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
). 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
), 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
, 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
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
).
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