23 Mar, 2021, Oakland, CA
I love to cook and love cooking gadgets so I was excited when I recently received an Ooini pizza oven as a gift. I begin today’s dispatch with this topic because learning to use this new oven reminded me of some cooking fundamentals that parallel woodworking quite aptly.
The popularity of this pizza oven is due to the fact that it is compact, affordable, and enables the home cook access to temperatures north of 950 degrees F. If you look at the dial on your oven, the top end is probably around 550. 550 is fine for reheating a frozen pie, but a 950 degree oven can yield a restaurant-quality pizza with a “thin layer of crispness to the crust, followed by an interior that is moist, poofy, and cloud-like” [1].
It can also yield a burnt-up slab of compost. Just like driving a car at high speed, when things go wrong at 950, it all happens wildly fast and is usually extra messy.
As I experimented with this new cooking tool, I was reminded of a dining experience I had at San Francisco’s A-16 restaurant. Open since 2004, this restaurant helped set the standard for deliciously overpriced pizza. It is a vibrant eatery with an open kitchen that highlights the frenetic energy of the chefs, wait staff, and of my City by the Bay generally. We had no reservation that evening (of course) so were offered a couple of seats at the bar in front of the ripping hot pizza oven where we sat enchanted (if a little too warm) as the pizzaiolo (yes ,it is a word) effortlessly turned out one perfect pizza after another. In stark contrast to the room around him, this was the calmest, slowest moving chef I have ever seen. In fact as we chatted with him, we were tickled to learn that his nickname was “Tortuga” – Spanish for “Turtle”.
So dear reader, as always, we slowly approach the point. Whether we reference Aseop’s fable of “The Tortoise and the Hare” or the Navy SEAL mantra that is the title of this essay, we must admit that while working deliberately and mindfully may look, feel, and even be slow, it is usually the quickest way to achieve your goal.
Outside of burning some pizzas because I was distracted tidying up or running inside to grab one more ingredient, the latest reminder of this concept was offered to me during the making of a single, solitary drawer. A drawer that will live above my trash bin and hold bags – a roll of fresh trash bags and a heap of reusable grocery bags to put a finer point on it.
So, what happened? How much did it cost? Why does it matter? Was it fixable? How did I manage to live with myself?
We’ll move quickly here (ahem):
- What happened: Having cut all the parts to my new drawer pretty darn well over the course of Friday and Saturday morning, I decided that adding a little flare in the form of some pale green milk paint would be a nice touch. It was brilliant – I would use some (rare) time spent out of the house to let the paint dry, then do some final surface prep and have it in clamps by bedtime. What I did in my haste was paint the wrong side of the bottom panel. This meant that when fitted into the sides, the rabbet in the edges of the panel would face up and gaps would be manifest to the user instead of being hidden below. Sadly, I did not realize what I had done until both the glue and the sun were setting.
- How much did it cost: About three days all told. What should have been schellaced and waxed by lunchtime Sunday spilled over into Monday to fit and glue new parts, then Tuesday for finishing, and Wednesday for the install. The delay was due in part to extra work required to conceal my initial error, but also further mistakes that came with it. I scuffed the milk paint and needed to wait an extra day for another coat to dry.
- Why does it matter? Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter to anyone other than me. This was not a commission, my family has lived just fine without said drawer for years, and – in truth – this was a practice piece made out of #2 pine, so there was not a large capital investment at stake. That said, it mattered to me because I wanted to prove to myself that I could cut dovetails (which I did well), get to know a new router (love it), and was ready to make a similar, but much higher quality, piece out of Cherry (ready enough…I guess).
- How did I fix it? My solution was simply to add some trim. While measuring, cutting and fitting these delicate little pieces I tried hard to slow down and focus on getting things right. Cutting the pieces a hair long and then using the shooting board and a jack plane helped get the fit nice and tight. The results were much better and the trim added a nice bit of depth & dimension to an otherwise pretty boring box.
- How do I live with myself? Well, we all make mistakes. It’s not how many times you fall down that matters, it’s how many times you get up. The difference between a master and an amateur is how they respond when they make errors. You have probably heard them all, and that is because they are true. A large part of slowing down to speed up is tempering your anger, frustration, and disappointment with yourself and acknowledging that – yes that did just happen – I’m not an idiot – let’s get to work fixing it.
Often fixing it means doing a bunch more work. I have learned that trying to cut corners usually makes things worse. Have you ever known you should sharpen, but tried to squeeze out just one more part, only to have it be a hot mess? Have you ever tried to fix it with glue when you should have made a new part? Ever use your knees or armpit as a vise? I’ve done them all and have dozens more examples.
I encourage you to think about your craft, your product, your process, and spend some time considering how you approach it. Do you focus on doing each step as well as possible or do you rush through the mundane, anticipating the truly “exciting” part?
We all feel pressure to make progress, we all have distractions and daydreams. A hard part of woodworking, or any pursuit really (ever try golf?), is being able to acknowledge these feelings and put them aside. Doing so will slow you down, but in that space you can distinguish the task at hand from the noise and provide that task the focus it requires. In the end, this means getting more things right the first time – and that is the quickest path to success.
49 slack days left – it has been a productive month.
[1] I love this website for recipes and cooking technique: https://www.seriouseats.com/
[2] At the time of this writing, JFWoodCraft has no affiliation with Ooni, SeriousEats, A-16, Aesop, the Navy Seals, or Siniopia.
For me, that slowing down and being present in what I’m currently working on has been a game changer. I have found that instead of focusing two or three steps ahead, if I focus on just making the cut I’m currently sawing, of the board I’m currently handplaning, I get better results and make less mistakes.