Experience, efficiency and enjoyment.

[Cheshirechappie]

During the somewhat extended -and sometimes surreal - thread on OBM or bevelled-edge chisels for morticing ( regular-mortice-chisel-or-bevel-edged-for-your-mortices-t109499.html ), several side discussions developed, one of which was about efficient methods. I thought it worth extracting the matters raised and starting a separate thread, in part because I think there are ideas that could be discussed more widely and perhaps developed for mutual benefit.

Jacob raised the point that some older pieces were made by 'efficient' hand methods - fast, and with no frills - and that he was interested in such methods because there could be things to apply to modern hand-work. I posed an alternative view that most people doing hand work today are not mass producing items to make a living, and thus can afford to take a bit more time to do things to a better standard. A number of people then pointed out that there was merit in learning to do things more quickly and efficiently - which is a fair point.

I'd like to expand a little, firstly by adding experience to the mix. It's been mentioned before that learning to do anything really well takes something in the order of 10,000 hours or so. Most craftsmen earning their living in the 18th or 19th centuries working wood would rack up their 10,000 hours well before finishing their apprenticeships, given a working week of about 70 hours and five to seven year apprenticeships. We can therefore infer that the standard of work they used was dictated not by lack of experience, but by the time available to complete the work. A journeyman cabinetmaker working for a supplier of cheap, basic furniture would therefore use whatever time-saving tricks they could find, whereas one of Thomas Chippendale's craftsmen would have more time to do a 'proper' job, because that's what the client was paying for.

For most of us, working part-time in sheds and garages, accumulating 10,000 hours might take years, or even decades. However, we can still try to do the best work we can. That might mean taking time and care, and forgetting about 'efficiency' for our early projects, but trying to become 'more efficient' as our skills develop. That's rather different from Victorian skilled journeymen deciding whether a job needed maximum efficiency (or 'corner cutting', as BB pointed out) in order to leave enough for a profit on the job, or whether he could take more time and still make a profit.

The 'cheap end' furniture of today (flat MDF joined with KD fittings, backs of cardboard stapled on and so on) has supplanted the Victorian basic furniture that used to be hand made down to a price; there's no point in our trying to emulate it. Thus, the 'efficiencies' practiced by the Victorian journeyman to cut as many corners as he could should not concern us in the work we do today, except as historical interest. For maximum enjoyment and pride in what we've produced, we should be trying to do better.

 

[nabs]

another perspective - given the depressing thought that most of us amateurs will have snuffed it before we can accumulate anything like the number of hours a traditionally trained tradesman would rack up in their apprenticeships then we have an equivalent incentive to avoid unnecessary work also.

For instance, if I choose not to flatten and smooth the far side of my workbench or the underside of a coffee table (basic tasks I will have opportunities to revisit on every subsequent job) then I am freeing up some of my limited time to practice other new/harder tasks.

PS these are real examples - the underside of my coffee table and the far side of my bench are both as rough as old a*ses!

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Good point.

I suppose that introduces the idea of deciding between 'unnecessary work' and 'shoddy work' - which may be subjective!

 

[nabs]

yes indeed - I wonder if there were any conventions on what steps it was acceptable to omit and whether it varied much according to top end vs utilitarian. We need the views of some furniture historians!

 

[D_W]

There is an errant assumption here, and that is that doing something efficiently means that you'll have to do it to a lower standard.

That may be the case, but it's not my point. I'm not sure if it's Jacob's point, but I have faith that he'll tell us his point.

Also, the 10,000 hour discussion often gets misused. While we may not, as amateurs, master a trade, we can certainly master elements. An amateur can easily master basic sawing, chiseling and mortising. While we might not be as fast as someone who has done those things for 25 years 50 hours a week (I'm sure nobody has done exactly those operations above for that, anyway, most of our bodies would not hold up to it - which you can still see in africa where there are power-free shops. The workers often don't last past their mid 30s), we can still learn from people doing something efficiently.

Fast and cheap is not the point.

 

[MusicMan]

It depends on the market, the location and the expectations of the customer.

I wrote a big thread on the restoration of a Georgian bureau last year. This was a "country" piece, oak, made as a utilitarian object and it was clearly heavily used. The workmanship was competent but routine. All nicely done to a decent standard, good dovetails etc, but yet they clearly didn't do anything unnecessary. The underside of the base was nothing like flat (clearly never had been, just rough sawn), likewise the undersides of the drawers and the dust sheets. The back was panelled, flattened on the outside but only roughly fitted inside.

On the other hand I've just bought a lovely 19th C French large bookcase, also oak, delightfully carved on front and sides, and the panel work is as well finished on the invisible parts as on the display parts. The only concession is that the shelves are pine, though fronted with oak.

So then as now, it looks as if it would depend entirely on the customer and the price.

I think there was a great deal of piece work in 18th and 19th C joinery, which would certainly encourage efficiency.

