Dumb Mistakes

I’m making a workbench which has consumed about 2 months so far. I’m at the stage of chopping and routing the leg recesses. I made a mistake that just struck me as so illustrative of the learning process for me which is generally making a mistake and then correcting to somehow make the mistake worse. By the third try I usually start to see improvement.

Anyway, I first cut the wedges for the leg recess and, miraculously, they looked just like they were supposed to. Then I laid out the recesses and, once again everything looked good. Chopped and routed and ended up with a recess that looked amazingly good! Maybe I’m getting better.

Fitted the leg and tried to press in the wedge — no go. Can’t get the wedge in. Should I go back and rewatch the video? Heck, no! Bust out the smoothing plane and lop off a few shavings and it’ll fit like a charm. Nope. Now the wedge is loose and doesn’t hold.

I was about to cut a new wedge when I finally came to my senses and rewatched the video. When Paul fits the wedge it’s obvious that it’s a wedge for a reason. He doesn’t press it straight into the dado like I was trying to do. He slides it down at a slight angle until the bottom of the wedge snugs in and then presses in from the bottom up. I resisted the urge to whack myself in the head with my hammer and refit the wedge. It slides a little farther than I’d like, leaving a gap at the top, but it now holds perfectly.

I repeated, like a mantra, enjoy the process!