Project Overview
Reflecting on my Experiences as a Learner
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I learn best over the last few years, so I actually have a bit to say on the matter. I am, first and foremost, a tactile learner. I naturally pick up physical skills very quickly. A couple of examples would be learning a new sport, or figuring out just the right tension and angle for holding yarn while making a tapestry. As a very slow reader, I get a piano piece by reading the notes while playing only a few times before my hands can start to take over on there own, and I can rely on that physical memory instead of reading in order to play the piece at its appropriate speed instead of at a snail’s pace. If I’m trying to find my way back to my car or somewhere I’ve been before, but wouldn’t be able find by trying to mentally remember where they are, I just let my body go and I’ll end up where I want to be. I never lose anything, because I always have the physical memory of where I put it down. I have a much stronger physical memory than anything else, and if I’m able to work that in somehow when I’m trying to study or memorize more abstract concepts, it helps my retention of the information enormously. Just the act of physically writing things down that I’m trying to remember on flashcards or notes can make a big difference in how well my brain retains the information. In the case of math, from a very early age I’ve always translated any new concept into a physical representation in my head (i.e. figured out what the measurement or calculation gave me in real life, what it would be used for and on, etc.), and then wove that understanding into my own personal logic. As a result, I always did very well in math, despite it not being something I automatically understood. There are other, more effective applications where I can use physical memory to help me learn things I have particular difficulty with, which I will get into in a moment.
What I’m able to remember best after tactile information is actually story. If I’m told a story (like in a history class), I’ll be able to retell the narrative elements of the event years later, but wouldn’t be able to tell you any specific names and dates even ten minutes afterward. There have been a good number of times where I was able to repeat to the person more or less verbatim something they had said in a conversation months prior, simply because the topics had segued into each other in a more narrative way. I’ll give an example in a moment, but generally speaking, if I’m able to make something I’m trying to learn have story elements, I automatically pick it up faster.
My third strongest learning style is visual. If I can’t get my hands on something to learn about it or how to use it, I pick it up best by watching someone else do it, or by looking at pictures. The memory of images or appearance will stay with me for a very long time, and I always resort to describing things instead of ever actually being able to remember what they’re called. This happens particularly often with brands of anything you could get at a store. I operate exclusively by sight in those cases, and if I ever have to tell someone what something is, I’ll never manage it. I could tell you the shape, dimensions, weight, colors, design or patterns, but never a name. All of these different ways that my brain picks up information best, I’ve been able to use to compensate in the (many) areas where I have a lot of difficulty absorbing information.
Here are a couple specific examples. I’ve never been able to remember names of people or places for anything, and it was especially bad when I was younger. However, I was able to memorize the capitals of each state in the US in a night, because I turned the words into actions and stories. Springfield, Illinois, for example, became “A person springs through a field of flowers, which kicks up pollen, making their allergies act up, so now they feel ill, which is annoying.” Breaking down the names into pieces and turning them into very physically active stories made it infinitely easier to remember with minimal comparable effort, so I used it a lot. Memorizing new vocab words worked the same way. I would break down the word into bits that sounded similar, then employ them in some sort of narrative, which would imply or relate in some way to the meaning of the new word, and then I would draw it out. That way, when I needed to recall the word for a test, I would have the physical memory of the drawing, which would trigger the visual, which would remind me of the story, and I was able to reconstruct the word in reverse while having it stay attached to its meaning.
This has all been a very long explanation, so I’ll try to summarize: I learn information best when I can relate it to, or absorb it, in a physical, visual, or story driven way. I have great difficulty remembering abstracts and words, such as names, lyrics, dates, and concepts like in math. All are things that don’t come naturally to me, and so I weave my strengths into them in order to better support and learn them, like a safety net.
Guides and Tutorials
The first type of guide that I looked at were instructional videos on YouTube. Usually, this would be the quickest way for me to absorb what supplies and techniques a project would need, as well as help me make some educated decisions in the beginning stages of planning. They usually are fast to get through, and I get the information I need and a good sense of scope for whatever I’m working on. Downsides are that they are rarely polished, and the people teaching in them tend to be prone to going on tangents that aren’t always helpful. Unfortunately in this case, my take-away was that I neither had the right equipment, nor did I like the particular methods/techniques used to create the recipe boxes in their videos. I never got far into any of them, and even the one I kept open in a tab never got used. I had better luck later when trying to find any tips and tricks for using latex paint, but I still ended up relying more on other formats.
