OPPS is part of woodworking.

[John Gregory]

Reading Nancy's thread about an opps she showed that resulted in a beautiful dresser, reminded me of an opps we had on a sofa table a while ago.

We made a sofa table for our daughter, it was done!! Finished and everything. When we "tested" it with our sofa, we found that we made it too short!! @#$%

What we did was to take some leg stock and put a 1/4" of Brazilian Cherry trim slightly larger than the leg stock. Then we doweled the pieces into the legs. I think the fix actually improved the piece. I don’t think we ever fessed up to our daughter about our fixed, she did comment on how much she liked the trim on the legs.

And my point??? I doubt I will ever complete a project with no mistakes along the way. Part of the challenge of woodworking is fixing our errors as we go and being proud of the finished project.

[John Marshall]

Nice looking fix. Looks like its meant to be there. :cool: See sig below for rmy other comments about mistakes. We can see all the flaws because we know where they are at. Everyone else will just think they are meant to be there.

[Jim Becker]

Let's just say that true craftmanship is the ablity to recover from unfortunate "redesign" situations with elegance...as both you and Nancy have illustrated.

[Nancy Laird]

What we did was to take some leg stock and put a 1/4" of Brazilian Cherry trim slightly larger than the leg stock. Then we doweled the pieces into the legs. I think the fix actually improved the piece. I don’t think we ever fessed up to our daughter about our fixed, she did comment on how much she liked the trim on the legs.

And my point??? I doubt I will ever complete a project with no mistakes along the way. Part of the challenge of woodworking is fixing our errors as we go and being proud of the finished project.

John, what a great recovery. Isn't it nice that Brazilian cherry goes so nicely with oak/maple/birch/etc.? To be honest, I like it better with the trim on the legs--like it was meant to be there.

Nancy

[Mike Monroe]

A few years back I made my kids a rocking horse using the Woodsmith plans. Somehow the horse ended up a little lopsided when it came time to attach the horse to the rocking frame. The fix was easy enough, I made a couple custom shims to elevate the down hill side of the horse. The glue line of the shims just didn't look right though, so I painted black hooves onto the horse. I think the hooves actually make the rocking horse look better and no one is the wiser about the shims.

-Mike

[Brian Hale]

Nice recovery John, i like it!!

Many of the things i build contain Bonus Features, something outside the original design that adds personality to the piece.

Brian :)

[Bryan Lord]

My father-in-law was a master cabinet maker. He said; "The only difference between the professional and the amateur was the ability to hide the mistakes. Nothing is ever perfect!"

Nice recovery!

[Christopher Pine]

AS much as I try to avod the mistakes that inevitably come with my woodworking projects... there has to be some acceptance that the mistakes will happen and Like the others have said the abiltiy to fix those mistakes is where the "talent or experience" come in.
I heard the saying a little different.. "The differemce between a begginer and an accomplished woodworker is how fast you make mistakes. (The advanced of course being that you are so experienced you can now make the mistakes faster and more often. :) )

Still drives me nuts though...

Chris