Lessons Learned

Sometimes for the second time. If not the third.

I guess that means that I should have entitled this Lessons Remembered instead.

First, no matter how much you’d like to believe otherwise, a 9″ bandsaw is pretty much worthless. I am working on a cribbage board design of alder and aspen and figured that I could glue up some thicker stock and then slice my tops from it. Here’s an image of my first attempt at this:

Cribbage Board Top

That “divot” you see in the middle is a result of my equipment (and, for that matter, my inexperience) failure. When I tried to cut the other side is was much worse. (For completeness sake, the runs will be drilled into the alder and there will be an additional 1/4″ aspen border around the entire thing. The top will be held to the bottom via magnets and storage for cards and pegs will be inside.)

The second lesson remembered is that no matter how many times you measure before you cut (or how many times you sneak up on a cut to get it perfect), if you don’t think first it’s all wasted effort.

I have (had) some poplar processed down to 3/8″ to make boxes for my other puzzles, and I was very careful to measure how wide the puzzle was. After cutting a sample I checked to make sure the puzzle would fit in to it with a little bit of room. The I proceeded to cut a stack of bottoms. Then I carefully measured the height of the puzzle and cut a few sides to go with it.

That’s when I realized I have a problem. I failed to allow for the beveling of the box sides/bottom.

Normally I create boxes by mitering the ends so there’s no end grain showing, only the side grain at the top (these are uncovered boxes.) The way I cut these I have two choices: throw it all away and start over or cut the ends wider to they overlap the sides.

And, OK, so the “throw away” bit is not really what will happen. They’ll go into the cutoff bin as I’m sure I can use them later. For something.

If I butt-glue the pieces I’ll most likely hit them with the sander to round everything off and make it less glaringly apparent that I’m an idiot.

OK, I’m going back outside to pull nails and screws from the reclaimed decking material so I can make progress on my mobile benches.

Unless I managed to pinch or puncture myself not too much can go wrong there.