Lost Momentum

Have you ever just totally lost momentum on a project? Ok, dumb question. The real problem is, do you ever wonder why you lose momentum on a project? There can be a lot of different reasons, but recently, I had one particularly daunting one. I had taken a class at the [Marc Adams School of Woodworking] with [Jeff Miller] on making a Slat Back Dining Chair. The course went great, and I ended up with a chair at the end of the class. My goal was to build five more chairs when I got home. The wood was bought, and I had all the plans and the knowledge to get to work and complete the chairs. There was one problem though – all the joinery in the class was done with a horizontal mortising machine that was a tool I did not have. I would love to have one, but they are costly. Instead, I would use a [Festool Domino ]for my joinery. For the most part, this would work out well, but there is one joint were the tenon comes out parallel to the stile, but the stile has an angled cut on the end. The mortise has the same angle going into the leg. This would not be easy with a Domino but could be done. The joint would not be as robust as a hand-cut joint, but with five chairs that would mean hand cutting 10 joints that are very difficult to get just right and at my skill level would probably end up being loose.
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After making all the individual parts and shaping the legs, it was time to get to work cutting the joints. I had to make a decision – hand cut the joints and probably only get about half of them tight or use the Domino and risk the joint not being robust enough. I decided to go with the Domino but, started second guessing my self. Would the joints be strong enough? Can I make this last long enough to be a legacy piece? I imagined the legs coming loose and then needing to remake the joints. What would people think, what would my wife think? All progress stopped at this point.

Months past as I agonized over these joints. I started and finished other projects, re-organized the shop, build shop furniture, and did just about anything other than face this problem.

Then one evening it hit me – why am I trying to make the perfect chair, I can make more, and if this joint doesn’t hold, I can probably fix it. I need to just get in the shop and build it. As I was preparing myself and thinking about it, I had another realization. These joints would be re-enforced by braces under the seat. In the class, we cut and prepared these braces, but since the chair would be dis-assembled to ship it home, these braces were not installed. All this time, as I stared at the chair, I never remembered the braces. Now I was sure these joints would hold. And with that progress was restarted – just in time for me to leave for another class at Marc Adams.