7 Habits of Highly Effective Woodworkers
Powerful lessons for part-time furniture makingSynopsis: Anyone who pursues woodworking as a hobby knows that uninterrupted shop is at a premium. So it’s best to make the most of the hours you have. We tapped into the expertise of our contributing editors to come up with seven tips that will make your woodworking more effective. Surprisingly, the advice we got was not concerned with technique, but with careful planning, tool maintenance, and basic milling operations.
From Fine Woodworking #203
Making furniture isn’t easy, especially if you do it in your spare time. When it comes to complicated tasks like dovetailing a carcase or sanding a big piece, it’s challenging to get consistent results when working in short bursts.
I’ve long thought that if I could make wiser use of my limited shop time, I’d make fewer mistakes, get more done, and build better furniture. To that end, I recently asked our contributing editors for suggestions, tapping their combined decades of experience. Surprisingly, none of them focused on technical skills; I guess these just come naturally over time. Instead, their advice dealt with things like project planning, tool maintenance, and basic milling operations. And there was a surprising amount of agreement among them.
In all, their tips boiled down to a set of good bedrock habits that will enhance anyone’s work and enjoyment in the shop. With apologies to Dr. Stephen R. Covey (author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), here they are.
1. Plan your work
Begin each project by drafting an overall plan. This plan should start with a detailed drawing and cutlist, but just about everyone agreed it pays to think through the whole project in advance and map out a logical step-bystep sequence for every facet, from milling and shaping parts to joinery, glue-up, sanding, and finishing. (For more, see two earlier Fundamentals: “Making a cutlist” by Philip C. Lowe, FWW #176; and “Develop a game plan” by Stewart Crick, FWW #187.)
Planning ahead yields a number of benefits. It helps ensure that you won’t forget any crucial steps. It also breaks up the project into a series of tasks, each of which can be made small enough to treat as a goal for an individual shop session.
As you develop your plan, you’ll learn to spot natural breaks in the action that afford their own very real woodworking advantages. For instance, if you conclude a shop session with a final sanding of your project, you’ll be ready to apply finish when the next session starts—after the sanding dust has completely settled. You’ll also find that short shop sessions are ideal for applying a single coat of finish that can dry during the interval between them.
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