I had much more luck with blog style guides on more official woodworking databases and DIY project pages. My two favorite resources were instructional blog posts, one from Woodworkers Guild of America, and the other a personal blog called “The Wood Grain Cottage.” Apart from having good techniques and suggestions, they worked best for me because of the many large, clear, well-lit pictures they provided throughout the entire process. Thanks to that, I was able to understand and conceptualize the different stages and techniques without getting overwhelmed by walls of text. They also had a clean, pleasant aesthetic to them, which kept my attention for longer. Fickle as it may sound, if the atmosphere of a tutorial appeals to me, I’m much more patient and willing to spend time absorbing it fully. I typically try to keep searches for these simple and minimalist, and I specifically look for sites that I recognize as credible, well-known sources, or pages that are structured in an easy to understand and straightforward way. Oddly enough, typeface and font size play into this as well. I like uncomplicated, easy to read fonts, and they can’t be too small. Due to my visual learning style, if a tutorial is cluttered or has only a few scattered small pictures where I can’t easily see details, like the page I found on the Woodcraft website, it doesn’t work very well for me, and I largely just end up scanning it at best. However, despite the images being way too small in that case, and it not being laid out in my ideal way, thanks to the pictures they had of a bloody finger I did manage to come away with a good safety tip: be careful with the sharp edges of your box before you glue and sand them.
On a related subject, one good resource that I wish I had read early enough into the project was a softback instructional booklet called “Small Space Workshops” by Larry Okrend. It didn’t have any specific tips for the kind of small project I was working on, but it did have safety information and recommendations that would have been invaluable to me before I made the cuts. Namely, even though I thought of it at the time, I didn’t pursue finding hearing protection for use of the circular saw. I had eye protection, but I wasn’t offered any for my ears, so I just decided to go ahead instead of running to the store again. Don’t try this at home kids, always use ear protection when cutting wood in order to prevent hearing loss! Learn from my mistakes. For all of their benefits, the blogs that I referenced were made for people with some level of experience in the field, so they didn’t have any safety gear reminders for novices that might not know better.
Problems Encountered Along The Way
The contemplative/planning phase of this project went through multiple stages due to different roadblocks. From the get-go there were complications with trying to find the right thickness and dimensions of wood that I either had immediate access to, or that would ship here in time to complete the project, as well as kept below a certain price threshold. Also, I originally thought I would be able to get the wood custom cut from places like Lowe’s or Home Depot, but I ended up learning that that service is not for smaller “project cuts,” only larger rough cuts. I had previously checked with Woodcraft, and they also didn’t provide that service. I had not contacted anyone connected with the woodworking studio on campus, so I didn’t feel comfortable going in and trying to figure out their equipment on my own, nor did I feel I had the time to wait to begin the construction part of the project until I could schedule to meet up with someone at that point, so I made the decision to borrow a circular saw from a family member, who was willing to show me how to use it. Ultimately, this ended up being a mistake on my part with regard to time management. There’s no need to get into specifics here, but the general sense of it is that I got set back a bit of wood and a sizable chunk of time (along with indirect time loss due to dehydration sickness…Don’t be like me, kids! If you’re out in the heat for extended periods, take breaks and drink water!). I don’t know how useful it would be, but hopefully this can kind of serve as a cautionary tale, if not for others then for myself, to always keep in mind the potential drawbacks and time costs of certain options that might not immediately come to mind. Overall though, I felt I was able to do a fairly good job putting this all together despite lots of extra limitations that cropped up, and I’m better prepared for the planning stage of any future woodworking projects I’ll inevitably want to get my hands into.
How Does the DIY Project Connect to Class?
