Bathroom cabinet now a pile of scrap

[david simper]

Well I have touted my meagre successes on this forum so here’s an abject failure. The planned bathroom cabinet is now a heap of scrap, most of which will go on the woodburning stove tonight. So enjoy your schadenfreude, here’s the link:

http://public.fotki.com/stanley-clifton ... t-in-pine/


The tools have never been sharper, the components never squarer, the preparation never more meticulous and yet I get to the dreaded glue up, something’s out of line, the glue’s too far gone to get the piece apart – Armageddon ensues.

I am now planning to have a long rest and then give up.

 

[George_N]

Hi Dave,
thanks for sharing your trials and tribulations with the rest of us. I think for most people the tendency is to keep quiet about our failures, so well done for having the courage to post this this one. Do you think your glue may have gone off? If PVA glues get frozen (think shed/garage in winter) they are pretty much useless and you have to discard them and get a fresh stock. One way to tell if your glue has gone off is that it dries white rather than clear and the joints will be very weak. Normally a joint made with modern PVA glues will be stronger than the wood being glued.

 

[woodbloke]

Dave - I know how you must be feeling as I've been there myself but never quite got to the stage where the whole project has been 'nuked'. The only thing that I can suggest for the next project is to break the gluing up stage into a series of smaller processes so that you're not trying to juggle quite so many cramps and joints at any one time, it then does become a lot easier, also a second pair of hands (not always available I know) can be very useful. If there isn't a way to make the dreaded glue up any easier, the only other option is to deliberately go for a glue with a much longer open time, the one I use is the slow setting Araldite (expensive, but a little goes a long way) where the open- time can be measured in hours rather than minutes, which is all you'll get with PVA in a moderately warm 'shop. Definetly have another go and let us know how you get on.
Edit - whatever you do don't give up! - Rob

 

[Paul Chapman]

Hi Dave - as Rob says, don't give up. We've all had spectacular failures and it can be very disheartening after having done so much work, but you usually learn something from it. It's often helpful to consider the assembly stage when you are designing the piece - some pieces can be almost impossible to glue up in one go.

Despite the problem, your photos and commentary were great and I enjoyed viewing it. Hope you have another go

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[les chicken]

Wow Dave some nuke job of that project. I hope that you got some of your frustration out on it.

DO NOT GIVE UP, have a whisky and chill and then decide that a bit of wood will not beat you and start again. The final result will be a I knew I could do it moment.

Les

 

[gwaithcoed]

Dave, the man who never made a mistake never made anything. We all have our failures at some time, please don't give up.
Go back in the workshop and kick seven bells out of it, enjoy burning every last piece of it if it helps and as Les says Chill out have a LARGE whisky, but don't give up

Alan.

 

[mailee]

Hey Dave we have all been there mate don't worry. Never say die mate I don't. I still make mistakes after twenty years of woodworking but you learn by them or use a get around in the process. I once made four cabinate sides wrong after routing all the rebates in them. Even when I do get something right like a shoe cabinet for SWMBO she didn't like it and refused to have it in the house! That is now collecting firewood in the garden :evil: Never give up mate it will get better and you improve with each mistake it is true. :wink:

 

[OPJ]

You don't like using biscuits, Dave? I find that great for edge-jointing as they help to prevent the mating pieces from sliding about. You will only get best results with a good-quality biscuit jointer though. I recently replaced my cheap Ferm machine with a second-hand Makita. It is truly excellent! I did find the slots weren't quite cutting deep enough out of the box, so I reset the depth stop back about 1mm or so. This also gives you a little sideways 'play' in order to get things just right. They're a lot easier than dowels, anyway! :wink:

I love the wooden clamps too, they're great fun to make. I do admire you use of hands planes too - especially when cutting the rebates. Nice to see you decided to steam out your dents too - this is something I picked up at college. I've tried to fill over them before, but it's very hard to get a good match and I made a right mess of it! :roll:

Did you do a dry-run before you decided to glue up? They're worth doing once, if not two or three times so you know exactly what you're going to do when it's time to put the glue on.

I wouldn't worry about this project too much; get yourself focused on what you intend to make next! You're clearly not afraid to try new things and, remeber: the man who never made a mistake, never made anything! :wink:

(At least it was pine and not English Walnut!! :wink: )

 

[woodbloke]

Mailee wrote:

Even when I do get something right like a shoe cabinet for SWMBO she didn't like it and refused to have it in the house! That is now collecting firewood in the garden

Alan - I remember that job from a little while ago...nice to know what's happened to it :lol: - Rob

 

[Fecn]

Dave,

It's so frustrating when it all goes horribly wrong. When I made did my toybox project it took me about 5 attempts to get the top rails looking right.... and when I'd finally got them right, I had the toybox clamped up and attempted to move it... I got about 15 feet before the clamps fell off and the whole lot ended up as a pile on the concrete. The fall broke all the slotted dovetails and one of the M/T joints on the box.

You'll certainly find that if you attempt to re-make the cabinet it will take you about a quarter of the time it did before.

I got rather good at making decorative top rails before my toybox was finished.... Here's some of the ones that went wrong for me.

 

[NeilO]

I`ll leave my signature to say everything for me.....

 

[Anonymous]

Stick with it Dave, it's all just lessons learnt

 

[RogerM]

Wow - You really went for the nuclear option! David - we've all been there. I remember making a plywood canoe and lovingly making 2 left sides. I should have known better having made 2 right wings for a model glider the week before! And I always say that if you are going to have a failure, have a great and glorious one and not some weak and feeble affair! So have a double G&T (or whatever your tipple may be) and get back on that horse.

 

[devonwoody]

If you decide glue is useless this time of the year, how can you order replacement mail order. After all the temperatures tonight are down to minus.

In fact if you go to your local diy they are only tin sheds these days and I reckon the temps. can be low there as well.

BTW, if at first you dont succeed, try, try again, is an old Victorian saying.

 

[Adam]

Ahh mistakes. I make them regularly and have documented some of them on here. I would have turned it into a "shop" cabinet if it'd been me, rather than burn it, but no doubt even though you may not think so, you will have learnt a few lessons, about glueup, checking squareness, whatever caused the problems etc etc. I'd give it another go with and see how it goes. As everyone says, nothing ventured nothing gained and sub-consiously (or conciously) you will probably avoid the series of events leading upto it on all future bits of furniture.

Have a large glass or whisky. Or better still, have two :wink:

Adam

 

[david simper]

Thanks for all the encouraging remarks; I am feeling less self-destructive now.

In response to specific issues raised. I did do a dry run and everything seemed ok, so it’s still a bit of a mystery what went wrong. The really frustrating thing was that I have used all the techniques in this piece before with no problem, so there was really no excuse.

Biscuit jointers are good for edge jointing provided that I get the edges aligned.
My jointer is a Trend T20 if anyone’s got any views on this. It’s not that I dislike biscuits, I just try and minimise hand power tool use; I don’t know where I’d be without the band saw, drill press and increasingly the bench sander. As observed, biscuits are so much better than dowels.

The steaming trick was actually learnt when I was a battle re enactor; good to get dinges out of a gun stock when someone’s attacked it with a bit of tractor spring (that they’re calling a sword).

If anything the glue was too good. Titebond’s fast tack caught me out and stopped me separating the piece. I have lost glue to frost and so keep my supplies in the utility room where the central heating boiler should prevent any freezing.

Replacement timber is arriving tomorrow so watch out for ‘Bathroom cabinet 2 – the nightmare continues’.
:twisted: