I make mistakes and I’m OK with that. Take my coffee maker as an example. My Keurig machine produces one cup at a time. Of course I make a cup in the morning, but I also have a mug after dinner, on my way to the woodshop.

For traveling to the shop, I have an insulated cup that’s too tall to fit the coffee maker. I make a cup in a regular mug, then make the transfer to the travel mug.

One evening, as I pushed the brew button, I forgot to put the coffee cup under the spout. Hot, steaming coffee spilled from the machine like Old Faithful working in reverse. Coming to my senses, I quickly shoved a cup under the spout. The coffee maker finished its cycle, and I had a mess to clean up due to the collection of liquid dispersed into the cup stand (not to mention I had a less-than-full cup of coffee).

As I pulled the stand from the coffee maker,   much to my surprise I uncovered a second cup stand located directly below the normal stand I used on an everyday basis. It seemed my travel mug would, indeed, fit the machine. No more did I need to transfer between cups. If I hadn’t made a mistake (forgetting to put the cup in position), I would not have discovered the lower stand.

Clearly, mistakes in life provide more information than doing something correctly. The same holds true for woodworking. I’ve always learned more from mistakes than from doing an operation right the first time.

Once the mistake is made, you assess the steps, find where you veered off course or when the problem first appeared, and know what not to do the next time. A lesson is learned, albeit a sometimes costly education. And the feedback from a mistake is immediate – the mortise and tenon is sloppy, the dovetail joint doesn’t fit or the topcoat has an unsightly sag – and the lesson is appreciated because it cost you either money or time. And time is the most costly of the two.

In addition, you discover methods to fix the issues that do arise. I would not have known how to close small gaps in my early dovetails (place a saw kerf beside the “gappy” dovetail then drive a wood-matching wedge into that kerf) if I had tight-fitting joints. Or, if I hadn’t sprayed the finish too heavily around the door frame on a cupboard, which creates a sag only visible with light directed from above, I wouldn’t have unearthed how to use a single-edge razor blade as a small but efficient scraper. These events build our knowledge as woodworkers, as well as add to our experience. That experience makes us better craftsmen.

By making mistakes and dealing with the consequences, you begin to fully understand the processes. With a complete understanding of the processes, you know why a joint fits accurately or what a good finish looks like. The woodworking picture comes into focus. It becomes clear. You can then make small changes and anticipate the results. You can tweak a step here or there in the process and know you’ll not have a problem from which to recover.

But if you do the task at hand without incident, do you stop and question why it happened the way it did? No. So what have you learned? You don’t know why the joint fit or why the case assembly is square. It just happened.

If you can precisely duplicate the process again, you can complete the same task many times. Can you remember the exact steps? More than likely you cannot. And if you cannot, you’re destined to make another attempt and hopefully the process runs successfully a second time.

So don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Get going. Do something. Even if it doesn’t work, you’ve gained as a woodworker. No, I don’t particularly want to toss a half-carved cabriole leg into the trash or throw away an ill-fitting joint – but I’ve done just that. And it hurts.

They don’t call it the “school of hard knocks” for nothing.

As I stated at the beginning, I make mistakes and I accept that fact. What I don’t accept is making the same mistake twice. WM

Glen D. Huey is senior editor of this magazine.