Ever Have one of those days...

[Andrew Gibson]

when nothing is working quite right?
I am working with some red oak right now, and it keeps tearing out because of spots of reversing grain. My 4-1/2 is not cutting it, and my BUJ is not getting it done either. Just the thought of going over these panels with a card scraper was enough to blister my thumbs.

Then I thought to myself, self I think it is time to get that #80 out and learn to use it. So I did. Pulled it out, sharpened it up, and put it to work... my #80 is one from Woodcraft and the blade was a sorry excuse for a blade when I got it...

There is something so satisfying about taking a tool that has given you trouble in the past and making it sing.

Now I really want to pick up a LN cabinet makers scraper.

[Matt Evans]

I have lots of those days. More in the past two years than I think I care to recall.

It is nice turning a crappy tool into one that works well. I have several handyman planes that I have done that with, and the difference is striking.

[Steve Branam]

Me too. I think it's because woodworking is a very iterative learning process, and tiny little bits of different skills contribute to each other. Eventually all the little bits add up and you achieve critical mass. You try something and fumble around with it and not much useful happens, then go off and do the stuff you can do. Then you come back to it and maybe are a little better, but not much. Then you come back to it again after a while, and it just works. What changed? Who knows? Something just really clicked. I've had this phenomenon stretched out over years. The great thing is that success with a few initial hand tools has eventually translated into success with other tools. Even things that seem totally unrelated somehow build on each other.

It happened yesterday with my lathe. For years I've been barely able to use a lathe. Sunday I visited a fellow who had invited me over to see his shop and chairs he had made. He was a far better turner than I. He gave me a 10 minute lesson and turned me a leg to copy at home (this leg would have taken me 2 hours and required 2 more hours with sandpaper to achieve the same surface), and gave me some stock from his pile. I got home, tried a couple things he showed me, watched some YouTube videos on basic lathe techniques, tried some more stuff, and somehow suddenly it was like I knew what I was doing. I was roughing blanks down to cylinders fast, getting rolling-pin uniformity with the skew, turning coves and bead corners with the gouges.

In 2 hours of play my skill had leapt to 10 times its previous level. Amazing! But it was a combination of little bits of watching several people use the tools and their individual emphasis on different subtleties, tiny points about tool handling, placement, and movement, plus lathe tool sharpening that I can now do since my sharpening skills have improved dramatically over the last few years. That's the advantage of being able to watch someone.

[Harvey Pascoe]

Sure, there are those times when nothing seems to go right and I think I should go back to bed and trying getting up again. I get days where I just up and quit before I do any more damage. And surprisingly, when I come back to it, it all goes like clockwork. I have no idea why this happens but I've learned its a good idea to just back off for a while, maybe an hour or a day. Need time to let the head clear and get back in the groove. You contrast those times with those where you can seem to do no wrong and wonder why.

I started my day by knocking over a full jar of shellac on my new finishing table. It didn't get any better from there so I went to the store to get some stuff. By the time I returned, the cloud had passed.