The screw up fairy…

[MF1000]

There are two levels of fairy intervention following the US Army’s terminology

SNAFU ….Situation Normal All F’d Up - standard problems encountered each day needing a workaround fix

FUBAR……F‘d Up Beyond All Recongnition - in army terms you stepped on a land mine ….in woodworking terms it can’t be worked around

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I remember fifty years ago seeing something on a building site marked 4F. I inquired what it meant and was told effing effer's effing effed.

 

[spanner48]

Milled down the Sapele for a Windsor seat. Edge joined it, nice bit of planing by hand, took my time.
Clamped it up and all looked good.
Next day popped the template on and sawed out the shape, feeling all good about it as it was looking nice.
Middle glue joint fails as soon as I get in on the bench with a rasp in hand. I suspect I didn’t clean the wax off of the bottom of my ‘best’ plane and contaminated the joint, potentially all three in the seat.
It’s now on the floor in my workshop, I do believe if you listen carefully there are still echos of the verbal foulness that spewed forth still ringing in there.

Perhaps things went wrong earlier.?

The key to Windsor chairs was the SINGLE PIECE elm seat. The point being that elm - famously - does not split; because it has 'crossed grain', so there is no single along-the-grain split line.

• Sapele doesn't have that. Strong enough in general, but not particularly split-resistant
• Putting a plain butt joint in the middle of a seat pan subject to bending stress is asking for trouble.

As a minimum, I would dowel across the butt joint at frequent intervals, using oak, hornbeam or hickory dowels – as strongest in bend strength – towards the lower [i.e. tension] edge of the joint.

And/or add re-inforcing wood flitch bars across the joint underneath the seatpiece.

 

[HOJ]

Not sure this fits the definition:

 

[niall Y]

Not sure this fits the definition:

View attachment 173499

Another job, jobbed .....NEXT

 

[Doug71]

I let out a few expletives yesterday.

I had a move around of some bits in the workshop yesterday morning then went off to a job around 11am. I finished the job around 4pm and wasn't sure if to go home or back to the workshop, luckily I chose the workshop. When I walked through the door I was greeted by some water on the floor and the sound of dripping There is a tap in the middle of one of the walls inside my workshop (a brass one like you normally fit outside), and bizarrely a clamp had fallen off my clamp rack, landed on the tap and turned it on! It was more than dripping but not really running, I scooped and hoovered up about 3 buckets of water, glad I had gone straight back to the workshop and not left it until this morning. No damage done really and I have taken the head off the tap so it can't happen again.

If we are also posting other peoples screw ups (I'm presuming the skirting isn't @HOJ work ) here's some cornice I took off a customers built in wardrobes when altering them. I guess the fitter had run out of cornice and was using up the off cuts, he's actually not done a bad job considering what he was working with, the wardrobes had been in a few years and the customer had never noticed it

 

[BravoNovember]

Perhaps things went wrong earlier.?

The key to Windsor chairs was the SINGLE PIECE elm seat. The point being that elm - famously - does not split; because it has 'crossed grain', so there is no single along-the-grain split line.

• Sapele doesn't have that. Strong enough in general, but not particularly split-resistant
• Putting a plain butt joint in the middle of a seat pan subject to bending stress is asking for trouble.

As a minimum, I would dowel across the butt joint at frequent intervals, using oak, hornbeam or hickory dowels – as strongest in bend strength – towards the lower [i.e. tension] edge of the joint.

And/or add re-inforcing wood flitch bars across the joint underneath the seatpiece.

I don’t know if I didn’t explain that very well when I posted that, I’m edge jointing, I.e. long grain to long grain the Sapele boards to make the seat board. Do you mean a butt joint involving end grain? A lot of the books on the chairs e.g. Moser, Dunbar and Hill have some of the seat boards from edge joined timber, I wasn’t aware that this would be inherently weak!

I agree, the old windsors were one big board, preferably elm, but if I went to any of my local timber merchants and asked for an elm board of the right size I think they would think I had been sniffing glue, even if I could afford the board
Sadly I think I’m 30 years behind the curve for the availability of them…

 

[Cozzer]

Sadly, all the above stories involve real woodworking skills that, for once, went a bit awry.
Momentary lapses in concentration, but probably sorted at the next attempt.
Mine, ladies and gentlemen, is basic. Really stupidly basic.

