Working Through the Problem

When we're not teaching woodworking we are working on commission pieces. Presently, we have a number of projects underway that gives me an opportunity to experiment and learn from my own mistakes. I'm a firm believer that if you are not making an occasional mistake from time to time, you're not learning.

One such piece is a customized bed frame. Because the room itself is small the frame has been designed with two pull out center drawers and a third draw that pulls out at the foot of the bed. The drawers are made of poplar and the fronts will be face framed in the finish. In planning out the drawers I decided to do half blind dove tails at the front and finger joints at the back. I cut the finger joints on a jig we have that can produce a number of different size joints. As I began to cut the joints I was unaware that the position of the fence had moved. Lesson number one, don't be in a rush. Do a test cut first to make sure your measurements and machine settings are just so.

Once I got the piece back to the bench I had something less than satisfactory. What to do? For a commission piece where time is money I thought I had something suitable for the wood stove. On the teaching side, I had an opportunity. What if this was a student's project? What if the material was an expensive species of wood? Sometimes it is worth the extra time to figure out how to make it work and learn something in the process. For a student with limited time this is an important consideration. If they can fix it, they will become more confident in problem solving once they get home.

The fix was actually simple all though the glue up process took longer. I glued each corner individually inserting small splines into the spaces. Once sanded it was hardly noticeable and probably only to me. And since it is at the back of the drawer, it will hardly ever be seen.

What do you think? What kind of problem solving have you experienced? How useful do you find it learning from your own mishaps? Let us know. We'd like to hear!

Kip Christie