One example was Edison’s attempt to make a telegraphic-telephonic repeating and recording device, it didn’t work, but when somebody gave it a spin it sounded like human speech. Edison started from that chance observation and developed the phonograph.

It can also happen in the shop.

In my latest project posting “I had Twins!” I turned would could have been a disaster into a chance to get really creative.

Take a look at this picture – especially the shot of the back of the clock:

Look at the sides of the door. You’ll see the back door, which is quilted maple, a thin sliver of Paduak, and then more maple. It’s a nice visual interest; otherwise, it would have been just plain maple on maple.

It wasn’t intended that way! Here’s the back-story:

I had to rabbet the sides of the clock to recive the back door. I did this on my router table. It was a 1/4” rabbett on a 1/2” stock. Of course, I set up and tested the rabbett on a scrap piece of stock. Worked fine. Right depth and so on. My mistake was, I did the whole depth in one pass on the real pieces. I should have done an 1/8” at a time, instead of the whole 1/4”. What ended up happening was, the bit crept out of the collet on the router, cutting deeper than I wanted. Ugh!

The only option was to throw out 4 nice pieces of maple ( I was making two clocks), or get creative.

What I ended up doing was re-rabbetting all four pieces to an equal depth, and then gluing in a strip of paduak to bring the rabbett back up to the originally intended 1/4” depth. The result was a more visually appealing ( I think) back of these pieces.

Obviously, sometimes mistakes can’t be fixed; if you needed a piece to be 8” long, and you cut it to 7”, you probably can’t just glue it back on and hope no one will notice. Some mistakes are final.

But other times, if you get creative, you can turn mistakes into a positive.

I’ve had a stamp made up of it, so I can “sign” my projects. I think it will look professional. I did want to use Maker's Marks, but this guy is impossible to get a hold of; I’m guessing he is incredibly busy.

Anyhow, I think it came out well.

I’ve also done more planning on what to make and sell. I have a small shop, so making huge furniture is not a viable option. Looks like clocks and urns for me – both of which have terrific mark up, are easy to store and ship.

I’ve made up several plans in sketchup, so once I do get a website going, it’ll have some items to sell!

But I saw the value in Sketchup. I could create my own WW plans, and manipulate them like crazy to make sure everything fit, and that particular woods and finishes would look good together – before ever cutting a single piece of wood.

I bought a “for Dummies” book, and watched some YouTube videos; I tried playing with it on my own. I even contacted the guys that do the Design.Click.Build blog on FWW.

I made slow progress, but progress nevertheless.

I need SU to help me with my (hopefully) money-making WW business.

This was something I finished up this morning; about 4 hours of work. It’s a toy chest / blanket chest for a friend of mine.

You guys out there having trouble with SU – keep trying!

I was looking for a way to better plan my projects, and SU (SketchUp) seemed to be the ticket, so I downloaded my free copy.

I had a terrible time making heads or tails of it – and I am a bit of a computer geek. Making things as I wanted them was not easy – if possible. I was frustrated.

But, realizing that this really would help me design and produce better product, I kept at, picking up a “for dummies” book on SU and watching some things on YouTube.

Well, I got better and better, and am happy to report SU is really becoming an integral part of my wood working hobby.

If you’ve tried SU, and given up on it – don’t. Get a book like I did, or watch the YouTube videos; but keep at it!

I got down to about 3/4” and of course, it wasn’t. DOH!

Not wanting to thin the boards down even more, I thought biscuits would make everything pretty darn flat – at least enough to let me sand it flat.

It seems as though it will. I have the whole 33” square piece in clamps right now..seems pretty flat right now….hope for the best!

However, I have two other shelves, one just below the top, and one near the bottom. My issue is, how do I allow expansion (which means cutting the board short width-wise) and still have a finished look? I’m guessing I can somehow affix it at the front (the top of the photo) and do a couple of metal table clips adjacent to that fixation…but what about the gaps on the sides (left and right in photo)? I guess I could use some molding to hide it, but molding isn’t really part of the Mission-style, to the best of my knowledge.

Anyone?

The common wisdom also states that if you just try to run that raw stock through a planer, flipping it each time until you get it flat on both sides, you’ll end up with anything but. Supposedly, the planer rollers will flatten the board temporarily while it takes off stock…so what you end up with is a smiley-face shape board.

I’m currently breaking down some thick raw stock – about 5/4 oak, 8 inches wide. I only have a 6” jointer, so I can’t go the traditional route of jointing, then planing.

Thinking back to the conventional wisdom, I found it difficult to believe that rollers in a small planer had enough strength to flatten a board that thick.

So, I put a piece of this 5/4 raw oak through the planer, skipping the jointer. I put it in so that it would like like a frown, if viewed from the side, with a high point being planed off first. When I finally planed it down enough to reveal smooth wood on that side, I took it out, and a straight edge told me it was dead flat!

Flipped it over, planed down the other side….and now i have two flat, parallel sides!

Having said that, I think conventional wisdom would be true for thin stock, or soft wood.

My neighbor, an older man who makes great stuff, said he hardly ever uses his jointer, and does basically what I described to you.

Thoughts?

He asked me if I wanted some.

Ok, guys, what would I do with that?!

This is why I’m learning SketchUp, so I can nail down the measurements!

Side note: while I was breaking down the stock for this project, unbeknownst to me, something was amiss in my planer. After putting lots of pieces thru, i noticed I was getting a wedge shape coming out the other side! I thought the problem was that I was not jointing the face flat enough…but that was not it. I had never taken out the knives on the planer to sharpen (or align) them, so I did. Apparently, the knives were out of alignment! After sharpening and aligning, worked fine, but I lost a lot of time – and stock – due to this problem!

Back to the drawing board.