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Patriarch

wrote in news:1153516188.868969.50920
@s13g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

I used to think that people who advocate trial and error "test cut"
methods just have an aversion to using precise measurement instruments
(dial indicators, calipers, etc.). However, lately I've seen more and
more of them use these instruments to assist them in the process. So,
I just have to assume that people who advocate trial and error just
plain like the method. After all, they could use the instruments to
adjust the machine directly instead of using them to measure test cuts.
snippage

When I was in college decades ago, it was said that the whole world could
be divided between accountants and economists. I have always been on the
side of the economist...

On another axis, people, woodworkers, too, can divide along the lines of
engineers and artists. (This has all of the validity of most of these
generalisms, but work with me here.) An engineer, as you seem to be, values
the measure and the exactness. If you want to make something replicable,
and to a measured drawering, there is great validity to that tack. But it
has little appeal to me as an artist. The second of anything simply is an
exercise to see if I can remove some of the errors of the first, but the
thrill is gone of having made the first.

Makes for a lousy business, but a great hobby, at least for a while.

Nice that the world is more than large enough for all kinds, is it not?

Patriarch,
thankful for engineers making neat, exact, repeatable tools...