All Replies on How many of you have had a project fall to its demise.

Stepson dropped the foot end of a bunkbed set off the tail gate of truck and it broke a mortise joint. When I told them I would have to build a new one, they chose to buy a box store bed. :-(

-- Mother Nature created it, I just assemble it. - It's not ability that we often lack, but the patience to use our ability

I made this clock as a wedding gift for my brother and sis-inlaw in 2005. It got knocked off a wall and sustained some pretty significant structural damage… the mechanism didn’t survive either, but the glass didn’t break! I rebuilt it, salvaging what I could from the original.

-- Happiness is like wetting your pants...everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth....

Years ago I broke my big toe (that’s another story) and told my wife I still had to go to the shop because of all the work I had to get done. I was working on a customers antique rocking chair, picked it up from the work bench, turned around and stubbed my broken toe on the leg of my work bench. Both me and the rocking chair went crashing to the floor and ended up breaking one of the rockers on the chair. The rest of the story is not “G” rated.

-- John @ http://www.thehuffordfurnituregroup.com

John I got a laugh and an ouch out of that one.

Monte I’m guessing yours was a gift hence a freebee thus they dug into their pockets for the next one, I hope you told them they won’t get the same quality.

Scott Good that you were able to salvage it.

-- Randy - If I'm not on LJ's then I'm making Saw Dust. Please feel free to visit my store location at http://www.facebook.com/randy.blackstock.custom.wood.designs

It happens. I built my first set of raised panel cabinet doors. I had dry fitted one together and had it standing on it’s side on my work table. It seemed stable, but as soon as I turned my back it fell from the table and broke a peice from each rail and stile. The raised panel actually survived, but I had to go through the entire process of making new rails and stiles for one door. If you haven’t done it, basically it’s about as easy to make 20 doors as it is to make one.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

Mark, I know what you are talking about I’ve done two custom kitchens complete with raised panel.

-- Randy - If I'm not on LJ's then I'm making Saw Dust. Please feel free to visit my store location at http://www.facebook.com/randy.blackstock.custom.wood.designs

not my own project since it was under a house rebuild
about a month after we had installed new windows we descovered
one of the beam that hold the ruf together in its angle (sorry if it isn´t the right name )
was pretty rotten and had to be changed a 12 yard long beam isn´t the easyest to handle
so I knew we had to be exstra carefull …... yah right …. before I knew it , it has swinged right thrugh
one of the new windows in the master bed room on second floor where it has to be installed
my freind didn´t looked happy when I told he had to ordre new glass …. not so much of the money
but to the fact he knew he had to sleep on the cauch
yes he still is a freind :-) and had never heard for it other than he wanted me to installed
another beam four years after the episode with the same two helpers
was we nerwrecking that day …... you bett we was …. lol
I gess that was a payback from him

take care
Dennis

I had a flamenco guitar fall off its hook while I was spray
finishing it. Unfortunately, it had not occurred to me
to put padding on the concrete floor and the top of
the guitar was crushed. Repairable by removing fingerboard,
and replacing the binding and top, but a major hassle
and a real disappointment.

I am sorry to hear that. It sux when somethin like that happens. I do a lot of unforeseen jugglin sometimes.. lol I don’t mean to laugh, but, I know I’d be lying if I said that has never happened. It turns us all into cussin fools, but, afterwords, you have to laugh, and be thankful that nowbody got you on youtube.

-- Roger from KY. Work/Play/Travel Safe. Kentuk55@bellsouth.net

I’ll see your raised panel door and raise you one. I was taking a photo of a china cabinet base for my granddaughter and the hinges had not arrived. I set two raised panel doors on the openings, took the pictures and watched one of the doors nose dive to the floor. As I picked it up, the other did the same.

The panels survived without a scratch so I’ve redone the rails and stiles. I have not yet sanded them but the hinges came today so I’ll get on it soon. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!

