Good enough vs overkill

[Mark Hennebury]

An interesting balance. Built to last by good design and economical use of materials.

Popularized in England, These Wavy Walls Actually Use Less Bricks Than a Straight Wall

https://twistedsifter.com/2020/06/how-wavy-crinkle-crankle-walls-use-less-bricks-than-straight-walls/


wavy-crinkle-crankle-walls-use-less-brick-than-straight-walls-2.jpg

[Brian Holcombe]

I recall reading that Stradivarius violins are nothing to look at when taken apart. When you look at the old cabinetmaker journeyman daybooks it's clear that they had no time for making anything perfect that didn't show, but many of the surviving masterpieces of our craft were made under just such time pressure and close inspection proves it. I think the industrial revolution made societies more generally affluent and designer-craftsmen able to indulge their penchant for meticulous unseen work. Of course it also made way for the mountains of mass-produced crap shown in that brilliant "Man" video. Hail blessed, wretched excess!

There is a lot of truth in this, even for Chippendale estates (his company mainly outfitted castles). It's easier to do today because we have industrial equipment which processes material with greater ease when it is dimensionally perfect. It's actually much more difficult to work with a rough side.

[Brian Holcombe]

Actually for all the precision in modern instrument mass manufacturing, the instruments often don't sound exactly alike, even for successive instruments off the same assembly line made by the same workers using the same machines with wood from the same tree and hardware from the same batch. Don't get me wrong, in general the quality is much higher, especially for lower cost instruments. It isn't even that they don't necessarily sound good, they just sometimes sound slightly different, and sometimes a lot different. It tends to be more pronounced in acoustic instruments like say a violin, even more so in complex instruments like pianos and non-electronic organs, but even partially or fully electric/electronic instruments like electric guitars, amps, and keyboards can have variance from item to item.

I might be just making things up at this point but I believe that was in some way due to the 'quality control' aspect of their work in which someone highly aware of the sound of their instruments would have say-so in what went out the door.

Sort of like a cognac master blender.

[Kevin Jenness]

Did Stradivarius and Guarneri actually make the best-sounding violins? Apparently that's just, like, your opinion man. https://www.livescience.com/44651-ne...adivarius.html

[Jim Becker]

The fact that so many of them still sound so good after all this time is what's noteworthy to me...speaking as both a musician at points in my life as well as someone who makes things.

[Mel Fulks]

No, I'm not a musician. Think I've seen that info before ,but certain I forgot about it. Thanks for posting it. Glad good instruments are being
made. There is ,of course , a difference between accomplished players and the top tier. While most of us could enjoy
a good church violinist or "fiddler" at a hoe down. The great musicians have accurate and tender ears. And they don't
want listen to noise while they work. There are ,no doubt ,alley wine drinkers who love Ripple ....just like many of us.
But that does not mean that fine discerning palates should be ignored. Top tier ears can't tolerate less than the best instruments. And they can't get gigs without practice.

[Eric Arnsdorff]

As an experienced engineer (I guess old is relative but I'm getting there) this question has lived with me throughout my career.
The definition given for good enough in this thread seems odd to me. Good enough has never been a term I associated with calculating all loading aspects, applying design margins and trying to minimize material, cost and labor. Good enough is a term that often lacks a look at these aspects all for focus on one item such as quick or cheap.

I think the comparisons to the musical masters instruments is an interesting one. I could spend my entire life trying to develop overkill or the absolute best possible and never make something as good as these truly gifted people have been able to achieve with much less effort.

For those of us without the masterful gifts of the great architects, great instrument builders, or other true genius in their respective area, we must adhere to balancing as many aspects as possible to achieve our goals. The work we put into this is what will make it successful.

I was talking with a colleague at work once when I found out he also did woodwork. I was proud of building my furniture for my new babies (they're in college now) and some of my other projects. He listened and enjoyed the conversation. Later I found out that he builds fine woodwork that is the type you see the glossy magazine photos and sell for thousands and 10's of thousands of dollars. I could do all the overkill my talents and resources allow while never making a piece of furniture like he makes.

There's a spectrum and we all fit in there somewhere. The fact that my colleague made amazing fine furniture still required us and many many more technically talented to develop the systems that we do. Our woodworking likely didn't make us any more capable than our other colleagues (although I like to think it helps a little).

