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Professional or Amatuer Woodworker 

Professional or Amatuer Woodworker

What's the difference?

 The same is true of becoming a general Contractor. There was no formal training involved, and yet after being in business for a number of years, we would regularly do residential renovations totaling over a million dollars in cost. (and some of those people were kind of picky). Just the school of hard knocks to lead the way.

When I was about seventeen, I was living on a farm, planting trees, along with learning the plumbing business. (from my father). Here was a self educated man, who had extremely high standards for himself, and everyone around him. Things had to be perfect, close wasn't acceptable. Even if the pipes would be buried under six feet of dirt, they still had to be installed as though they were headed to a museum somewhere. And he was not polite, or gentle about it. 

While living at this farm, I decided to make a stock for my 22 rifle. I spent a lot of hours shaping the stock to fit the barrel and associated parts of the rifle. When I was finished, I took it to him. He looked it over and said, "that's nice, when you going to finish it"? I was kind of shocked. I thought I did finish it. Well I started in on shaping it some more, making it a little thinner and more streamlined. Well I took it back to my father, and damned if he didn't say the same thing. Now I was getting a little irratated. But I headed back to the barn and continued to shape and trim it some more, actually curving where my hand would fit the stock near the end at the barrel. 

I also fitted the pistol grip to fit my other hand. Now for the third time, I took it back to my father. He looked it over pretty close, and said, "ah, you finished it".

The shorter version of that story is, "it ain't right, till it's right".

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