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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

Woodworking is one of those skills where you can see literally every flaw about your finished product, because you know what greatness looks like and you cannot achieve it.

And nobody will notice but you, and maybe another woodworker. But generally they're nice enough not to say anything mean.

I like it because it keeps me humble. Just when I believe I have the largest amount of domain knowledge related to my job, and just when people are starting to view me as an expert. . . .

The god-damned half blind dovetails don't fit, and I know I made them right. I KNOW I DID.

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It's also one of those frustrating life lessons about putting in the work.

Like, sanding. When you first start out you're very tempted to just give it a very cursory sand to get any splinters off the edges or whatever, but once you sand something butter-smooth once, you have the frustrating realization that you're going to have to keep investing that much time and effort on every project you make going forward.

OCD sanding warning: down this path you may discover it's possible to sand some types of bare wood to a mirror finish.

Sanding well is huge. It can be the difference between "yep, you nailed some 2x4s together" and "oh my god, that is so beautiful"

I took Jory Brigham's TWW guild Hank Chair class, he said something like 30% of his shop time is spent sanding.

For me, finishing is not as fun as joinery; but patience during the sanding and finishing is absolutely essential to a good result.

Or you just cheat and epoxy the thing and then poly it for UV protection. Gives a nice glass smooth surface, but every woodworker will know you cheated and took the easy route and you loose the feel of a nice oil finish but everyone who is not a woodworker will marvel at it.

Can't upvote this enough!!

And there's no freaking undo button with wood.. it's mentally challenging to not freak out about every little mistake.

Over time I'm learning to get better about this, but it's rough.

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