Some years ago, I worked in a large old building that had once been a furniture factory. It had been  converted mostly into a large empty space, but it also sported about a dozen small woodworking shops up on the second floor. It was a great old space if a bit difficult to find under the freeway and across the tracks. Built in a long ago time when the train tracks ran right through the back parking lot to unload lumber and load up furniture. Across the hall from me there was a friend of mine, Michael, who built custom made furniture as I did. Over the years we would always help each other glue up, or talk about designs, shoot the breeze, lift many heavy objects together.

The interesting thing about our relationship was how we relied upon each other. For myself, I needed Michael to bounce ideas off. He would come in and I would say what do you think about such and such a leg shape. He would tell me what he liked and I would usually pick the opposite shape. But I needed this conversation as much as he did, I’m sure. Just someone to push against, to test out ideas, prove to myself that I was right or stubborn.

One of the curious things about us though was when something had gone wrong in a piece. This plague, unlike the seventeen year locusts, was far more frequent. More reliably frequent too as mistakes are such an integral part of the woodworking game. So something would go awry in a new project for him or me. Something that to my eye or his looked terrible and we needed confirmation of this fact. It could be a dent somewhere, or a screw tip poked through a door, the misplacement of a hinge, or any number of things in a list so long I hate to think of it. The mistake would occur and then I, for one, had to decide was it obvious? Was it just me or did I need to launch into the costly fix? First I needed another set of eyes to confirm what I saw.

I would call Michael over and ask, “Do you see it?”
And he’d say, “What?”
“You don’t see it?” I would ask incredulously.
“What?” he would respond.
“I can’t show you. I want you to find it. Don’t you see it?”
“No, what?”
“It’s right there,” I would say, but point nowhere.
“What?” Michael said growing more impatient with his cuckoo neighbor.
“Well I… I can’t…I’ll show it to you, but are you sure you don’t see anything there? It’s so obvious,” as I grew more impatient with my cuckoo neighbor.
“No not unless you show me where.”
“It’s right there.” I would point it out.
“Oh that, oh yeah I saw that. So what?”

Next came my grimace, the gnashing of teeth, the inevitable question in my mind: Is the man blind? Has he lost his values? Does he not see this neon sign of a mistake pulsing out HERE LOOK HERE! But no, he wasn’t blind and it was always true. He never saw the mistake like I did. Never.

Nor would I see his mistakes like he did. It was never as big a deal for the observer, the neighbor, the client even, as it was for the maker. The maker whose ten thumbed approach, whose blindness and incompetence, whose woeful lapse of concentration again, had caused this flagrant violation of all design and construction principles. That maker, that idiot. No one saw it like him. No one was as hard on his work.

It is a sad constant for us woodworkers that I, for one, work on minimizing. Our focus is so small, our constraints on our obsession so meager that we think everyone can see all the mistakes that we make and see ourselves with such clarity. I laugh when I think about the old saying of not offending god by making a perfect piece, by including one mistake so as to not offend. God must be plenty satisfied with me and not offended by now with how many mistakes land on my work. But few others seem to even notice them.

Bear that in mind. Step away sir or madam. Put down the hammer and step away from the project. Try to see it with someone else’s eyes. It’s not so bad. You do pretty good work. It’s worth remembering.