Embarrassing Mistakes – 'Hall of Shame'!
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We all have those occasional ‘doh!’ moments. Feel free to share them here, so others might have a chuckle and maybe avoid the same pitfalls. Maybe Paul could donate a wooden spoon as a prize for the most cringe-worthy effort?!
I’ll get things rolling – spot the problem with these dovetails…
hey Martin i could fill the gallery with the amount of times i’ve done this ive made so many box’ for one or two chisels lol
Eddy .. Liverpool, Merseyside, UK
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Martin,
just cut the tails on the remaining board inversely, so they fit. 😉
David
from Germany
When I was making my workbench, I cut the tenons for the top rails, with nice crisp shoulders and straight and flat cheeks. Then I cut the hunches on opposite sides of them all.
don’t feel too bad, Martin..as a novice hand tool enthusiast my mistakes, uh, “learning experiences” are not infrequent and have included rabbeting the wrong side of a drawer side, putting a housing dado on the wrong side of a board and putting the step-down on the wrong side of a board for a half-blind dovetail as demonstrated by Paul in the tool chest vids, just to name a few.
Anyway, each one has taught me a lesson and while they were all frustrating, I learned a great deal from them and in some cases not only learned to be more careful to not repeat the mistake but was forced to come up with a “fix” as simply discarding the piece in question and cutting a new piece of stock was not really an option.
Having said all that, not really sure what I would do about that tho… 🙂
Thanks for the words of support guys. I think I was more amused than upset, there’s no point getting excited, it’s all part of the learning process. Whether I can be as relaxed about it if I made such a mistake on a much bigger project, I hope not to find out any time soon!
A little bit back to front Martin. 🙂
Nottingham, England
I see a slightly narrower box!
Cheers
Markh
One of my first major woodworking projects many years (30+) ago with my new Shopsmith, a wedding present from my wife, was a record cabinet to house all of the LP’s we owned. The apartment we lived in at the time in Brooklyn, NY was smaller than a lot of the mobile homes (manufactured house) sold today. I found pine construction grade lumber 3/4 inch thick by 13 1/2 inches wide. I made the shelves about 6 foot high or so and spaced the shelves 12 inches high for the 12 inch LP’s. It was a huge surprise to find that the LP’s were larger than 12 inches but the shelves were done, the glue was dry and we had nowhere else to to put them. They all went in at an angle with some of the albums bowing at the ends of the rows. After that fiasco I didn’t attempt to do much with the Shopsmith in the way of furniture projects. We still have the shelves, they still house the records but I’m making plans to replace the shelves and use the wood for other projects, maybe a tool chest or two.
Perfect!
HaHa Nice post kevin 😉
Kevin, That looks like something I would do… and still do on occasion.. Here is one of my screw ups. I didn’t see it till I posted picture of my shop on this forum. I made a tool chest and was very proud of it….. Can you see the screw up?
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
It is barely noticable Sandy, lol. That would not be hard to fix, 5 minutes in Photoshop and it is perfect!
We should see if Joseph @joseph would add an “Embararassing Mistakes” category to the Gallery. That could be fun. I have a few submissions for that.
Memphis, Tennessee
my last dovetail box, I plowed the groves on the outside of the box. I didn’t notice at first until every joint was just a little off. Luckily I was able to still assemble the box without much notice..
When I was doing my month long course with Paul he mentioned that some of us would have shorter tool boxes than others…mine was one of the short boxes because I made a Z shaped box and had to cut off the dovetails and start over on one side 🙂 You can see Paul got a kick out of it 🙂 Good times.
Then the other day, I was a little to aggressive cutting a mesquite log and pulled the saw out to far, it got stuck and bling! There goes my 100 year old Disston.
Still learning.
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