Robert and the Elder Cat

A dedication, of sorts

In Highlander, there can be only one. It’s a good line for a movie. It’s terrible advice for a craftsman.

I learned this properly on my first tour of North Forge Maker’s Space, led by a member named Robert. He’d already had his own head 3D-scanned as a demo for the photogrammetry and 3D-printing equipment — a small, good-humoured sacrifice to the cause of teaching. As we walked the shop floor, he told me the one rule that has quietly reorganized how I think about making things ever since: never build only one.

“Never make just one,” he said. “And I’ll help you sell the other ten.”

Not because more is always better. Because a single object is a curiosity. A second one is a decision. And a decision repeated is a practice — the beginning of something you can actually offer to other people, instead of a thing that only ever exists once, admired and then shelved.

It’s the inversion of the Highlander mythos, in the most practical way imaginable. There can’t be only one. There shouldn’t be. If it was worth making, it’s worth making again — a little better, a little faster, a little more yours each time.

I’ve paired Robert’s rule with a second one I’ve been living by more informally, one I’ve taken to calling the Way of the Elder Cat: no more complicated than absolutely necessary.

I came to this one watching an actual kitten and an older cat in the same room. The kitten was leaping constantly — launching at a toy, missing, tumbling sideways, looking utterly adorable in the process, but getting nowhere in particular. The old cat just sat there, watching, eyes tracking, occasionally turning his head. Then, without ever standing up, he’d snap one paw out an inch and pin the toy dead still. Same success rate as the kitten, near enough — for a small fraction of the effort.

Where Robert’s rule pushes me to repeat, the cat’s rule keeps each repetition honest — stripped down to what the piece actually needs, nothing bolted on because it seemed clever at 1 a.m.

Left to my own devices, I tend to run more like a kitten — pouncing from one bright idea to the next, delighted and mostly unproductive. Robert’s rule and the cat’s rule together are what turn that scatter into a workshop. One says: don’t stop at one. The other says: don’t make it harder than it needs to be. Between them, an idea actually gets somewhere.

That’s also, I think, why a place like North Forge works the way it does. Robert’s line wasn’t just about production — it was an offer, freely made, to a stranger on his first day. That’s the same goodwill that gets passed around the shop floor every day: someone shows you where the good clamps are, someone else fits you in for five minutes on a machine, someone hands over a tip that saves you an afternoon. It costs nothing to give and it comes back tenfold. I try to pay it forward where I can — sharing a design file, showing a fellow member something of mine that might suit their work, the small trades that keep a workshop feeling like a workshop and not just a room full of machines.

So — this one’s for Robert. Wherever you are in the shop today, you’re still right. And sometimes, you just have to feed the old kitty.