I'm always off!

[Jared Cuneo]

No matter how diligent I am with milling my starting pieces and attention to detail, I always seem to wind up 1/32 or even 1/16 off at least one point in my projects. When I check for squareness, everything is on, and lengths and widths add up, but its just enough to be very annoying.

Will I ever get better at this? Noone notices, and you can't visually tell my pieces are off, but I'm getting weary of always having to plane a little here or there to get edges to line up etc....

Is there hope for me?!

JC

[Stan Welborn]

Heck I'm just happy if I don't read the rule wrong and cut an inch short.

[Richard Magbanua]

Are you kidding? If everything were perfect, I wouldn't have a need to play with all the extra "toys". No more belt sanders, chisels, vintage planes, flush trim router bits, spindle sander (oscillating, of course), and any other new and improved or proven and expensive obsession of the month. And if, after all of our money is gone, things still don't line up perfectly, well, that's what we call "custom, hand-made furniture."

In other words, I have the same problems. I've read though that wood is dynamic and always changes in ways we can't always predict. Cut a bit here or there and internal stresses take over and it does what it wants unlike working with plastics or metals. I think I'm getting a bit better in both my accuracy and my ability to say, "oh well, time to use my old handplane I've been trying to tune up." or, "I wonder if I can buy another new router bit to clean that up". I'm still very new to this but, because of such inconsistencies, I'm learning and enjoing it more and more every day.

Good luck!

[glenn bradley]

This stuff is hand made you know? We are not machines. You may want to look at your methods. I rarely cut a lot of pieces ahead on a project. I dry fit and adjust as I go. I probably make a 64th of an adjustment here and a 32nd there throughout the project. If I made all the pieces per the cut list and then just assembled them I would be much farther off than you are talking about. Just an idea.

[Robert Waddell]

Glenn is dead on in his comments. Make the parts to fit as you need them for assembly. If you get in the habit of measuring with a steel ruler, cutting each piece just a little heavy and trimming to fit your end result will be better. Don't beat yourself up over it though. Wood is an imperfect substrate and hence nothing done with it can ever be 100% perfect. Most important is to have fun working with it.
Rob

[Hubert Carle]

Besides all that this is WOOD as soon as you cut it and a new surface is exposed it will CHANGE!

[Bill Brehme]

I'm glad you posted this! I thought I was the only one w/ this problem. It's gotten to the point where I was starting to hate the milling process. I kinda have to mill all/most of my pieces as per cutlist as I have to rearrange my shop every time I go back to milling (pull the mower out, move tables etc).
My latest approach is: TURN A GLASS EYE TO IT!!!

Whats the saying? PERCEPTION IS REALITY! ...If it LOOKS good it IS good...

[Randall Frey]

Yes, it can be frustrating when things are a bit off. Woodworking can be very humbling at times (which it sounds like you hit one of those times). No worries, time and pacients will prevail. I can offer this, Make absolutely sure all of your tools are dead on with alignment and all cutters are sharpened correctly. There are many books out there that explain how to achieve this. I've pulled my hair out many of time wondering why things don't come out right. It is amazing how a few thousandths misalignment can transmit into bad results. I once made a planer sled which allowed me to surface material too wide to fit on my jointer, I just could not get good results. I had just thrown the noose over the rafters when I thought, Let's put new blades in the planer, bam, that did it. Good luck

[John Mihich]

As an experiment cut 4 peices of wood one day - make sure they are exactly the same. Wait a few days and check - I would bet at least one piece is off in size. It's kind of the nature of the beast. It could be as simple as saw dust getting between the fence and the board, not paying attention to the board against the fence, miss measuring (never have done that myself ), the list can go on. If you use a miter guage they aren't perfuct either, there's got to be a little movement otherwise it wouldn't slide.

The best you can do is keep at it. Do you get better with experience. I'll let you know when that happens. Been at this a long time and have cut a few board and it still happens.

[Chet Kagel]

Whenever I'm milling wood and the dimension is critical to me, I measure it with a pair of calipers instead of trying to read a rule. I was shown this technique by a craftsman who meticulously repairs classic wood boats. There is still variation due to all the reasons mentioned in the previous posts but I'm now satisfied with the results.

[Per Swenson]

I dunno,

Nothing is perfect.

But, I do have two words of advice.

STORY STICK

Per

[Al Willits]

Join the club, been at this insanity for little over a year now and I finally figured out how to get a cabinet square, well, once I did..
I taken to cutting a bit long a trimming to size, seems if I cut a plan to stated dimensions and try to assemble, I'm off.

Also we are our own worse enemy, while your agonizing over how off something is, ask the wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/neighbor/drug dealer down the block or anyone else, to come look.
Chances are they will think its fine.

This is not a hobby for someone with out patience imho

Good luck and it'll come, just keep at it.

Al

[Brian Weick]

that,s not unfamiliar-check your adjustments ,watch your feed is going in smoothly and your not drawing the board laterally when feeding. Just the nature of woodworking.
Brian

[Jim Becker]

In addition to the sage advice of taking actual measurements off your project for components, working with "story sticks" is another way to keep things together. You should also avoid using too many measuring devices...and avoid a tape measure if at all possible. I largely use a "matched" set of steel rules from Lee Valley whenever I can to insure consistency...the shortest is 6" and the longest is 36" which covers a lot of ground during project time. (These rules, although not a "real" matched set are dead-on with each other from a precision standpoint.

Oh, and don't trust that the fence rule on your saw is exact, especially as you get to longer measurements. Stick on tapes can be "stretched"...

[Don Bullock]

No matter how diligent I am with milling my starting pieces and attention to detail, I always seem to wind up 1/32 or even 1/16 off at least one point in my projects. ...
JC

JC, I feel your pain, but as others have said, nothing is perfect especially when working with wood. Per's idea of using a "story stick" has a lot of merit. Even one of those is subject to shrinking and expanding. I'm just happy if the results of my work look good.