The Ides of March

Don’t go for the “save”

A.J. Hamler

You’re working with a liquid — any liquid — and bump it with an arm or elbow.

Let it go. There’s a chance it‘ll just wobble and won’t spill at all. Or it’ll splash just a little over the edge. Or, worst case, it’ll tip and create a puddle.

But if you go for the save, suddenly fumbling and grabbing in the attempt to prevent a spill, you’re not only guaranteed to cause a spill that likely wouldn’t have happened, but you will knock the container flying, slinging liquid everywhere.

Bottom line is that going for the save with liquid nearly always creates a much bigger mess than if you’d done nothing at all.

DAMHIKT

A.J.

Power planer and well

Mike L

I was working some short boards and needed to joint them. My 6 inch cabinet jointer was too big for the job. I decided I needed a smaller one to edge the boards I was working.

No beer was drank before this idea popped into my head. I have a Makita power planer I could use. I have used circular saws mounted to plywood tops as a make shift table saw why not the power planer.

I fashion up a table grab a few clamps put the planer bottoms up on top of the table and use a single clamp to clamp it down.

I turn it on all is well. I grab the first piece of wood and start to guide it into the spinning blades. As soon as the wood hit the blades I realized most of my mistakes.

The planer slipped out of the clamp running, and hit the concrete floor with parts flying every where.

I still have the power planer, I repaired it. I use it to plane down doors etc as intended.

I went and bought a bench top jointer to do the short stock with.

Re: The Ides of March

Jerry Gibbs

Kinked a good bandsaw blade trying to cut a poorly supported log.

sadly - more than one blade for me

'Dropping' onto moving bits/blades

Henry (Raleigh NC)

Early on in my woodworking, I was following the plans and methods from a WW-ing mag.

To create mortises the article (as I recall at least) showed 'dropping' the wood onto a turning router bit (in a router table). As described in earlier posts, I tried that once - and quickly decided there had to be better ways. I did not have control over the piece - and with this being the first time I tried this, I did not have any experience.

For me that decision has been the right one - as I have found much better methods to cut a mortise controlable (a horizontal router 'table' is one).

Henry

When chopping mortises ...

Larry Barrett

with a mortising chisel, the deeper the mortise the harder it becomes to extract the chisel. Wiggling and gentle pulling does the trick at first. Eventually you need to lean over the chisel so you can get your shoulder muscles into it. As you lean over your chin becomes right in line with the chisel handle. One more good yank, the chisel comes free, and you might almost knock yourself out.

DAMHIKT.

Working from memory.

Virgil Johnson

One of the biggest mistakes I have ever made was while building 5 tables to hold electronic equipment for the machine shop I worked at. I drew the plan for the simple table in Autocad but forgot to bring the drawing home that evening. No issue since I remembered the legs were 1.5" square and 15" long. I could at least make those and get the project started. I squared the material and cut the 20 legs to length. Only problem was the legs needed to be 18" long. The blanks stayed around for years until I eventually used them. The take away here is to wait and double check a critical dimension.

Re: The Ides of March

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Failing to account for wood's response to humidity. I suspect I have posted here more than a dozen instances where something failed or didn't work properly that resulted from a moisture change in wood. The one seared into my memory was a walnut top I was finishing on a warm Spring day. Sprayed the finish and left in the sun to bake off the solvent. The walnut got astonishingly hot from the sun and dried enough on an end that the wood split.

My bench has a permanent hump in it because after building it I put Masonite on it to protect it. This moisture barrier prevent moisture from equilibrating on this side and as the bottom dried out in the winter it curled and set that way. Ditto for solid panel doors in bath. They took up water from the damp bath preferentially on the room side and cupped. In fact many of my moisture problems resulted from differential moisture gain or loss from one side of a panel or piece of lumber.

Check a plan's arithmetic

Jesse Cloud

I don't work from plans from magazines anymore, but when I was first learning I did and I blindly trusted them to be right. There was an error in one of the dimensions in a set of drawers that caused me to make more drawer front space than the opening in the carcass would accommodate. I cut the wrong piece shorter and the cabinet came out really wonky looking.

Also, when making a big piece of furniture, do a cardboard mockup. How many of us have built something that fit awkwardly into its available space or something that looked good at 1/8 scale but was a dumpster fire at full size?

Student goof, entirely my fault

John K Jordan

I was teaching a student turn her first lidded box.

Due to my failure to teach the careful methods of measuring depth, she cut through the bottom of a box. This is an unhappy time when working solo but downright Just Plain Embarrassing with a unforgivable lapse in instruction!

Fortunately, it was a learning experience on how to enlarge and cut a clean, slightly tapered hole in the bottom and fit a piece of ebony that nicely complimented the ebony cabochon in the lid. The result was beautiful and looked like it was planned motif. Whew!

She did such an excellent job at this unique piece I thought about doing some like that on purpose!

Her second box was perfect, but lacking the surprise detail in the base!

JKJ

Re: Check a plan's arithmetic

Neal in SC

Been there, done that. Made a very nice entry hall table for a friend. We'd checked the measurements and figured out what would fit. Built the table, but it looked way too large when installed. That one now graces my house and a new smaller one is at my friend's house.

