Experience, efficiency and enjoyment.

[D_W]

Lucky them, then... not only because they have that amount of free time, but can also find anything interesting to watch for 3 hours a day on TV!! :lol:

You and me, both, brother. But I think it's better that we can't. I probably see five hours of TV per year, and it's usually enough (wife is against it because of the studies of brain inactivity for the kids - even if the programming isn't interesting to them and they're not directly paying attention).

(my first weird admission in case of asking the presumably non-teaching expert - I generally won't ask an expert something unless they are actually suggesting doing it, and I can't figure out what they're doing. The reason for that is just that I know that they get a lot of requests for free help, and i don't want to use their time unless I've got no other option. I also know that if I can figure it out, I'll remember it. )

re: the double iron, no special wood needed, I was building some case work at the time, and it presented an opportunity for planing. The material was already there. If it's not, I'd wait until it is.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

As far as I'm concerned successful furniture making is more about what's in your head than what's in your hands.

The many craftsmen and indeed hobbyists that I've met, the ones that consistently complete projects to a high standard, overwhelmingly share certain characteristics. They tend to be very methodical and patient, they think a job through in advance and prepare carefully, they don't rush at things and they're not easily distracted. They automatically break a project into interim stages and then focus exclusively on the immediate task at hand. When faced with a choice they carefully evaluate the options then make a clear decision, they don't keep returning to a decision like a dog to its puke, they just get on with stuff. They're realistic about what they undertake, they tackle jobs that are do-able if stretching, rather than chasing quixotic fantasies. When they start things they invariably finish them, they're not surrounded by half finished projects or discarded hobbies.

People like that tend to be good cabinet makers, for everyone else there's video games.

I think that's an excellent approach for anyone with a specific goal in mind (refurnish the house, for example, or earn a living from a craft). However, I think it's too goal-oriented for some woodworkers. There are those who take pleasure in acquiring and refurbishing old tools, for example, who may only want to do enough 'woodwork' to try out their tools. There's valid enjoyment in that, and arguably no real need for 'efficiency'.

Another point worth picking up is one made on page 3 by Chris152, who said he was just looking to master a few basic techniques, and then see what he could achieve with them. I think that chimes with your original point about 1000 hours (or so) being enough to make some pretty decent rectilinear furniture. It's also efficient, in a way, because it cuts the amount of time spent learning and gaining experience to just enough to make some solid achievements. For someone with limited time to devote to the craft, that makes sense. A different sort of 'efficiency', in this case.

 

[MusicMan]

....... And the more one can decompose the task into bits like this, the more efficient is the learning process.

Keith

Emphasis on technique can put people right off and defeat the object.

A friend wanted to start playing clarinet - she's very nervous and has picked up on the supposed difficulty and talks about being "too old to develop her embouchure" and similar b44llox. She's owned one for three years now and is too nervous to take it out of the box. Another mate with a sax talks similarly. A group of classical guitarist beginners are working their way playing some very boring exercises in unison, all with their left legs uncomfortably perched on little rocky stools in the Segovia fashion.

Non of this is efficient - it's the opposite, its aversion therapy! It also reenforces the notion of innate talent - lack of which is their excuse for not being able to do it, but actually it's the joyless and over-technical teaching punishment they are subjecting themselves to.

All too true. I play and teach clarinet and yes, you can develop the embouchure at any age. In fact you sometimes need to redevelop it; I have had a few weeks off playing due to surgery, and I know I will have to build it up again for a concert in ten days time. I'll manage about five minutes playing on the first day, and will double every day. The only difference between me and a beginner will be that I know where I am heading; nothing physical or age-related. But if she has never played before, she should have at least the first (and preferably a few) lessons with a teacher, so that she can cut out the discouragement of simply squeaking or making no noise at all at first. There are straightforward things to do, and not to do, that can not easily be learned from YouTube. A teacher will be able to tell by watching and listening to her efforts and set her on a good path. And also check that her instrument is working properly, which is much less evident than on strings.

