Reply by William

I want to make sure I read this right.
You’re worried about one sixteenth out of square?

I once done an exercise.
Ok, it waas suggested to me as a challenge to myself.
Each day for a week (seven days), I tried my best to make a perfect box. We’re talking six sides (four side and a top and bottom actually). The trick was that it had to be perfect in every way. The measurements had to be EXACT.
Yes, these were supposed to be useable boxes with hinged lids. They were just square for the pupose of the exercise.

Seven days I tried. Seven days I failed.

Then the same friend told me to do a new exercise. Pick the worst out of the boxes and show it to as many people as I could find over the next seven days and see if they could tell if anything was wrong with it.

So I did. Guess how many people found the flaw in my 12×12x12 box that, only I and my friend knew, was about an eight of an inch out one way and about 3/16ths out of square the other?

None. Zero. Nada. NOBODY could, even with some going over it with a fine tooth comb trying to find what was wrong with it, could find a single thing wrong with them.
Well, actually, that’s not correct. Some people said things were wrong such as finish, hinge choice, and such. The point is that noone could tell it was out of square.

As my friend (a woodworker of over fifty years) told me later, the point of the two exercises was to prove the futility of trying to make a square box perfect in every way and just how much it really meant to the general public.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/