The poison is in the dose. Look up the web site for Di-Hydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) sometime.
Mike Mahar told me about an interesting anthropological study he'd read. They looked at things that lots of people do all over the world, to see what they did the same, and what differently.
If you're making a basket, say, there are some things you have to do, like soaking your materials in water to make them pliable. Everybody does those things when they want to make a basket.
There are different styles in baskets in different places, simply owing to differences in taste, and those can lead to different ways of doing things. So some differences in process arise simply because they don't matter.
Another, and more interesting, class of differences come from the fact that sometimes there is _no_ good way to do something. You might smear you basket with pitch to make it waterproof, and put up with the sticky stuff getting all over the place, or you might try to weave it really tightly, and hope that it won't leak too much on the three mile hike home from the creek, or whatever, but the fact is that until you can get your hands on a plastic bag there's really no good way to make a waterproof basket, no matter how much you might need one.
When it comes to finishes, we have yet to find the plastic bag. They all have problems, and all you can do is to asses the advantages and drawbacks of each one and find the balance that works for you and your customers.
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