The decomposing into bits stage comes when you have made enough progress to be able to listen to yourself and work out what needs correction or improvement in order to get to the next stage. But that self-analysis and self-training takes place much later. It's the sort of thing I am doing with a pupil who got grade 8 at school, but hasn't played for many years. I wasn't talking about the initial level, sorry not to be clear.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Look chaps - I really don't want to have a go at anybody, but I started the thread to discuss experience, efficiency and enjoyment in woodworking using hand tools (that's why the thread's on this board). I really don't have anything against musical instruments, but they ain't woodworking. If people want to discuss musical matters (and why not?) could someone start a thread on the off-topic board, please?

 

[nabs]

to be fair CC, much of the views shared on music - and on skills in general - are relevant to woodworking too.

Besides, thanks to this thread I am now only 10k hours away from being a world class banjoist and I also now know what embouchure means

 

[AndyT]

So, lurching back on topic, people might like to look at this blog post by Stephen Shepherd. It's not the calculations back from the price books I was looking for, but it's from a thoughtful woodworker interested in rediscovering the old ways.

http://www.fullchisel.com/blog/?p=191

I think his most interesting point is near the end and I don't think it's been made yet (though I admit to not reading every word of the last few pages).

He says that old makers were efficient because they made only a small range of very standard products, over and over again. So there was no need to spend any time agonising over details of construction or dimensions. All those questions had preset answers.

As simple and familiar to them as it is for me to stand in our kitchen and make a cup of coffee, like I do every day, with the same things from the same places.

I know that in the projects I write up on here, I can spend hours just thinking and reviewing options or choosing pieces of wood. To some extent it's enjoyable to exercise my mind solving problems but it certainly isn't efficient.

And just for fun, here are two of my favourite video examples of someone making a standard product for the umpteenth time, with no effort wasted, no tool put down just to be picked up again.

The first is the well known old Swedish archive film of the rural chairmakers. They have a fixed pattern to lay out the joints and judging by the closing shot of the loaded cart, made just one style of chair. (Go to 8:40 for the chair.)

https://youtu.be/wGDkliy1DEU

The second is from Frank Klaus, cutting dovetails with no superfluous marking out, tools or processes.

https://youtu.be/vKuy3NdLhlE

 

[Tasky]

wife is against it because of the studies of brain inactivity for the kids - even if the programming isn't interesting to them and they're not directly paying attention.

See, to that I'd merely suggest quality over quantity - I watched cartoons and sci-fi as a kid, but also nature documentaries. I also read books just as much, if not more and if I wasn't riveted to the screen then the TV was switched off!
All that did foster an imagination in me, though and I left the TV with a plethora of adventures to go out and play with down the garden or off in the woods (because we could do that alone, back then). It's what took me to various crafts and careers and part of what brought me here. I suppose that gave me my results to desire and this is where I start finding my how.

The reason for that is just that I know that they get a lot of requests for free help, and i don't want to use their time unless I've got no other option.

I find most experts, and indeed people in general, quite happy to talk about themselves and their work. Many are delighted that someone would take an interest, especially those who aren't teachers or internet gurus.
The idea is to talk with them, not request a lecture.

re: the double iron, no special wood needed

It still needs to be there and two weeks worth of even junk wood just to practice planing still costs a LOT of money, for some people...

you can develop the embouchure at any age.

But it's taken until now for me to realise that's how you spell it!!!

Look chaps - I really don't want to have a go at anybody, but I started the thread to discuss experience, efficiency and enjoyment in woodworking using hand tools (that's why the thread's on this board). I really don't have anything against musical instruments, but they ain't woodworking.

They ain't martial arts or driving either, but the principles of learning them that were taught to me in all three have rung true in each other and in every other aspect of my life... and so far are just as true in woodworking.

 

[bugbear]

And just for fun, here are two of my favourite video examples of someone making a standard product for the umpteenth time, with no effort wasted, no tool put down just to be picked up again.

Do you know of any footage of original bodgers doing the parts work for Windsor chairs? That was a repetition task par excellence!

BugBear

 

[AndyT]

And just for fun, here are two of my favourite video examples of someone making a standard product for the umpteenth time, with no effort wasted, no tool put down just to be picked up again.

Do you know of any footage of original bodgers doing the parts work for Windsor chairs? That was a repetition task par excellence!

