demoralized noobie

[dicktill]

I found a book titled:

"101 keys to preventing and fixing woodworking mistakes" by Alan Bridgewater

to be helpful in recovering from all sorts of setbacks. It can help you develop a frame of mind that allows you to come up with solutions on your own.  

Charles

Hi geary126 and welcome to FOG. I am fairly new here too, and also to woodworking. Here's another book: Although the author recently got some real bad press here in another thread, I have found Sandor Nagyszalanczy's book "Fixing and Avoiding Woodworking Mistakes" to be quite helpful. Available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Avoiding-Woodworking-Mistakes-Nagyszalanczy/dp/156158097X. I'm going to try the other book suggested by Charles too.

Good luck, Dick

 

[tiralie]

Anybody who has the woodworking equivalent of "it gets better,"  I'm all ears to.

Or, what's the most common mistake you used to make (that I may be missing?)

"We all learn by our mistakes"

Norm Abram at 12:19 Festool Connect 2013.

Finally got time to watch. Such a great video.
Tim

 

[JeromeM]

Hi geary126 and welcome to FOG. I am fairly new here too, and also to woodworking. Here's another book: Although the author recently got some real bad press here in another thread, I have found Sandor Nagyszalanczy's book "Fixing and Avoiding Woodworking Mistakes" to be quite helpful. Available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Avoiding-Woodworking-Mistakes-Nagyszalanczy/dp/156158097X. I'm going to try the other book suggested by Charles too.

Good luck, Dick

It looks like a good book and the first 2 paragraphs of the introduction have very wise advice

[attachimg=#]

[attachthumb=2]

BTW the link didn't work for me
http://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Avoiding-Woodworking-Mistakes-Nagyszalanczy/dp/156158097X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373418006&sr=8-1&keywords=Fixing+and+Avoiding+Woodworking+Mistakes

 

[fdengel]

Yeah, wood does all kinds of strange things.

Can't trust to take your eyes off it for a minute...

[blink]

Wood can warp and twist, may not be square on the ends, may not be completely flat, the thickness may not be consistent across the entire piece...  so many variables...  and no two pieces of wood are exactly the same, so the behavior won't be entirely consistent between them either.

Good luck on not winding up with errors in a meaningful project involving the manipulation of wood.  The real trick is to recognize those errors early and try to deal with them before they become problems.

(And no, I have hardly perfected that skill myself yet...  I have just reached the point where I don't let it get in my way.)

 

[leakyroof]

Generally I find it better to keep schtum about any mistakes I make. Much less embarrassing all round. We use a LOT of offcuts during the winter in our wood burner

  You haven't meet POTO then, he goes out of his way to point out his mistakes in his projects [embarassed] [scared]

 

[geary126]

Thanks, guys, for the notes.

I just bought the book. 

On the cuts, I used the parallel guides but have also been clamping the work piece, the parallel guides, heck everything to eliminate shifts.

what I can't figure out is I have four panels, glued vertically, and I could have sworn that the panels were exactly the same.  And yet the tops aren't even!  And I glued them on a piece of melamine, to have a flat work surface.

The face frame is this complicated thing.  I used a mitre saw to cut the matching pairs exactly even, and yet, the lower right corner is 1/8 off the ground!

It's nuts. 

How would you guys glue up something like this, to preserve sqaure?  Assume the parts are correctly cut.

Because I was gluing, and using pocket holes, I could not figure out a way to glue, and use the face clamps, and use the screwdriver AND have a square-framing-thing, other than building the entire assembly on a flat surface.

Maybe that was a mistake.

 

[CharlesWilson]

The face frame is this complicated thing.   I used a mitre saw to cut the matching pairs exactly even, and yet, the lower right corner is 1/8 off the ground!

How flat is your ground? The only flat surface in my house that I can rely on is the granite top of my pool table and I don't use it to check my woodworking. My MFT is close to flat, and I use it as a reference for gluing. It is sometimes a good idea to make a face frame just a bit oversized, and trim it down to match the rest of the project.

 

[pugilato]

I wish I had a penny for every time that I swore that the cuts were perfect... One of the most fun and at the same time frustrating things about wood is that, sometimes, even though you did everything perfect, the final project is not. The problem can be in the medium, and you have to adapt to it. Wood is dynamic, sometimes cutting a piece releases tensions that cause a previously straight piece into a pretzel. What you cut yesterday or a week ago to a perfect dimension has now grown or shrank by a fraction.

In other words, nothing is perfect. Measure twice. Dry fit. Focus. Adjust to the unexpected. And be aware that what seemed like a huge mistake when you first built the thing will become hard to find after some time.

 

[sancho57]

You all dont want to see my scrap pile…. [eek]

Dont be discouraged. Its all part of the learning curve. Festools are a different way of doing things. Though Ive been woodworking going on 19 years, I feel like a rookie sometimes making some real beginner mistakes. It took me 3 purchases of wood to make some simple cabinet doors recently. I couldnt figure out what I was doing wrong. I finally finished them and after thinking about it I realized it was my assembly sequence that cause most of it..

