Have you ever spent hours doing something the hard way, only to finally realize there was a much quicker and simpler way to do it? My latest example is that I need to make a cardboard five pointed star; I spent I don’t know how long looking up how you construct a regular pentagon, until I finally remembered I could download and print an example.
Well…I overthink everything, friend. Like you I tend to go off on wild rides trying to do or make something. I have learned, over the years, to stop at a particular point and ask an uninterested other and see if I am really all the way down the rabbit hole and need to rethink. It helps, sometimes.
Sharpening card scrapers for woodworking. Everything you see seems to tell you to clamp the scraper in your vise, then use a file on it. But it’s impossible to keep the file at a 90 degree angle to the scraper to either polish or flatten. I tried unsuccessfully to think of a way to make a jig, then had a brilliant flash of simplification: don’t clamp the scraper, clamp the file. :smack:
Just today I attempted to bypass the shift lockout feature on the steering (fuck autocorrect KOLUM) on the Jeep XJ by drilling a small hole and inserting a roll-pin.
All greasy and no way would a drill bit find purchase.
Fuck it. Just secure it with a tiny rare earth magnet.