BugBear

None in the UK as far as I know, but there might well be something from Eastern Europe where all sorts of traditional hand work has survived into the age of cine film or video. Stuart King was a pioneer of bringing their work to our attention over here, but I expect there's still plenty for the ethnographically inclined tourist to record.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Modern UK equivalents might be fruit and vegetable picking in the agricultural industry, or dressing chickens in a meat-packing plant. I've seen amazingly fast examples of such tasks, seemingly simple and repetitive, but needing guidance by eye and feel. There will be a robot along soon, though....

Not sure that's the sort of 'efficiency' woodworkers should be emulating, though - especially hobby ones. Knocking down stock to a cutting list, squaring-up timber, marking and cutting joints efficiently, yes - but production line repetition? No.

 

[G S Haydon]

Any help for bodgers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP5_OJxNccY

 

[bugbear]

Any help for bodgers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP5_OJxNccY

That looks rather like a UK version of "Der Letzte seines Standes" (Last of their Kind) which was (and is, on YouTube) a program attempting to record craft skills before they finally die out. The participants tend to be rather old, and are more remembering what they used to do than still doing it. Fascinating stuff though.

I'd love to see the production rate of a fit and healthy 30-40 year old bodger from (say) 1880.

BugBear

 

[D_W]

It still needs to be there and two weeks worth of even junk wood just to practice planing still costs a LOT of money, for some people...

I guess I wasn't clear enough. I'm not advocating using junk wood, and I don't like the idea of practice projects. I think you make your best effort on reasonable materials (in my case, the casework is in my daughter's room - a simple book case with hand cut mouldings and beaded trim on the face, and T&G on the back. No modern adjustable shelves, etc, it's all dadoed together and you could stand a car on it without it weighing 300 pounds).

It turned out, I didn't have any problems at all with it. Setting the double iron was almost immediate. The project itself took less time than it would've if I had used my prior rotation of single ironed planes.

No test wood, no test projects.

I did that at the time (forced myself to learn to use the double iron) because I'd had a couple of hand tool only projects before where I used very good quality single iron planes (an early 1800s jointer that was unused before me, a panel smoother and a self-made high angle infill) and it just didn't seem to me like the amount of time that it took to remove tearout was reasonable, and it made planing undesirable.

Let's say that you're trying an alternative M&T method instead, or order of operations. The kind of problems you'll have won't be dealbreakers - they'll be things that cause you to stop for a second and think, or perhaps you'll really **** something and have a mortise that's too high and need to shim a tenon. No big deal.

If I thought I had to stop all work and purchase special materials to learn something, that would be a big issue, but it's rare that such a thing occurs.

My first couple planes weren't that great aesthetically, and eventually, I made two that I threw out for two different reasons. But I've made about fifty planes, so that's not much of an issue in the grand scheme. The speed and quality of most of the rest of those planes was improved significantly because I was willing to make mistakes on a project rather than making a test project. I made a test-something a single time on a plane, and that was a test infill on my first large infill plane. It took so much time to do and fit and trial that I vowed I'd never do it again. And I haven't. And I've never thrown out a single piece of wood since then that I can recall - on planes that is. In the last several years, I mismeasured two stiles on a cabinet face frame (working by hand) and they ended up a quarter too narrow and I had to set them aside. I probably threw them away, but I don't remember. I used about 200 board feet of cherry on those cabinets (and probably siphoned something off for a small project or two during that time) and that was the only outright waste due to error. Of course, I made mistakes when working, but few were unrecoverable. Working mostly by hand, you have a few chances to think about what you're doing, even if you're tired - I'd have had waste of at least 10% if I had used only power tools - just a personal thing. If I used power tools to make planes, the same thing would happen there.

 

[AndyT]

Any help for bodgers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP5_OJxNccY

That looks rather like a UK version of "Der Letzte seines Standes" (Last of their Kind) which was (and is, on YouTube) a program attempting to record craft skills before they finally die out. The participants tend to be rather old, and are more remembering what they used to do than still doing it. Fascinating stuff though.

I'd love to see the production rate of a fit and healthy 30-40 year old bodger from (say) 1880.

BugBear

This is the best I can offer, from The English Country Chair by Ivan Sparkes, p33. I think his source is probably John Mayes but I don't have his book.

