I know no one likes to admit, but I am sure we have all done it – Made that one critical mistake the ruined or nearly ruined a great project! I want to hear your worst, your most embarrasing, the thing that you lose sleep at night over! Whether it was simply cutting to the wrong side of the line or dropping a load of bricks on your last piece of curly koa.
(I am actually seeking consolation here as I just made one of those unspeakables myself. &*#^$% If you really must know what it was, then I am going to need someone else to laugh at/learn from first!)
Replies
Well, I dunno if I's call it the biggest screw up of all time, but it bummed me out nonetheless. We recently bought our 5-year-old daughter a full size poster bed (coulda built it, but she might have had to wait til she was 6!). The store wanted over $100 for a two-step stool that helps kids get in and out more easily. This was a painter poplar thing put together with pocket hole screws. I told my wife I could duplicate it in an afternoon or less.
Well, I get down to the shop and find a nice tiger maple board, and decide I make something a bit nicer than the painted pocket screw thing. I kinda designed it on the fly, added some walnut accents to the maple, and was very pleased with how it came out. Then came time to finish it. I decided to try something new (famous last words) to really make the tiger maple pop. And by now my wife was groing impatient for the "afternoon" project to be done, so I didn't want to take the time to test anything. Bought some water based dye. Going on it looked great - nice honey and russet tones and losts of tranlucence etc., but when it dried, it looked like I'd caked my stool in dark mud!
Well, I sanded it off, but it's tough to get in every nook and cranny - and when you do, it tends to mess up the crispness of the joinery at the junctions etc. So that was really the loss - my daughter's stool looks a little more rough than it could have. Garnet shellac to the rescue for the finish by the way.
Here's a couple pics I took to e-mail a friend:
Edited 3/24/2006 9:34 pm ET by Samson
Looking at the picture is enough to impress me. If I could make that "step-stool" with nice finishing likes yours, I will not use it. Too nice to step on it. I like your dovetailing style - with slanting end.
But I wonder if you can put the stool very close to the bed side without leaving a gap.
Sincerely..
The bottom of the side boards are around 9" off the floor, so the 8 degree slant of the back leg largely goes slightly under the bed. Also the top step extends an inch or so off the top of the back leg, further taking away the effect of the angle. Finally, to the extent there may be another inch of gap, the bed clothes and comforter, more than fill it. In short, it works!
Thanks for the kind words.
That's an 'afternoon' project? What, couple hours? Geeze, I might as well give up, that'd take me all weekend. Very nice....
My (ex) wife gave me a benchtop bandsaw (before I had a ww shop) and then wanted to know why I couldn't build anything with it....she just could'nt understand why I needed more equipment, like a jointer, a planer, tablesaw, etc. etc.. In a way, that's been my worst screw up to date.
Jeff
Edited 3/25/2006 12:12 am ET by jeff100
The wife or the band saw?!
The benchtop bandsaw is a nice little machine...
Jeff
Yeah, that's why I put "afternoon" in quotes ;-)
I meant it tongue in cheek - as in I told my wife I could knock it out fast, and it was going on several days (an hour here and hour there in the evenings mostly), so I felt the need to rush the finish - and that's where my screw-up troubles began . . .
It actually has some nice strong joinery that can't be seen in the pictures, but took some time to chop. For example, the steps each have a support directly underneath them about 3" wide that each are dovetailed into the end strechers.
I'm definitely intermediate and none to fast. Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.
Whew. You had me going, I was getting depressed....;-)
Jeff
Jeff, I use that line on the wife all the time. Hey babe, if I could just buy that piece of equipment, I could make anything. Hope it works better for you. Hee Hee.
Oh yeah, that works great when you already have most of your equipment. You can really pull it off. I may have used that line myself. In fact, I think I used it so many times, it wore out ha ha. Anyway, I don't have these 'relationship' problems anymore, and at my age, kids are grown, getting close to half century mark, etc., I don't foresee it becomming a problem any time soon either....as it is for me now, every day is Christmas baby!!!
