WilliamCanada

The presentation combining slides, sketch-up and music was really cool. Shop appears to be spacious and well organized. However, I was not impressed with the way turning gouges and hand tools were simply placed in open drawers with no dividers - not a way to treat fine tools.

Gary is right: if you want to become a better woodworker, learn from your mistakes. Though you can also learn from your successes, even if they do not happen as often. The common core of leanrning from successes and failures is to understand why your method, technique, etc. worked or didn't work and to provide guidance for future work. I write detailed plans for every project, plans which change as the project develops. The last section of every plan is entitled "Lessons Learned." Almost all of these lessons flow from errors in planning or execution of work. Written in the form of a bulleted lesson, with an example, they remind me what to do on the next project, which will not be error-free but hopefully the errors will not be the same. And if they are, it's time once again to ask: Why? What can I do about this?