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A friend was recently making a rolling cart for his kitchen using a slab of butcherblock and an industrial metal cart on wheels. But he ran into trouble. Instead of measuring from center to center for the hole locations, he was measuring from the edge of the uprights – first from the inside, then from the outside. By the time he called me, the Bondo was dry. It took me about two seconds to identify the problem, and another two seconds for him to slap himself on the forehead and say, “I’m such an idiot!”
But he’s not. He was just having one of those moments that we all have…like my recently forgetting to put the thin-kerf blade on the table saw for two 3″-wide pieces from an almost 6-1/8″-wide piece of stock. (That mistake became a design opportunity.)
In 2003, we ran an article on the “16 Dumbest Woodworking Mistakes.” You can read the whole thing for an explanation of the problem – and the solution – by downloading the PDF at the end, but in short, those mistakes are:
1. You measure carefully, but everything is a bit off
2. You forget to include the kerf in your planning (Yeah, I know)
3. You cut on the wrong side of your line
4. Your mitered moulding is too short
5. You’re off by an inch
6. Your joints are gappy
7. You insert a piece wrong in a glueup
8. Two left feet (or sides)
9. A hole that is too large/too small
10. Your doors don’t fit
11. Pencil line too light to see/too dark to remove
12. You ruin a critical piece
13. Fasteners are too long (Oh yeah…did that one recently, too!)
14. The finish color is…unexpected
15. A panel glue-up doesn’t close
16. Boards slip at panel glue-up
I’ll add 17: You measure from the wrong location. (The fix is Bondo…only the cats will see it).
Oh – and 18. You promise a project will be done by XX date. (The solution is to never promise a thing. And yet I keep doing it!)
What mistakes do you make? Or perhaps better yet, what mistakes do your friends make? It might be time for an updated article…or at least company for misery.
Download: 16Dumbest
