Monday, December 31, 2018
Adventures in Woodworking Year-end Review:
Problem Solving key to IT and Woodworking
People who know me as an IT guy are always surprised to find out I’m a woodworker.
I don’t know why. Because the way I see it, they are essentially the same thing.
Okay, I know, what you’re thinking. How in the world is dealing with all of today’s latest electronic gadgets and do-dads anything like that most basic of all technologies which has been around since man learned to sharpen a stick?
Well I’ll tell you.
Both require a fair amount of problem solving skills.
In fact, I’d even go so far as saying that both IT and woodworking require you to be a problem solver above all else. The other skills are just incidental.
I know just about anyone who has ever dealt with a computer, tablet, cell phone or other smart device on the fritz won’t need an explanation of how problem-solving skills apply to IT work.
After all, it’s fairly obvious.
But far fewer people have firsthand experience building something out of wood. From what I’m told, most schools don’t have “shop” class anymore, which, if true, is a damn shame. Today most people’s only exposure to woodworking comes from watching Norm Abrams on reruns of the “The New Yankee Workshop” or from the dozens of home-fix-up shows on cable TV. Others might have even watched a video or two by members of the “maker” community on Youtube.
Watching these folks complete their projects in 30 minutes or less make the whole process seem simple. I mean if Norm could build a reproduction 17th century highboy in 27 minutes and have it look like something you’d find in a high-end furniture store, how hard could it really be?
As stated in a previous blog, the answer to that question is ALWAYS “much harder than you can imagine.”
Woodworking has always been about more than just having all the right power tools, as Norm always seemed to have. I’ve seen some pretty damn impressive projects built by people with just a few basic hand tools: a hand saw, hammer, plane and maybe even a chisel or two.
It also goes beyond a person’s ability to follow a set of plans, whether written or on video. Although it helps to be able to do that, those instructions can’t take every situation into account and sometimes they are just not all that clear. Just ask anyone who has ever struggled to assemble Ikea or other brands of knock-down furniture.
So why then is woodworking or just making something from scratch so difficult?
Well, in the case of woodworking, wood is a natural product. No two pieces are exactly the same.
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The living room cabinets all assembled and installed. They didn't
quite come out as I planned and there is still more work to do,
but this project once again reminded me about how important
problem-solving skills are to woodworkers.
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This is where “problem solving” comes in.
It’s more than about fixing mistakes when they occur – and they always will. It’s about looking at a set of plans and adapting them to the size and type of materials you have on hand, the type of tools you have at your disposal and your particular skill level.
Can’t make that most classic of all woodworking joints, the dovetail, but still need a strong way to assemble a set of drawers? Then you need to figure out what other joinery types you can use that fit the bill.
Box joints would be the next logical choice. But that requires a jig to cut the evenly spaced fingers. Don’t have a jig? Well now you need to figure out how to make one.
I think you can see where I’m going with this. Woodworking, like IT, isn’t about just fixing a “bug,” patching a system or fixing a mistake you made while building your project.
It’s a process that starts from the moment you decide to build something and often continues well after you think you’re through with it.
What brought all this to mind was thinking about the woodworking projects I did this year. It seems to me I spent the better part of my year in the shop working on the built-in bookcase and media center project that I have been documenting.
Right from the very start, I faced a number of issues, and although I thought I’d solved them all in the planning stage, they continued straight on through the build. I even documented one of them in my August blog: Sometimes Failure is not only an option: It’s a necessity.
Even after everything was built, assembled and installed in my living room, there were still more problems. Not everything worked the way I had intended. So once again I was forced to sit back and think about how to fix them without starting all over.
While mulling over the changes I needed to make to fix my cabinet and media center at home, I was dealing with a server upgrade at work that had gone sideways.
I had done all the required research and finally acquired all the software and licensing I needed to execute it. Like my cabinet design, it seemed a fairly straight-forward process, one that should have only taken a few hours with most of them spent watching a status bar inching it’s away across a screen and me clicking the occasional “Next” button.
However, about 60 percent way through the process I started hitting problems. I’d work my way through each one only to hit another. Turns out there was a “minor” bug with the software which the vendor didn’t see fit to inform anyone about until you called them.
As a result of this minor bug, I had to come up with a workaround to get my systems back up and running, which I was able to do.
I like to think that these two problems happening at about the same time were just coincidence, but being a writer I can’t help but think that it was just some sort of cosmic plot device designed to re-inforce my belief that problem-solving is the key to both my chosen profession and one of my biggest and most written about hobbies.
I hope this little life lesson from my experiences in 2018 will be of benefit to you in the coming year, and may you all have a happy and healthy 2019!
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