When is good enough actually good enough?

[Chinobi]

empirically i find that good enough for me tends to fall somewhere between 'it resembles the designed form or function' and 'i really shouldnt have kept trying to fix that', and as i continue to practice i try to narrow that window as much as possible.  i struggle the most with stopping myself before i wreck it trying to adjust some minutia that most other people will never even register.

 

then again, i havnt actually sold any of my work in a number of years, i tend to just make things for my own satisfaction or to give as gifts, so i try to satisfy myself that it is done well enough to the point that further fiddling will in reality become detrimental.

[Ridgewayforge]

Good enough is when I make what I set out to make. It must be beautiful for me to like it, but I don't rework pieces that I messed up on. I look at them and see what I did wrong and then I do better the next time around. Good enough is also when I look at things from a different perspective and see what others would think about it. Sometimes I set a piece aside and go back later to look at it. What in my excitement I initially liked usually has glaring flaws, that only after a few days I am able to realize. Then I try again.

[Pulsepushthepopulace]

Be true to your craft and your touchmark....

 

 

The phrase "good enough" should only be used and directed towards things that won't outlive you, and don't carry your name throughout the next few centuries... 

[Rich Hale]

As longago as this started I  may have said this before  but as Glenn said:

 

Good is the enemy of excellence:

 

Talent is not necessary for excellence.

 

Persistance is necessary for excellence.

 

Persistance is a decision!

[Glenn]

As longago as this started I may have said this before but as Glenn said:

Good is the enemy of excellence: Rich Hale post number 10 of this thread

Talent is not necessary for excellence.
Persistence is necessary for excellence.
Persistence is a decision!

http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/28084-a-few-quick-question-on-blade-smithing/
Post number 19
Rich Hale 08 July 2012 - 10:19 AM
This is a big part of how I live and work:

Good is the enemy of excellence.
Talent is not necessary for excellence
Persistence is necessary for excellence.
Persistence is a decision!

Rich, thank you for the post but the credit is not mine.

You deserve full credit for the words of wisdom.

[WayneCoeArtistBlacksmith]

If you have to ask if it is good enough, it probably isn't.

Or as my dad said, "Good enough never is".

[JNewman]

I think Grant Nailed it in post 2. 

 

Good enough is a moving target.   Even when something was good enough I try to do better the next time I make the same thing. 

[EGreen]

from doing bit and spur work and also leather work.I have re-started quite a bit.even when family says "good enough"

I started a wall with stuff on it with a sign that said "mistakes I have made".

[yves]

For me though, if I let something go thats under par, I do not feel good about that job, and often times it wrecks the rest of my day. I literally can't sleep at night lol

Same here.

 

However, I have to live with my lack of experience. I do not have the experience or hammer control of Brazeal, Aspery or of any of the masters but they set the standards. My inexperience is the source of the defects of my production. Not that I dont care. The standards I have such a hard time meeting are the subjects of my thoughts during my sleepless hours.

 

I believe that for a lot of us, the question is not wether it's good enough but wether it's getting better.

[01tundra]

I think my problem is not being able to recognize "good enough" at times.  I'm a perfectionist and I find myself working hard to make things "match" and sometimes have to step away and then come back to a piece and reevaluate things.  

[thingmaker3]

I have not changed my opinion since I posted back then. It MUST function within specs. It MUST have the illusion of perfect appearance. Only then is it good enough.

[rustyanchor]

I do the best work I can with the tools I have-within reason. I sell my work and I am a prefectionist, problem is I am not capable of constant prefection! The people I make things for have never had any negative comments or complaints about the quality of my work, but I can look at each piece and point out things I don't like or that didn't come out exactly the way I thought it would it.  

Good enough for me is a satisfied customer.

I know that there are things that I can improve on. Comparing my early work to what I am doing now I see vast improvement, I am learning to work faster and produce more in less time and I still see a better product in the end.

Will everything I make ever be perfect? No probably not, but will it be "Awesome" to a customer-YEP that it will.

 

Mark

[menze]

As with most here, I see the flaws and imperfections that nobody else does, I have a bad habit of pointing them out to the customer and then taking a few dollars off the original price because I felt it wasn't good enough to charge full price for. some will insist they pay the original amount because they are pleased with the outcome, others are excited to get a fine piece of craftmanship and a discount. being my own worst critic hasn't really helped my income much....

[rustyanchor]

menze:

My wife is the negotaitor and she doesn't discount. She figures I am working for sub minimum wage as it is. I am happy to give a customer something they are happy with, she makes sure I don't under price my work. Every now and again I get one by her....

 

Mark 

[SoCal Dave]

Menze:  I don't understand why you wouldn't charge full price because it wasn't "good enough".  You could redo a simple project for your entire life redoing it over and over again and again until you happen to one day produce "the perfect one".  I assume there is always something about a project that I know it could have been done better or different the next time.  That is the nature of doing things by hand.  If you want perfection each time, buy a machined part.  If you want to twist two bars and you turn each one the same number of twists, when finished they look similar.  But if you looked really close, you can see little imperfection in the twists.  They didn't come out exactly the same.  I would say they are "Good enough".  I believe in all hand forged projects there is always the imperfection, but that is the beauty behind hand made.   

[rustyanchor]

Dave,

You hit it right, every hand made piece is different and unique. I have to reign myself in sometimes to keep from spending 3X the time trying to get it " just right" for me.

 

Mark 

[pjakkur]

what i tend to think when i finis something is "would i be reddy to pay for that if someone elese had done this" is my set step for when it is "good enough"

if i am reddy to pay or would like to get the iteam as a gift i consitter it as "good enough"

 

if you are not your hardest critic someone elese will be and that is a tough bite to swallow

[menze]

menze:

My wife is the negotaitor and she doesn't discount. She figures I am working for sub minimum wage as it is. I am happy to give a customer something they are happy with, she makes sure I don't under price my work. Every now and again I get one by her....

 

Mark 

RustyAnchor, my wife is the "quality control" if it's good enough to get by her then it's good enough to sell, but it is myself being way too criticle on the piece that always gets me working for sub minimum wage... :rolleyes:

Menze.  

[hildenmw]

My goodenough has gotten a lot better over the years. My customers have always been pleased with my results. Some surprisingly so. The items I make for shows and the same for my custom requests. Momentarily it the most beautiful thing I've done. Then I start my critique . Pretty soon I'm ashamed and surprised anyone would want it. But they do. I'm very grateful for that. But. It's a vicious cycle. the more I do , the better it gets, the unhappier I am with past projects. I'm not sure we should ever be happy with good enough an I have ate time and once gave money back when I really over estimated my time. Marc

[Bentiron1946]

I thought "goodenough" was a rushing fellow, always rushing around to get something finished not quite on time but just about finished. The setting of standards is somewhat arbitrary. An old client who was moving into retirement living was cleaning out his back yard called and asked if wanted it back. When I forged it in 1976 I thought it was more than "good enough" but if I were forging it now the level of "good enough" would have been vastly different. The last four years I have been making jewelry and when my wife put on one of the first pendants I made I was somewhat aghast at the workmanship but she and others think it a thing of beauty and would like one "jut like it". "Good enough" can be very variable over the life of any give smith, it your standards aren't advancing and your skills improving then you will never ever be good enough. One must strive to be better than "good enough" otherwise you are like the painters who turn out the pictures for the "starving artist" sales, they have all the strokes down to make adequate paintings but not truly great art, they are just "good enough" to make inexpensive paintings that sell for the bottom tier of the market. That may be fine for most of what we do in making a thousand fence pickets but not for the individual sculptures, focal point hat/coat racks, gates, grilles and other items that are in close daily use by the client. I think as we mature as smiths we are constantly pushing the boundary of "good enough".

[menze]

Menze:  I don't understand why you wouldn't charge full price because it wasn't "good enough".  You could redo a simple project for your entire life redoing it over and over again and again until you happen to one day produce "the perfect one".  I assume there is always something about a project that I know it could have been done better or different the next time.  That is the nature of doing things by hand.  If you want perfection each time, buy a machined part.  If you want to twist two bars and you turn each one the same number of twists, when finished they look similar.  But if you looked really close, you can see little imperfection in the twists.  They didn't come out exactly the same.  I would say they are "Good enough".  I believe in all hand forged projects there is always the imperfection, but that is the beauty behind hand made.   

you are exactly right Socal, and essentialy that is the "beauty" in the craft. But this is a dilima I'm trying to overcome, I wouldn't pay that much for it because I could make it myself, there for I wouldn't think someone else would pay that.. does that sort of make sense? I envision how i want something to look like and if the finished product isn't the same then i feel it isn't good enough to me, however the customer could see it entirely different. I'm working on learning the busines side of this... it will come lol.