There have been strong arches in architecture that have fallen because the load became too large. There have been bridges of paper that supported all the loads that was ever needed for the purpose. There will always be the masters that show us a new way and their creations will stand the test of time. I'll continue to be amazed by the masters while trying to make my good enough a little better.

[Darcy Warner]

Been trying to do some finish trim work on my parents house, I am trying for just good enough because overkill would mean building them an entire new house.
Their house must have been built by the cheapest farmer ever, who obviously didn't own any levels, tape measures or string lines.

[Mark Hennebury]

That's Funny Darcy, Had to deal with plenty of that stuff myself. Thinking i would rather build a new place than finish renovations on my own place.

Been trying to do some finish trim work on my parents house, I am trying for just good enough because overkill would mean building them an entire new house.
Their house must have been built by the cheapest farmer ever, who obviously didn't own any levels, tape measures or string lines.

[Andrew Seemann]

Been trying to do some finish trim work on my parents house, I am trying for just good enough because overkill would mean building them an entire new house.
Their house must have been built by the cheapest farmer ever, who obviously didn't own any levels, tape measures or string lines.

I don't think my great-great-uncle made any houses out that way, but maybe it is possible Level and square were not hallmarks of his work.

[Darcy Warner]

I don't think my great-great-uncle made any houses out that way, but maybe it is possible Level and square were not hallmarks of his work.

It is what it is. It will be nicer then they ever had, but I won't feel too bad bull dozing it after they die.

[Andrew Seemann]

It is what it is. It will be nicer then they ever had, but I won't feel too bad bull dozing it after they die.

My grandmother's (now uncle's) house is like that. I have a lot of positive, sentimental memories of that house, but the many repairs I have had to do over the years are not particularly positive memories.

[Bill Dufour]

It is interesting to work on a older house with lath and plaster. There was no need for accurate stud spacing so who cared if they lined up every four feet or not. The lath was cut with a hatchet at the joints where ever they fell on a stud. And lath was more then four feet long anyway. Cabinets were built to fit the opening not the other way around. My sliding glass patio door was about 1/4" narrower then today's. So I had to pull a jack stud and replace it with one I planed down about 1/4".
Bil lD.

[Stan Calow]

My builder friends say that they cant build houses the way they would want to (overkill), because nobody would buy them. Price is the primary factor buyers look at, and buyers want bling not quality, to see that they get their money's worth.

[Mark Hennebury]

In reference to the two bridges; i don't know anything about them.
My reason for posting the bridges was simply that i saw the video of the bridge that collapsed, I don't know why or how,don't know the circumstances surrounding the collapse. It just seemed a fitting image that represented the direction that a lot of things in our society are going in. The cheap throw away mentality. I am sure that the Romans could have built a cheaper bridge, and just kept replacing it every couple of decades,instead they built it with a mindset of having it remain functional far into the future. Why?

Move ahead a few thousand years;
40 odd years ago a woodworker wandered into my shop and when he saw me making a small table with double mortise and tenon joints, he proceeded to tell me how it was not “necessary” to do mortise and tenons….at all, and that he had just made two small tables for a customer and had used screws and plugs, and made $150 an hour doing it.
My table was just a simple table, that i constructed the way i thought it should be made. Unnecessary excess to my visitors mind.

A few years back my friend outfitted his shop with new machinery, all brightly colored with flashing lights.
His panel saw needed replacement linkage parts within a couple of months.
My saw is from 1950, dull battleship grey,weighs a ton, just a solid well-built workhorse. It's been working for the past 70 years... so far, without needing any replacement parts. Built with a different mindset.

It would be interesting to see what Thomas Robinson ( the builder of my old saw) would think of my friends saw.
On my Saw, The threaded rod that tilts the saw is about 1-1/2" dia round bar with precision acme threaded lead screw with a huge block of brass for the nut, a massive cast iron gearbox, cast iron base and all cast iron parts.
On my friends saw the parts are all cheap off-the shelf mickey mouse stuff, one quarter the size or less, but it has a nice paint job, and flashy lights.
My guess someone put a lot of effort into building it so cheap, figuring how small they could make the parts and still have them work...until the 12 month warranty was up.

We have the technology to build better stuff more efficiently now than at any time in human history,
But it seems that we have gone from how well we can make things to how cheaply we can produce them.