I was just posting on another thread and I realised that I tend to post about threads dealing with dumb mistakes (or helping avoid them) and I was thinking about this and wondering why that was. And I think I have if figured out. I may not (and am not) in the same class of wood worker as a lot of peaple on this forum, so a lot of times I leave it to others that are better then I am to reply. But when a thread has to do with avoiding a mistake I tend to pipe in because I think I am as least as good (if not better) at having made said mistakes in the past and thus know what I speak of then a lot of peaple. In short I think I have made just about every mistake in the book (and wrote a new chapter or two) so I feel I can speek from experience on the subject of boo boos and and such issue.
So being the type to think about these things I was wondering what would be either your biggets mistake or at least an uncomon on that you may want to tell others about in order to help them avoid making it?
I would post something but I need to think about this for a bit as I have made SO many mistakes it will take some time to think about what one to post! 🙂
Thou the one that comes to mind the just now was forgeting that tapering jig was shorter then the part I was tapering and thus the cut (set to the jig not the part) was in a bit of the wrong place. Not sure way that one comes to mind. Of course then thier was the time that I made 4 frames and they all turned out 1 1/2″ to small, seams I forgot to add the thickness of the frame material and thus when I cut the 45s on the edges they all became to small. Or maybe I will tell about ……. Well lets just say I could go on, and on and on…
Doug
Replies
Finding out the hard way that you use the same tape to measure and to mark your cut.
Jack
Good post Doug,
This is going to be a long and entertaining thread. We all do such silly things.
1.) I like to put the 1 inch mark of a steel ruler as my start point rather than the end of the steel ruler/yard stick. I think it's more accurate. Guess how may times this has messed me up one inch short?
2.) I'm 59 now, when I was 11 years old my Dad put carpet in my bedroom. The door bottom dragged on the carpet so....Dad put the door on his "custom made fancy wancy protable saw horses" and measured a 1/2" cutoff. He even scored the veneer so it wouldn't chip. He got a perfect cut EXCEPT he cut the TOP of the door off 1/2".
So now he relocated the hinges (took some time), then he mounted the door, only to discover the door striker plate and door knob no longer mated. The fix (took some time).
3.) Just the other day I installed a garbage disposal for an elderly friend. When I took the sink trap off I gathered all the water in a plastic pail. Much later, after the disposal was installed BUT still no sink trap, I saw the pail of water sitting near by and thought, I'll just pour it down the sink. Duh.
4.) Now and OPPOSITE small story. This is clever from my Grandpa....We went fishing when I was very young. Our rented oar boat had a oar pin that would squeek every time he took a stroke with the oars. Very annoying! He took a worm out of our kit, removed the oar pin from it's socket and dropped a worm into the socket. When he reinstalled the oar pin....no more squeek.
I love FWW.
Don
Hello Duogmeyer,
One of the biggest ever I made was when I worked in exhibition building.
After working 2 weeks 16/18 hour days I had to make one last cabinet( its Friday morning) for the exhibition that had to be loaded on Monday.
The veneered board sheets where really nice and the boss said don't make a mistake I cant get more of this stuff, its sold out.
First cut on the saw and below and be hold wrong by 4 " ,###^& I said to the boss no problem 2 more sheets in stock, Next one on the saw with boss looking over my shoulder,and ###^&* wrong again.
The boss agreed that we measured it right, to the drawing board to work out how to make it with one good sheet of material.
This time the boss did the cutting and the poor bastard cut wrong as well,He looked so angry, now I started to laugh and and said to the boss I can not think any more I go home have a sleep and see you tomorrow and went home.
The next day at 7 I looked at the mess and changing the cabinet in 2 parts this was better and lighter to transport.
The moral of this story is dont work to long , and even the boss makes mistakes.
Cheerio Bernhard.
Your question brings to mind too many uncomfortable moments...
If I had to pick one, I'd say it was making a large entertainment piece which was carefully measured and made to fit the client's wall, but in no way could it go through the entry door into the apartment building. Standing on a busy city sidewalk with a large piece of furniture that won't go in the door was an experience I've never forgotten. Nowadays, I trust no one's measurements but my own, I measure elevators, and I always "walk through" a potential installation to make sure access is clear.
David Ring
http://www.touchwood.co.il/?id=1&lang=e
Along the same lines as your story, I once built a pretty large entertainment center/bar for a room with 9 foot ceilings. There were about 6 individual cabinets, each running from floor to ceiling. When we delivered them we brought the first one in and tried to stand it up. Imagine my surprise when the top back side of the cabinet hit the ceiling. Apparently when I built them I managed to forget that the diagonal measurement from the top corner to the opposite bottom corner was longer than the height of the cabinet. The cabinets were short enough in the upright position to fit in the room, but the diagonal measurment was too long. No matter what we tried we couldn't maneuver the thing into an upright position. At one point I debated cutting a hole in the ceiling, but the GC nixed that pretty quickly. Man, did I feel stupid as we were loading the cabinet back onto the truck.
Many years ago, when we were first married, I wanted to 'pipe' music from our LR into our BR upstairs. I installed speakers in the BR wall and ran the appropriate wires up into the attic. My task was then to traverse the wires across the attic and then drop them down the stud space to the speakers. No problem.
I drilled the top plate; stuffed wires down about 6' and left the attic to pull wire the rest of the way. No wire in the wall opening! That's strange. Back up into the attic to stuff more wire - 10' or 12'. Down thru the hatch to check in the hole in the wall. Still no wire. Get a mirror and flash light. That trick does nothing to produce wire.
