The Prototype Life
You might not see it, but I do. This prototype stool has half a dozen problems. A dowel joint has come loose. A last-minute stability-fix (after the glue-up) forced me to use pocket screws, and I don’t like screws. I blew out some dowel holes and had to fill them in. The curved laminated pieces, made from oak and cherry strips, just look like basic plywood so far. I’m still on the fence about that part, having been excited to try it at first. It’s a classic MCM technique. One of the laminated rails has cherry on top, the other has oak. That wasn’t great planning. This is the prototype life.
That’s where we’re at, as I write this about two months into a moonshot experiment. Our thinking was that it would be fun to imagine and spend time together building stuff that we hope is a) pretty nice and b) brings people together. We gave ourselves a year to see what we could come up with, how proficient and efficient we could become at doing it, and whether we seemed to have the pulse of what others might like. The jury is still out on absolutely everything, but there’s still time.
It won’t be long before this stool appears as a “sale” item in our store. Some prototypes become furniture in our house. Others are listed at a discount in the store. The two-toned oak and cherry wood will be complemented by two-tone tan and off-white webbing (I’m thinking), and I’m sure it will look nice in the photos. But psychologically speaking, the prototype life is rough. It takes a special kind of emotional stamina to feel like you’re doing battle with an idea you have, and the idea is always one step ahead of your execution. It’s kicking your ass the whole time. I’m talking about the endurance it takes to keep going with something you already know has flaws, not because you think you can correct or conceal them this time, but because each flaw is a lesson learned. The next one will be better. The one after that will nail it.
Prototyping is both exhilarating and grueling. It’s a life lesson. You start with the courage to step out and try something new, relatively confident in your capacities. Then you realize you’ve overestimated yourself. Wood happens to be an unforgiving, impatient teacher. You’re always guessing what it wants, what it plans to do. You want to form it to your will, but it wants to move and bend. So you have what amounts to a conversation with it. There’s no use telling it Okay look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. The only way is to work with it, listen to what it wants, and somehow comply. Metalworking is for control freaks. Woodworking is therapy.
The semi-grand life analogy I’m alluding to here is that prototyping is an existential leap. You say to yourself, I want to do this thing I’ve never done, I’m going to try it. I’m not even sure what “the thing” is yet. I’m just going to start and see what becomes of it. It slaps you in the face more than once, but you keep going, knowing you’ve already failed in most respects. But you keep going because failure is, in a big way, the goal. It’s why you tried in the first place—to learn from the conversation.
