Follow up on Vaughns post

Dennis Kranz

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This has to do with Vaughns post about shoddy work for sale. How many of you have taken the things you made in the beginning and did them over. I made a couple of things that my wife has that are driving me nuts. I want to redo them so bad. Most of them are so thick that I won't show them to anyone. I did take one out to redo and ended up with a funnel. Thats why I can't do any more.
Dennis
 
Yep, although I have a few old pieces that I sometimes see when visiting folks and go "huh that doesn't look nearly as bad as I remember", I'm not sure if its due to my eyesight or my standards going bad :rofl:. I'd also add that some things end up as firewood even if other people seem to like them :D
 
Yeaah. I've managed to burn a few turnings when my wife wasn't looking. I would take a turning and put it someplace where she would not see it. If it managed to stay there a couple months, I added it to the morning's kindling before my wife was downstairs. It was easier when I did ceramics---all you needed was your most important tool---a hammer.

Enjoy,

JimB
 
Yes, I have many turnings that aren't shown to anyone anymore. I've burnt a few of them, returned a couple and use even more in the shop to hold things. They remind me that you only get better with more experience.
 
I feel that I changed the direction of Vaughn's post and people thought I was being critical of him. That was not my intent. I sincerely hope Vaughn did not take it that way either. With that said, if you become a major league baseball player are your Little League trophies worthless? Embarrassing? Should you put them away, not be proud of them? Should Ryan Newman not display his short track trophies? His midget car trophies? His go cart trophies? Are those not the awards that created the ladder of success? Should they not be something to be proud of/displayed?
Why not be proud of your first hollow form even though years later your technique/tools/equipment have improved greatly? Why not have the before and after hollow forms to display and show your progression?
 
i think jonathan has a good point on the trophy list,, how many of us have the piece that we made or maybe our parents have it.. i was asked on tour this year by bill simpson about my woodworking history, and in turn he told me how he taught his students.. in the course of the discussion he told me of many of his students still having this simple project that they made in his class just as my mom still has my first project.. we all have baby pictures somewhere and they are just the beginning to what is today so is the first turning or project we made.. i dont think any of us was criticizing anyone in that thread or this one as of right now.,. we all are better than that,, sometimes typed words can be misconstrued to sound differently than originally meant.. so look at the first project as baby picture and the last one as one fo your success as of today:)
 
Agree! I have my first turning and I still strive to do as well! Someday I may even do better, and some days I have. We lament that the undiscriminating buying public doesn't recognize quality as we see it. Not the point for me, as I don't turn for anyone but for my own pleasure. If I were turning for the public it would be another thing. We do not know the whole story behind a less than stellar turning offered for sale in a fast food restaurant. Perhaps its the offering of a brave new turner venturing into the retail world oblivious of evaluating point of sale locations and the tastes of his/her potential clientele. What a lot we have to learn (and teach our customers) when we go commercial!
 
Larry so eloquently put my thoughts and my post into words exactly what I intended (man that trip down South did something to him!). I am not trying to be critical of this thread just thinking out loud. Thanks Larry for the explanation and rewording.
We all would have egg on our face 10 years from now to find out some high falutin rich word turner started out selling his wares in a fast food joint!!!!!!
 
One other quote I forgot last night: "Perfection is the enemy of good (enough)" (Voltaire, the enough part is somewhat debatable in translation but makes better sense here).

I have a lot of work I've done that was.. just good enough... Is it my proudest work? Not really; but I was still happy to have it.. and it gets the desired job done (form following function, or perhaps form following methodology in some cases :D). Is a piece that looks "good enough" on top of the bookcase from 10' away but not so much when you're handling it still "good enough"? Maybe...

If I had to jump in the deep end and try to make a living woodworking (which would be tough because I couldn't afford as nice of tools :rofl:), I'm not sure the strive for "perfection" (in every detail) would survive all that well. A good part of it seems to be knowing where to adjust your expectations and what really matters. I suspect that no one here would be happy stopping at 80 grit on the show surface for a fine finish piece, but I have left carving marks in visible places as part of the "style" (overstating my efforts somewhat there I suspect :D, but you get the idea) and if the backs of cabinets have some plane marks - that's ok. Show pieces like Vaughn's turnings are harder to have details like that, but there are still sometimes cases where it doesn't matter as much perhaps (the bottom of a really deep/narrow hollow form?). Would I still do 8+ coat hand applied finish regimes (disclaimer: I've also done 3 coats of wiping poly and been happy as well.. again form vs function) if I found that 2 spray coats sold as well? Maybe not as often if I had bills to pay :D

I've also seen this happen in the brewing world, I've seen world class brewers selling dumper beer because they had to get the doors open and the dollars rolling... were they happy with it? no.. but they couldn't afford to toss it and so... there it was.. Winemakers have a similar problem, I know of at least a couple who have two classes of product; the premium that they can't afford to spend the time on for the most part and the regular that makes the bread and butter sales. They make some premium and lay it down, trying to slowly increase the amount each year as they get the pipeline rolling.

Doing woodwork as a hobby gives me a lot of leeway to decide "I don't like that" and redo it or junk it (in most cases; I did some door panels the other week that I was really NOT happy with but the person I was doing them for was happy enough so out the door they went as they wanted to get the project finished... that was sort of a quick reality adjustment compared the normal - takes me six months to do a days worth of work :D).

Joel @ TFWW had an interesting blog about this topic just this week... must be in the collective conscious:
http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/...nextpage=/extra/blogpage.html&BlogID=385&BG=1
 
I've got a number of pieces I've made that I wish I could have do-overs on. I'm really reminded of that fact every time I go to my dad's place and see a bowl and hollow form that I made when I was just starting on the lathe. He displays them proudly. There are various things I'd do differently on them now, but they're gonna stay as they are as reminders. My wife also had a few pieces that I'm not allowed to change, because she likes them they way they are now. I've also got pieces that I've done as recently as in the past year that will never be seen by anyone but me, because I'm not happy with how they came out.

Jon, I sure didn't think you were being critical of me. You were just bringing up a different, but very valid point of view. :thumb: I keep my early attempts and other flawed pieces...I just don't try to sell them. So I guess that's where I was being critical of the fast food guy. From what little research I was able to do on him, he's not a beginner, and he's a member of the local AAW turning club. So it's not like he hasn't seen what higher quality work looks like.
 
As I am reading all this I remember someone saying that sometimes a piece of wood will only allow you to do so much. It's not what you want but there sometimes is nothing else you can do. To me that would be a good enough. I mean they look good just not great.
Dennis
 
As I am reading all this I remember someone saying that sometimes a piece of wood will only allow you to do so much. It's not what you want but there sometimes is nothing else you can do. To me that would be a good enough. I mean they look good just not great.
Dennis

This is all true, but that still doesn't excuse things like deep sanding marks. That has nothing to do with the wood, and everything to do with the turner's patience. If this guy had spent 15 to 30 more minutes on a piece, the problem would have gone away. And also, if it doesn't come out like you want, then why sell it? I sell "good" pieces, but never "good enough" pieces. ;)
 
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