My Journey in Writing, Ranting, and Woodworking

‘Even in failure one can succeed in gaining knowledge’

- Timothy Chippendale, the little known brother of Thomas, who not only failed at woodworking but also, horse back riding, masonry, and eventually personal hygene, said this early on in life.  Later in life his quotes were much more colorful, as he also failed at sobriety, and became an angry bitter man who had a lot of cats.

Despite the fictional Tim’s rough imaginary life, it was still a good quote. The success in the shop today came in the form of multiple failures. I have figured out the exact dimensions for the legs on my jig. That wasn’t the failure, the failures came when I stripped a screw on my router plate. Now I can’t get the plate off, so I am unable to re attach it to my router table.

Next on the it parade was some rather inaccurate cuts with my beloved Japanese hand saw. It seems like I have actually gotten worse, which is perhaps because I haven’t been practicing as I had earlier in the year. The cuts just weren’t that straight. Not the end of the world, as the cuts were not difficult to clean up. The real blunder came next.

First of all there was an efficiency blunder. I spent close to 45 minutes trying to figure out how to cut out a notch that turned out to be really easy with the coping saw. I can’t believe how easy it was and how hard I was trying to make it. Finally, I had cut out a recess for the two Rockler tracks and had it looking just perfect when I broke off one of the tabs I created. The tabs will allow me to move and clamp down the feet. With one tab missing it just doesn’t work. The really sad part was that the tab was fine as it was and I was just futzing around with my chisel trying to make only slightly better. About 20 seconds before I broke off the tab I even thought to myself, “Be careful, it might snap right off, and that would be …d’oh.” Sometimes I just don’t listen.

About 5 years ago I was playing softball and was on 1st base with one out. I grew up loving baseball and my dad and I spent hours talking about strategy. It is taught to every little league player, at a very young age, ‘Tag on a fly ball, with less than 2 outs.’ At age 38 I got doubled off first base on a one out fly ball. That had never happened to me before. We won the game, by 12 or 13 runs, so in the end it just didn’t matter, but it still bothers me today. But with age comes wisdom and a certain level of mellowness.

During the 30 seconds following the breaking off of the tab, despite my specific instructions to myself to be careful, I quickly calmed down. It just wasn’t such a big deal. I made a small piece of oak, worthless for this project, but I will use it for something else. If it had been ebony or something similarly rare, it would have stung more. I am getting good at putting things into perspective.

The screw that is stripped can likely be removed with some bit of cleverness. If not, I will just buy another router base, as I had planned on doing it anyway, so the one could remain dedicated to the table. Choosing to take time to write the blog has helped too. I will finish this up, then go grab some more wood and give it another go. No need to beat myself up, take up masonry, or to start drinking and wallowing in self pity. I am just a pizza is half uneaten sort of guy, and next time, I will do a better job of listening.