A Spoon of 100 Cuts

My level of production this year is way down. Switching from doing almost everything face-to-face to an entirely online model has been challenging. To stop my making muscles from atrophying I’ve decided to set myself regular little challenges to keep improving my green woodworking skills.

I believe that the best way to improve at a thing is to just do it. What to get better at carving spoons? Carve a bunch of spoons. What to get better at turning on a pole lathe? Put the hours in behind the lathe. This method works. To a point.

Eventually you’ll see fewer and fewer improvements with each session. This is totally to be expected. You’ve gotten a lot better, so there are fewer areas that require improvement. And the areas that need improving might only require small tweaks.

Enter deliberate practice. With regular practice we’re just focused in putting in the reps. There’s so much to learn in your first 100 spoons/mugs/bowls that you just need to do them. Eventually though you’re going to have to take a step back from your process. You’ve found a system that works, but it might not be the best. Maybe you’ve developed some bad habits. You need to tear that system down into it’s constituent parts so you can examine them individually and assess how well each of them is working.

That’s what this video series is about. I want to try a whole bunch of different exercises that each focus on just a small aspect of green woodworking. At the same time, I’m using these exercises as an excuse to get in my reps for video making. I really enjoy making short films about my craft, but I’m still at the stage where I don’t know what I don’t know. So it’ll be fun to mash up one craft where my skills are quite advanced with another where I’m a total beginner.

I hope you join me on this little journey of discovery and find it as enjoyable as I do.