Jeff
PS - I'm not advocating anyone give up their wife for woodworking, that's not the REAL story here...just joking around.
Samson,
Nice stool, nice craftsmanship, but I have to give you the bad news. There was probably nothing wrong with the dye. When you apply waterbased dye, the color looks great when you apply it and as it dries, it turns an ugly muted, hide the grain, muddy mess. However, when you apply your sealer the color and definition all comes back and it looks great. You may want to try it on a test piece of something, but I'm pretty sure there was nothing wrong. Eric"When it comes time to die, make sure all you have to do is die." -Jim Elliot
Boy, I feel pretty dumb. I will try again on a test. It looked horrible when that die dried. It really looked exactly like I went out in the yard and got some dirt, mixed up a pail of mud, and painted it on thick. You couldn't see any of the grain, and the color was terribly drab.
Given the places where I didn't bother getting every bit off - like on the leg where the walnut stretchers tie in in one to the pics and underneath, I can tell you that at the very least I screwed up by making the dye too dark.
The nice thing about water based dye is that you can adjust the color to lighten it also. If the dye is to dark when you put it on, take some distilled water and rub some on the dye to lighten it. I like to use the synthetic maroon pads for the dye application. They hold the dye and knock down the grain at the same time. If the dye is too dark I can dip the pad into water and rub the surface, pulling some of the dye up. You may want to check out Jeff Jewitts newest book for a much better explaination on dyes and their application.
Eric"When it comes time to die, make sure all you have to do is die." -Jim Elliot
looks real nice to me for an afternoon project. very impressed with the joinery.
Thanks, Samuel. As I explained further up the thread, it actually took me much longer than an afternoon; hence my rush to finish and the screw-up with the die. I tend to underestimate how long projects will take (am I the only one??), and told my wife: an afternoon (to make one like the one at the furniture stoor with screws and paint). Trouble wass, once I got into the shop I "got inspired" LOL
As for the joinery, thanks again. I kept picturung my daughter stepping on it (and as kid, kind of abusing it a little) and you know a Dad never wants to let his daughter down. I kind of overengineered it.
NICE Step Stool.. Bet it would hold up my old M88The store wanted over $100 for a two-step stool .. Looks like ya' spent at least $100.20
Thanks ... I think. I'm not sure what that last bit means exactly. If you mean, that in the end, despite material costs being close to nothing as most of the wood came from the scrap pile, if I paid myself a decent wage, my time alone was over $100, you're right. But I gotta say that this stool is ten times nicer and sturdier than the painted poplar pocket screw thing the store was offering. And don't we hobbiest types routinely rationalize in order to make excuses for shop time? ;-)
Thanks ... I think. I'm not sure what that last bit means exactly. If you mean, that in the end, despite material costs being close to nothing as most of the wood came from the scrap pile, if I paid myself a decent wage, my time alone was over $100, you're right. But I gotta say that this stool is ten times nicer and sturdier than the painted poplar pocket screw thing the store was offering. And don't we hobbiest types routinely rationalize in order to make excuses for shop time? ;-) YEP... Dont't ya' just love it when the screws don't fall out of partical board.. LOL..I was not knockin your project.. Hell, I liked it!
Samson,
according to Bob Flexner, you could have tried to bleach out the finish first, then resorted to sanding.
Gret story, though!
Marty
As people used to say to Sasha Foo (You know, "I'm sasha Foo."), DON"T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF! That's nice Joinery. Good material. Stout!
When she's ninety, and one of her great grandchildren sits on it, she'll say, "your great-great-grandfather built that. He could build anything!".
