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Thread: Do as I say, not as I do...

  1. #1
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    Do as I say, not as I do...

    I made one of my most boneheaded moves ever this weekend. (The key being one of my most boneheaded moves - which implies that I have made more and some of them much worse.) I am building a new vanity for our master bath. It's a simple shaker style. My wife found one she really liked at one of the dozens of stores we wandered through. They wanted $548, but I figured I could build it for less than half that. I have the whole carcase built and was cutting and fitting the rails and stiles for the drawer and doors. I kept reminding myself to measure to the top, not to the stop (the door stop).


    I measured a couple of times. I even cut a test piece to verify my measurements before cutting all of the rails and stiles. I dry fit the drawer and doors together to check out the gap sizes, etc. The drawer is perfect. The door is perfect, too, except it is cut to the bottom of the door stop, not the bottom of the top trim.


    NOOOOOOOO!!!!


    Fortunately, it is going to be a painted piece so it's just made of poplar and not an expensive hardwood. I (of course) was just short of extra material to re-cut four stiles so I had to make the trip to the hardwood supplier Saturday to pick up some more poplar. I used the opportunity to buy some wood for the medicine cabinet that she decided she wants me to build, too, as long as I was there. The mistake only cost me a few bucks, some time and my pride.


    I told my wife that I am going to completely finish one of the short doors and hang it in my shop as a reminder to put a piece of painter's tape, or something, on future work as a visible reminder instead of only relying on my aging brain!

  2. #2
    I feel your pain.

    I made four shelves last week for each of the left and right sides of the space they're going in. By the nature of the thing the sides are cut differently for the left and right sides - but I managed to produce five of one, and three of the other.

  3. #3
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    Pieces of tape, witness marks, triangle system, all are good reminders to help us stay on track and I use them all . . . and still manage the classic bonehead move now and again.
    "A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg".


    – Samuel Butler

  4. #4
    If you're >60 this is fairly SOP.

    But if you're <60 its just practice for what's to come. LOL

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by glenn bradley View Post
    Pieces of tape, witness marks, triangle system, all are good reminders to help us stay on track and I use them all . . . and still manage the classic bonehead move now and again.
    I usually use some sort of visible marking system, too, but I figured that this one was so easy that there was no way I'd mess it up. I guess I proved myself wrong once again!

  6. #6
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    Yea..."measure twice, cut once..." is a great thing, as long as you're measuring the correct thing. LOL "Stuff happens". Fortunately, one of our woodworking skills is to be able to adapt to, um...changing conditions... There are none among us who have not done similar to your experience...multiple times.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  7. #7
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    Been there on Doors. One thing though I gon't understand, if its going to be painted why not just add a strip to bottom and top and be done. Why rip all new?

  8. #8
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    Thanks for your posting. I feel much better now after reading I'm not the only one who works carefully, measures twice, and still manages to do it wrong - frequently. I recently built some drawers. They were perfect until I went to install them and they wouldn't go into the faceframe opening. Seems I had sized them based off the drawer front height instead of the faceframe opening. Both numbers were on my drawing and like a fool I read the wrong number. A much better approach would have been to physically measure the faceframe opening, but it wasn't in my shop any longer. That's my excuse. So now I have 4 drawers looking for a home.

    John

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Keith Hankins View Post
    Been there on Doors. One thing though I gon't understand, if its going to be painted why not just add a strip to bottom and top and be done. Why rip all new?
    I originally thought that I might try that, but adding a strip to the doors would make them out of proportion to the rest of the rails and stiles. Adding a strip to the top or bottom of the door opening would alter the overall look of the piece and not match the look around the drawer. I decided that it would be better to just do it right and redo the doors entirely. Otherwise, I would see that error every time I went into the bathroom and it would drive me nuts that I didn't just fix it the right way.

  10. #10
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    I, too, feel your pain. I've been replacing my stairs with oak risers and treads that I milled from rough lumber.... I made a jig to help me "scribe" the treads to the skirt board on both sides, cut to the right width, etc. I then adjusted the angle on my miter gauge as close as possible to the prevailing angle of the scribe line, cut one side, adjust angle again, cut the other side. The system worked perfectly for the first 14 treads. On #15, my mind decided to take a holiday and I forgot to adjust the angle for the second cut. The tread was the perfect width at the back of the stair and then a little more than 1/8" short in the front. It really hurts when you have to wait a few days to replace your mistake while you mill more lumber, wait for glue to dry, etc.

    --Dan

  11. #11
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    I have heard there are those who add a mistake on purpose to their work as only God can do perfect work. I must be a better craftsman than that as I add them automatically!

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dick Brown View Post
    I have heard there are those who add a mistake on purpose to their work as only God can do perfect work. I must be a better craftsman than that as I add them automatically!
    Ha ha!!! There's never any danger of me having to purposely add mistakes to my work, either!

  13. #13
    I have made plenty of bonehead moves, this is actually quite minor. As long as I have ten fingers....

  14. #14
    Most of my efforts involve a similar episode I call massive epicyclic cerebral flatulence. ...Hey, it makes me feel better - - kind of like I'm in a protected class?

  15. #15
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    You can't make mistakes if you don't do anything. Some comfort in that thought right .

    The mistake that bites me the most often is that I will make a pencil line (cut line - my little one sided arrow) then I will change my mind about dimensions or grain pattern - some such excuse - and add another cut line WITHOUT erasing the 1st one. You know the rest of the story.

    I tell myself AND anyone who works with me - If you add another pencil mark - ERASE THE OLD ONE. Some days I just live on the edge and the wrong edge gets cut off .
    "... for when we become in heart completely poor, we at once are the treasurers & disbursers of enormous riches."
    WQJudge

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