Keith

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

Obviously there is a certain amount of efficiency required to get anything done in a period of time acceptable to the maker. Outside of this, 'efficiencies' are unnecessary and are often counter to the desires of the maker. This is whether the maker is amateur or professional, it is for them to land on the happy medium that satisfies them as craftsmen and achieves the satisfactory outcome. Looking to Victorian handwork methods is irrelevant. We do not want to be doing piece work, no one wants to work under this pressure, there is no satisfaction in it. If a professional in the first world is making things with purely hand tools, by piecework, to have to make a viable living (does this situation even exist) then they are doing something wrong. They either need to mechanise to a point or just plain do something else. Handwork is fun and can give a great sense of achievement, but piecework by handwork is miserable. I doubt anyone would train up in the skills of woodwork, perhaps taking Cities and Guilds qualifications and the like, to spend a life working piece work.

The other point is, a lot of the expedients taken by dead craftsmen, that Jacob seems to hold in high esteem, are totally irrelevant in the modern workshop. Amateurs want to achieve neat results, whatever neat is to the individual concerned. They will try hard not to overcut dovetails and hope tondo better next time if they fall short of their expectations. They are unlikely to make deliberate overcuts, or allow overcuts to happen as an acceptable consequence of speed. They will slow down and eradicate them. They might get quicker on subsequent efforts, but from repetition and not sloppiness. Professionals who are doing this sort of work are selling to client who will be paying a lot for the products, as labour is expensive these days. Any sloppiness will not be acceptable by the purchaser.

I think Cheshirechappie is more or less right in his introduction post, and with the odd exceptions, like perhaps leaving cabinet backs unfinished by certain makers, is pretty much the way things are these days. In my mind better for it.

Mike.

 

[D_W]

You guys are completely in the weeds. You're confusing efficiency for shortcuts or subpar results. They are two separate issues.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

It's been mentioned before that learning to do anything really well takes something in the order of 10,000 hours or so.

I've certainly heard it asserted many times, with never any substantiation. And I firmly believe it to be a load of old cobblers, probably perpetuated by people with a protectionist agenda.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yes. I often wonder of what the "learning" consisted - a decorator acquaintance years ago told me the first year of his apprenticeship was spent sweeping up, knotting and priming skirting boards and cleaning brushes. I doubt he learned much there.

 

[cowfoot]

Hello,

If a professional in the first world is making things with purely hand tools, by piecework, to have to make a viable living (does this situation even exist) then they are doing something wrong. They either need to mechanise to a point or just plain do something else. Handwork is fun and can give a great sense of achievement, but piecework by handwork is miserable. I doubt anyone would train up in the skills of woodwork, perhaps taking Cities and Guilds qualifications and the like, to spend a life working piece work.

Slightly different sphere of work, but I spent over twenty years as a painter using the most basic of handtools (usually working to price) and whilst it wasn’t ever particularly profitable it was enjoyable...most days! Obviously it was slightly more entertaining laying on faux finishes in Highgate than toshing out council toilets in Hackney.
There are plenty of jobs that haven’t been mechanised and are fairly repetitive that still provide decent work - bricklaying, plastering, tiling, roofing etc. Once you’ve spent a few years doing one, you start noticing the little details that mark out someone who takes pride in their work - these are often utterly invisible to other people (even/especially site managers and architects!).

 

[custard]

It's been mentioned before that learning to do anything really well takes something in the order of 10,000 hours or so.

I've certainly heard it asserted many times, with never any substantiation. And I firmly believe it to be a load of old cobblers, probably perpetuated by people with a protectionist agenda.

As far as cabinet making is concerned I think there's three broad levels of attainment.

Level one comes after roughly 1,000 hours of training or structured practise. That gets you to the stage where you can make most of the rectilinear items that constitutes the majority of domestic furniture. You might not be particularly quick, your joinery might not be absolutely immaculate, but you'll have the skills to get the job done to a reasonable standard. You could for example tackle a project like this,

Level two comes after roughly 10,000 hours. You've then got a thorough grasp of a much wider range of techniques, such as lamination work or veneering, you can handle complex curved work and compound angles, and you can pretty much make the claim "if I can draw it then I can make it". You could for example tackle a project like this,

Level three is less time dependent and more about aptitude, although you'll certainly need 10,000 hours or longer under your belt. This is the preserve of Guild Mark winners and true "master craftsmen", people who can figure out how to make things that have never been made before, people who can conceptualise and create the ingenious jigs and fixtures necessary to make original or staggeringly complex work, people who have an innate grasp of the possibility of wood as a raw material. There are at least two people who contribute to this forum who operate at this level, sadly I'm not one of them.

Are these categories cast in stone? Of course not, some people will get there faster, and some won't ever make the cut; but they're broadly applicable guidelines that accord with my practical experiences of the furniture making world.

