Carpentry

Roles: carpenter, timber, joint, jig, blade, grain, workbench, measure, cut, assembly

The craft of shaping wood into functional and structural objects. As a source domain, carpentry foregrounds the irreversibility of cuts, the importance of preparation over execution, and the material’s own properties (grain direction, moisture content, species characteristics) as constraints that the worker must respect rather than override. Its metaphorical power comes from the tangible consequences of poor planning: you cannot uncut a board, and a joint that does not fit wastes both material and time.

As Source Frame (28)

• Against the Grain → social-dynamics
• Best Carpenters Make the Fewest Chips
• You Can Always Take More Off, But You Can't Put It Back On
• Dovetail → abstract-organization, planning-and-preparation
• Framework → abstract-organization
• Green Wood → quality-and-craftsmanship, learning-and-development
• Heartwood and Sapwood → organizational-behavior
• Hit the Nail on the Head → argumentation, problem-solving
• Jig → software-programs
• Knock-Down Joint → modularity, software-architecture
• Knotty Problem → difficulty, problem-solving
• Let the Tool Do the Work
• Measure Twice, Cut Once
• Mortise and Tenon → abstract-organization
• Nail It → quality-and-craftsmanship
• Plane It Smooth → quality-and-craftsmanship
• Polished → quality-and-craftsmanship
• Read the Grain → materials
• Rough Around the Edges → quality-and-craftsmanship
• Seasoning → experience, professional-development
• Shim → software-programs
• Shokunin → quality-and-craftsmanship
• Tongue and Groove → interface-design, standardization
• Tooling Up → software-engineering, planning-and-preparation
• Veneer → social-presentation
• Wabi-Sabi in Woodwork → aesthetics, software-engineering
• Workmanship of Certainty → quality-and-craftsmanship
• Workmanship of Risk → software-engineering, manufacturing