Save of the week thread

[labr@]

Most of us seem to have moments during our woodworking time when things go wrong, and while sometimes these result in an addition to the scrap bin, there are many occasions where a bit more work or some creative thinking saves the day.


The idea for this thread came from a save on a box I am working on. With the hidden hinged lid designs I've been making lately I originally used 2 small dowels to locate each side with the body. This was only partially successful and I now use 4 per side. This particular box body was being made out of redgum with a patch of porosity on 1 side so it was important to cut that piece out as part of the interior hollow. The dowel holes were drilled using a template before cutting out the interior and directions were marked on both template and piece to ensure it was aligned correctly. Somehow I managed to put the piece in place upside down despite all this. The sides had already been drilled so my first thought was that the piece was no longer usable. Then I realised that the hole positions were laid out in a rectangle that was centralised on the piece and if the drilling was accurate enough then the piece should still work if inverted. Tried it and the sides fitted fine. The action that saved it was the symmetrical drilling that was done before the error was made.


The ironic thing is that I would normally consider dowel location as better if it only allows assembly 1 way (a product of working in manufacturing industry) but in this case that would have resulted in a scrap piece.

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So if you have any saves in future, whether they come from op error or other things such as equipment failure, water/pest damage, random applications of Murphy's law etc, feel to free to post them here. Sometimes there will be a lesson learnt but it's also a chance to show off your creative thinking and determination in problem solving.

[IanW]

There have been far too many times in my career that a momentary lapse has resulted in a similar stuff-up. Unfortunately, being able to recover has rarely been as simple as your recovery, Bob!

My mistakes normally result in a piece of wood being re-purposed to form part of something smaller... :C

Or rarely, some creative thinking to incorporate the mistake into a 'design feature'. An example of the latter was when I was making a model of a plough plane a while ago. I was at the point of cutting out the stock to fit the skate, a mildly tricky operation requiring several well-places saw cuts in a small piece. I marked out carefully & set up the saw for the first cut, then decided to leave it 'til after lunch so I could finish it all in a smooth sequence. Of course, you know what's coming, I came back from lunch, picked up the piece & ran it through the saw on the wrong side!

And of course, it was the last piece of seasoned western rosewood of suitable size I had & I particularly wanted to use it to 'match' the rosewood original. I could have patched it with a matching piece but decided that would be visible on close scrutiny, so the best bet was to fill it with a contrasting wood & make it look like I meant it:

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Although the particular plane I was using as a model is relatively plain, it was typical of this maker to add various decorations like contrasting wood for the fence nuts and ivory accents on the tips of the fence screws, etc., so my addition is in the spirit if not an exact detail:

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And I swear the speed stripe makes it cut faster.....
:;
Cheers,