Factories use finishes which are formulated for them, tailored to their specific conditions and needs. They have huge drying ovens, flash off rooms or stations, curing rooms. The key to conveyor-belt factory production is that a factory typically uses one person per manufacturing step. 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, that is to say, each operation or each step 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 equals 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.
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