Thursday, October 5, 2017

Opps! Mistakes

Sometimes it is refreshing to see that people are human.  We make mistakes, errors and our lives are not as perfect or horrible as we post online.  I make mistakes, and want to share a couple of mistakes I recently made and what I learned from them.
I am working on a child's rocking chair.  Everything was ready to be assembled and doweled into place.  I laid out the first assemblies and glued and clamped them together.  After I had doweled them, I realized that I had switched the two back legs.  With them glued and doweled, I would not be able to take them apart without cutting them.  The good thing is that I only lost two parts and with the dowels in place, the holes were already filled.  It was refreshing to be able to fix a mistake.

I was recently cutting out ornaments to see if I want to make them for next year ornament.  When I cut out thin pieces I stack them so I can cut multiple out at a time.  I also recently ran out of my first big purchase of scroll saw blades.  This meant that I started using the new blades that I had purchased.  These were crown tooth which means that I cut on both the down and up cuts.  They are to give a cleaner finish cut and when they dull, I can flip them over and use the other side.  I am learning that these are good for some applications but not all.  I was cutting the center section of the ornament and about halfway complete when the parts exploded.  I lost for ornaments.  I concluded that I did not have sufficient pressure holding the pieces down so as the blade was cutting upward, it hit a soft spot and broke the piece.  This may have been avoided if I had used a skip tooth blade.



I recently purchased some simple compound patterns.  I have always wanted to try these but did not want to invest in the books at this time.  I figured the patterns were simple enough that I should not have any trouble cutting them.  I did not have the recommended thickness of wood for the pattern.  I was too anxious to wait to pick up some board I reduced the patterns down to the 1 1/4" material I had.  This made the parts really thin and small.  They came out ok.  My blade warped during the cut and the the piece was not as consistent as I had hoped.  After some investigating, I discovered a couple of things.  First was that the blade I was using (crown tooth) does not clear the dust away very well on thick materials.  This would cause a build up in heat causing the blade to warp.  The consistency was cause because I did not clamp the cut parts to keep them in the same place as I was cutting.  I was confident that I could make these cuts easily but there were some things that I needed to learn first.  With a little bit of information I am able to get back to cutting.
Mistakes happen and the best thing that I can do is learn from them.  I hope to continue to post my mistakes so that others can also learn from them.

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