When is good enough actually good enough?

[Glenn]

When you are chasing a gnat for hide and tallow, you sometimes get caught up in the chase and forget it is a gnat.  Gnats can get expensive. 

Bottom line: Today, I chased and caught the gnat. The project gets my touchmark.

THEN I remembered this thread. (grin)

[Dave51B]

 Glen......You must have a really small touchmark....  For me, one of the best ways to tell if my "good enough" is good enough. Is making trade items to exchange at our clubs meetings. Sometimes, your item gets picked first, sometimes last, and sometimes I take my own so no one else will have to take it. The comparison with my fellow smiths work is invaluable to me.        Life is Good     Dave 

[Al Stephens]

When I find myself "correcting" minuscule things that no one but me would ever see, I often decide that it's good enough. However, it is the chasing, and correcting, of those same minuscule issues that separate a great piece, from a common piece. And lest I open myself up to abuse, I don't consider any of my work in the "Great" category.

[yves]

I hate it, really hate it when I have to say it's good enough. To me it means that it is not quite what I aimed at but this is the best I can do . Oh, I can sell it. The client and the people who see the object will not spot the defect. But I know it's there it. I feel it as a sort of defeat when I have to say that.

For instance, I am finishing an exterior handrail. It will be held to the concrete with angles with a scrolled vertical part. I see that 1/8" to 3/16"or so difference in the position of the tip of the imperfect scroll compared to the first one that is exactly what I wanted (I forge the scrolls without the use of a scroll tool). I know that if I try to make it perfect, I run further risks of changing some other aspect. So I have to decide that it is good enough. I hate that.

I have another commission for an exterior handrail. I will give in and make a scroll tool for that one. My scrolls will be better, hopefully. But I do fear that I might have to say again that "It is good enough".

[SLAG]

Slight deviations and flaws scream bespoke work. They make all the difference from factory products and mass produced items and components. Knowlegeable buyers appreciate those sight imperfections and will pay a premium for your work.

SLAG.

[JHCC]

If you haven't read David Pye's The Nature and Art of Workmanship, you should. He discusses this at length.

[ThomasPowers]

Hard to walk the narrow line between "not finished enough" and "overworked". I try not to leave "flaws" in my work; yet there is a lot of stuff that is not a flaw; but not a dead flat lifeless surface too.  Engineers and Artists often think about these differently too.

[jlpservicesinc]

Back in my much younger days as a starting out smith..  Because I had no examples of work around me i didn't know how to judge what was good work or not..  

I started out making knives and swords an things of that nature so had examples of factory finished knives to compare to.. Not being hand made it was a bad comparasion.. 

fast forwards 6 years, and many knives, swords and such later.. STill only factory stuff to compare to.. 

A person I was working for doing carpentry ( I was 15)  he knew I was forging knives and he asked if I could make a thumb latch for him.. He handed me a copy of an Acorn latch.. 

I went home and hours later I came out with this..    It was hideous.. I just didn't have a reference and really a lack of skill in regards to really forging metal.. Knives were easy, Sq make flat, round, make flat.. Mind you there are curves and such but there was no forging metal only sideways..  

The guy was not impressed.. LOL..   Nor was I.. My thinking I had a skill set worth a salt was devastated..  It became my goal to be able to forge a latch, or hinge or anything there was..    The chase/game was on.. 

I started to try to find any old hardware I could.. I also started to look for any reference books or instructional materials on making hardware..  I found none that showed me what I wanted to know.. How in the smiling face does one do this stuff.. 

I started to forge any chance I had.. I had no car. little money and would spend any money I did have on coal,  My first 2 years of really forging I had built and destroyed 5 forges..

Only to finally be able to come up with enough money for a Centaur firepot and was able to put together enough money for some cinder blocks..  A friend of the family his father was a blacksmith and I borrowed his Buffalo silent 200..   and I finally had a real forge, a real anvil and a lot of time on my hands.. 

so, 10-12hrs a day I would just practice.. Read the old blacksmithing books and practice.. Day in, day out..  6-7 days a week.. 

So, on the side note I started to find hardware at flea markets, old houses, and then bought Early American Wrought iron.. I started to try to match what I had seen in the book.. 

Eventually it took hold.. By 17 I was smithing full time...   

Anyhow,     Of note and what was instrumental to "know when enough was enough" with hammer and anvil is/was..     10minutes at the forge is 1hr at the bench.. 

The ideal from the old smiths was/is   "It should look factory made" Not hand made or cobbled together.. Quality speaks for itself.. 

Shakers Believed " Hands and hearts up to GOD"..      Each piece was made and finished to the 99999'sssss..    

A textured surface was considered a non finished piece or poorly skilled smith.. LOL..         

So,  a forged piece will have a softness to it.. The edges will be slightly soft, well defined lines by still slightly soft..  will  be pleasing to the eye but not overly so.. it should be finished accordance to what it will be used for..   When I say finished I mean forged..   filing and grinding are a minimum.  The piece should almost raise the question whether it was machine made or made by hand.. Yet someone in the know will know it's made by hand and wonder how it was completed..    

[jlpservicesinc]

one other thing.. I started to look at all items made before like 1940's.. All forged stuff that is and then tried to apply the same level of finish.. 99% of the items are beautifully finished.. Hammers, tongs, axes, Etc, etc,   Hand saws.. Wow.. 

[Mark Ling]

if it was perfect it wouldn't be handmade.

                                                                                                                 Littleblacksmith

[ThomasPowers]

I disagree.  Handmade often allows for finer distinctions in construction that are not present in machine made do to cost, time or other controlling factors.  (You may have run across suggestions to differ the angle of a chisel's bevel depending on the type of wood it is used in and tweaking plow points for local conditions was once common over the "one size fits all" love of factories and modern merchandizing.  However; I am eagerly awaiting the rise of 100% custom from the factory as computers are tied to the machinery and the customer.)  

I think your definition of Perfect varies from mine.

[WL smith]

YVES   I once worked for a man who was a machinist. He told me when he first started machining he would make each part to the numbers. His boss told him to quit being exact and to keep it within tolerance. I got the same lecture!!  Put your handrail on stands in position and check the wall for imperfections that each scroll could/ should be used and then you will be more than good enough.

[gote]

This is a very difficult question because it depends upon what is being made and what you had in mind when making it.

To me, it is good enough if it works as intended. But.....looks are also a part of the usabillity. If we make a scrollwork grid it is importat that the grid is good looking with well balanced details. It is not enough that it is strong.  In my view, an eysore tool is not efficient since it gives a bad feeling to the user. A well designed and executed piece is more efficient since the user has a good feeling when using it.

My professor in machinery design used to say that if the part looks ugly it will not work well but if it looks beautiful it will.

In the nineteenth century, a machine made piece, was more expensive and gave he owner more prestige than a hand made, so blacksmiths were keen on smooth surface. Today it is the opposite. Hand made means a certain uniqueness and uniqueness has always been considered valuable. An artist making prints will destroy the plate after a certain number of prints in order to preserve the uniqueness of his work.

I was warned at an early stage that i should not overdo what I made. There is a limit when a piece is finished. If one goes on and tries to refine it, it starts to go downhill.

There is a lesson to learn from Chinese/Japanese calligraphy. You must execute the character fairly swiftly with single strokes of the brush. You are not allowed to "paint" the character. Any attempt to "improve" the character afterwards kills it. Similarly a piece of  blacksmiths work should in my view have a certain amount of boldness. When I look at video clips I am often surprised that smiths, who obviously are very good, go on tapping long after the shape is there and the tapping does not make any change that is visible in the video. (besides the piece is too cold when they do that)

Of course it is also a question of what we are making. A garden fork is not a necklace. Some pieces benefit from surfacing brass brushing blueing whatever.

[yves]

13 hours ago, littleblacksmith said:

if it was perfect it wouldn't be handmade.

                                                                                                                 Littleblacksmith

With Thomas Powers, I must disagree.

To be right you would have to qualify as imperfect works like the following :

1. the gril from the 14th century of the Palazzo Publico in Siena,
2. the gril of the forecourt of the Chateau de Versailles (circa 1680),
3. the hinges on the doors of Notre-Dame in Paris, those that were deemed to have been forged by the hand of satan or with the help of the same, I remember not quite the legend, in the 12th century was it?
4. Those hinges that were reproduced or restored by Boulanger under the supervision of Viollet-LeDuc in the middle of the 19th century,
5. the Washington Cathedral gate for the Children's Chapel by Yellin, 1934,
6. the wrought iron door for the pavilion of the magazine "L'Illustration" at the 1925 Exposition by Edgar Brandt,
7. some if not most of the locks from the Yellin collection, a collection he put together to show to his designers and blacksmiths how things ought to be done, what quality and, yes, perfection, was, (here are two of them, (photographs by yours truly))
8. 
9. Some of Alfred Habermann's work, closer to us,
10. Most of Claudio Bottero's work presently.

Of course the perfection you would have to refer to to qualify as imperfect the works in this extremely short and random list must be other-wordly. As such it is unattainable ever in this world. 

I am sure we would agree however that the works in this list define the level of quality that is good enough, that this is the level of quality one would aim for. If perfection is not of this world, how can we use it to evaluate earthly wrought iron work? Why bother with it, we do not even know what perfect other worldly iron work looks like. Let's aim for this "good enough" that we can see and try to reach. 

1.  

[JHCC]

The Yellin locks are imperfect. Very precisely made, to be sure, but nonetheless bearing the unmistakable characteristics of having been made by hand.

Look at the chisel-cut decoration at the bottom edge of the lock in the second picture. Not only is the thickness of the piece inconsistent, but there are minute variations in the angle, depth, and spacing of the cuts. Notice that the vertical cuts in the very center do not line up with the center markings in the horizontal piece directly above.

Look at the decorated cover of the lock in the first picture, and compare the right-hand side with the left. Note that there are a number of asymmetries in the design, but that there are even more in execution. Again, note the central elements that don't line up and the decorative elements that are obviously intended to be (essentially) identical, but that don't match.

These are things that the eye notices, but the brain doesn't consciously recognize. If such a lock were absolutely mathematically perfect -- if it were precisely milled out by a CNC machine -- it would have a rigid regularity that would be, quite frankly, pretty boring. Instead, it is this accumulation of slight imperfections that makes the piece much more pleasing to the eye, the balance of fidelity to the design with just enough natural randomness to keep it from becoming sterile.

[yves]

25 minutes ago, JHCC said:

The Yellin locks are imperfect.

Of course. And I agree with the entirety of your comment for which I thank you.

My point was and still is that we could surely find assymetries, inconsistencies where there ought not to be, . However, I will argue that even with all these defects, in these cases, the work of the blacksmith has changed an ordinary metal in a precious one and that this is all the perfection that one can expect in this world. More time ? More money ? Maybe the "defects" you point to could have been avoided, maybe the services of a more expensive, more proficient (plus habile) blacksmith could have been retained.

There is the best that I can do and the best that can be done. To search for the second of the bests, one must look to the work of people who have done the best that they could do. There is no way out of it. And I do not believe it is a problem. If some see perfection in the output on the CNC machines some like you and I will call them imperfect for they are, as you aptly say, boring and sterile.

All in all, if ever I get to that even though limited level of proficiency I have seen in some of the locks of theYellin collection and to that of some of our contemporaries, I'll be very glad to say that "it's good enough" and call it a day. Or is it at that particular point that I will wait longer, a while longer to call it a day?

 

[JHCC]

Reminds me of a story about a fellow visiting a foundry and watching an old workman polishing church door. When asked, " How you know when it's finished?", he answered, "It's never finished. They just come and take it away."

[yves]

15 minutes ago, JHCC said:

Reminds me of a story about a fellow visiting a foundry and watching an old workman polishing church door. When asked, " How you know when it's finished?", he answered, "It's never finished. They just come and take it away."

