Somedays I should stay in bed.

[Derek Cohen]

Last weekend I was looking forward to a little more time in the shop working on the two military chests I am building (for use an an entertainment centre). Well, I spent more time repairing mistakes than moving forward.


Where I had left off last time was this - two carcasses in Jarrah dovetailed together with centre divider. These are 900mm x 525mm each, and will make up a long, low cabinet 1810 in length.



I was looking forward to turning this pile of boards into supports for the drawers ...



The initial part of the WIP is on my website: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furnitu...entCentre.html


First I decided to plough the rebates for the back of the cabinets before turning to the mortice-and-tenoning. That is when I really should have gone back to bed.

I usually double- and sometimes treble-check everything. Not because I am a careful, but because I am prone to getting things back-to-front. Call me spatially-challenged.
Well, in spite of this I managed to play a rebate on the outside of the cabinet! B-----r. How did I do this? I suppose that the inside and the outside look the same ..

It was easily repaired by glueing in a matching piece. It will not be seen ...



Then blow me down, I did it again - this time getting the back and the front mixed up! B-----r again!



OK, so you think it doesn't get worse. But I was on a streak - it comes in threes, not so? Oh yes, I did it a third time!

Here you can see the repair being planed down, and the other side has the correct rebate ...



That was Saturday. Sunday was better. I completed all the supports for the drawers for one of the units - I decided to do them one at a time since they were not exactly the same (one side has two colums of three drawers, and the other has a column of drawers alongside a column of shelves).

Today I made the stopped dados, and glued together the shelves.

At the end of the day this is where the project stood (everything is just a dry fit) ...



The one carcass is done and ready to install the 6 drawers (I am looking forward to that time - I love building drawers).



The other carcass needs drawer supports and shelves, and both sides need stopped dados.



The inside of the area for the shelves has been scraped, and the repair looks decent. With finishing it will be difficult to detect.



Onto the next time.

Regards from Perth
Derek

[Kent A Bathurst]

Sorry for your misery, Derek - but you made my day....I feel so much better knowing someone like you can do the same dumb things that I do.

I can tell you this - if you were to look at one of my pieces in a similar stage, you would see chalk marks/squiggles for dadoes/etc, and you would see pieces of painter's tape in various colors to denote alignment of parts and inside/outside/etc - the two pieces of narrow blue tape need to mate up; same for the purple, green, white, wide blue, etc...........Hasn't stopped dumba** attacks, but it's helped.

[george wilson]

I stood in bed till noon. Then I got tired and laid down!! Can't tell you the dumb mistakes I have made. Too many!!

[Don C Peterson]

It's nice to know I'm not alone...

[Andrew Gibson]

I am going to keep my mouth shut because I have been doing pretty good as far as mistakes go, however today I fit a drawer front to an opening and then proceeded to run the groves for the bottom on the top side of the drawer... thus making the drawer upside down.

Luckily the drawer opening was fairly square and I was able to refit the drawer without major gaping occurring.

[Mark Wyatt]

It was a long day in the shop today. At about 6:30pm I was measuring the width of a plow plane iron with a dial caliper. When I set the caliper down, I looked for the power button to turn it off. That's when I knew it was time to wrap it up for the night.

[Derek Cohen]

...I can tell you this - if you were to look at one of my pieces in a similar stage, you would see chalk marks/squiggles for dadoes/etc, and you would see pieces of painter's tape in various colors to denote alignment of parts and inside/outside/etc - the two pieces of narrow blue tape need to mate up; same for the purple, green, white, wide blue, etc...........Hasn't stopped dumba** attacks, but it's helped.

Thanks Kent

I use coloured pencils. The trouble is that they are not durable and the marks fade quickly. I have been wary of using chalk with Jarrah as the grain is quite open and I fear that chalk residue will lodge there and affect the finish. I think that it is time to test some out as it certainly is more visible. Plus use pieces of coloured tape.

Here is a picture of the dovetailed cabinets placed edge-to-edge. You can just barely see the writing. This is the problem ..



Regards from Perth

Derek

[Hans Braul]

Derek,
You've described my most common and frustrating error - I call them "symmetry errors". I've screwed up so many times that way, that I now have a rule that I try to apply every time I am about to do an irreversable operation: ask myself, "Can this be done backwards?" If the answer is yes, check very carefully which side is which. When I use this rule, I find many times that, yes it can be, and yes, I was about to screw up.
Works for me,
Hans

[Dave Anderson NH]

We all have days like that Derek and the only sensible option is to walk away. I ruined a perfectly good curly cherry dovetailed tray with handles by plowing the grooves for the bottom panel on the outside. Somehow the bottom just wouldn't fit. More than one carcass has ended up shorter than intended because I started to cutout the wrong part of the dovetails a la Jim Shaver "Martian dovetails". Generally most of my major errors occur when I get distracted or when I get overconfident and start to rush things. When turning my many tool handles I have a rule that if I mess up 2 in a row it is time to quit for at least an hour and go read, watch the idiot box or otherwise get woodworking out of my head for a while.

The only people who don't make mistakes are those who don't do anything.

[John A. Callaway]

I put blue painters tape on my parts and label the with left or right, front or back, and arrows pointing up or down .... on both side of every part. I do this before cutting any joinery or making any marks with the marking wheel...

[george wilson]

Wyatt,your reference to looking for the power button on the dial caliper might be a bit obscure to some!!

[Harvey Pascoe]

A master is one who is expert at repairing his mistakes! I am neither. Rather I am an expert at making the right cut in the wrong place.

[John Coloccia]

Sometimes it's easier to glue up the project from 1/16" strips of wood than to keep repairing all the mistakes. LOL...been there, done that. I had one particular binding ledge on a guitar that I just could not get right. Boy did I become good at binding ledge repairs!

[James Taglienti]

It was a long day in the shop today. At about 6:30pm I was measuring the width of a plow plane iron with a dial caliper. When I set the caliper down, I looked for the power button to turn it off. That's when I knew it was time to wrap it up for the night.

Nice... Today I tried to plug an electric router into the end of an air hose.

[Mark Wyatt]

Nice... Today I tried to plug an electric router into the end of an air hose.

Thanks, I needed that this morning .