Buck
Thanks, that really made me smile wide to think about. It is definitely built to last. Thinking of posterity, I carved a little inscription and the date on one of the stretchers under the treads: "Made with love for Claire by her Dad - 2006"
All in all, I'm not displeased with the result, it's just that it came so close to being one of those on the fly projects where (despite the lack of a well-defined plan) all the little things go right, and then it took a hard left at the end and came out looking a little "antiqued" with some dark areas where I didn't get off all the dye and some loss of crispness - like where the bottom tread overlaps the front risers supporting the top tread. All in all, nothing too serious, just a little frustrating - and a "I shoulda known better than to apply a finish without a test" kinda stupid feeling. As usual, it was one of those things where that little voice in your head is screaming "slow down and think this through" and I just plowed ahead.
Thanks again.
So how long was that afternoon?1 - measure the board twice, 2 - cut it once, 3 - measure the space where it is supposed to go 4 - get a new board and go back to step 1
The "afternoon" was indeed many hours:
http://forums.taunton.com/fw-knots/messages?msg=34297.7
Probably when I had my last lesson at tech (the theory and practical part of trade training) and was rushing to finish a project, and put a corner block in upside down on a chair.
I was using fast-setting glue (high solids PVA that goes off in about 3 minutes) and realised 5 minutes later when the seat didn't sit flat -> took to the block with a hammer and reset the glue block in the correct position, minus some timber and cosmetically damaged.
If it didn't work, I would have been back at training the following year.
C'est la vie.
eddie
Well I have made many, many screw ups. But this one is one of the more painfull. The panels of this table are increadibly figured Bubinga. I believe I paid $25 a board foot, the rest is very nice Cherry.
What is the problem?
It is hard to see from the angle of this pic but the table top is 1 1/2" too short. the deep coves under the top's frame dosen't meet the legs so there is an odd gap or reveal. This was a well paid comission and I had to remake the top! How did I make such a bone head mistake? The Delta Unifence is an amazingly versitile fence for a cabinet saw. The fence can be mounted in two positions; tall for large pieces or edge rabbiting or low profile for most ripping functions. So it also has two indicators, one for each of the fence positions. Guess what the distance between the indicators is.
I now keep a piece of electrical tape over the indicator not in use.
Mike
VERY nice looking piece. Shop is super clean too.JerryP.S. I now use masking tape on my Unifence scale.
Thank you, It is one of my favorites. You have to see that Bubinga to apreciate it. As far as the cleanliness of my shop..... I don't know it you are kidding or not, but look carefully under the canvas... There is crap piled every whare.
Mike
Mudman,
Know exactly what you're talking about and it almost happened to one of my students during a competition last week. It was a High School Joinery competition in which students are given a plan and are required to construct a given project in a set time. We have the same fence you describe and use it " on the flat" the saw used during the competition was the same saw with the fence used " upright". I was pleased to see my students follow my lesson and distrust unknown calibration in favour of actual measurements. In your case how would you know?
Your work looks great and I'm sure your recovery though costly was appreciated by your client.
Regards,
Well, one of my first projects almost made me blow a gasket. I was building a jelly cupboard for the wife as an anniversary present. It was my own design based around early American and she wanted it painted and rustic looking. I made it out of poplar and the two front doors were solid poplar about 48" long and about 13" or 14" wide. I had a crucial design flaw. The doors were just strait stock no breadboard ends. I was dirt poor and only had enough money to buy the exact amount of lumber to do the job. I had spent a lot of time on it, and was at the final stage. Paint the doors and attach to the cupboard. I took them out side because it was warm. Painted them a shade of williamsburg blue. About that time the phone rang. I went in for maybe 20 minutes to talk, and when I came back out, I almost passed out. The doors were so badly cupped, you could see it from a mile away. The next part is funny looking back. The wife comes out, because I'm using about every four letter word I ever heard. She tells me to calm down and suggests that it would straighten out if I just brought it inside. I just laughed at her and explained that it just does not work like that. I was ready to throw them on the trash heap, and she insisted that I take them down stairs to the basement and place them on the floor and weight them down. Would you know it, it worked. Shocked the he## out of me. To this day twenty years latter, those doors are as flat as pancakes. As you married men know, the wife has never passed up the opportunity to mention it too.
