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Do you like stories about gladiators? How about stories about idiot woodworking editors?
This week I was finishing up work on the joined Chinese stool for the cover of the Autumn 2009 issue of Woodworking Magazine. I took the components to my shop at home , mostly to avoid all the scatological jokes we all were making about it. (“Hey Chris, you gonna push out that stool this week?”)
On Tuesday I had just a couple joints left to cut , easy stuff. Then I just had to do a little shaping and assembly. It was going to be no problem to get the stool ready for the shoot on Friday.
About 10 a.m., I got bit by the dumb-donkey , as we say in Arkansas.
I’d taken the wrong construction drawing home with me. That preliminary drawing showed tenons that were angled at 5Ã?°. The final construction drawing had them at 8.7Ã?°.
As soon as I assembled the stool without glue I knew I had a huge problem. I spent about an hour trying to figure a way out of the mistake. But the best course was to flush it and start over. So I headed back to the office to get some more 8/4 stock for the legs.
After talking about my mistake with the magazine’s staff, we decided to switch a few things around. As a result the Chinese stool will be featured in the Winter 2009 issue instead. For the cover of the Autumn 2009 issue we’re going to use another project I had in the can for a book I’m writing. I’ll post details on that project next week , I think you’ll like it just as much as the stool.
In the meantime, feel free to snicker openly that Chris couldn’t make a stool this week.
– Christopher Schwarz
