Maintenance
Why tiny scene build records go wrong after the fact
The failure modes of a build record: hours reconstructed from memory, costs that omit what you owned, tidy lessons invented at the end, and files nobody can open.
What to take away
- Hours reconstructed after the fact are the single most common false number in a build write-up.
- A budget that omits what you already owned makes the build look cheaper than anyone can repeat.
- Lessons invented at the end are tidier than the ones you noticed at the time, and less useful.
- A record you cannot open in ten years is not a record. Format outlives content.
Hours you did not actually count
Ask someone how long a build took and you get the number of evenings they remember enjoying. The half hour spent searching for a part, the session spent redoing a wall, and the twenty minutes waiting for glue all vanish.
Remembered vs Counted Hours
Remembered
- Evenings
- counted
- Part search
- vanishes
- Redoing wall
- vanishes
- Glue wait
- vanishes
- Method
- recollection
Counted
- Evenings
- counted
- Part search
- noted
- Redoing wall
- noted
- Glue wait
- noted
- Method
- start/stop times
The fix is counting during, and the discipline is low: note the start and stop time each session and total it once at the end. If that feels excessive, count sessions instead of minutes. Even a session count beats a recollection.
Budgets that hide the shop
The second failure is a cost figure that only counts what was bought for this project. If you already owned the knife, the paints, the light and the sheet stock, a build can be reported at almost nothing while being unrepeatable by someone starting out.
Three Cost Numbers
- 1spent on this build
- 2already owned and used
- 3given or found
Report three numbers rather than one: spent on this build, already owned and used, and given or found. That takes one extra line and makes the figure honest.
Lessons that were written last
The third failure is the neat lesson at the end. Real lessons are noticed in the middle, usually in irritation, and they are specific:
- This filler sands badly and should have been the other one.
- This glue needed longer than the label said in a cold room.
- This part should have been made in two pieces and joined.
- This paint mix was right and the recipe was not written down.
Lessons composed afterwards tend toward the generic, and generic lessons help nobody.
Records that outlive their format
Institutions worry about this more than hobbyists do, and they are right to. Columbia University Libraries' brittle books preservation policy sets out the problem for paper. From the early 1800s paper was increasingly made by processes leaving an acidic content.
That acid gradually breaks down the cellulose fibers. With enough time, especially in high humidity, high temperature and polluted air, the paper becomes so brittle that it breaks when folded. Once that happens it cannot withstand the manipulation needed for rebinding or repair.
Its comparison of reformatting options is the useful part. Microfilm master negatives stored under archival conditions assure a lifespan of several hundred years for the content, preservation photocopies on acid-free paper can last at least a century, and digital files are described as quite unstable by comparison.
That ordering surprises people, and it is the argument for printing the one-page summary of a build you care about rather than trusting a folder of files and a format.
Conditions change, so record them
The last failure is treating the environment as constant. The Getty Conservation Institute's managing collection environments initiative, running since 2013, begins from exactly that challenge.
Collection environments have typically called for narrow ranges of temperature and relative humidity, and this practice has raised concerns about environmental and financial sustainability, driven by energy costs, reduced budgets and mandates to cut carbon footprints. Its work has increased knowledge about the relationship between climatic fluctuations and the response of objects made from hygroscopic materials.
Wood, card and paper are all hygroscopic. Noting the season and roughly what the room was doing costs one line and explains a surprising number of later mysteries. The method this all feeds is in running a case study on your own build, and the wider list of build errors is in mistakes beginners make.
