ALL of my mistakes have been intentional.
ALL of my mistakes have been intentional.
Trying to thin titebold II way too much with water to avoid running to the store and it all falls apart. Almost cutting off my thumb on the table saw. There is so many I am overwhelmed at this point. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger I guess.
Well, the mistake was - firstly - creating the dado on the wrong side of the line. The insert was to correct this. Frankly, I was not concerned about the cross grain direction as the area was too small to create movement. And it would be hidden inside the cabinet.
This was an apothecary chest I built in June/July this year.
Then I made a bigger blunder. All the horizontal dados - about 20 of them - were a millimetre (or less) out, but the combination of errors accumulated to make the result look shoddy.
Here is my blog post ...
The previous weekend had seen the completion of the drawer blades. There were 24 to make - 6 rows with curved faces.
The walnut was flushed ...
... and then were slid along the dados in the carcase ...
At this point the build came to a grinding halt. The drawer blades ... dados ... were not coplanar ... level ... damn! We are talking a millimetre here-and-there, but the combination looked terrible.
What went wrong?
It was the marking out. I ignored a very simple rule - I failed to use a common reference point. This should have been done with the dividers installed - with the inside base of the carcase as the reference - and not marked outside the carcase.
I could have repaired the dividers, but I decided to scrap the lot and make new ones, and cut new dados.
The carcase was repaired. The dados were filled in ...
Flushed ...
None of this would be visible when the new dados were made.
Then I did what I should have done when marking the positions of the dados - made a series of MDF templates, which could be used as left- and right hands ...
These were used for all dividers, with a line scored by a sharp knife ...
The power router and guide were used again. Tempting fate, perhaps, but I was convinced that the fault lay with the marking out, and not the cutting of the dados. I was tempted to just do the dados by hand - I do feel more in control with hand tools - but 40 needed to be done in all, and in hard merbau, before the weekend was over.
I am not going to bore you with pictures of the dados being made. It was the exact same as before ... except this time I did not cut on the wrong side of the line with one!
Here is the rear of the chest with the drawer blades inserted ...
And a couple of the front ...
Well, live and learn ....
Regards from Perth
Derek
Very nice Derek. Really nice.
I'm not sure if this is applicable for you but I went through the same learning process you did (on much less formidable projects) and then it morphed into using one piece of MDF or plywood. First I cut it to length for the long setup. After completing cutting dado or mounting sliders, whatever the case, I then cut the MDF or plywood to the next shorter setup and repeated the process as many times as necessary.
Arrrggghhhh! Reading through this is bringing back some unpleasant and sometimes painful memories.
Rustic? Well, no. That was not my intention!
Ok so my great mistake is trying to get ultra precise measurements with a tape measure by holding the tape on the one inch mark. You can probably guess how this ends... multiple pieces have ended up one inch out,wierd.
Well at least they were precisely off Mike.
The other day I was cutting a piece on the table saw, and in some non-thinking way I began to pull it backwards past the blade with the saw blade still moving.
The piece hit the fence on the other side of the back alley, with a huge gouge in the glued up and almost finished face piece.
Only one of my latest.
Young enough to remember doing it;
Old enough to wish I could do it again.