JHCC, you should have said it at the top of this thread. All would have been said. Love it.

[Frosty]

1 hour ago, JHCC said:

Reminds me of a story about a fellow visiting a foundry and watching an old workman polishing church door. When asked, " How you know when it's finished?", he answered, "It's never finished. They just come and take it away."

Thanks John, that says it all. 

Yves: In a post above you mentioned not wanting to stop before it's "perfect", that it feels unfinished. I grew up in a Machine and metal spinning shop, Dad produced some incredibly precise work on manual machines. I took up blacksmithing to escape the nerve crushing need to be perfect. Still I can't escape the early training, I build everything to the limits of my measuring tools. To stop at good enough does indeed feel like I'm a quitter, it's just not finished.

Truth is there is no such thing as perfect, it's a matter of Degree, not Kind. We have machinery we can look at atoms with and machine metals to atomic precision. Can we make a perfect sphere? Nope, not possible if you look close enough an atomically perfect surface (of ANY shape) is lumpy, it's a bunch of little wobbly spheres stuck to each other but not quite touching and they're all bouncing around.

Perfection is a human myth it just doesn't exist short of divinity. AND which ever Divinity we look at closely enough we find flaws. Sure they're human flaws, misunderstandings, or . . . Still falls short of perfection.

In the race for perfect work there's only one finish line. When you're finished.

Of course that's just my opinion I could be worng. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

I notice a tendency of some people to equate perfection with absolute symmetry/flatness/etc.  Why? 

[JHCC]

11 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

I notice a tendency of some people to equate perfection with absolute symmetry/flatness/etc.  Why? 

Because perfection (in the most general sense) relates to the maximal closeness to some imagined ideal; to borrow from the OED, "In a state of complete excellence; free from any imperfection or defect of quality; that cannot be improved upon; flawless, faultless." For example, when we say "a perfect square", we mean equal sides and ninety degree corners. When we say "a perfect circle", we mean one with every point equidistant from the center, with no irregularity or distortion. In this sense, perfection is an objective and measurable quality: straightness of line, symmetry of pattern, and so on.

[ThomasPowers]

But that is not a universal concept---look at a perfect "Zen" circle for example.   Perhaps your platonic ideal is not the same as my platonic ideal.  I find that an array of hand forged scrolls have a lot more richness to the design than a similar array of cold bent scrolls though the cold bent ones are much more "exact". Quantum physics allows for a lot more "uncertainty" in things than uniformity. 

[JHCC]

Zen perfection is aesthetic, not geometric.

[Frosty]

The more I read, learn and think about things the more I come to believe we don't really understand very much. What we do is measure and describe what we observe and measure. As noted by the advancement of sciences we start with Eureka! and proceed through more and more accurate and complete descriptions of the universe. Newtonian physics did a darned good job of explaining the motion of the sun, planets, moons, etc. Certainly better than cycles and epicycles explanation though if you refine the measurements enough it does a decent job. Ellipses are so much tidier and predictable.

Then comes Einstein and suddenly things are even more predictable! But with special relativity comes a failure to describe a unified theory of everything. Personally I don't know why we need a special relativity or don't the two mesh either?

Still working on that description of how things work, no  matter how much quantum . . . stuff messed things up. Getting closer though. 

It's my theory of everything. We're good at observing, measuring and explaining why we think things do the things they do. I think maybe when we can't measure imperfections by whatever description a thing will be perfect. . . maybe.

Frosty The Lucky.

[gote]

14 hours ago, JHCC said:

Zen perfection is aesthetic, not geometric.

Blacksmith work is not geometry. Geometry is a branch of mathematics.

Zen also implies a "unreasoned" understanding and the ability to execute a stroke with the brush or katana wthout thinking. I think that a good blacksmiths can do this with a hammer.  

Perhaps we are getting into more of a semantic discussion about what various pople mean with the word perfect than abourt when good is good enough.