"The bodger, beside turning the actual chair legs, was expected to provide the three stretcher pieces which form the underframe of the chair. Before the Great War, he would receive five shillings for a gross, which would consist of a gross (144) chair legs and three quarters of a gross (108) stretcher parts, making a total of over two hundred and fifty turned pieces. A man working from seven in the morning to seven at night for five and a half days a week could reckon to make two and a half gross per week and from this effort take home about twelve shillings a week to live on! The price per gross increased rapidly after 1914 until by 1920 it had risen to fourteen shillings."

 

[custard]

"The bodger, beside turning the actual chair legs, was expected to provide the three stretcher pieces which form the underframe of the chair. Before the Great War, he would receive five shillings for a gross, which would consist of a gross (144) chair legs and three quarters of a gross (108) stretcher parts, making a total of over two hundred and fifty turned pieces. A man working from seven in the morning to seven at night for five and a half days a week could reckon to make two and a half gross per week and from this effort take home about twelve shillings a week to live on! The price per gross increased rapidly after 1914 until by 1920 it had risen to fourteen shillings."

I guess that'd take much of the fun out of it.

:shock:

 

[Sheffield Tony]

Andy's figures agree closely with the ones in Jack Hill's book. About 150 pieces per day.

"Log to leg" races are an event at various greenwood events. The title almost says it all, except that the requirement is a matching pair of legs, based on a prototype "master leg", with a system of penalties for defects. Peter Wood usually wins, he can do it in 7 to 8 minutes. That certainly looks like hard work.

 

[Trafalgar]

Hat tip to Graham Haydon, who posted these links some time ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bhu7HjIGAk

A reminder of what very fine furniture making looked like in its heyday.

 

[bugbear]

This is the best I can offer, from The English Country Chair by Ivan Sparkes, p33. I think his source is probably John Mayes but I don't have his book.

"The bodger, beside turning the actual chair legs, was expected to provide the three stretcher pieces which form the underframe of the chair. Before the Great War, he would receive five shillings for a gross, which would consist of a gross (144) chair legs and three quarters of a gross (108) stretcher parts, making a total of over two hundred and fifty turned pieces. A man working from seven in the morning to seven at night for five and a half days a week could reckon to make two and a half gross per week and from this effort take home about twelve shillings a week to live on! The price per gross increased rapidly after 1914 until by 1920 it had risen to fourteen shillings."

Crunching the numbers; 12 hour per day x 5 1/2 = 66 hours or 3960 minutes

2 1/2 gross is 2.5 x 250 pieces = 625 pieces

3960/625 = 6.3 minutes per piece. :shock:

From the topic title, I think this example shows Experience and Efficiency. Not so much Enjoyment!

BugBear

 

[Jacob]

......

From the topic title, I think this example shows Experience and Efficiency. Not so much Enjoyment!

BugBear

I wouldn't completely discount the possibility of enjoyment. In the right circumstances (the right employer, the right workmates?) there could be pleasure in a job well done, sense of achievement, sense of worthwhile contribution to the communal effort, and so on, in spite of the hard work. Sometimes.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

2 1/2 gross is 2.5 x 250 pieces = 625 pieces

3960/625 = 6.3 minutes per piece. :shock:

From the topic title, I think this example shows Experience and Efficiency. Not so much Enjoyment!

BugBear

I wouldn't disagree, did enjoyment enter into the picture for any working class career ? But remember almost half of those pieces are stretchers, which are simpler than legs. They are just a cigar shape, no beads. As I mentioned earlier, flats from riving very (too) close to the finished dimensions were tolerated. And only the green turned parts were being made, they'd be seasoned in the wood before being transported to be finished off in a workshop. That probably included trimming to length and finishing the tenons to final dimension with a rounder or similar, so the turning need not be particularly accurate.

12-13 minutes for one pair of legs is quite doable today even by people who don't do it day in, day out. Of course if you are doing it all day there is break time, and fatigue to consider. But on the other hand, you'd probably get eight or more pieces from a single billet, so to rive two pieces means you've done some of the work on the next 6. You would probably have better timber to work with too, as it would be grown and selected for the job.