Wood working NEW Weekly Rotating Topic Discussion Thread. First up: What kind of woodworking screw-ups have you made recently and how did you solve them? Made a mistake you can't solve? Tell us and we'll try to help!

NEW Weekly Rotating Topic Discussion Thread. First up: What kind of woodworking screw-ups have you made recently and how did you solve them? Made a mistake you can't solve? Tell us and we'll try to help!
Cupboard for my daughter.
Douglas fir end grain floor pre stain
First "real" project to come out of my little shop. Address plaque for the house. Numbers in my favorite font (Neutra via DesignWithinReach) and some scrap mahogany from a local building supply recycler. Now on to something more substantial!
My first castle joint. Not very pretty but should be good enough to subjugate the peasantry.
Simple Sanding Cabinet
Built my first workbench with all hand tools and am immensely proud of it!
Installed an inlay into existing hardwood, also added a new room with a Brazilian cherry boarder.
Some built in lockers we made
Just finished my first cutting board. A lot of mistakes were made but overall I’m quite happy. Especially considering I don’t have a planer or a jointer. Walnut and maple. Really happy with the sapwood stripe down the middle.
Finished this doll house shelf for my daughter. She loves it.
My thor mallet
Olive wood in salute the troops kit as a going away gift for the best veteran neighbor I've ever met
Homemade Nixie Tube Clock with a Custom Solid Walnut Base. Any Suggestions for Finishing?
Intro and obligatory shop pic. Behold..."The Tiny Shop...home of The Madcap Woodwright."
First woodworking project... be gentle!
Cherry and Walnut cigarette box.
3/4 of a sheet of Baltic birch plywood reshaped. My first piece of furniture.
Roubo completed (2016).....now scarred and "broken in"
I just completed my set of exotic hardwood ring boxes! I handmade the pillows with a little bit of help from you guys, thank you!
I made a sign for my workshop
A light fixture I made, my first splines, pretty proud of it but I wish I'd made the grain continuous.. didn't think about it at the time.
Rearranged my shop, put up a tool wall, new clamp racks and some drill and nailer storage. Album in comments!
Walnut and cherry Cutting Board with a polar wood base. Cut into the shape of the Pokémon Ditto and made for my dad. I have a wood shop class and I’m very proud of this.
Matching mirror

NEW Weekly Rotating Topic Discussion Thread. First up: What kind of woodworking screw-ups have you made recently and how did you solve them? Made a mistake you can't solve? Tell us and we'll try to help!

Posted: 06 Mar 2020 03:39 AM PST

Recently a member of the community mentioned that we should have a weekly thread about mistakes where people post their screw ups so others can learn from them. They felt intimidated by the single, finished glamour shots that populate the front page of the sub lately. Myself and the other mods discussed it and determined that, over time, there might not be enough content there for a weekly stickied thread on mistakes alone but there certainly might be if we changed the topic every week. Many of us who have been around the sub a while remember it being a fantastic source of learning and inspiration for new woodworkers where everyone from professionals to wood newbs would chime in and discuss questions, techniques, etc. Big, in-depth build logs used to be more frequent and helpful as well. We'd love to see the sub return more to that ethos and thought a weekly discussion thread, each with a specific topic, led by different moderators, might be a step towards that. So this, in the hopes that it generates more conversation and community engagement, is our first weekly discussion thread and I'm titling it "Well S@#t, Now What!?"...Just kidding, but it is about mistakes and the different ways we all either scrap it, fix it, or make it a feature.

To set the ball rolling, I thought I'd share two of my mistakes from the same project and show how I fixed them. Then it would be great if others showed off their mistakes and their fixes, the more creative the better! Got a current mistake that you're stumped on? Show or tell us and we'll try to provide feedback! Know a way to fix that error? Chime in! I'll be as involved as I can but would really like this to be a community powered discussion as well.

So here's two of my many, many goof-ups. In 2016, I was working on a re-creation of a board game I liked as a teenager, Cathedral: Game Of The Medieval City. The playing board is simply a square mitered frame with a panel grooved into it. Mitered corners that are just glued don't tend to be very strong so I wanted to strengthen them with hidden splines. The trouble came when I forgot the splines were in there and cut a deep chamfer around the perimeter of the frame. Too deep, in fact, and I revealed the splines underneath. That might not have been so noticeable if I hadn't used some maple splines under the mahogany frame! At first I thought I might dye them for a color match but then settled on a discarded design idea I'd had earlier, capstones. I cut a twelve inch mahogany scrap and then profiled one side to perfectly fit over the profile of the chamfered frame. I then cut that into four mitered pieces and glued it together as its own little frame. When dry, I cut off each corner and was able to glue it over the corners of the bigger frame. Viola! mischief managed...or at least covered and it ended up looking more, uh castle-y?

The second mistake I made was in carving the title into the panel that fit into the lid. That too was a simple mitered box with a veneered panel in a groove. I'd spent plenty of time gluing up the panel, cutting my own veneer, veneering it, then having the rules laser etched into the bottom side, so of course this was a perfect time to screw things up. I'd made plenty of practice runs carving the logo with my CNC but they had been on stock that was slightly bigger than the work piece ended up being. I conveniently forgot that and carved away. It wasn't until I was done that I noticed that the logo wasn't centered as it was supposed to be and it was obvious. I ranted and raved for a while, toying with the idea of scrapping it and starting over but that had been a fair bit of work. After a day or two of sleeping on it, I realized that I didn't have to center it. I just had to add a little "weight" to the other side to make it look like it was centered. Thankfully, I have artistic friends. I showed one what I'd done and how I needed to add more visual weight to one side to balance it out. He designed a few flourishes for me and I chose the one I liked. As soon as I carved it, I knew I'd not only solved the problem of centering the logo but added a little something to it that made it much better than my original plan.

Maybe it's just the pride of overcoming a problem with a little ingenuity but I often find that the design changes I'm forced to make due to mistakes end up being nicer than the original plan was.

So we all make mistakes, all of us. It's part of the process. So let's hear about your screw-ups and the ingenious way you fixed them or bring us your unsolvable mistake and we'll discuss it!

submitted by /u/Squeazle
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Cupboard for my daughter.

Posted: 06 Mar 2020 01:04 PM PST