Comments on: What Type of Woodworker Are You – Honestly

By: willynilly

willynilly — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 14:00:48 +0000

I wish I could concentrate better. My problem is that my concetration is broken when I stop to put things away right after using etc. I usually do my best work around a big messy pile. I do clean up after a lengthy task but only after completing it. I do agree to get things to flow is all important and it comes with experience. This is what I always try to achieve because it helps the whole process and decreases frustration. I guess it is the “Zen like” state that I am after. Whatever it takes to get there then I am all for it.

By: Eric R

Eric R — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:11:37 +0000

Knowing where stuff is located is half the battle.
It lets me concentrate on the more important parts.
A little bit of clean up after each session becomes automatic, and it gives me the renewed feeling of excitement every time I walk through the shop door.
http://lumberjocks.com/Woodwrecker/workshop

Thanks Chris

By: shannonlove

shannonlove — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:14:17 +0000

Organization has nothing to do with how a workspace looks. It has to do with how much effort the person using the workspace must expend to find something at any particular point in time. A workspace is “organized” if the person using it doesn’t have to think much to find something but can instead focus on the work at hand.

In other words, organization largely occurs in the mind of the worker. If workers mental model matches the current state of the workspace such that they can just reach out and find a tool or resource without moving the focus of their concentration off the actual work, then then the workspace is organized regardless of its appearance.

We’ve all seen people with chaotic appearing desks, closets or workspaces who can nevertheless quickly lay hands on anything they need. I read a psychology study on this phenomena years ago and they concluded that “messy organizer” actually had a rather rigid set of rules for where they put things. It might seem random to an outside observer but it made intuitive sense to them. Since their mental map of their workspace matches the physical reality, they can find things without thinking.

In a wood shop, such rules might be something like, “hammers are always set down to the right and screwdrivers to the left” or “drill bits are always set closer to the edge of the table than the drill.” By automatically and thoughtlessly following the rules they made up, “messy organizers” can actually have what is, from a functional viewpoint, a highly organized space.

I think organization absolutely key to productive work and I think people we perceive as being both messy and productive aren’t really messy but just following their own system.

By: MHomer

MHomer — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:55:05 +0000

In all honesty and pardon my french I hate clusterf**ks I hate having lots of things because there is no place for them all. Even when I first started woodworking I told myself that I would buy the only essential tools I would need and 2 years down the line I already have a stack of tool boxes filled with unused, unneeded tools. And that is just my personality, I like to keep it simple,neat and as much of less shit as possible.

By: pcott

pcott — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 15:08:33 +0000

I don’t know about this whole neatness is paramount thing. Two of the best woodworkers I know are total shop slobs. One thing I have noticed in life is that neat people think being neat is the natural order of things, and us slobs are somehow wrong in the way we do things. Us slobs generally live and let live. That being said, I do put away my tools every day. But my tiny shop looks like a bomb hit it most of the time.

By: Jim McCoy

Jim McCoy — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 09:42:14 +0000

Something that has always encouraged me to keep a clean shop is that if I accidentally “pop” something off the piece I’m working on, I’m much more likely to find it if all the shavings and chips from the previous day were swept up before I started working. Since I don’t like to clean the shop first thing in the morning I got in the habit of doing it each night before I quit work. That same routine included putting away the tools I used that day so I didn’t have to clean around them, or worse accidentally knock one off the bench. As I’ve gotten older I’m finding that more and more “good stuff” ends up on the floor despite my best intentions. I’m not a hundred percent perfect about it but when I start getting lazy I generally drop something or watch a piece go flying that I didn’t intend to separate from the work piece, and feel the immense depression set in associated with crawling around on my hands and knees pawing through all the crap on the floor looking for my “needle”. That generally cures my laziness, at least for a while.

Thanks for the post. I enjoyed it.

By: Floss

Floss — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:12:23 +0000

“A man who makes caliper fits with confidence holds the universe in his hands…When he raises a sledge hammer he hits where he intends to. He don’t wonder where that hammer is coming down.”

Fantastic.

Thanks

By: woodmagnet

woodmagnet — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:06:43 +0000

A very enjoyable read Chris,and to
be very honest,I am a very ordered,
confident and tidy worker. Notice
I didn’t say woodworker, because I
am the same whatever job I am doing.

By: John Passacantando

John Passacantando — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 12:08:10 +0000

Poet Gary Snyder in his classes at Cal State, Chico, says, Don’t try to write anything new. Everything worthy has already been written. Write something that is new to the ears of your generation. So reading Chris this morning I am reminded of the opening two paragraphs of “The Classic Book of Tea” by Okakura Kakuzo, first published in 1906:

“Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. the fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism — Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.”

“The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste.”

All very different language from our dear Schwarz, but to the same end, I think.

By: Mitch Wilson

Mitch Wilson — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 01:37:39 +0000

My father ran a service station for 35 years, although he was not, himself, a mechanic. He always tried to hire experienced mechanics who had their own tools. Not because he was cheap, as he always bought very high quality tools for the station and he respected that better quality tools led to better work. No, it was because of the way these employees treated the tools. Their own tools they caressed, cleaned thoroughly after using and put away properly immediately. They also rarely let anyone else use their tools. But my father’s tools! These were never cleaned, rarely put away and were often thrown around and/or dropped on the floor. Sometimes they were left under the hood or in the engine to be driven off with when the car left the shop. And trying to get them to keep the work areas clean was quite a challenge. And, to be perfectly honest, it is often not a whole lot different in a dental office. (Gag me with a spoon, eh.) Some employees never get it.