Hello and welcome to Hungry Woodworker, a newsletter about learning the art and practice of woodworking. I’m Taliesin and one thing I do when I’m not building furniture is take notes; some get edited into essays, which I share every other Thursday. Thank you for being here.
A little check-in: I’m not a summer person. All this sunshine and warmth makes me want to hibernate. So I’m taking a break from woodworking—actually, I’m forced to due to pain in my right elbow that is worsening while I work, which is maybe just my body’s way of saying that summer is no place for me.
Given all this, I am also going to take a couple weeks off writing and will be back with an essay July 27.
Today’s essay is below. I hope your next several weeks are full of joy and free of pain!
Are we there yet?
What is finished? As in, what do you mean when you say you’ve finished something?
The task or project has no more steps?
Time is up and so the work must stop?
The thing is ready to be submitted or shared, is open for use or observation by those in the wider world?
There are no improvements left to make? (Are you sure there are no more tweaks, even a minor adjustment or edit, that would improve it?)
The thing you’ve done is perfect? Or as perfect as it’ll get?
There now exist two large wooden boxes with several smaller boxes inside them to hold the future possibilities of what my children will wear.
In other words: my children now have dressers.
Phew.
And may I say that those leg tapers really tie the whole thing together.
As I thought of writing about the conclusion to my months-long project, I realized that saying “the children now have dressers” is more honest than saying “I’ve finished the dressers.”
Because I’m not finished with them. I’m still hung up on a couple issues that I think I could or should fix. Maybe, like the twist near the end of a bad domestic thriller, it turns out the dressers have some kind of psychic hold on my mind and they’re not finished with me?
Dad tells me not to share all the defects and problems I see each time I look at something I’ve built. Josiah reminds me not to dwell on the negative but instead to focus on what went well. To celebrate being done.
But my peevish brain prefers the path of most resistance. And so I ruminate on what it means to actually finish something. And I longingly note all the many additional tasks that, if undertaken, underscore just how not done my work is.
“Work,” David Whyte writes, “is freighted with difficulty and possibility of visible failure.”
Drawers that won’t open. Stiles, rails, and drawer fronts not inset the same on either side. Imperfections or warps in the wood, seemingly slight but when compounded running the project as off course as a ship on the sea one degree astray of where it was meant to be heading.
“Work, therefore is robust vulnerability, and a good part of the time, a journey leading us through very unbeautiful private and public humiliations,” Whyte continues.
I spent a good bit of last week with a block plane and sander resizing the drawer boxes, which were about 1/32” too fat for seven of my eight drawer slides.
This is the kind of nitpicky task that always happens near the end of a project. It’s why I find planing and rough cutting lumber so relaxing. Even sanding, as boring as it can be, is a mental reprieve from all the numbers, calculations, checking and rechecking necessary to ensure one piece of wood fits with another.
As it turns out, the issue was that I used measurements for the drawer boxes based on an extra set of drawer slides Dad gave me. While they were the same kind of slides I bought for the other seven drawers, they were a bit older and thus a tad different in width than my newer ones.
So I saved about $30 on drawer slides but spent about three or four extra hours fixing seven drawers.
But can you really put a price on learning?
As I was inserting the very last drawer in the second dresser, I sliced the dickens out of my left thumb on the bottom of the drawer slide.
So maybe that’s how I know I’m done. By bleeding on the final drawer just before it closed.
Everything any of us do would probably benefit from one more edit or adjustment. But at some point, the relentless pursuit dulls us more than it hones us, making our edges brittle instead of sharp.
Does the project fulfill its purpose? Is it pleasing to the eye and inviting to the hand? Do the piles of my children’s clothes look better when hidden inside the dresser than scattered on the floor? Why yes, they do.
I guess that’s my definition of finished.
"All this sunshine and warmth makes me want to hibernate."
Ahh... a classic case of Ursus Reverso -- nothing to be ashamed of, just go to bed as soon as you wake up.
"... due to pain in my right elbow that is worsening while I work"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendinopathy
Sounds like what we all get when we work a bit too much and repetitively. Welcome to the club: you are now a member of the Sons & Daughters of the Dust -- with all concomitant ills & aches. Our motto: "It get's better, but it'll never be good."
"What is finished?"
Good question. One every woodworker must ask him/herself. My answer? "Fu*kit! This is good enough for that price." (might not be universally applicable)
"In other words: my children now have dressers."
I like the bold grain-patterns you've chosen. Have you seen Japanese 'Tansu'? Same sensibility.
Lucky children, yours. Good Mother, good Family, good future :-)
"That rug ... really tied the room together"
This dude also abides ... as does the gray, whiskered 'Overseer', I dare say...
"Because I’m not finished with them. I’m still hung up on a couple issues that I think I could or should fix."
I can relate to this feeling. I used to feel like this, too. But I stopped thinking like this because I came to understand that nothing I was able to make would ever be flawless. I can envision 'the flawless' or 'the immaculate' in my mind's eye but I can not make it out of wood -- what vanity would that be !? 'Perfection' is a construct of my mind. (Or is it that capacity that indicates that I'm made in God's image? Can cats imagine perfection, coming so close to embodying it?? Or perhaps 'imagining perfection' is a blind alley ... perfection being something that is just embodied, like a cat just is ??? The Egyptians were not onto nothing, methinks ...) The first time I try to make some thing I'm usually able to make a passable/ saleable version, but I'm very conscious of what I could've done better. Next time around, I've upped my game a bit. After that, even more ... it's like an ascending spiral of know-how :-) We strive and fail upwards.
"But my peevish brain prefers the path of most resistance."
Hahaha! yes ... woodworking's definitely for you :-)
"... warps in the wood, seemingly slight but when compounded running the project as off course ..."
Valuable insight, this. Inaccuracies compound, multiplying tedious remedial work. Solution: wood moisture control - this insight is everything ... wood / moisture / environment
"Is it pleasing to the eye and inviting to the hand?"
Exactly ... this! One of the best things I know is when I've made something and show it to someone and I see their hand reach out, involuntarily, to feel it, caress it, like you would a cat, a child or a loved one. I have made something desirable of wood!
Dear Tali: Forgive me for rambling on like this ... you know me by now, I guess ... and to not take me more seriously than I merit. Words are only words, after all. Live well and nurse your tired wing! Best wishes to you and your family (and the whiskered overseer).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oextk-If8HQ