Thread: Shelves and mistakes

Hi all, there are threads from time to time about mistakes, this is my latest one.....

So, I'm under instruction to go ahead and build some shelves so SWMBO can sort out the material stash, I've had this timber machined ready for said shelves for quite a while now, I seem to have a recollection of posting something about reclaimed Kuari floor boards, my plan is to build 6 stand alone shelf (units) and space them apart with an intermediate floating shelf which will sit on pins pushed into a mortice that is machined on the outer faces of the legs, so that's 24 legs with mortices for long and short rails on inside face and inside edge and mortices for the floating shelves on the outside face, plus I decided I'll have them adjustable in height, so basically lots of mortices, and these are all floating tenons so there's a mortice in each end of the rails.

I decide what parts are symmetrical, whether there's a top or btm, left and right, etc, etc, then decide on which parts I start with and in some sort of order which is all about not changing the setup of the morticer or at least minimizing the number of times I change the setup. So, all morticing done and start planning the glueup, ok so do all long rails on one side blah blah, glueup goes well, glue cleaned up, a bit of thinned BLO splashed on and it's up stairs with the first one of six.......look what I have done!!!

We shuffle things around, position one of the existing shelf units (this I might have posted on before???) and the new one, all looking good, I go to place the floating shelf in and it doesn't seem to be sitting correctly, Why is it wobbly? after some examination it seems I have machined the outside face mortices in the left side leg too high, AARRRGGGGHHHHHHH.

More rearranging and repositioning the two existing shelf units (with correctly machined mortices) and placing of floating shelves gives us this
shelving.jpgcentre shelf support.jpg
and a happy partner.

Now, What to do about the dodgy mortices? Let me think on it! I examine all the other legs and sure enough I have machined all the outside face mortices in the left leg too high by about 13mm which just happens to be the width of the floating tenon used here in this position, mm aahh, I wonder if I have cut the mortice on the wrong side of the line? I go back and check I have marked out from the datum (btm of leg) and I have marked out left and rights, (it's not too unusual to just make all rights) or (lefts) nope I have left and rights, not clear at this point but How do I fix this mistake? I decide to plug the existing incorrect mortice and remachine mortices in the correct place....
wrong and right.jpgplugged.jpgnew mortice.jpg
I had made up five ladders (short sides) so this makes the remorticing a bit more difficult. Annndddd to add insult to injury I glued one leg in a ladder assembly upside down, AAAAARRGGGGHHHHHH ,at least it is only one (so far) so I have sawn off the offending leg thru the rails right at the join and will just remortice all these joins.....
separating rails and stile.jpgseparated.jpgcloseup tenon.jpg

Feel free to laugh and giggle, I don't mind, woodworking presents challenges just in the usual process of doing, but then throw in a balls up (or two), here I am trying to show all is not completely lost, not at the moment at least!


Pete