You never master your skill.
You master some processes, but you never master your craft.
Anybody that does this will tell you that there's always a step above where you're working.
It's an artistic expression.
It's something to do.
It's rewarding.
I'll appreciate the work.
It keeps me off the couch.
It keeps my brain working.
I like inletting locks.
I like to shape.
I like the shaping part.
It's tedious and it takes a long time, but it's a lot of fun.
When you're this far along on any project, you don't want to mess up.
Right now I'm at about 50 hours and a mistake would be just a terrible thing.
You don't want to ever make a fatally bad mistake on a piece of wood.
It's much like the finishing parts here.
When you get everything done, and the barrel, and the lock, and all the parts are out of
this piece of wood, it's this tiny little toothpick that you're carrying around.
It's almost like a knife or a glycerin.
You've got to be so careful with it or you might break it.
I'm married to one of these things and I'm watering it around for 60 hours to 160 hours.
After it's finished, I'm ready to give it up.
I don't want to look at it anymore.
I don't know how many artists are like that, painters or what have you, but you spend so
much time looking at something that it's nice to see again, but I don't want to spend any
more time with it.
You always have that secret little, man I sure hope it works right in the back of your
head, but you already know it's going to work fine, but it's nice, it's payoff, then you
have to clean the damn thing.
It's a good hobby.
It's something like said, it's country boy art, it's all I can tell you, it's art that
kills.
It's something that you can do that has value that doesn't just hang on the wall.
A person can take it out and shoot it or put a meal on the table with it, pass it on to
his family, and it's something that for as long as we're around, humans are around, there
will be one or two of these laying around somewhere, I've got 100 or so floating around
out there somewhere.
We all want to kind of live forever in some way, so that's part of that.
