Yesterday (11-Jan-22), I laid out and cut four mortises for a stool project I'm working on. This morning, the moment I woke up, I realized I had done something wrong. Funny how that can happen - I wasn't dreaming about it or even thinking about it. All of the sudden I realized the mistake. I'll admit that I was in a bit of a just-woke-up fog, but when my wife asked me if the error was recoverable, I said "no", thinking I'd have to remake the parts.
But I went for a long walk that morning and let it slosh around for a while in my head. I wasn't really thinking about it during the walk. But at some point I came up with a solution.
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| The mortise was supposed to be angled, like the sliding bevel, but I made the end walls 90° like the combo square |
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| The solution was to angle the end walls, going past my mortise end layout line (note how the mortise goes beyond the right-most layout line) |
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| On the opposite side, I want past the layout line on the other end of the mortise |
The outer layout lines in the above pics show the extents of the rail that is to fit into the mortise. If I kept to those lines, the end shoulders would have to be different. Fortunately I hadn't cut the tenons yet, and I still wanted the tenons to have equal shoulders. The solution was to cut the tenon with equal edge shoulders (a little smaller than originally planned). This resulted in the rail being about 1/16" higher on the part shown above than where I wanted it. I just had to make sure to adjust the mortise and tenon on the other side the same way.
And here's the moral of the story. We all make mistakes in our work. Don't panic! Step back, think about the problem, evaluate options. A solution just might present itself. It might force you to make small changes in your design, but ask yourself if that really matters. It might not.
And by the way, this project has a lot of angles and I made another boo boo in these same mortises. But I thought about it and came up with a solution that I believe won't affect the function of the joint.
Glad you were able to save it. Amazing how are mind works. Don't think about it and you actually will in possibly a better way.
ReplyDeleteI know - I guess the unconscious mind was juggling it around and I didn't even know it.
DeleteI made the same mistake three times during a build. It was a very simple mistake, but common. These things happen. We lost concentration or we get over confident either way it happens. The solution will always come to you, it comes to me after stepping back for several hours.
ReplyDeleteAt least I've gotten past throwing things when I mess up. That might have been my modus operandi a few years back (ha). Maybe that's a good thing about mellowing with age.
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