How to get over the I suck barrier when learning a new skill
Just to let you know, not a big fan of DYI initiatives, but I do it because relative to the cost for the pro job... :)
Generally speaking most from what I could gather most pros do the jobs that they could do for a living because they don't suck enough to not get hired doing what they do. Admittedly not a pro here either.
Generally I turtle on DYI stuff, but eventually I try to make sure stuff gets done.
Some important tips that I could tell from a very brief stint in construction:
Make jigs for repeat cuts. Don't measure the same stuff out with your tape measure. Learn what a jig is, and know how to use it If you set a decent one up, you can make repeated cuts of the same length in a fraction of the time spent otherwise measuring.
Make a habit of accomplishing something for the project that you are working on, and set a reasonable time frame in terms of expectations. If you decommission the only bathroom in the house, and five other family members need to use it, and the project turns out to be a month away from completion, you might be facing relationship change in short order. To be added to this, if you can stage your project by decommission individual things, for instance, in a bathroom, you're better situated here. If this means putting in a temporary stop valve where one doesn't exist, to shut the water off in a section where you work without effecting the water being shut off in the entire house, do that instead.
If you decide to install woodflooring, and keep the house semi functioning in terms of traffic over a given area that you are working in terms of installation...don't do what I did...leave the flooring nearest the sink uncovered so that water/liquids could spill on unfinished wood. Unfortunately, when the finishing stage comes alone, the higher moisture content in the wood where spills have been left behind may not go away soon enough, and you are left when staining with obvious water marks left on the floor...this probably owing to differences in moisture content in the wood.
Takes time to do what you don't know how to do properly. Learn the processes and methods needed to accomplish your task, and do it as efficiently as you can. I'd say make a trial run, working with sample materials before you invest heavily into working larger scale. This way you don't blast through much material producing much waste and cost, trying to figure out something that should be fairly easy. If you are spending too much time and money doing something. See if you can find answer's online, or through reference or resource materials pertaining to the work that you are trying to accomplish. To give you an idea of top notched contracting: prefabricated well measured, well surveyed, pre cut material houses (German one's here) can be constructed in a day or two at best. While generally less well site surveyed construction projects can translate into months of construction time spent for building a house. If you can prefabricate your work as much as possible before installation, it may save you significant time and work. For instance, in plumbing, instead of measure soldering, measuring soldering, measuring soldering. Measure, measure, measure, cut, cut, cut, solder, solder, and solder. Task switching sometimes can be more costly in terms of time spent. If you have a template, use this before trying to construct one through your own measuring. At least if you know the template is good, it may save you time measuring. Know how to cut flush on your marks. If you can cut flush, your cuts will be accurate, and you shouldn't need to re measure. This means lining up properly on your compound miter saws, and so forth. Basic math and trig might help, especially for angle cuts. T square bevel and protractor for reading angles. Should at least understand right triangle relationships for translation to 47 degree max miter adjustments. Then sometimes, especially if you are a noob like me, you might need to measure on an as needed basis. For instances, laying wood floors, could present enough irregularities in terms of the wood and the flooring itself (especially with aged houses) such that it could be enormously difficult laying out everything completely before nailing. The more lengthy and the more parts required in a the process of building and designing prefabricated structures for installation means also greater possibility that an error in measure could cost other parts in design especially when incorporated into existing structures. Unless you were well surveyed on your design here, I wouldn't bank so well on pre cutting everything at once for say a thousand separate pieces relative to something simpler to a pre fabricated design that were ten cuts ahead. .
Anything else...not really sure here... not really a pro, probably not so great, and be reasonable about your expectations with DYI, some maybe great at doing what they do, but a lot may learn the harder way through some trial and error. When it comes to finishing in the aesthetic sense, there can be much technique that is learned in the way of producing excellent visual results. As stated before, if its something like a finishing technique for painting, woodworking and what not. Practice and have your method down so that you can apply this in the larger scale sense. Otherwise, if you are guessing every step of the way, chances are you are going to have inconsistencies appearing in your finishing work.
If its structural, its important to be level and plumb. If its finishing, the visual lines are more important from what I gather.