Two years ago I was making a set of 8 chairs in a mission style for a customer. Each chair had 6 spindles, and the M & T joints were all at angles, and took a while to make.
To make a long story short, I like to cut up my offcuts and shorts, and throw them in the fire pit outside my shop. It is where I take my breaks. I just zip them in half on my bandsaw and chuck them in the fire.
You guessed it. I accidentally grabbed a handful of spindles instead of offcuts, bandsawed them in half, and....................OH CRAP! I had to make 9 of them over again. They did burn nice though!
Jeff
Hdgis,
Haven't you seen enough to come forward and tell us about your dumb mistake? If not, here's one more. This past year I completed a gun cabinet for my son. Photo below. Upon completion of the door I found it to be 3/8" too narrow. To this day I don't know how I did it but it required that I saw out the two rails and reassemble the door. Not much wood wasted, but it's frustrating.
Roy
Nice looking cabinet but it would look even better if that shop was not so clean.Have a good one
Brian
If any one is interested, I will be posting the pics of my finished piece here in a couple weeks.
I like to . But why take weeks ? I enjoy very much reading all posts and looking at project pic. too. Sometimes, I kept repeating.
I'd rather miss my afternoon nap than miss working with wood. Or at least I must smell sawdust.
I enjoy watching pic. of you all post.
Thanks
It's absolutely human to make those mistakes.
I build furniture two ways, the fun way is to design as you build until you have the end product. At the end of such an adventure I have almost convinced myself of total self incompetence.
The other way, is to draw out all the parts and assemble the thing with something like SolidWorks on the computer. Then you produce your part drawings and cut lists. You make the same mistakes, but they are easy to fix on computer. When you get to the actual project, it is faultless and normally takes half the time.
Attached is a Solidworks project I'm working on, for a large TV entertainment center. Can't believe the amount of parts I built incorrectly and had to go and fix. At least this was not real lumber. The drawing is 75% complete, with each part designed independently and assembled.
Willie
Allright, I suppose its time to fess up. I am currently a student at Rio Grande Community College in Ohio and am finishing my first year of the program. Having established I was proficient enough to build something a bit more sophisticated than a lowboy (Phil. style) my instructor singled me out and suggested that we work together and build seperate examples of a highboy that he had been wanting to tackle. Feeling up the challenge I agreed and off we went. I had the perfect supply of air dried walnut as my family cut a tree down that when sawed yieled quartersawn planks about 8" (tree was sawn through and through). Started with the legs. Hand shapped and carved. All went well though I must admit that it was one of the most challenging things I have ever done. Completed the rest of the lower piece with only minor error - Over shaped an apron. Nothing big. Moved on to the upper case. Probably the simplest part of the whole project. Build a box dovetail the pieces add some rails and move on. Unfortunately this is where the troubles started. First of all, spent two days handcutting dovetails which turned out rather nice. Everything fits, I take it apart and we go on break for a week. Come back and low and behold the poplar top and bottom had expanded almost a 1/4". Cant understand why as the wood acclimated for almost a month! So I backtracked a few days and recut the dovetails and all is well in highboy land! Not so I say! My next step was to cut dovetail sockets for the rails. Spent a bit more time on that than I wanted so I attempted to make up time by rushing on the installation of said rails. (can you see where this is going?) Upper case is divided so that the bottom four drawers graduate from 9 to 7 inches and the top two sections of drawers from 6 to 5 with the top row being divided into 3 drawers. After gluing in the bottom four rails I realized, much to my embarresment) that I had just glued in the top four rails in the bottom four sockets! As I am prone to panic, I thought I might be able to remedy the situation and knock the rails back out and put them in the right place. Heck the glue had only been setting for 15 minutes or so. The first rail came out without too much trouble. As I was carefully trying to remove the second rail, I heard a loud crack and almost pooped my pants. Tried to tell myself that it was my mallet! Turns out that the case split from the top down abotu 15"! Who ever said building a box was easy must have been more skilled than I!
And that is my story, so if there is anyone out there looking to hire a young guy like me, disregard and and send me an email.
Beware the sliding dovetail.
Having acquired some fine olive ash and acclimatised it for what felt like a year, I would build a nice set of cupboards with book-matched door panels and a set of bookshelves to sit on top.
The making of the carcases goes well – dovetailed corners which will be hidden by the moulding in due course. Since we are using dovetails, lets put in all the shelves of both cupboard and bookshelves using sliding dovetails.
The bookcase went nicely. The dovetailed slabs of the shelves only have to slide a mere 8 inches into the carcase. My, they look nice!
Let’s put the 2 cupboard shelves in now. We have a dry run and the fit is tight but not difficult. Just at it should be. On with the glue and in they go for real.
Well, in they go for about 8 inches (of the 18 inches all the way to the back) before there is unaccountable sticking. The rubber mallet gets them in another 2 inches. Then they stick, well, like glue.
This silly little woodworker had glued the whole 18 inches of the dovetail slots. Naturally, the dovetailed edges and the slots that were to house them began to expand as the glue soaked into the wood fibres. Result, premature stickiness and lots of it! Lordy!!
Of course, the half-in shelves wouldn’t come out either. (And, yes, I had tried to put both in at once - this will keep everything square, you see). By now the glue was solid.
I have a hissy fit and stomp off into the sunset, waving the rubber mallet in an alarming fashion, seeking something or someone to blame. Yes, it was like being 5 years old again, after your mother tells you that you can’t pull the head of Amanda’s best dolly and you had been having such fun up to that point. How can life be so cruel!?!
The thing was eventually salvaged, via a lot of cutting down, re-routing, remaking and other unnecessary work. I learnt how to glue up sliding dovetails that day; and also a number of new oaths that I never knew I had the imagination to think up. (I cannot share them here, for, useful though they are for woodworkers who cock-up, the Good Taste police would arrest me immediately).
Lataxe
Something that might help with the sliding dovetails - Chamfer everything but the first inch or so. All the structural benefits remain but you reduce friction to such an extent that they virtually jump in the socket. Oh yeah, I mean chamfer the tail by removing the sharp corners. Good luck and thanks for the 'support' :)
Hi Willie:
Great idea for a thread. Back when I was working for an antique restorer I had taken apart a maple rocking chair completley for repair and refinish. The job went very well, and I was on a roll. When I had finished glueing it back togather my boss came in the next a.m. and complemented me on a first class job except he had to point out that I had glued on one of the rockers facing backwards. The chair was much harder to dissasmble and reassemble the 2nd time, partly because I was NOT being paid to do it over. That was maybe 20 years ago and so far probably my biggest stupid mistake. Thanks, Robert.
if I had to use the CP to make my drawings I would never get any where.I just do it the old fashion way draw it on paper and got ot town man
This didnt happeen to me but to a friend of mine. He is somewhat of a perfectionist with a short temper, he built a gun cabinet for himself that hung on a wall...or it was supposed to! The guns were to be held horizontally in the cabinet. He decided that the doors should be 2 sliding doors that overlap. He made the cabinet and finished it and hung it on his wall. He went to put his guns in and they didnt fit! The sliding overlapping door idea allowed only 1/2 the opening to be open and since the cabinet was somewhat shallow the guns couldnt go in. He had a temper tantrum, ripped the cabinet off the wall and smashed it all into kindling.
Wicked Decent Woodworks
(oldest woodworking shop in NH)
Rochester NH
" If the women dont find you handsome, they should at least find you handy........yessa!"
Perfectionist with a short temper? Been there myself. Many times in fact. That can get expensive. Bad combination, I've had to learn to just 'let it go', when the inevitable 'sh..stuff happen's'....;>)
Jeff
Hmmm. A man with a short temper and a gun collection. Not an ideal package...
As for sliding dovetails, I have not made that mistake with gluing them... but mostly because one of my teachers always stressed that DTs in general, and sliding DTs in particular, should just about hold together with minimal glue... so I always did a fairly minimal glue up- a little on the front of the tail, a little on the back of the slot- tap, tap and no need to clamp. Haven't had any come apart. I have managed to cut the pins and tails for a drawer 90 degrees out of place (tails to the sides)... but that is another story...Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
oh, did I fail to mention his drug problem too?
just keeps piling up
Wicked Decent Woodworks
(oldest woodworking shop in NH)
Rochester NH
" If the women dont find you handsome, they should at least find you handy........yessa!"
Screw ups, however dramatic they can be, are not important, what is important is the generated ability and ingenuity to come out of them on the up side!
C.
As you have read, mistakes are part of learning and will continue to happen. Considering every mistake for me feels like it's the end of the world at the time (until I think clearly again), I will list a few "short-story" versions of mine.
I had resawn a great piece of spalted pecan into 3/16" pieces for laminating onto a table top. Each piece was about 4' by 6" wide. I had such a large area to cover and I needed to glue them into a recess at the same time that I layered the glue onto the pecan first. Well, by the time I got them both covered, they were warping like bowls from the moisture in the glue. Somehow, I managed to get them clamped down but the result was a few weak points that did not have "any" adhesion.
Above all, I encountered most of my mistakes with my coffee table. For one, the walnut boards I used for the inside of the floating table top were cut 1/4" too short. I didn't catch my mistake until the outside spalted pecan was already cut and glued. I had to "add" an inside dark spacer border to expand the dimensions. Secondly, I had wanted to have the grain flow around the pecan border by cutting mating pieces in succession. However, I had marked them out of order not thinking and had to live with my bad cuts. Last of all, and thanks to everyone on Knots for help w/ advice about my finishing mistake, I nearly had to strip and refinish the entire table because I had tried rubbing out an open pore finish (I prefer open pore but didn't realize at the time that extra care is needed when rubbing out). The main factor was that I had used Waterlox, which is a more flexible varnish finish. Anyways, when I rubbed it out w/ steel wool and water, I created such a distorted, cloudy mess that had terrible particle build-up in the pores, I nearly croaked. Buffing, lots of cleaning, and another application of finish reduced it but the lesson was learned.
A picture of the coffee table is at http://forums.taunton.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=fw-knots&msg=33433.1
Just make sure you learn from your mistakes ;)
"100 Years" -- scribbled on the wall by a woodworker to remind him to do his best and as a warranty on his work -- "If anything I make fails in the first hundred years, bring it back, and I'll take care of it. After that, there will be a small charge. (Original purchaser only)"
How about this one....Getting pissed off at your brother in law after returning your drill bit index and finding that he dulled each and everyone of my bits ! He dulled them to the point that the wood smoked at times when trying to bore a simple hole! After calling him up and chewing on him a awhile he came over to see ''if they were the same bits he borrowed'' ''since they worked ok when HE HAD THEM''??!! Yeah right...where did I hear that one before?! Yep they sure were the same bits...just like I said they were!.... but he showed me that they work much much better IF you have your drill TURNING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION !!! Ok guys, beat that one!
That is by far the best one yet!!!
Reminds of my dear departed father waving his hammer in the air yelling "where is my G-D #@%*&!! Hammer"
I have the hammer now and the story to tell my Five year old.
I am going to send your drill bit story to my brother in law. He'll get a kick out of it as I have come close to that sort of brain fade with him.
I once spent about ten minutes looking for my car keys, which were in my left hand.My goal is for my work to outlast me. Expect my joinery to get simpler as time goes by.
A friend's friend went out to the parking lot to go home after school and found his truck missing. He went to the office and a number of people spent some time looking for it and finally called the state troopers. After filing the stolen car report with the police he called his wife to come and get him. She said "You idiot, you drove the car today!
