A careful maker learns which small irregularities belong to character and which threaten the result.

Skill includes knowing which marks give a thing its character and which will actually fail. Beginners treat every deviation as an error and sand away what made the work feel handmade. The judgement is not looseness but a trained sense of what carries the load and what merely varies.

Pick something you are making or repairing and sort its imperfections in your head. Ask which ones affect whether it works and which only affect whether it looks uniform. Put your effort into the first kind and leave the second where it is.