Sometimes ya gotta laugh.....

[Steve Ash]

You sometimes have to laugh at yourself and not take yourself too seriously.

I have a meager clamp supply by most woodworkers standards. I am currently gluing up the doors for my son's kitchen cabinets. I glue up 4 and run out of clamps.....wait for them to dry and do another 4. So this morning I am going to take last nights doors out of the clamps and do 4 more....when I released the clamps on the first door I forgot to glue one of the rails when I put it in the clamps...you'd think a guy would have noticed glue squeeze out when clamping last night, right?

My wife told me yesterday I should buy more clamps...I guess if I had more clamps...I'd just have more gluing mistakes.

Anyone else want to come clean on some of their shop blunders? I'd hate to feel all alone here:D .

[Josh Goldsmith]

I do that alot. Get so caught up in what i am doing i forget what i am doing!:D Just the other day i did this. I have a planer and jointer that are wired for 220 and share one outlet that i have to unplug one to plug in another one. Well the other day i unplug the planer and without paying attention i pluged it back in thinking it was the jointer plug. Well i was trying to start the jointer but it wouldn't start. I started to get upset thinking my motor died and i just bought it a few months ago. Well about 30 mins of me checking the motor and so on before i realized that i never pluged it in. I felt soooooooooo stupid. So your not alone!:D

[James Boster]

Let's just say you are not alone by a long shot. I would tell my blunder but theres so many I would probably mess that up too!:D

[Steve Clardy]

I'm kinda like James. Mine would be a long list.

Like making a 47" wide pantry in a set of kitchens cabinets.
Had them delivered, ready to install. Pantry should have been 18" wide. Never did figure out in my paperwork how I did that.
That cabinet got put in my wifes sewing room, so it wasn't a total disaster.

[Steve Ash]

I would tell my blunder but theres so many I would probably mess that up too!:D

Aw, go ahead James...confession is good for the soul.:D

[John Timberlake]

The important thing is that your wife said to buy more clamps. Do it!

I once put together a blanket chest and forgot to put the bottom into the dados. Had to cut the bottom in half with a stile to make it fit. Oh well.

[Steve Braman]

I was laminating the sterm and stern on my stripper (strip built kayak) a few weeks ago and was distracted halfway through the job. The stem went together great before intermission but I managed to glue all the strips together while not putting any glue between them and the hull. You can only laugh and add another day to the schedule.

[Ron Blaise]

You sometimes have to laugh at yourself and not take yourself too seriously.

I have a meager clamp supply by most woodworkers standards. I am currently gluing up the doors for my son's kitchen cabinets. I glue up 4 and run out of clamps.....wait for them to dry and do another 4. So this morning I am going to take last nights doors out of the clamps and do 4 more....when I released the clamps on the first door I forgot to glue one of the rails when I put it in the clamps...you'd think a guy would have noticed glue squeeze out when clamping last night, right?

My wife told me yesterday I should buy more clamps...I guess if I had more clamps...I'd just have more gluing mistakes.

Anyone else want to come clean on some of their shop blunders? I'd hate to feel all alone here:D .

Nobody ever has enough clamps! Every time I go to an orange lunch box
I always seem to come away with more clamps and I still run out:mad: As for mistakes,,,, well I don't recall ever making one :D

[CPeter James]

I can't find small tools, so I have about 5 of everything. It helps, but is not the answer. Socket wrench sets, I have about 10 of. Screwdriver sets the same and still the other day spent 15 minutes looking for a #2 Phillips. Tape measures, I keep 3 Stanley 16' and 2 12' in the shop and can usually put my hand one at least one. The big things like clamps I do better as I have a rack and I can tell if there is one missing. I get distracted and then forget what I was doing. Old age, I guess.

CPeter

[Mike Cutler]

You gotta' nuff clamps to do 4 doors at once, Ahh.... you were lucky.:p

I thought I would be really slick one day and glue two cabinet doors at the same time in a single clamping setup.
Both doors were to sit side by side and I would glue them up and consolidate clamps. Suffice to say at the end, instead of having two seperate doors, I had on really wide one:eek: I somehow, or the other, put glue on the outside of one rail in my haste and glued both doors together. :(
Will anyone admit to gluing a door to a clamping frame, or the workbench?:D

[Brad Noble]

Will anyone admit to gluing a door to a clamping frame, or the workbench?:D

NO!!! At least I won't. ;)

Brad

[Mike Zozakiewicz]

Last set of boxes I was working on I ran the dado for the bottom all the way through on all of the sides, then I did the box joints and the result was a gap in the corners where the bottom will show through.

As soon as I get in a hurry I often make a dumb mistake like that. So, it always ends up taking longer, when you have the least amount of time!