I'm glad that you liked my 'Brain Freeze Moment' ! More like, 'Brain freeze DAY' !
Than ks,
Steve
Not the worst screw up, but a recent one. This past weekend I was working at a friend's house making a simple style built in oak book shelf. Since I was not in my shop, I was using a ripping jig with a circular saw to rip the oak plywood and cross-cut the sides / shelves to length. On the last cut I "brain farted" and ran the saw on the plywood along the edge of the jig, rather than along the surface of the jig. I got 3/4 of the way through before I realized what I was doing and stopped. Result - the side was cut about 5 inches short and we did not have more wood on hand. I put that errant curf at the bottom, and I'll add a molding or something to cover it.
2nd part of my first project was building a corner unit come entertainment centre... task was to cut a pair of parallel stopped dado's to carry the uprights that take the centre shelves.. only tool I had to do the job was a cheap n nasty router; needed to take 2 passes to get the slot to the right width...
2nd pass on the 2nd slot I notice the motor speed dipping a bit... ignored it n carried on some... few more inches and it's obvious that the router is labouring way more than it should be... picked the router up out of the cut... probs were obvious despite the steamed up safety glasses....
1st prob... clamp holding the straight edge guide had backed off so much it was literally dangling off the end of the stick; my constant pressure against the stick caused the gude to pivot around the 2nd clamp.. cue dado tapering from 17-28mm in a nice irregular and wickedly jagged line...
2nd prob... plunge lock was prone to backing off in the cut, made worse by the depth stop slowly unscrewing through the vibes the tool generated... cue the bottom of the cut tapering from 3mm-8mm...
SWMBO heard my bellow despite both the router and shop vac still running, dust mask still on, and she in the opposite end of the house...
The clamps (all 4 I'd bought at the time were prone to the exact same fault) have been gathering dust ever since... the router was retired at the end of the project..
5 years on I still wince every time I open that particular cupboard and see the patch...
Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
Mike,
Had something similar happen to me as I was routing the rabbet for the glass in the ends of a tallcase clock hood. The patch however, is in the top of my bench, where the router bit entered, after gradually cutting all the way thru the stock I was routing.
The most expensive goof I ever made, was done on paper. In figuring the estimate for a partner's desk, I forgot that I would have to build drawers on BOTH sides of the dam' thing. But, a promise is a promise, so I ate it. Experience is a good teacher.
Then there was the time I assembled the base for a highboy. Rushed to get it in clamps just at quitting time. Next morning, as I took the clamps off, it looked a little (all right, a lot) out of square. About an inch out, over the depth of the piece. Rather than build the top section an inch out also, I elected to squeeze the base back into shape. Put a clamp across the long diagonal, and pulled it square, to the accompaniment of much popping and groaning. But nothing cracked or broke, so I dovetailed a diagonal brace from corner to corner, on what used to be the short diagonal, then let off the clamp. Later that week, the client came into the shop to check on the progress of his project. Laying his hand on the brace, he says to me, "This is for strength, right?" Who was I to disagree?
Lots more stories, after 35 yrs, I've messed up a lot of wood, countless times from holding the tape on the 1" mark to get a more accurate measurement, then forgetting to subtract that darned inch when cutting the piece I've measured for so "accurately". It hurts one's pride to cut apart two benches made to accomodate 3 rows of tiles that are 4" wide when the benches ended up being 13" deep.
One of the best craftsmen I have known said one time that being a good workman doesn't mean you don't make mistakes. A good craftsman knows how to hide his mistakes, so no-one can see them.
Cheers,
Ray Pine
Was it a screwup - or just bad luck. The story of the stopped dovetails reminded me of my problem job. (I guess you tend to forget the bad ones?)
