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Unpopular opinion: I think night classes at the community center made my project worse
I signed up for this 6 week woodworking course at the Tacoma community center to help me finish a bookshelf I’d been dragging my feet on. Figured having a teacher and real deadlines would push me, but instead I spent half the sessions fixing mistakes from the instructor’s bad advice. On week 3 he told me to use a hand plane on some oak, and I gouged it so bad I had to start that shelf over from scratch. By the time I got home and worked through it on my own, I was way behind schedule. Ended up staying up until 2 AM the night before the final project deadline to redo half the joints. I’m honestly wondering if I would’ve been better off just watching YouTube tutorials alone. Has anyone else had a class set them back more than it helped?
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alicehernandez1mo ago
I know an older guy named Walt who took that exact same night class at Tacoma Community Center last spring, and he told me the instructor spent more time talking about his own furniture line than actually teaching. He ended up with a warping issue on his walnut table because the instructor told him to rush the drying process. Sometimes these classes are run by people who know their craft but don't know how to teach it to beginners, which is a whole different skill set. Sounds like you got a bad mix of bad advice and a class that moved too fast for proper guidance.
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