Factory Finishing vs Small Shop Finishing

[The Grand Wazzoo]

Factories have finishes that are formulated for them, tailored to
their specific conditions and needs. They have huge drying ovens,
flash off rooms or stations, curing rooms. Most of all what they have
is one person per operation for the conveyor belt factories. And for
the shop oriented factories they have very definite routines and
procedures that are set to run like clock work, the people functioning
as much like a machine as possible. Every bit of activity is
multiplied out over the course of dozens and dozens of pieces, and
that adds up to time that can be whittled down to its most essential
and efficient uses.

Cabinet shops function best when the people there have that same
factory-cog -like mind set, that they are there instead of machines
and that routines are their function. Repetitive activities are the
way they work, piece to piece.

Only the glaze coat people or the flyspecking people or the cowtailing
people or the pad staining people (hand padding) get somewhat of a
feeling of being artists. The rest of them are the living machines.

Afterall, these are factories and production shops. The workers are
cogs. The materials and equipment are fine tuned and sometimes built
just for those factories, just like a person will make his own cowtail
brush and mix his own flyspecking lacquer.

We finishers do not need to do the same things that they do. It helps
to learn what they do. In mimicking the looks that they get we can
eliminate some steps, add some steps, pay more attention to detailing
and finessing (smoother finish = better quality), etc.

It's the difference between reading a book by ourselves and lining up
100,000 people to each read just their one word right after the
previous person and right before the next person. Both books get read
but the effect on the person doing the reading is nothing alike.