Nephi’s experience making tools to build a ship helped him learn to work with raw metals. Not long after arriving in the promised land he used this skill to make the Large Plates of Nephi. This verse makes it clear that Nephi did not begin to record his history until after arriving in the promised land. The first thing he did was make the Large Plates of Nephi. These contained more of the secular history of the people, including, the record of my father, and the genealogy of his fathers, and the more part of all our proceedings in the wilderness...and the wars and contentions and destructions of my people (v. 2,4).
He did not begin to make the Small Plates until about 20 years later, see 2 Ne 5:28-30. Therefore, 1st and 2nd Nephi which came from the Small Plates were written not as a daily journal but as a retrospective history (written 30 years after Lehi left Jerusalem), including only those details which are pertinent to the story and the doctrine. Nephi explains that at the time he made the Large Plates, he did not know that the Lord would command him to write another record, the Small Plates, I knew not at the time when I made them that I should be commanded of the Lord to make these plates (v. 2).