I think the problem with throwing the word ‘talent’ around is that it implies as you are doing that the act of high end luthiery (woodworking) requires some special aptitude. I really don’t think woodworking is that at all.
The reason I’m more competent than say some people on this forum when it comes to working with my hands. Is simply, the tens of thousands of hours I’ve spent over the past 20 years using hand tools every day.
I’m not a talented carpenter but I am competent.
Using the word talent has this hidden subtext, that it’s only achievable by a very small subset of society who were lucky to be born that way; and for almost all jobs, hobbies that’s not the case. Hard work will get you much further in life than raw ‘talent’.
There are 9 billion people in the world; so only a tiny fraction of those are the Einstein’s. Most of us are by the nature of things, average. But that’s good news. It means that with hard work a lot of us can achieve our reasonable goals if we want to.
Like learning to play bass for example.
