We were at the theater the other night to see the touring production of Pippin when I came across a sign with one of my least favorite words, CONCESSIONS. At your local entertainment venue, this means those overpriced food stuffs of which the dietician general (not a real position) would not approve.
And you don’t really need them.
The other common meaning isn’t much better. It’s the one that means you didn’t get your way. You had to concede, give in, compromise. I guess it’s not all bad. If you concede, at least some progress is possible. If you are unwilling to concede, it is likely that nothing will ever happen. Just ask those 535 elected clowns in DC.
I recently made a concession and lived to tell about it. A while back I wrote about proposing the curved front cabinet from Woodsmith as a project for the Monday night woodworkers, HOW (Hillsborough-Orange Woodworkers).
All was going well until I presented the project. There was some enthusiasm. Then one member thought they might like to do a more Krenov-like cabinet. And other suggestions came forth. These were all do-able.
Then I got an e-mail from the nominal leader mentioning that some had expressed an interest in making a dartboard cabinet from this project. A few weeks after the curved front cabinet episode, Don and the Woodsmith boys built a dartboard cabinet. I watched the episode in question and thought it was one of the least interesting projects I had seen in a while. Building a larger curved front cabinet would be more interesting, but…
I was grumpy for a few hours wondering why not all had seen the genius in the plan I proposed and resisting any changes to my brilliant plan. Individual needs and tastes be damned.
Then, my mind started wondering what it would take to expand the cabinet to 30″ square from 20″ by 30″. I made a life-sized drawing as my mentors have suggested.
Then I built it.
Another comparison showing the gluing forms for the coopered doors:
So, I made a concession and lived to tell about it. All is well with the world. Until the next time it comes up for discussion…