Making Mistakes
They are inevitable. No matter how careful and diligent you are, you will make a mistake.
What's your reaction when you make a mistake? Oops? It wasn't my fault? It was an accident?
We all know you didn't do it on purpose, if you did it wouldn't be a mistake. But there's one thing that is undoubtedly true, it was your fault. You made the mistake. You were holding the hammer when you hit your thumb instead of the nail, not someone else. The sooner you own up to it the quicker you can get around to fixing it.
I am working on a pair of white oak counter tops. These tops are the largest glue ups I've ever done, so I wanted insurance to keep the panels flat as I knew my boards were not completely flat and would shift when I clamped them together. I also knew I couldn't run them through my planer for a quick fix. I would have to hand plane and sand the entire 75"x22" surface which would take me a long time and a lot of sweat.
Initially, my insurance policy was going to be dowels. I have an American Eagle Wide Capacity Self-Centering Doweling Jig. It works great for joinery and I used it for every joint on the Walnut Entry Bench, including for the top where I used the dowels to ensure alignment in the panel glue up. The process is simple. Clamp the boards together and make a mark on the seam where you want a dowel to go. Take the boards apart and use the jig to drill holes in both boards so they line up perfectly. The jig self centers, so as long as the two boards are the same thickness you are good to go. But what if your boards aren't the exact same thickness? That was my first mistake.
I didn't realize it at first but two of my boards were thinner than the others. Not by much, but by enough that I’d have a stair stepping top and I’d have to remove 1/16 - 1/8 of an inch across the top to level it out.
Two mistakes here, dowel holes in the left. Two slots in the right.
Unfortunately, I had already drilled holes in one board when I realized it's mate was thicker and my doweling process would not work.
At this point I had two options. Since the boards were not yet glued up I could individually run them through the planer to bring them all to an even thickness, but I would lose an eighth of an inch and I wanted to preserve as much material so the thickness of the counters matched the already done floating shelves.
Second option, I needed to reference the top of the board to make a hole of some sort the same length down on each board so they would line up across the top. The conventional way to do this would be to cut slots with a biscuit jointer or drill mortises with a Festool Domino, but I don’t have either of those tools (someday the Domino will be mine, when I have a spare $1,000 burning a hole in my pocket.) I had to come up with a different option. I decided to use a rabbeting bit in a router and cut small slots similar to what a biscuit would make. Then I make myself some “biscuits” out of some scrap wood.
It was an easy solution and simple process. I used the same dowel lines I had marked out and made a somewhat similar length slot for each marking. The length didn’t really matter as long as they were the same on both sides of a slot, but if the “biscuit” wasn’t a perfect fit it didn’t matter because these were just for alignment to keep the boards all at the same level on the top, they weren’t for strength as the glue would do all the holding.
A nice and clean mistake. I suppressed the urge to move forward and try to blend the gouge in because that would never look right. Good thing the board has two sides and the bottom will never be seen.
Partway through my slot cutting process I ran into my third mistake, I got too comfortable. I was moving along fast, cutting slot after slot. After completing a slot I picked up the router to slide over to the next one and took my eye off the router as I shifted to find the next mark, and I let the router dip slightly and it bit into the top of the board.
I turned off the router, said some choice words, stared angrily at my mistake for 18 seconds, expressed gratitude that I didn’t hurt myself, and flipped the board over to start again. I didn’t have time to dwell on my mistake and the solution was simple so I moved forward with a lesson learned. Slow down. Rushing is sloppy. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Take your time, be diligent, and you’ll be faster in the long run. There was no reason to hurry and all it got me was extra work to fix my mistake.
In the end it all worked out and came together nicely. This was one of two counters, so I am hopeful the next one will go smooth and easy, but if I make a mistake, I know what to do. Take ownership, find a solution, and fix it.