . If I need sixteenths, it must be sixteenths, and measurements in the next increment will not be good enough.

A famous writing teacher named John Gardner said, "Circus knife-throwers know that it is indeed possible to be perfect, and one had better be. Perfection means hitting exactly what you are aiming at and not touching by a hair what you are not."

So, no more, "That's close enough" attitude. No more, "Does it touch?" Besides a responsibility to the material, there is a "caring" in this process, a slowing down to do what's right. I can't achieve excellence in anything I do without it.

I am going to school myself to inject more precision in my woodworking projects. Somewhere down the line, things will all fit together. Each step will lead flawlessly into the next, and the reward will be that soft, airy whisper of a drawer closing flush against a perfect surface. Maybe then I will feel I've finally "got it right." PW

Barb Siddiqui is a woodworking grandma in Wenatchee, Washington. She writes book reviews at WoodCentral.com and a "Starting Points" column at WomenInWoodworking.com. You can see her finished chess box at www.popwood.com/features/mag.html.

88 Popular Woodworking August 2002