Thursday, January 28, 2010
It's Best To Practice
Popular Woodworking: "Talk is cheap. We always talk about how important it is to practice, but do we practice what we preach? Yes we do. Practice improves your woodworking abilities and provides a chance to see what the end product or component will look like as it takes shape."
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4 comments:
It's always interesting to see someone who still practices the older methods of wood working. While most modern wood workers would probably make table legs discussed in the article with something like a band saw, it is nice to see that some people still at least attempt to use the older techniques used back before power tools. The process described by the article's author seems simple enough, and is probably something that many might not think to do when initially attempting the project.
Glen Huey is so right in the sense that practice is one of the most imoprtant things to do to perfect your craft. Reading this article makes me wish that I knew this much about anything substantial. The way he talks about his art, just warms me. "I felt compelled to use mahogony" I mean he might have technical reasons for it but, his first inclination was to write 'compelled'. In this hsort little article I can feel this man's love and passion for his work, it makes me more than ever to want something like that for myself.
Just like any other skill, woodworking is something that benefits from practice and continued development. I know that if I was only doing projects I'd done before then not only wouldn't I be developing skills, I'd also be bored out of my mind after a while. Developing a new design for a cabriole leg might not sound like much, bus as he describes it's a fairly subtle process. If the details aren't right, such as the ankle being too thick, the entire leg doesn't look right but at the same time making the ankle thicker can require adjustments throughout the rest of the leg for balance. Only continued practice and development of skills will let you do something like that quickly and easily.
As I was readi8ng this article, I couldn't help but feel that there wasn't really much of a point to it. It seemed like he was just describing what he did to make the leg without really anything deeper in there. I mean, I guess it illustrates itself in that he is "preaching" after the fact of his "practice" in which case he did fulfill what it was he was saying but, it still seemed a bit useless.
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