In your case Ive experienced the same problem when ripping pieces using a filler piece. I was getting a slight bevel on the edge of my work. So after talking to Tom who posted that method here on FOG, I realized that it was the filler, it was a tad thinner then the stock. So based o Toms advice I used some duct tape to fill the gap and get the filler and the piece level. Also it was my technique when sawing the wood, If I put to much side to side pressure, I messed my cut up.

So what I saying it happens to all of us. But thats one good thing about this forum, You can anyone for help, advice etc and they will help you the best they can.
Festool TV has a lot of videos showing different ways to do things. Also I go a lot to Guido Henn' s Holtzwerken site, its in german but he makes it easy to understand the process he uses to build certain things.

Which reminds me I got to go cut up a bunch of scrap oak to fit in the trash can,

edited to add I wont even talk about the kerf marks in my MFT Fence, MFT V groove, and on my 1400 guide rail….

 

[peter halle]

I wont even talk about the kerf marks in my MFT Fence, MFT V groove, and on my 1400 guide rail….

 

[thumbs up] [thumbs up] [thumbs up]  [big grin]

Peter

 

[pugilato]

There's a show on the Travel channel about this guy who builds treehouses and he, who builds real beauties, cut his stringer for stairs one step short. Oops!

 

[sprior]

Ever since I got my Festool StretchX board stretcher (with optional plywood attachment) I never have any problems with any of my projects.

 

[farms100]

A couple more tips.

Once you get to a certain point, you have to ignore the cut list and cut a parts to fit your current project.

Glue up in stages so its less stressful.

small mistakes early in the process make life much more difficult, and become compounded by the later stages.

It's only wood! it does grow on trees, and is readily replaceable. Your spending a lot of time on project and your materials cost a lot less than all the festool tools you have.

 

[Runhard]

Demoralized? We all make mistakes and have scrap bins to prove it, the important thing is to learn from them. Sometimes I will cut my material a little long to account for any of my measuring errors. Like others have said, wood moves in all kinds of ways. Have a way to check your measuring/marking tools, equipment and machinery. Is your floor flat and level? My shop floor is anything but flat and level and has caused my some frustration during projects.

The bigger mistake that I see you have made was putting this topic in the Festool and Tanos Systainers thread  [laughing]  [doh]

I'm just joking with ya  [poke]

Have fun here on the FOG,

Daniel

 

[colevalleytim]

Check your Square!

I've been a finish carpenter for 15 years and teaching furniture making for about 10 years, I've learned that about 80% of the time mistakes are due to operator error/skill.  But 20% of the time it's a machine set-up problem.  You fences being out of square, out feed tables out-of-whack, etc.  The most important thing, make sure your reference tools are true.

Also, cut to fit, not to plans.

Good luck, it's your first project, it's bound to be imperfect. 

 

[sancho57]

Heres a post from Guido on another thread. Funny though he is german he describes this technique better then I could and Im american . [big grin]

BTW I deleted most of his post just left what I thought was applicable to this subj.

Offline

Location: GERMANY (DE)
Member Since: May 2011
Posts: 16

   

Re: German Homemade cheapo parallel guides for the TS saws
« Reply #13 on: June 20, 2013, 02:46 PM »
Quote
The most important part when you cut cabinet sides is „parallelism“ and not the perfect half-millimeter-precision width of the cut.

Nobody will find out that a cabinet is one millimeter to small, but can see directly when something isnt perfect parallel.

I often tell my students that they should not stick to much to the measurements in a woodworking plan, because this is a more theoretically cut list depending on certain thicknesses of sheet goods. But in real a 19 mm thick board could vary from 18,5 to 19,5 mm.

A good woodworker doesnt stick to dimensional accuracy but to accuracy of fit. Hope you understand what I mean ;-)

Best regards

Guido

 

[fritter63]

Wrong forum?

 

[fdengel]

The face frame is this complicated thing.   I used a mitre saw to cut the matching pairs exactly even, and yet, the lower right corner is 1/8 off the ground!

How flat is your ground?

That is exactly what popped into my head when I read that - the cabinet may be perfectly level and the floor might not be.

Another consideration, as it sounds like you are using a TS saw to make your cuts: are you consistently putting the guide rail on the "keeper" side of the cut?  The blade is not infinitely thin and if the guide rail is on the wrong side the cut will be short by the kerf width of the blade.

 

[geary126]

Hey, about the forum.  I was  / am building Timtool's slick sustainer.  So that's why it is here.

Peter, if you can move the thread somewhere else, that's fine with me.

Thanks / sorry.

 

[GPowers]

The difference between a "good" craftsman and  "GREAT" craftsman is his ability to hide his mistakes.