Oh well, if you never make mistakes, probably means you aren't accomplishing anything either.

Mike

[Julio Navarro]

After cutting a length of pine for a rail and spending about 20 or so minutes planing down to 1/2" when I go to put it on the assembly , come to find out I had planed the waste half of the pine...it was too short!

[Gary Stallings]

Steve........you ever glue a clamp to your project??............It can be done.

[john whittaker]

OH STEVE....great timing on this one.

I made a BIG blunder last night....The wound is still too raw to be able to discuss it now...I'm at work and don't want them to see me cry.

But most of my blunders happen during glue-ups. I'm convinced it's the rushing around thing. I would be much better off going to a long setting glue and taking my time, thus avoiding the CCCC's (cavalcade of crazy clamping calamities)

[Jim Hager]

I do lots of stuff that is wrong, sometimes I realize it early and sometimes I'll do a big blunder only to discover it later.

The worst one I did lately was on a full house set of raised panel oak doors. I had been having some shaper troubles and changed out the panel raiser and then immediately began cutting panels without remembering to readjust the machine for the cutter. After power feeding almost all of the 40+ panels through the shaper I noticed that I was only leaving about a 3/16 thick edge instead of the 1/4" edge I should have been doing.:eek: OH CRAP!!! I guess I had too many other things on my mind.

I saved it all by using foam tape around each panel to make it fit the styles and rails that were all already cut and ready to go. They left the shop good and tight but probably took an extra 4 hours to complete.:o

[Andy Hoyt]

My most recent woodworking related mistake was to admit (right here in this very sentence) that I never ever make woodworking mistakes.:D

[Rich Torino]

Clamps??? you guys use clamps???

I don't know Steve, this sounds like a case of premedidated un gluing.
Some guys will do anything to convince their wives they need to buy more stuff....

[Vaughn McMillan]

...Anyone else want to come clean on some of their shop blunders? I'd hate to feel all alone here:D ...
What are these blunders of which you speak? Never seen any around these parts! :rolleyes:

OK, now that the lying part is over with, I'll admit that part of the reason I've built mostly cutting boards and trinket boxes is one key point: no dimensions are critical. I can cut off any mistakes and end up with a smaller finished product. If I had to build something to an exact size I'd be hung like a horse thief in Laredo. My list of blunders (er...design modifications) reads like a "How NOT To..." book. :p

- Vaughn

[Larry Norton]

Switched on the HVLP turbine to spray a cabinet. Picked up the gun and pulled the trigger. A little bit of paint dribbled out. Just knew I was going to have to call Compliant Spray Systems to find out what to do. Walked back over to turn the turbine off. The turbine wasn't running. The Shop Vac was!!:)

[John Miliunas]

Hah! I start laughing at myself 'bout every time I walk into the shop! :D Seems the one thing I can't seem to get right on a real regular basis is, getting a bunch of sawdust wooooosh'd back in my face. Can't be the cyclone's fault, 'cuz I turned it "on". Think it might be due to the fact that I regularly forget to slide the blast gate open???:rolleyes: :o :D :cool:

[Rob Will]

OK, so you are working all alone in the shop and do something really goofy.........do you instinctively look around to see if anyone is looking?

:o :o :o :o

Rob

[Bill Fields]

The biggest mistake I COULD make would be to try to remember and chronicle all the mistakes I've made!

Bill

[Joe Chritz]

A wise man once told me....

Admit nothing, deny everything and demand proof.

Generally the only one who sees my blunders is my shop buddy and the Rottweiler ain't talking.

Joe

[Dave Fifield]

I cut some drawer fronts too small out of a nice piece of cherry once. Swore at myself, got another board, then proceeded to do EXACTLY the same thing with the new cherry! I couldn't believe it....I was so exhasperated that gave up WWing for a couple of weeks and came back afresh. I still have the scrap drawer fronts - will probably use them as sides on some boxes.....

Dave F.

[Norman Hitt]

One of my "Favorite Tricks", is to rough cut a nice panel and then when I go to the TS and trim off the rough side & to final dimension, (taking pains to be sure the face side is up for tearout protection), then discovering afterward that I layed it down wrong on the saw and just retrimmed the "GOOD EDGE", instead of the rough cut edge.:o
Note: This particular trick was a major contributor to the development of my Signature line.:D

[Tom Drake]

I can relate to that Steve. I've done the same thing a few times.

[George Sanders]

I built a tv armoir with raised panel pocket doors. When I tried to check the fit on the pocket doors they were 1/4 inch too wide for the cabinet. I checked my math and never did find the error. I had to cut 1/16th off each side of each door to fix it. Hey now it's a custom cabinet!

[Michael Gibbons]

What are these blunders of which you speak? Never seen any around these parts! :rolleyes:


- Vaughn


Vaughn, In your case it might be a decorating blunder with the carpeting.



