Thread: Best Stuff Up Ever! Entertainment Unit

Originally Posted by Lumber Bunker

......Doesn't any one have any other "good" stuff ups to share? or am I the only one that doesn't realize there I made a mistake until the VERY END! I need to feel like i'm not the only one

Have you got time to read a very long list?

After umpteen years I'm still capable of the most fundamental errors, & my latest had me kicking everything in sight, too. Been labouring away on a writing desk, a long promised to myself, all-out special, with just enough very fancy Qld Maple to do the job. It's a fall-front, with two drawers between the lopers, and I decided to construct it with sliding dovetails. The hardest part of the job is the layout. I wanted to cut the housings from the back, so they don't go through to the front. This means setting out the line for the router guide on opposite sides of the centre line for the housings. I was extra careful & checked everything at least twice. The desk top & drawer runners had to be glued-up before sliding the whole assembly into place, so no room for more than a fraction of a mm error. All went into place well, checked for square around dawers, all pretty good, slip the bottom into place & didn't bother checking for square as the top was already ok - success, thought I.

The other day, I started doing the doors for the bottom cupboard, & found the housing for the cupboard bottom is exactly 5mm different side to side. The fact that it is exactly 5mm & perfectly square tells me I have made a blunder I frequently make - when I have to add 2.5 or 7.5 mm to a measurement, my stupid eye often flicks to the wrong side of the 5mm mark between the 10mm divisions. And since the router guide had to be exactly 162.5mm from the centre line, I think I know what's happened. Mostly, I pick up the error by carefully matching opposite pieces, but because the layout lines had to be on opposite sides of the housing, I guess I missed this one.

I considered living with it & making a pair of out-of-square doors, but only briefly! Can't live with a stuff-up like that, so the only option is to cut the bottom off & fit a new one - luckily, the bottom is Hoop pine, since it's out of sight, & I have plenty of that. I will measure twice, & twice again, this time!