Pride Goes Before a Flaw

Woodworking has to be just about the most maddening activity that anyone has ever invented as a fun leisure time pursuit. Somehow or other, it always manages to humiliate you. Just at the very point where you are thinking, "I've mastered this!", woodworking slaps you up along side your head and sends you home crying.

Here's a single example. I was cutting rabbets yesterday with a router. It's for a set of four bookcases that I'm building for the living room. I was running the router down the edge of a panel when the bearing on the bit hits a void in the plywood and the bit takes a bite out of what should be a smooth clean edge. The flaw would be right at eye level when the bookcase was assembled, so obviously, I cannot use the piece. Should I have looked at the edge better before I used the router? Yes. Should I have seen that there was a piece of really thin wood covering a sizable void. Yes, again. I certainly will do both in the future, but I am still out $10 for that one piece of wood.

If that isn't enough, I followed it up with my second disaster of the day. I was cutting mortises with my router on two seven and a half foot tall by 12 inches wide
pieces of 3/4 inch maple veneered plywood. I had laid them side by side, clamped them with a straight edge, and all I had to do was hold the router tight to the straight edge to cut perfect mortises. As I was transitioning from the first piece to the second, the bit hits a knot or something in the wood,and jerks the router off the straight edge. I have now ruined two pieces.

At the end of the evening, I have $30 in ruined wood, and have wasted two hours doing it. I have done both of these operation many times before, and have never had a problem. So whats going on? My theory is that pride has once again done me in. Rather than approaching the project as a humble beginner working carefully, I just assumed that the project would be a snap.

In this case, the project snapped back.