Some people like to call mistakes "learning experiences", but that's only true if something has been learned. October was a month of problems and figuring out how to figure out the solutions. The slideshow shows the results of some of those adventures, but there's no way to show you how much time was involved.
It takes a lot of patience to sand out every visible tool mark, tear out, & scratch, and then comes finishing. Just because they put the word "finish" on the bottle doesn't mean you're actually finished. Once the finish is dry (up to 12 hours after application depending on product), the ridges and uneven spots need to be scuffed out, which can take as long as sanding. When that's done, it's time for polishing! The small cherry bowl in the slideshow was the learning piece. The second bowl went a lot faster.
...And then there was the curly maple mushroom. Ug. Yeah. I've picked up a few wood turning books and when it comes to basic and advanced techniques they're very helpful. But when it comes to detailed project instructions, they can be the worse than useless. That mushroom took me two weeks because it took that long to go through the book's processes, fail at nearly every step, and then figure out how to actually do it properly.
It took the better part of a week alone to redraw the book's plans with accurate measurements and work out a decent process sheet. The process sheet took the most time because there's no way to know if the process works until attempted, failed, adjusted, redrawn, and reattempted. Once that was all done, turning the mushroom itself took less than a day. It was all very frustrating so I didn't bother with fine finishing. Just gave it a quick protective coat on the outside and ignored the inside. There will be more of these. I didn't walk through that particular Hell to not get to Heaven.
I also have other projects I've been working on. Some have been included in the slideshow and some have not. Ran into many similar problems with these projects and they've taken as much time to design, process, attempt, fail, correct, and repeat as needed.
And that pretty much sums up the month of October! Lots done, lots failed, lessons learned (potentially), little to show.