The other thing here that I've found:
It sucks when you get best accomplished nearest the end of a particular project and the skills learned are no longer needed. The differences between pros and DYIs, pros do the same sets of things in terms of skill use for labor from site to site, while its more or less probably going to be a one shot deal for maybe a decade or more depending on how frequent you change scenery and have money to spend. I've made my mistakes. I've probably cost some money in the process. People can spend years in professions building up their trades to a particular level of mastery, and then techniques learned can also be coveted. If you stink, you are probably in good company. Some people are gifted at what they do and learn fast, while others can take time to acquire the skill, knowledge and practice doing what they do. Likely, you probably aren't going to be a master at the DYI project you are working...get over it. All relative in any event.
Review of the article above: Hmm, years ago tried to do hand sawed dovetails, figured out the basic ratio formulation for a given edge length here. The problem were that my noob hand and eyesight weren't so great at cutting machine like cuts. There are some great woodworking videos of some real woodworking master's that can cut extremely precise by eyesight relative to drawn measurements which made me appreciate skill here on what should seem apparently so easy at first glance but is probably more deceptively hard then one could imagine. If you could learn proper strokes with the golf club, on violin, and what not, the skill is appreciably the same. I found that I could make some decent and nice looking cuts with my band saw up to a point, but as close as I could get to better precision. Second in terms of design there are considerations to scaling in design it should seem. I've heard things like golden ratios (means), but really it seems if one weren't working with a template this is another matter altogether. Mockups, or if you spent the same amount of money on junk/scrap wood and built a to scale model, this would save you the money on the fancier wood. I've seen some articles mentioning circular saws with fairly well designed jigs for doing table saw like work. In any event, it seems the equipment in many cases may not be cheap. Having access to a good workshop alongside people with knowledge and experience can help I'd imagine. While hadn't been to this particular shop in town, that rents equipment and space in a while. It at least then offered, access to the sorts of precision equipment, that I could probably little afford on my own in terms of building things like furniture. If you are lucky enough to have a woodworker's shop such as these in your town, I'd probably recommend utilizing these spaces instead. Chances are I couldn't imagine, that you'd want to invest a huge sum for table saws, band saws, routers, and nice workbench for any glue ups and what not, just for one small table project.
Just to let you know, not a big fan of DYI initiatives, but I do it because relative to the cost for the pro job... :)
Generally speaking most from what I could gather most pros do the jobs that they could do for a living because they don't suck enough to not get hired doing what they do. Admittedly not a pro here either.
Generally I turtle on DYI stuff, but eventually I try to make sure stuff gets done.
Some important tips that I could tell from a very brief stint in construction:
Make jigs for repeat cuts. Don't measure the same stuff out with your tape measure. Learn what a jig is, and know how to use it If you set a decent one up, you can make repeated cuts of the same length in a fraction of the time spent otherwise measuring.
Make a habit of accomplishing something for the project that you are working on, and set a reasonable time frame in terms of expectations. If you decommission the only bathroom in the house, and five other family members need to use it, and the project turns out to be a month away from completion, you might be facing relationship change in short order. To be added to this, if you can stage your project by decommission individual things, for instance, in a bathroom, you're better situated here. If this means putting in a temporary stop valve where one doesn't exist, to shut the water off in a section where you work without effecting the water being shut off in the entire house, do that instead.
If you decide to install woodflooring, and keep the house semi functioning in terms of traffic over a given area that you are working in terms of installation...don't do what I did...leave the flooring nearest the sink uncovered so that water/liquids could spill on unfinished wood. Unfortunately, when the finishing stage comes alone, the higher moisture content in the wood where spills have been left behind may not go away soon enough, and you are left when staining with obvious water marks left on the floor...this probably owing to differences in moisture content in the wood.