I made several variations of these grape & leaf dishes for Christmas gifts etc, this one I kept because I felt it wasn't good enough, due to the flaws that I see. now the average person probably won't notice the grapes being a disproportionate clump or the grinder marks zinged on the bottom one. but i do, along with the vine not quite natural looking. However it is "good enough" to sit on my shelf.

Menze.

[rustyanchor]

RustyAnchor, my wife is the "quality control" if it's good enough to get by her then it's good enough to sell, but it is myself being way too criticle on the piece that always gets me working for sub minimum wage... :rolleyes:

Menze.  

 

My goodenough has gotten a lot better over the years. My customers have always been pleased with my results. Some surprisingly so. The items I make for shows and the same for my custom requests. Momentarily it the most beautiful thing I've done. Then I start my critique . Pretty soon I'm ashamed and surprised anyone would want it. But they do. I'm very grateful for that. But. It's a vicious cycle. the more I do , the better it gets, the unhappier I am with past projects. I'm not sure we should ever be happy with good enough an I have ate time and once gave money back when I really over estimated my time. Marc

It sounds like we agree that we are our worst critic, my wife does QC on my work and thinks some of the stuff I am ready to drop in the scrap  pile is just dandy, people that buy it love it, it isn't just right, but my wife saw it before it went away to scrap.

My later work is a vast improvement over "The early stuff", but still needs improvement.

I made a sign that said Fultz for a wedding present, I was on the 3rd revision of it and finially got what I thought was sa good sign. Vulcan the shop assistant cat liked it, Anita liked it, I thought it was good. Put it in the mail and Anita posted a pic on FB, one of her friends in England asked if the Z was supposed to be backwards....Looked at the pic and darned if the Z wasn't slanted wrong. Big OOPS. I quickly made another sign with a correct Z and sent it with apologies. The customer loved the unique sign ?! Well they got a 2fer-2 fer the price of 1. 

[jgirard13]

Its good enough when I'm happy with the pc and my gf. Looks it over and says it'd good (just ad anal as I am). I had to emulate a towel rack another blacksmith did yrs back and even though totally it was only 3 pcs. (Two scrolls and a twisted rod) I made 7 of the scrolls and 2 rods. Altogether I made around 5/hrs on the job but it got me alotta work in the long run due to word of mouth. Quality first cause my shop isn't Walmart

[CaptainSpaulding]

Being an absolute beginner but also being a perfectionist of sorts in other aspects of my life, just this weekend I quickly turned what was turning into quite a nice looking leaf for a key ring into a flux spoon because "just one more heat and a little more attention RIGHT THERE" will make it perfect.  Now, the error was 100% due to lack of experience (left the leaf in the fire WAY too long for how thin it was) so next time I should get it right. On the plus side, I now know what the sparks, sizzling sound and blistering means. 

 

 

 

As long as you're aware of your strengths and weaknesses, good enough may very well be as perfect as you can get.  As someone else already mentioned, as long as that's a moving target and your next piece is better than your last, you know you're moving in the right direction.

[nonjic]

Grant - still missing your wisdom mate....

 

For the day job, good enough is to customer spec, does not need to be better than that if I want to pay the rent! Does not stop me from machining a part with a nominal +/- 0.020 tollerance, and trying to hit dead size, with the same feeds and speeds so there is no time penalty though :D

 

Good enough is a moving target in my bladesmithing. I have very high standards, unfortunatly just not the skill set to meet them ! there is allways a point where a piece starts to 'go west' , I now resist the urge to just sling stuff in the scrap pile, and finish it up - take the improvements onto the next one. The journey on the pursuit of excellence has to have mediocracy as many of its steps.

 

Untill my hands are capable of creating what my mind sees I just have to keep taking the small 'good enough' steps, and allow myself a smile at the bits that have improved. Somtimes looking back at the progression of past works gives confidence that the moving target is one day achievable.