There are also "special cases", more focused areas of woodworking that require a narrower skill set. One example might be windsor chair making, you can go on a one or two week course, let's say 100 hours, and you'll likely come away with all the necessary skills to make a windsor chair. Again, not particularly fast, and certainly not the highest expression of the craft, but something that will do the job and pass muster. In a similar vein fifty hours might be enough to set you up as a maker of basic picture and mirror frames. Or two hundred hours might get you to a reasonable level of proficiency as a maker of basic jewellery boxes or strip wood canoes. But these are narrower areas of expertise and the constituent skills aren't necessarily very portable into other applications.

 

[cowfoot]

It's been mentioned before that learning to do anything really well takes something in the order of 10,000 hours or so.

I've certainly heard it asserted many times, with never any substantiation. And I firmly believe it to be a load of old cobblers, probably perpetuated by people with a protectionist agenda.

The 10,000 hours theory is from Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

You’re not alone in taking issue with it! -
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-stud ... 014-7?IR=T

 

[JohnPW]

It's been mentioned before that learning to do anything really well takes something in the order of 10,000 hours or so.

I've certainly heard it asserted many times, with never any substantiation. And I firmly believe it to be a load of old cobblers, probably perpetuated by people with a protectionist agenda.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to think that!

We're talking about sawing and cutting bits of wood, not playing Beethoven's violin concerto!

 

[custard]

We're talking about sawing and cutting bits of wood, not playing Beethoven's violin concerto!

 

[AndyT]

I started to write a long reply but here's a short one instead.

To learn about how the reputable cabinet making trade was displaced by the disreputable trade, "slaughterhouses" "slop work" and "scamping" read Henry Mayhew's contemporary descriptions from the 1850s. The chapters on Woodworkers in the book "The Unknown Mayhew" are what you need. About half of it - mostly about the reputable end of the trade - is available online at http://www.victorianlondon.org The site uses frames, so providing urls for specific sections is tricky, but if you can't find what you want under Professions & Trades > Craft and Household > Furniture, use this link for all of Letter LXIII http://www.victorianlondon.org/mayhew/mayhew63.htm

Here's one sample quote from letter 68 showing that the good makers were very quick, but the scampers were even quicker, only outpaced by the machinery which took their place later in the century.

"A very quick hand, a little master, working as he called it 'at a slaughtering pace' for a warehouse, made 60 plain writing-desks in a week of 90 hours, while a first-rate workman, also a quick hand, made 18 in a week of 70 hours."

Hands up anyone who can work that fast by hand or by power tools today!

 

[D_W]

It's been mentioned before that learning to do anything really well takes something in the order of 10,000 hours or so.

I've certainly heard it asserted many times, with never any substantiation. And I firmly believe it to be a load of old cobblers, probably perpetuated by people with a protectionist agenda.

The 10,000 hours theory is from Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

You’re not alone in taking issue with it! -
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-stud ... 014-7?IR=T

It's a limited statement - overly simplistic, but it does have value in some cases. Most notably, when someone transitions from one profession to another or to a hobby, to remember what they invested when they wanted to succeed, and to remember that after you have a few dozen or hundred hours under your belt, be realistic about what to expect and see every project as an opportunity to grow and improve skills or efficiency.

 

[Jacob]

....... Thus, the 'efficiencies' practiced by the Victorian journeyman to cut as many corners as he could should not concern us in the work we do today, except as historical interest. For maximum enjoyment and pride in what we've produced, we should be trying to do better.

You've equated "efficiency" pejoratively with "cutting corners". It's called "confirmation bias".
Makes your argument meaningless; efficiency isn't only about cutting corners and isn't only aimed at by "Victorian journeymen".

In fact; the more efficient you are the less you need to cut corners, the more time you have for enjoyment (or profit making) which is rather the whole point!

 

[dzj]

"A very quick hand, a little master, working as he called it 'at a slaughtering pace' for a warehouse, made 60 plain writing-desks in a week of 90 hours, while a first-rate workman, also a quick hand, made 18 in a week of 70 hours."

Hands up anyone who can work that fast by hand or by power tools today!

One of the reasons life expectancy in 1850s England was around 40.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Some interesting comments - thanks, chaps.

One or two people feel that I'm trying to equate efficiency with deliberately sloppy work. Not so. I'm trying to say that efficiency is something that can only come when sufficient experience has been gained, and the only way to gain experience is by putting the time in. Once someone can work efficiently, they can choose whether to work fast to a good standard, or fast to a sloppy standard and churn out more finished work (as AndyT kindly illustrated), and to point out that examples of Victorian work made to the latter standards are not necessarily good examples for us to follow today, because we're not trying to compete on price with IKEA. Thanks to Musicman for developing the point about standards of work.

On the 10,000 hours; I rather regret using that number now, since it's diverted the discussion. Perhaps I should just have said 'a significant amount of time' or some such phrase. However, I do think Custard's development of the point was spot on.

That leaves enjoyment. That, of course, is very personal - but for me, enjoyment comes with the growing abilty to work efficiently and choose the standards I'm going to work to. Personally, I don't enjoy doing sloppy work (though I do take Nabs' point about unnecessary work - and that's a personal choice too, at least for the amateur - for the pro, it's more about what the client will pay for).