Learning to Like Dogsh*t Flavored Toothpaste

(I realize that the point of the commentary below may not be immediately obvious, so to state it briefly before getting into it; it’s critical to learn to like the bad taste that comes along with making something that you realize you don’t like. You may even immediately dislike something you’re making vs. the slow “ah…the more I look at that, the less I like it”. But, understanding how to make what you like and what others will like builds heavily on learning the feel and eye appeal of the things where you come up short. Allow yourself the space to come up short, ponder and discern to make things better.)

Sometime in the last several weeks, I was listening to Don Shipley, a retired Navy Seal who busts fake seals, and several other things. But he’s famous for confronting people who steal valor.

While he was talking about something, he said “that’s about as desirable as dogshit flavored toothpaste”, or something along those lines.

When you’re a beginner, you want success. Success is like eating candy. Whether you’re experimenting making tools, or furniture or cooking, keeping things only easy and refusing to venture out really limits what you can do. Referring to my good friend George Wilson here is perhaps the far end of things – George doesn’t have to brush his teeth with dogshit flavored toothpaste too often, but I’ll bet he’s done his share of it to get where he is.

What do I mean by that? The mindset of someone learning, or perhaps someone curious but destined for some mediocrity in the long term. We are fed a line by people selling gimmicks, or touting quality in their goods that will keep us safe from realizing and then subsequently improving our own shortcomings. Selling you the line that you have enough stuff to make things 95% of the time and what you lack is skill is a very low profit thing. It’s also unsafe for unaccomplished and some accomplished people when it comes to ego and wanting to share something.

I want to share failure and what it can do for you. But willful failure. I bring up George because George is a savant. He is a design savant and a savant in understanding and executing, but he is still human, so it serves us nothing to pretend we can’t learn from him. If George makes one of something, it will probably be better than my 5th try. It may be better than someone else’s 2nd and a third person’s 20th, and of course, there will be a few people who don’t get it at all and should find another hobby. But I know George didn’t shoot out of the tunnel at birth with a quill pen in his hand drawing sailboats freehand. He learned to do it. He spent time doing it and I’m sure he made things he ultimately didn’t like.

Welcome the Flavor, it’ll be Mint Later

When I started, I didn’t have the patience but I wanted to make things. Or at least, I thought I did. It was hard to separate the people who could make things and would share knowledge from everyone else. It was also hard to understand standards at that point and design, whether visual or utility with feel. Some of the fine makers seemed harsh, and as I learned over time, the Facobs asserted some long experience and criticized, but they really have nothing to offer.

I hated mistakes. I hated making something and looking at it and then not liking it. And then sometimes throwing said item away without much feel for what’s next. What’s next should just be more making, but I chose to do tedious things and get sucked into “well, I’ve got a long list of things I need” vs. a long list of making to do. That resulted in things like four hour dovetailed drawers that are now 1 (and better), too much pondering, trying to pretend that I have an organized mind. I don’t – I have a classic attention deficit type mind – lots of planning, but execution has to be something other than that because the execution of a complex plan is agonizing, whereas it’s bliss for someone who is conscientious. The whole attention deficit thing is a weird topic and maybe worth discussing another time – it’s got a branded label, but I think it’s just a better description of how brains work and not which urn you fall in – red balls or blue ones.

Where’s the stinky toothpaste come in? I never really stopped dreading making until i realized that brushing with the dogshit flavored toothpaste is how I find out how to stop doing it. Or put differently, if I try my best or reasonably best at something and expect item one, or maybe even item 5 to have characteristics I don’t like, then at some point, eliminating those as part of the process is a lot easier than trying to avoid them.

Here’s my latest brushing exercise:

This is just a kitchen knife in AEB-L that I offered to make for someone. I really like to put straight handles on knives but I’m thinking that sometimes, the handles that have a slight drop at the back and some registration to the sides are more appropriate for inexperienced users.

If you’re wondering what I mean by that, look up Zwilling Professional S knives. Those are big bulky knives with some kind of polymer handle. The handle is huge, but the knife is heavy to balance it out. I’ve made several knives with a drop on the back but attempting to put them with a lighter blade is leading to a lot of brushing with dogshit flavored toothpaste, so to speak.

The knife above is closer to success than any I’ve made so far save one that looked terrible but was a little more comfortable. I kept that one for myself. This one, I will send along anyway, but a second “free one” (the first one is free, too) will follow so that I can compare.

so, what’s wrong? Well, the knife is very light. The heel is a human finger filleting machine, but that heel is often useful, and the last section of it can be honed a little dull if it’s not desired. I like to have a little cut in at the front of straight handles so that gripping with thumb and finger onto the blade is comfortable. The trouble here is that the handle is kind of blah already *and* the notch is exactly where you don’t want it when you hold the handle without fingers on the blade. If you grip the handle, the notch is just there, teasing your thumb or forefinger forward. I have an idea to improve the next one. Having not made this style of handle as small as this before, I couldn’t have anticipated just how much it would be like brushing with dogshit flavored toothpaste to hold the knife handle for chopping.

If the knife were just for me, I could get used to it. If you were enamored with things made by hand just by the notion of it, you probably could, too. But if you objectively compared this handle to a lot of others that aren’t any harder to make, you’d have to admit that the notch is just wrong in most cases, and at the length of the handle, it would have to be handed and only on one side. Which isn’t great, either. There are left-handed people in the world who have already settled in to playing guitar left handed and so on. I should be able to make a knife that accommodates them.

So, instead of getting a really foul attitude and throwing the knife across the shop, I’ll take that feel (taste?) and how it it immediately felt like “ghee, I just made it worse than doing nothing by a mile putting that notch where it is”, and use it so that the next issue isn’t that. I appreciate what I’ve learned, and looking at the lines of the handle, see other things that could be improved – it’s just a little uglier than it needs to be.

Perhaps a better maker would have to brush with the stinky less often before figuring things out, but who cares – I’m not another maker. The disappointment is short and quick. If it takes five of these in the end to get one good, lots of little things are still occurring to learn from, and finally getting things right puts one in a place to make something better and more thoroughly thought out than any first item – no matter how good – could ever be.

It would take a really unproductive ego to go at this with the idea of entitlement, that everything will be minty fresh from the start.