-- Please Pray for Our Troops / Semper Fi / Bob Ross / www.theborkstore.com

Havent YET dropped anything that I can recall. But, the cat likes to sneed into the shop. One already bad day, he decided to move along the workbench behind me where there was also a small container of dye…mixed. He managed to knock it off right onto some new curly maple. The dye was black…..so was the maple after that.

-- Gary, DeKalb Texas only 4 miles from the mill

One time I was at the point of final assembling for a book shelf, and in a moment of horseplay I bopped one of my boys over the head with a panel. Damn board split cleanly down the middle. This was only pine, but still, I’m still mystified as to how the board made it so far through the project without revealing this weakness.

We all laughed, but that ended when my wife came into the shop and the kid proudly announced “dad broke a board on my head!”

-- - Crud. Go tell your mother that I need a Band-aid.

I’ve had some stuff come off my lathe, but thanks to the fact that I never sweep, it landed in 4” of sawdust.

-- Failure does not stop me, it makes me try harder..... because I'm crazy.

I was building a house once, with a one piece tub on the second floor, so it had to go in before the framing was done. All framing was up, sheathing all done, had half a sheet of plywood to go on the roof.

I was stripping the 2×4’s off the roof that had held the trusses in place and decided to throw them inside before I put the last piece of plywood on.

The 2×4 were 16’ long and I was dropping them down through the trusses into a bedroom. The very last one hit the floor just right and literally “jumped” through the bathroom wall, went all the way across the bathroom, and went right through the one piece tub.

-- There is nothing like the sound of a well tuned hand plane. - http://timetestedtools.wordpress.com (timetestedtools at hotmail dot c0m)

On a roofing job I was pulling up punky 4×8 decking, lifting them over my head and heaving them off and into a junk pile. An improbable combination of angle, force, and wind caught one board, lifted it up on end, and then brought the end straight down onto my prize Craftsman circular saw with a steel housing. When he stopped laughing my buddy said, “well, at least now you have TWO of those saws.”

-- - Crud. Go tell your mother that I need a Band-aid.

I was screwing down a laminate counter top from Underneath. Driving the screw up threw the cabinet corner brace. My hand slipped, the trigger caught the cabinet frame and kicked the drill in high gear and I still had just enough force on the drill to put the screw right threw the top of the countertop.

-- There is nothing like the sound of a well tuned hand plane. - http://timetestedtools.wordpress.com (timetestedtools at hotmail dot c0m)

Built a hall table for a woman I wanted to date, placed it in the back of the truck upside down on a blanket, drove onto the highway and a passing transport truck wind sucked it out of the back, only to be flattened by the truck following it

Built a complicated hall table for me : ) Curves, bowes, clamped and perfect, turned my body and pant belt loop caught a clamp…….disaster

there isn’t enough band width space to list/write the cries and screams, shouts and pouts from the humility I have taught myself…..

its way funnier when some one else does it : ))

-- "Good artists borrow, great artists steal”…..Picasso

This isn’t wood, but when I was an apprentice, I dropped an 8’ fluorescent tube from 14’ onto a concrete floor. It did not break! I had to know, so I put it in a fixture and it worked ;-))

-- "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence

Randy- Sounds like you’re not alone here. I put those interlocking mats around my bench and assembly table after dropping a NEW tablesaw blade on the concrete floor and ruining it.

-- " I'll try to be nicer, if you'll try to be smarter" gfadvm

I had just finished my best ever, globe and icicle ornament when I let it roll off onto the rough concrete driveway. It bounced several times as it rolled under my truck. It broke the finial, and dented the globe in several places.

I was just sick. What a stupid thing to do. I was going to show it off, and was carrying too many things. I should have wrapped it, and put it in a box.

I hope I learned that lesson.

Great stories and some costly just from reading them. Ouch!

-- Randy - If I'm not on LJ's then I'm making Saw Dust. Please feel free to visit my store location at http://www.facebook.com/randy.blackstock.custom.wood.designs