I think there was a good deal of value in starting with the DIY assignment out of our four major projects we will be completing for this class. The first and most obvious one is time management. It gave us a good sense of scope, and took place over the sort of time frame that we will generally have for our other big projects, aside from the final one. It was a good transition, I think, since it gave us the opportunity to feel out how much time we actually had to complete the assignment within our busy schedules, and begin to understand how to structure ourselves better for it. It also had us think at length about how we learn best and fastest, which will improve our efficiency going forward if we continue to be mindful of it. Choosing areas where we have no prior experience helps to throw this into greater relief, allowing us to pick out what works best for us much more easily. There is also a focus on quality, as well as keeping track of your sources from the beginning, which will definitely come into play fundamentally for all our future projects, as well as in the future. The DIY project sets us up to be more productive, as well as build good school and work-related habits.
Credits
I got the idea for making a mitered-edge box with face mounted hinges, as well as the general technique of constructing a box in full before cutting the top from the bottom in order to insure a perfect fit from a blog-style guide on the Woodworkers Guild of America website, by a man named Seth Keller. Ironically, among the many tutorials that he has made for the site, there was a post dedicated to the importance of hearing protection during projects, which I later had trouble with. Too bad I didn’t browse through all his guides earlier! The guide for his recipe box can be found here: https://www.wwgoa.com/article/recipe-box/#
A personal DIY instruction blog by a woman named Shayna, with the assistance of her partner Anthony, gave me not only aesthetic choices (that unfortunately I didn’t have time for), but put things more into an economic realm. They use cheap but sturdy materials like underlayment, and used nail guns to connect their pieces. This may not seem like a big deal, but I tend to get over-focused on trying to find better materials, even at the expense of time and cost to use them, so it ended up putting me in a much better mind frame of not needing everything to be done with the absolute best materials and techniques. What works for me now is just as important. They gave lots of useful links to materials they used, and there are details like the book plates that I’d still like to add to my box in my free time. Shayna’s blog is called The Wood Grain Cottage, and it functions as a DIY and “maker” blog where she redesigns her house to be just as they like it, as well as writes posts for their farm, most recently including recipes for canning season. You can follow the link to the post for her open top, rustic recipe box here: https://www.thewoodgraincottage.com/2014/05/01/diy-recipe-box/
The Woodcraft guide to several types of recipe boxes that I mentioned above can be found here (https://www.woodcraft.com/blog_entries/the-recipe-box-and-how-to-make-it-part-1-the-initial-design-build). I didn’t ultimately find a design or technique that was particularly useful to my final project, but I did come away with some good safety and cleanliness tips (using painters tape to prevent the wood glue from getting where you don’t want it, and making clean-up easier). The post was a combined effort between Frank, the author and man who writes for Woodcraft’s Woodworking Adventures Blog, and Bill Sands.
A couple good, simple video tutorials I used for painting were a speed tutorial set to music that I really liked by a channel called The Wood Spa by Pat Rios, who makes staining and painting tutorials (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcyC3EBdGS0) and a video by Melanie Alexander on her channel Lost & Found Decor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACrHYa4ED0I). Melanie creates videos for her channel and her personal website (lostandfounddecor.com) mostly focusing around tips and tricks for painting and refurbishing old or repurposed pieces of furniture and wood. The Wood Spa video had some good suggestions about filling nicks in the wood with wood filler. I ended up going with Spackle instead, since it was already on hand and I was close to over budget, but I’ll buy some for any future projects I try. Both videos emphasized sanding between layers, which I used to good effect!
The instructional booklet that I mentioned in the Guides and Tutorials section that I wish I had read before getting started for safety information is called “Small Space Workshops” by Larry Okrend and in partnership with Black + Decker, published in 2017. If you’d like to find it, the ISBN is 978-1-59186-689-3. It is published by Cool Springs Press, an imprint of The Quarto Group. It has good tips for planning your own woodworking space in your home, as well as safety information and descriptions of the power tools and equipment you may want to outfit your shop with. Information on hearing protection can be found on page 52.
Sources I didn’t end up using as much include an online posting of the Canadian Woodworking & Home Improvement magazine from 2011 (https://www.canadianwoodworking.com/plans-projects/recipe-box) and a previously mentioned video tutorial that was also by the Woodworkers Guild of America (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmxvObdwHSo). The magazine I was actually intending to use finishing information from if I managed to get my hands on some nice wood that I wanted to maintain the natural beauty of. As I ended up having to go with plywood, I didn’t end up using it.
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