There can be value in making a thing. Even when you make it badly.
Our new home essentially has no grass. But inside our gate is a little patio that I spent the winter months planning to fill with a bench and a bunch of containers for flowers.
I figured it would be a good place to sit and read a book for a few minutes or wait for an Uber or somesuch.
I had planned to pick up a nice bench at the store. But while surfing the web for ideas, I started seeing plans for DIY projects. Lots of plans.
So, over the weekend, I made a bench. And I’m slightly embarrassed at how pleased I am with it.
In fact, I’m so pleased that you would be forgiven for thinking that this particular piece of woodworkery is the successful culmination of years of attempts. But I have never made so much as a birdhouse in a shop class.
Failing that, you’d think that the bench must at least be some marvel, that I’d discovered that I’d missed my calling, my hands having put saw and hammer and chisel to the whorls and swoops of wood like a maestro stroking a violin, the final product worthy of a museum, or at least a Crate+Barrel.
But the truth is that I am the world’s worst measurer. I honestly struggle to cut things evenly in half. And I’ve never used a hand saw or a sander in my life.
And really, the bench is plain as hell. It is super basic. It has no back. No arms.
The entire thing is made of two boards and thirty-two screws. It only requires you to cut eight pieces. There are only ten joints in the whole thing. It is actually touted as a “fifteen-minute” bench.
Yet it took me a couple of hours to make.
I used cheap pine instead of the cedar that I’d considered because I was afraid that I’d butcher the whole thing.
And I was right to worry.
I cut every piece slightly crooked.
I drilled holes in a side where holes don’t go.
I used wood glue to help secure the pieces and then let the excess glue run down the legs and dry and then had to use a chisel to try and get it off which only ended up gouging the wood.
And it has a slight wobble where one of the legs is a bit off.
I even showed the picture to a few people and they all agree that while the legs look stained (Golden Pecan), the seat doesn’t. I don’t know why.
Still, I love it.
I cut it, joined it, sanded it, and stained it. Short of cutting down the tree, that is as good as it gets. And if the joints are crooked, well, I made every crooked joint. So there.
And anyway you can barely see the glue runs unless you really look for them (and only haters will…).
Finally, it’s not ugly. Is it simple? Yes. Utilitarian, even. But it’s not ugly.
Most importantly, you can sit on it. You can sit on it like hell. It is sturdy and seats two and will reward your sitting with a splinter-free experience.
It is a not too ugly, functional, bench. What else could I hope for?
But there was a moment where, after I’d abandoned my attempts to plane off the wobble and stopped gouging the wood to clean up the glue, and hammered in one screw that I’d stripped so that the drill wouldn’t work on it, that I thought that maybe my little bench wasn’t ready to be seen.
While considering it, I remembered a tv show that focused on respected craftsman, many of whom specialized in making a single thing.
Swords. Wooden tables. Chopsticks. Sushi. One guy just made scissors and commanded $800 for a single pair.
They all insisted that though they had specialized in making a single thing well — and many had been doing so for decades — they were still not satisfied.
It seemed that none of them had ever made any of those things “right”. Not really.
So where did I get off being happy with a rickety bench?
But then it occurred to me that the takeaway from the show might be more than just what could be created when you are obsessed with perfection. That maybe it was also about just doing the best you can while still putting your work out into the world.
Because as imperfect as their creations were, every one of those craftsman sold what they made.
I had started out trying to make a serviceable bench to sit on. And I made one. Then I nearly let a bunch of other, secret, expectations stop my enjoying it — my sharing it.
I’m glad I got over it.
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This post was previously published on Noteworthy – The Journal Blog and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Chris L. Robinson