Oh! Oh! Better go look in the hall ceiling.
No wire there either. Sit down and puzzle. I go back out into the hall and there, at the edge of the door jam, is a long curl of wire. I had drilled through the top of the door frame!
Moral. When you measure in from the exterior wall at ground level you had better be sure that you measure all the way from under the eaves in the attic!
Frosty
"I sometimes think we consider the good fortune of the early bird and overlook the bad fortune of the early worm." FDR - 1922
Doug and All ,
Many years ago when I was still young I used to make corner kitchen base units in one piece , this one in particular was about 4' one way and maybe 7 or 8' feet the other way not any bigger then I had done before .
I would make the toe kick a loose toe and attach it in the room , that left the face ht of the base about 31 3/4" to easily fit through the door .
I measured the door leading into the kitchen in fact both doors leading into the kitchen were plenty big.
The only thing I didn't' counton was the front door to the house was only about 30" , yeah that's what I said .
Well after surveying the situation the front plate glass picture window was my only way to get the cabinet in without a chainsaw (plan C).
Here in Southern Oregon it only snows a few days a year usually , and as luck would have it it indeed was blowing snow that day .
I called my glass shop and he sent a man out we removed the stops/molding and used the suction cups and lifted the glass out . We put the cabinet in while we were doing this I noticed the nice older couple sitting on the couch all wrapped up with blankets and hats and coats while the snow was actually blowing into the living room a bit .
After the glass was back in and the cabinet was installed , the homeowner said ,"we didn't think you would ever get that window back in"
Moral of the story , make your corners in 2 pieces , never had that problem again .
dusty ,,, graduate and still in attendance of the North West school of hard knocks
Every dumb mistake in the book..
I never do that. Most of mine dumb mistakes are HUGE BLUNDERS!
Doug,
There was another good thread on this subject:
http://forums.taunton.com/fw-knots/messages?msg=6986.1
Lataxe, a historian
Ok. I have made too many to remember. Here's one my wife likes to remind me of.
I have been building my house for about 10 years. I wanted to put two big closets inside a sort of walk in closet room attached to our master bathroom.
I carefully designed them to fit in the small room, which was much too small to do proper assembly in. I cut all the pieces and assembled these two roughly 8'x8'x24" boxes in an unfinished room next to the bedroom which connected to master bathroom which connected to the walk in closet. Just to be sure, things were all glued and screwed.
The next day, I discovered I could not fit the closets through the doorway, on account of the fact the door was 80", not 8'. So I broke up my project, doing a small amount of damage to the veneer, which I fixed by reducing the closet heights to about 79", so it would fit through the doors. (I would stack the remaining 17" on top as a sort of 'upper closet'. Then I assembled *one* closet in the master bathroom. Again glued and screwed. When I tried to bring it into the walk in, it wouldn't go because it was 24 1/4" (due to trim) and the door opening was 24".
So, I disassembled the door frame to get the closet into the walk in. I left it on its side and assembled the other one (glued and screwed). When I returned to the closet, I discovered when I tried to set the closet upright, the diagonal measurement was greater than the area between the floor and ceiling. (making a big dent in the ceiling in the process).
I disassembled the two closets again and cut off a little to hide the damage to the veneer.
I then took all the pieces, one by one, and assembled first one closet (glued and screwed), which I pushed against the wall where it was going to end up ultimately. Because the room was too small, I assembled the other closet out of position, figuring I could slide it into its final position like I had the first one. Again glued and screwed. Unfortunately, its final position blocked the door, but I managed to push and jiggle until I escaped after about 30 minutes. making a big dent in the wall in the process.
Unsurprisingly (by this point), I had assembled the closet backward (door towards the wall). Unfortunately, the dimensions of the room meant I could not rotate the closet the right way around. I then removed one end of the closet (you can imagine what shape the veneer was in by then) and kind of moved that end into the other closet while turning it and making yet another big dent in the drywall.
Finally I reinstalled the end I had removed and moved the second closet into its final resting place. By now, pretty much all the veneer inside the closet was scratched, or had holes or glue due to repeated cycles of assembly and disassembly. I figured that if I trimmed out the closets with red cedar and lined them with aromatic cedar, everything would look ok, which it did, especially after I carefully fit the trim to the wall.
Then, a few weeks later, after I recovered, I decided the time had come to fix all the dents in the drywall and paint the room. I carefully tapped all the exposed cedar, etc., just to be sure.
Needless to say, the paint bled under the painter's tape, necessitating replacement of all the carefully fitted trim.
The good news is, they look pretty darn good now, and my wife shows them off whenever visitors get the penny tour. She usually tells the story too, with some unnecessary and uncalled for embellishments.
Edited 10/5/2007 4:02 pm ET by Piccioni
I too have fallen victim to the "start at the 1" spot on the tape to get an accurate measure" syndrome.
Worst "error in judgement" I ever made was in building 2 add-on cabinets to go on either side of the passageway between 2 rooms in a 100 year old house. Lots of tinkering to get the right stain/shellac combo to perfectly match the existing woodwork. Both cases had raised panels on one side and divided lites on the other. And a tight time frame to do it.
The cabinets had to be mirror images of each other.
You guessed it. When I stepped back to admire my handiwork, both cabinets were exactly the same!!! At the beginning I'd marked some parts to ensure mirror-image construction but somehow lost track of it.
Lesson: Always allow yourself more time than you think the project could possibly take. Haste leads to errrr......errors in judgement.
Edited 10/5/2007 6:43 pm ET by BoardmanWI
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