Takes time to do what you don't know how to do properly. Learn the processes and methods needed to accomplish your task, and do it as efficiently as you can. I'd say make a trial run, working with sample materials before you invest heavily into working larger scale. This way you don't blast through much material producing much waste and cost, trying to figure out something that should be fairly easy. If you are spending too much time and money doing something. See if you can find answer's online, or through reference or resource materials pertaining to the work that you are trying to accomplish. To give you an idea of top notched contracting: prefabricated well measured, well surveyed, pre cut material houses (German one's here) can be constructed in a day or two at best. While generally less well site surveyed construction projects can translate into months of construction time spent for building a house. If you can prefabricate your work as much as possible before installation, it may save you significant time and work. For instance, in plumbing, instead of measure soldering, measuring soldering, measuring soldering. Measure, measure, measure, cut, cut, cut, solder, solder, and solder. Task switching sometimes can be more costly in terms of time spent. If you have a template, use this before trying to construct one through your own measuring. At least if you know the template is good, it may save you time measuring. Know how to cut flush on your marks. If you can cut flush, your cuts will be accurate, and you shouldn't need to re measure. This means lining up properly on your compound miter saws, and so forth. Basic math and trig might help, especially for angle cuts. T square bevel and protractor for reading angles. Should at least understand right triangle relationships for translation to 47 degree max miter adjustments. Then sometimes, especially if you are a noob like me, you might need to measure on an as needed basis. For instances, laying wood floors, could present enough irregularities in terms of the wood and the flooring itself (especially with aged houses) such that it could be enormously difficult laying out everything completely before nailing. The more lengthy and the more parts required in a the process of building and designing prefabricated structures for installation means also greater possibility that an error in measure could cost other parts in design especially when incorporated into existing structures. Unless you were well surveyed on your design here, I wouldn't bank so well on pre cutting everything at once for say a thousand separate pieces relative to something simpler to a pre fabricated design that were ten cuts ahead. .
Anything else...not really sure here... not really a pro, probably not so great, and be reasonable about your expectations with DYI, some maybe great at doing what they do, but a lot may learn the harder way through some trial and error. When it comes to finishing in the aesthetic sense, there can be much technique that is learned in the way of producing excellent visual results. As stated before, if its something like a finishing technique for painting, woodworking and what not. Practice and have your method down so that you can apply this in the larger scale sense. Otherwise, if you are guessing every step of the way, chances are you are going to have inconsistencies appearing in your finishing work.
If its structural, its important to be level and plumb. If its finishing, the visual lines are more important from what I gather.
The other thing here that I've found:
It sucks when you get best accomplished nearest the end of a particular project and the skills learned are no longer needed. The differences between pros and DYIs, pros do the same sets of things in terms of skill use for labor from site to site, while its more or less probably going to be a one shot deal for maybe a decade or more depending on how frequent you change scenery and have money to spend. I've made my mistakes. I've probably cost some money in the process. People can spend years in professions building up their trades to a particular level of mastery, and then techniques learned can also be coveted. If you stink, you are probably in good company. Some people are gifted at what they do and learn fast, while others can take time to acquire the skill, knowledge and practice doing what they do. Likely, you probably aren't going to be a master at the DYI project you are working...get over it. All relative in any event.
Review of the article above: Hmm, years ago tried to do hand sawed dovetails, figured out the basic ratio formulation for a given edge length here. The problem were that my noob hand and eyesight weren't so great at cutting machine like cuts. There are some great woodworking videos of some real woodworking master's that can cut extremely precise by eyesight relative to drawn measurements which made me appreciate skill here on what should seem apparently so easy at first glance but is probably more deceptively hard then one could imagine. If you could learn proper strokes with the golf club, on violin, and what not, the skill is appreciably the same. I found that I could make some decent and nice looking cuts with my band saw up to a point, but as close as I could get to better precision. Second in terms of design there are considerations to scaling in design it should seem. I've heard things like golden ratios (means), but really it seems if one weren't working with a template this is another matter altogether. Mockups, or if you spent the same amount of money on junk/scrap wood and built a to scale model, this would save you the money on the fancier wood. I've seen some articles mentioning circular saws with fairly well designed jigs for doing table saw like work. In any event, it seems the equipment in many cases may not be cheap. Having access to a good workshop alongside people with knowledge and experience can help I'd imagine. While hadn't been to this particular shop in town, that rents equipment and space in a while. It at least then offered, access to the sorts of precision equipment, that I could probably little afford on my own in terms of building things like furniture. If you are lucky enough to have a woodworker's shop such as these in your town, I'd probably recommend utilizing these spaces instead. Chances are I couldn't imagine, that you'd want to invest a huge sum for table saws, band saws, routers, and nice workbench for any glue ups and what not, just for one small table project.
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