Loose the Sheet!
Say what you mean and use terms that the other people understand.
A few years ago, Sweet Janice and I bought a small but very fast catamaran sailboat. On one particularly windy day, the best kind for a speedy cat, Sweet Janice and I were on the water. Suddenly a strong gust of wind picked one hull dangerously high out of the water and threatened to capsize our small sailboat. With Sweet Janice at the helm, I yelled “loose the sheet!” only to hear back in a confuseded voice, “What’s a sheet?” Over we went.
If you don’t use familiar words and phrases you might as well be speaking a foreign language. A natural progression for wood turners is to share methods and techniques they have discovered with others through demonstrations, hands-on coaching or videos. Be careful of the words you use around others as they may not know the language just yet. Phrases like MT2, HSS, banjo, 50mm jaws, dovetail, live center, bevel, shear scrape, pull cut and a thousand other phrases that a more experienced turner takes for granted.
Have you ever listened to an airline pilots’ conversation with the tower or ATC (air traffic controller)? If you are not a pilot, it can be like watching Russian car crashes on YouTube (these never get old even with the language barrier). So how do you avoid turning jargon? Simple, get in the habit of using the correct term (jargon) immediately followed with a short plain English term or description for clarification.
For example: you are describing how to use a skew chisel to rough down a spindle. “When roughing down, that is taking a spindle with square corners to completely round, begin nearest the live center which is the thing holding the end of the wood on the turner’s right hand side. Take several light cuts rubbing the bevel, the tapered end of the skew where you sharpen it. And so on. With a little practice, adding a plain English description becomes second nature and you will find that your explanations or instructions are much more clearly understood.
This technique can be applied across the board in our everyday lives at work, at church, with our children and grandchildren. Of course if you are involved in a very technical discussion with other experts, you assume that everyone is up to speed and fully conversant with every technical term. Hint: they aren’t. The military is famous for acronyms that everyone is just expected to know. We see these all the time with civilian reporters who are interviewing military spokesmen about some situation. Give it a try, you will find yourself communicating much more effectively because wherever you go, there you are.
BTW: A sheet is a sailing term for the rope controlling the tension on a sail. I should have said “Let the rope out” but I hadn’t learned this lesson back then.
Here is my inspiration for this message:
Prov 10:31 MSG A good person's mouth is a clear fountain of wisdom; a foul mouth is a stagnant swamp.
1 Cor 13:12 MSG We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
Proverbs 23:33 NIV Your eyes will see strange sights, and your mind will imagine confusing things.
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