Cobbled together workbench, squeezed into my shed.
*Thinks* I could store electrical stuff underneath. Keep dry, even with the odd roof leak.
Shelving? No...
Cut down some pallets to fit, add some wheels, tie on a rope loop on one end, and simply push/pull the gear out whenever required.
Measured the likes of the table saw, router table and other stuff before deciding on suitable widths for the three trolleys.
Did I remember the bench central legs that would get in the way?
Yes! Yes, I actually did!
Altered the topmost pallet slats to suit, ensured they were soundly attached to the frames, and awaited my eBay purchase of 12 x 2" wheels.
Each wheel base needed 4 screws.
Shall I just bradawl screw holes? No! Drill them properly!
Do they really need all 4 screws? Probably not, but let's do this properly for once!
Cordless drill, correct size drill bit. Wow! Hark at me! Almost a pro!
All 12 wheels attached within a few minutes.....
Great job.... except I'd turned the pallets upside down for some reason, so all wheels were screwed on the wrong side.

 

[TheUnicorn]

Another job, jobbed .....NEXT

that deserves a t shirt, or at least a mug

 

[paulrbarnard]

cutting up some osb today working on a picnic bench, first cut, off the edge, fine, measured for the second cut, completely failed to overhand the cut, made a ridiculous gouge across the table top

Never done anything like that myself

 

[paulrbarnard]

Not sure this fits the definition:

View attachment 173499

Bit of filler and it a good un.

 

[Distinterior]

The very first cut I ever made with my Festool track and TS75 track saw back in 2009..... A major kickback!

Never done it since, but I learned the hard way that you do sometimes need to clamp the rail and properly support the material that you're cutting !

The air was blue that day after spending the best part of £800 + on the saw and 3 rails the day before....
I was cross cutting 40mm thick x 650mm wide solid oak kitchen worktop.

PS. .....And it bent the blade as well!....

 

[Matt_0222]

I let out a few expletives yesterday.

I had a move around of some bits in the workshop yesterday morning then went off to a job around 11am. I finished the job around 4pm and wasn't sure if to go home or back to the workshop, luckily I chose the workshop. When I walked through the door I was greeted by some water on the floor and the sound of dripping There is a tap in the middle of one of the walls inside my workshop (a brass one like you normally fit outside), and bizarrely a clamp had fallen off my clamp rack, landed on the tap and turned it on! It was more than dripping but not really running, I scooped and hoovered up about 3 buckets of water, glad I had gone straight back to the workshop and not left it until this morning. No damage done really and I have taken the head off the tap so it can't happen again.

If we are also posting other peoples screw ups (I'm presuming the skirting isn't @HOJ work ) here's some cornice I took off a customers built in wardrobes when altering them. I guess the fitter had run out of cornice and was using up the off cuts, he's actually not done a bad job considering what he was working with, the wardrobes had been in a few years and the customer had never noticed it

View attachment 173567

I had a lucky escape with a leak in our kitchen recently too with the washing machine hose. It randomly started leaking a lot - and for some reason stopped fairly quickly. I’m looking at buying a couple of YoLink water leak detectors so I can be warned of any issues early next time rather than relying on being lucky!

 

[TheUnicorn]

The very first cut I ever made with my Festool track and TS75 track saw back in 2009..... A major kickback!

The air was blue that day after spending the best part of £800 + on the saw and 3 rails the day before....
I was cross cutting 40mm thick x 650mm wide solid oak kitchen worktop.

PS. .....And it bent the blade as well!....

nothing worse than damaging a tool straight out of the box

first thing I did when I got a multitool was to try out the metal cutting blade, put a big screw in a scrap of wood and cut it flush, took out half the teeth on the blade, hadn't realised they do nails but nut screws, didn't make that mistake again!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I ruined a new M42 bandsaw blade on a piece of 4" x 2" I had very carefully checked over. I hit a plasterboard screw that's head had broken off below the surface.

 

[Spectric]

We are lucky that most of these screw up fairies are busy building new sheds for people to live in as they desecrate the countryside.

 

[HOJ]

For the avoidance of doubt, the picture in my post #24 is not my handywork, just saying! it was posted on the Carpenters forum, where the client was charged IIRC £280.00..

(I'm presuming the skirting isn't @HOJ work )

Thanks @Doug71

 

[Phil Pascoe]

We are lucky that most of these screw up fairies are busy building new sheds for people to live in as they desecrate the countryside.

My daughter's partner, a builder, told me he'd been in new houses where the owner had been warned they couldn't store anything in the attic as some of thetimbers were only 25mm.

 

[Ozi]

I remember fifty years ago seeing something on a building site marked 4F. I inquired what it meant and was told effing effer's effing effed.

Sometimes it's just not your fault then it's the 5 Fs. Furiously, Phuqed by the Fickle Finger of Fate