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.