When The Light Goes On
I recently had one of those moments when the light suddenly goes on and I finally understand. I get it! Now it makes perfect sense. I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner. Well DUHHH! What an idiot I’ve been.
Folks had been raving to me about a particular item and I just couldn’t see the value in it. It made no sense to me and surely it wouldn’t work better than the way I was already doing it. Then someone close to me took the time to make me actually watch and listen. I felt like an idiot, really. My understanding was 100% backwards. No wonder I didn’t like it; I didn’t understand it. Now I do and I love it! I’m going to do it that way because it is so much better than the way I was doing it before.
Many things in life are like that. I see this all the time these days in turning wood. With the advent of carbide scraping tools, folks get used to roughing down a spindle or a bowl with a square edged scraper. Carbide tools make getting started turning very quick and easy. Beginners can do a respectable job scraping so they get used to it. Then someone takes the time to introduce a properly ground and shaped High Speed Steel (HSS) spindle roughing gouge or a properly sharpened bowl gouge and they are amazed at the difference. Learning to sharpen HSS tools is a skill worth learning.
Cuts are cleaner, require less effort, don’t tear up the wood and make dramatically less noise. What a difference in technique. Slicing wood is better than scraping wood 7 days a week. There are times when scraping is the best method such as certain hollowing cuts, or final finishing cuts for a bowl, but whenever it is possible to cut you will almost always get a better result with less effort.
Skew chisels are a prime example of this phenomenon. A skew is one of the most useful lathe tools of all time. It can also be one of the most frustrating. The key is in understanding bevel contact. As long as you don’t lose that contact you will never get a catch while using the skew and it can make certain cuts much better than most other tools.
I’ve told this story before so here is the Reader’s Digest Version. I was at a wood show and a customer who had driven 2 hours just to see me asked me to teach him to use the skew chisel. I couldn’t because I hadn’t taken the time to learn it myself. I went home and made myself understand the skew until the light went on and I finally understood how skews work. Don’t get me wrong, it took more than a few minutes and more than one Band–Aid. But with the help of good old YouTube and five or six 2X4’s I figured it out. It was well wort the effort and now I love using skew chisels.
Is there something you can’t see, don’t understand, doesn’t make sense (insert political joke here)? Keep after it until the light goes on. It will be well worth your time and effort because wherever you go, there you are.
Here is my inspiration for this week’s message:
Acts 9:18 KJV
And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.
John 9:25 The Message Bible
He replied, "I know nothing about that one way or the other. But I know one thing for sure: I was blind . . . I now see."