Remembering what I was trying to forget...

J Barrett Irby Jr

I decided hooking a router up to my lathe to speed up the roughing process would be fabulous. I just held it up against the tool rest as a proof of concept. The tool rest still has a notch in it and the router base was destroyed when it hit the floor.

Put a piece of wood on the lathe at the end of the day and failed to check it closely before turning the lathe on. Got a third eye, and a trip to the emergency room. 27 stitches later, back home.

Working on a table top that weighs close to 200 lbs. Needed to turn it over. Rigged up a rotisserie. Clamped a piece of pipe from end to end along the center line. Propped on end on the table saw and the other on a step stool. Pulled the cart out form under it and turned it over and put the cart back. Took it down off the table saw and stool. Crawled under it to plug something in and it nearly turned over on me. Either use a bigger cart or get a Life alert button.

Re: The Ides of March

Johanna Johanson

Making a small adjustment while bandsaw is running. The board I was starting to resaw hung on the back edge of the table insert. So I reached under the table to push the back edge up a bit. Removed a chunk of my middle finger. The finger still has a dent in it.

Re: The Ides of March

Jim Dillon

Neighbor lady asked me to cut a small piece of plywood for her. Anxious to show her my woodworking chops, TS prowess, and how fast I could do it, I set to work. Next thing I know, the piece of plywood was lodged in the wall behind the TS, thanks to the plywood twisting slightly and kicking back. Very, very sheepishly, I told her there had been a slight problem that I could fix with some glue and a patch. She, fortunately, said no problem. I did learn a lesson to NEVER NEVER rush any project using cutting tools and power machinery, no matter how small the task appears. That has, knock-on-wood, been my only experience with kickback and it sure sticks in my memory.

And then there was the time, before I had my garage shop, I built two assembly benches in my kitchen and they were 1 inch (2.5 cm) too wide to fit through the French sliding patio doors exiting the kitchen. Had to remove the entire door to get the benches out. Talk about feeling STUPID. Jim

Re: The Ides of March

Sam Force

When marking a piece to cut to length, remember to mark which side of line to cut. More than once when not paying attention a piece will be a little short due to this little omission.

Re: The Ides of March

Jerry Gibbs

A friend of mine who wants to remain name less made a dovetail tail board for a drawer. He made one pin board and left the project. When he came back he cut the wrong end of the other pin board, ending up with a z rather than a u.

Dovetails provide a volume of opportunities

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

The opportunity to screw up a dovetail could occupy one or more issues for Ellis. Saw on wrong side of line, saw off a pin or tail, mark the tails upside down, make two left drawer sides, mix up which tail board goes with which pin board, chamfer the wrong side of the tail, make a drawer longer than the case, forget to dado the side for the drawer bottom, locate the dado so it shows on the drawer side, do not register marking knife securely during transfer, break something upon assembly or disassembly of dry fit, over saw everything that can be, fail to own a chisel narrow enough to chisel out tail board waste, revealing your inept moments of making dovetails.......it hurts recalling all the problems others have told me happened to them.

Remove your offcuts

DocJim

I was making an octagonal shaped piece out of a cube of ebony. Each offcut slide nicely next to the angled blade until I got to the forth corner. While pushing the block through the offcut at the back of the blade caught in the saw insert which twisted the block being cut catching it on the blade kicking it back right into my chest. It felt like I was shot although I never have been so I can only imagine that that's what it would feel like. The moral: figure out a way to manage smaller pieces so when you saw them you are out of the line of kickback fire and remove your offcuts no matter how innocuous they appear!

Re: sadly - more than one blade for me

Henry (Raleigh NC)

....as in it took me more than once to learn the lesson that support is required for the material being cut, unless you like kinked BS blades.

Henry

Unless...

A.J. Hamler

... you’re Sam Maloof.

Re: The Ides of March

al morgan

I once carefully made my own wood knob for a jig I was making. It was roughly a banana shaped piece of hardwood (so you could get a good handle on it when you tighten it). So after shaping it, I had to drill a hole and put in a T Nut to attached to the threaded rod ....well I had drilled the hole into the side of the banana and not into the concave surface....I kept the knob and I use it sidewise so as a reminder to double check my future drilling.

Circular saw

Jerry Gibbs

If you throw a circular saw around enough it is possible to force the base out of alignment.

Re:  well....

Henry (Raleigh NC)

Turns out that Sam M had more than a few gifts and abilities that I do not seem to possess!

I laughed at your suggestion because I have seen videos or pictures of Sam at the BS and recall thinking "Hmmm that doesn't look like that should work..."

Results do speak for themselves, so as it turns out he did seem to know what he was doing (understatement!).

Henry

Re: The Ides of March

AZ in Colorado Springs

The adage is "measure twice, cut once." (In Spanish once means 11, but that's a whole different issue.) Well, I measured three times, looking at the wrong value on the plan I wrote myself, and made a raised panel 3/4" too short. So I decided to recut and machine the lower rail 3/4" wider, and the front of the desk ended up looking much better.