Building a bookcase with stopped, tapered dovetails, on the 12th out of 12 dovetail slots the router began to labor and spit some extra dust. I decided to check. You got it, the bit had dropped down to within less than 1/16" of cuththrough Wow! A close one - But - "I can patch that."
Later, when routing the shelf ends, (you're always supposed to keep the wotk tight to the fence) I detected similar symptoms on the 12th out of 12 cuts. You guessed it! One end of the fence had moved and I had a REALLY TAPERED dovetail.
Fortunately, when assembled I was able to patch that problem as well - and it doesn't show. Who says that 13 is the unlucky number?
Jerry
Hello all,
Is there any one " biggest screwup"? Somehow ( I think) whenever something goes awry we tend to think of it as the latest ,greatest and " Biggest " of all time, dont we? Well, I guess there always has to be one that stands out.
At the moment , perhaps this will qualify as mine. started to build a small table, purchased some 84 mahogany for the legs and to make veneer for the apron. Some really nice 44 boards for the top. Lumber was bought rough ( this may be key), allowed to acclimate in the shop, I got busy with the table , never thought again bout the top. Getting closer to making the top now that the base is almost complete. Last nite pull out the boards for the top just to go over them a bit, wait this cant be, I never noticed this b4. ( Suffice it to say that I have not had much experience with mahogany) The wood for the base has a darkish red brown (almost purply) hue, and the top wood is more of a lighter brown, no reddish hue at all! So why did I buy wood of two different colors? DUMMY!!!! In my own defense, I guess I didnt see it when I was purchasing the boards, (maybe one was african mahogany, and one honduran?) but at the moment today I still feel stupid, and this is my biggest screwup.
Of course now I still have to figure out what to do.
Thanx
Eric
Made that one critical mistake the ruined or nearly ruined a great project!
YEP Been there.. Did That!
I started the project.. It turned out great! THEN I finished it in the WRONG color for her!
Probably not the biggest screw up but the first one that popped to mind involved cutting stair treads. My buddy cut all the treads for a three foot wide staircase. Cut them all at exactly 30 inches wide. To this day asking him how many inches are in three feet elicits a curse.
This is not a woodworking screw up but definitely a good one. Everyone who rides a bike will enjoy this one.
Last year I took the engine out of my wife's Honda Motorcycle to rebuild it. Had the heads sent away for machining, the works. After I got the engine back we went for a weekend ride with 25 other couples, mostly Harley-Davidson riders. I didn't realize it but I had forgot to hook up a sensor that controls the cooling fan. We were sitting outside a bar with the bikes idling. Hers was getting hotter and hotter until it started over-flowing coolant. After about an hour and a lot of hard riding to get caught up we had to put up with a lot of comments about her Honda breaking down, and the mechanic who "fixed" it.
Well I can remmber mine. It was in my Dads shop when I was a very young man I was srewing in some srews and something did not work out just right and I got pissed off and slamed the Yankee srew dsriver on the side of the workbench,I was so surprised that bit bent I said oh "---------" and started right away figuring out how to straighten it.Dad ask the next time he used it what I did to his yankee srew driver and of couse as a kid I said I do,nt know. To make along story short I end up going out and buying a new one.
So the moral is do,nt get pissed in your shopp because tools cost alot.
LARRY
I was building a set of dining chairs for a friend on commission. Each had 10 spindles for the back. I applied glue to the holes in the last chair and was tapping the very last spindle home when the seat cracked. I knew I had to remove the spindle quickly before the glue started to cause the wood to expand. I wiggled the spindle while pulling it out-right into my eye, or so I thought. To my amazement there was no gushing blood, no blood at all. I was verrrry lucky to have only grazed my eye and eyelid. I now wear safety glasses no matter how mundane I believe the task at hand is. Ear protection too. I glued the seat back together and finished the chair. Lesson learned.
There are more old drunkards than old doctors. Ben Franklin
Like installing a cusom cabinet under an existing countertop and selecting a couple screws that were about 1/16" too long? $$$$$
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