Mike

[Matt King]

Does breaking a piece of wood for the fire barrel and having a section of it fly up and hit you in the face, leaving a nice crescent shaped gouge right above the bridge of your nose count as a blunder?????:eek:

Sure seemed like it to me, especially with the 12 year old daughter struggling to ask me if I was OK though her fits of laughter.... :rolleyes:

~sigh~

Matt

[Larry Norton]

Been there, done that, Norman! More than once! Actually, many times.

[David Fried]

Hmmm... most of my favorite mistakes have been well covered here!
I do tend to cut the wrong end of boards or mill the wrong side. Lots of pencil marks have helped but as soon as I relax and don't mark things 20 times - wham-o!

I also have a real tendency to turn tenons too small on the lathe. I try sneaking up on perfection - just a little more, just a little more, and then lose my head and go too far! Same story with the drum sander - but I'm getting better. I think.

The one that never fails is tossing out a small scrap early in a project because it's too small to ever be of any use only to really need a piece just that size later on!

My most recent blunder was measuring from the TS fence to the wrong side of the dado blade. Perfect cut on the wrong side of the line! Aaarrrggghhh!!!

Dave Fried

[Kelly C. Hanna]

My biggest one involved the Murphy desk shown on my website. I made one for a client who runs a law firm in the uptown Dallas area. I measured the front of the opening, then he asked me a question and I completely forgot to measure the back of the opening.

Yep, the cabinet was too wide by 1/4" due to the fine framing that preceeded me. Had to take it back to the shop and cut it down. Talk about embarrasing in front of a client.

[Byron Trantham]

A couple years ago we put in an Anderson storm door. I cut the stiles too short! With charge card in hand, I called Anderson to get new ones. To my surprise the guy said we guarantee installation and sent me new ones for free! They cam in and, you guessed it, I did it again!:mad: Charge card in hand I called back and the same guy answered and recognized my voice and said, "You did it again, didn't you?" Oh so embarrassed! Yea, he sent me two more stiles. When they came in, I had my wife to the measuring! She got it right the first time!:rolleyes:

Recently my brother-in-law drilled a 35mm hole on the front of his door!:rolleyes:

[Scott Parks]

I have a meager clamp supply by most woodworkers standards. I am currently gluing up the doors for my son's kitchen cabinets. I glue up 4 and run out of clamps.....wait for them to dry and do another 4. So this morning I am going to take last nights doors out of the clamps and do 4 more....

I know you're asking for blunders here, but... On a serious side, try pinning your tenons from the backside with 5/8" brads. By the time you get the fourth door done, you should be able to take the clamps off the first one, and continue. So on, and so forth.... That is if you're like me and spend at least 15-20 minutes per door...

[Steve Ash]

I know you're asking for blunders here, but... On a serious side, try pinning your tenons from the backside with 5/8" brads. By the time you get the fourth door done, you should be able to take the clamps off the first one, and continue. So on, and so forth.... That is if you're like me and spend at least 15-20 minutes per door...

But how could I convince my wife I need more clamps:D someone mentioned an ulterior motive...

Good ones guys, I've enjoyed reading them....shows we can all laugh at ourselves from time to time.:)

[John Lucas]

Years ago, I was making an armoire for my daughter and had one task left, to ad molding around the top. I carefully measured and went out a got a piece and came back and proceeded to cut the top piece short. So back to the lumber yard and I got another piece and came back and cut that one short. This time, the yard was about to close so I raced back and bought another piece...and can you believe it, short again. And no stores open...so I cut the piece in two and left the gap in the middle...about 1 1/2" wide, not something for wood putty. I found a piece of pine and carve a pineapple and fit that in. To this day, daughter gets compliments on the armoire and particularly the pineapple. Go figure. SO when I visit museums and see pineapples or acorns in the molding, I now know why.

[Kelly C. Hanna]

I got it easy...since I work with wood for a living, all I have to do is say I need _____ and I go get it. Course I also gotta pay the bills, so I do have limits [dangit].

[John Bailey]

I was laminating the sterm and stern on my stripper (strip built kayak) a few weeks ago and was distracted halfway through the job. The stem went together great before intermission but I managed to glue all the strips together while not putting any glue between them and the hull. You can only laugh and add another day to the schedule.

Steve,

Did I miss the pictures of your kayak project. If you posted any, where are they. I'm always interested in kayaks.

John

[Lars Olsson]

Yesterday while making four drawers for a set of built in closet cabinets I cut all the parts, double checked the measurements and everything. Put on the slides and tried to make them fit, 1/16" too big. Time to take them apart and put them back together. At least they are only cheap quick melamine, screws, no glue!!:confused: