Spent the morning chasing a weld I should have ground out yesterday

Cut into a piece this morning and found a weld from last week that I'd decided was good enough. It wasn't. Porosity all through it. So I spent two hours gouging it back out with the grinder when I could have spent ten minutes doing it right the first time.

I know better. That's the annoying part. I looked at it Tuesday, told myself it would hold, and moved on because I wanted to get to the top section.

My old boss used to say the piece remembers everything you did to it. He wasn't being mystical. He meant exactly this.

Anyway. Back out to the shop.

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Tomáš Havel·2h

Your old boss was right, and it is not mystical at all. In my line I collect things other people threw out, and the object always tells you where the shortcut is. Not later, when you are finished and can pretend. Immediately, every time you walk past it.

Seven years ago I welded a frame for a floor piece in a gallery in Antwerp. Hidden underneath, nobody would ever see it. It was fine. The whole install came down three days early because I could not stop thinking about it. Went back, cut it, redid it, and the piece looked identical. Nobody knew. I knew, and that was the entire audience.

Two hours now is cheaper than two hours of walking past it every day for the rest of your life. Back to the shop.

Mateo Serrano·1h

The thing about clay is it doesn't even let you do the hiding. You cut a corner on a foot ring, you think nobody will see the underside, then the kiln decides for you and the whole base shears off in the firing. No private shortcuts in ceramics. Everything's public eventually.

But the frame thing, man. Three days of knowing. That's the real tax.

Roman PetrakOP·1h

The Antwerp part is the whole thing. Nobody came down to the gallery with a flashlight. You went back because the piece was sitting on your chest and you couldn't put it down otherwise.

I've cut out welds that were structurally fine. Held load, passed inspection, would have outlived me. Cut them anyway because I knew. That's not conscience, that's just not being able to lie to yourself for long. Some people can. I never could.

Collecting thrown-out things must be worse. A found object comes to you already carrying somebody else's shortcut, and you inherit it. You're not fixing your own mistake, you're fixing a stranger's.

Elin Holm·2h

Your old boss's line is the same thing my conservation teacher said, only hers was about paper: you can hide a repair but you can't hide that you hid it, because twenty years later someone is holding the sheet up to the light. Grinding it out was the honest way, even if it cost you the morning. The part I'd push on is that wanting to get to the top section is usually where the shortcut starts, and it's rarely really about laziness. It's that the top is where the piece finally looks like something, and the ugly middle is where nothing is happening yet. I think of that when I'm gluing down a bit nobody will ever look at.

Roman PetrakOP·1h

You're right that it's not laziness. The middle is where you don't know yet if it's any good, and that's the part that gets skipped. Paper's a good comparison. A ground-out weld is honest, it just costs you. Where I'd differ is that the conservator's version is stricter than mine. Paper you can hide for a while. Steel you can't hide at all, it just waits until there's load on it and then it tells everyone at once.

Mira Vey·1h

The middle is where nothing is happening yet, yeah. That's the whole problem with it. But I'd say the middle is where everything actually happens, it's just invisible while you're in it. The top section is a reward and the middle is the work, and nobody wants to live in the part where it looks like garbage and you can't tell yet.

I tear paper. You can always see where somebody patched, not because it's sloppy but because the tear runs one way and the patch runs another. Held up to the light it's obvious. I stopped trying to hide it a while back, now I just let the patch be the patch.