If one really does learn from their mistakes, I am on my way to becoming a genius. I started a project 2 weeks ago to build a rolling cart for my Big Green Egg smoker. Got a few ideas off their website and found another variation somewhere else. The mistakes started right away and kept on coming, to wit:
1. Went to buy cypress from a local dealer. I made some calculations on what I thought I needed and then added a bit more for a fudge factor. To my surprise, the bill was $269! I thought it should be about half that but I already had it loaded so I figured I could always use what was left over for another project. Didn't realize I had bought enough for not only my cart but enough for one and probably two adirondack chairs!
2. I also thought this would be a great opportunity to try mortise and tenon joints to connect the frame together. Mortises went fine for the most part. Not the most perfect in the world but who is going to see them, anyway? Tenons were a disaster. A couple of them fit pretty well from the git go but the rest had to be trimmed to the extent that there were huge gaps between the mortise and the tenon edge in order to get the edges of the boards to come close to matching up. Moral of the story...for me at least... get a Leigh FMT if I want to do M&T joints again.
3. On a related issue, I needed to decide how best to glue all this mess up. Got a great deal on some of the new Jet clamps and a couple of the aluminum ones and found they were an inch too short! Ouch! Oh, well, have some great new clamps to use on another project. Then I had an epiphany. Why not get a Kreg pocket hole jig and just screw the legs together? Yep, another problem. Because I had already M & T'ed the joints, the screws weren't long enough to go all the way through the tenon that was where fresh wood should have been so I ended up glueing the crap out of it and running somemore screws from the underside where no one would see them anyway to hold the joints together until the glue dried. I briefly thought about just cutting the offending tenons off and filling the mortise with wood filler but decided to, as W would say, to "stay the course". Seems to have come out OK.
4. The top, ah yes, the top. The top is roughly 26 x 46 so it's pretty good size. Ripped the 4/4 boards to about 5.2 or so to get the ultimate width I needed. I should have ripped them in half again because under the stress of the clamps, the boards bowed a bit. Ended up putting the bow side up and then used the pocket screw jig again and pulled it down tight to the frame. At least that worked out. Moral of that story, don't use boards wider than about 3 inches and then alternate grain direction. Didn't think of that either. Oh, BTW, good thing I bought all that extra material. I needed some of it for my SECOND top. First one was about 2 inches too short... grrrrr. Don't know how that happened. I think I decided to make the cart a bit longer than I originally planned so now I have another top I can use for something else. Hmmm....
Believe it or not, even with all the mistakes, it's coming out looking pretty darn good! I am finishing sanding it now, bought some spar urethane and tested it on a small piece of cut off I sanded and it should look good. I'll post some pics when its finished. I suppose it's like a surgeon, it's not a mistake unless you close the patient before you catch it...
NEXT time I'll know what to do!
1. Went to buy cypress from a local dealer. I made some calculations on what I thought I needed and then added a bit more for a fudge factor. To my surprise, the bill was $269! I thought it should be about half that but I already had it loaded so I figured I could always use what was left over for another project. Didn't realize I had bought enough for not only my cart but enough for one and probably two adirondack chairs!
2. I also thought this would be a great opportunity to try mortise and tenon joints to connect the frame together. Mortises went fine for the most part. Not the most perfect in the world but who is going to see them, anyway? Tenons were a disaster. A couple of them fit pretty well from the git go but the rest had to be trimmed to the extent that there were huge gaps between the mortise and the tenon edge in order to get the edges of the boards to come close to matching up. Moral of the story...for me at least... get a Leigh FMT if I want to do M&T joints again.
3. On a related issue, I needed to decide how best to glue all this mess up. Got a great deal on some of the new Jet clamps and a couple of the aluminum ones and found they were an inch too short! Ouch! Oh, well, have some great new clamps to use on another project. Then I had an epiphany. Why not get a Kreg pocket hole jig and just screw the legs together? Yep, another problem. Because I had already M & T'ed the joints, the screws weren't long enough to go all the way through the tenon that was where fresh wood should have been so I ended up glueing the crap out of it and running somemore screws from the underside where no one would see them anyway to hold the joints together until the glue dried. I briefly thought about just cutting the offending tenons off and filling the mortise with wood filler but decided to, as W would say, to "stay the course". Seems to have come out OK.
4. The top, ah yes, the top. The top is roughly 26 x 46 so it's pretty good size. Ripped the 4/4 boards to about 5.2 or so to get the ultimate width I needed. I should have ripped them in half again because under the stress of the clamps, the boards bowed a bit. Ended up putting the bow side up and then used the pocket screw jig again and pulled it down tight to the frame. At least that worked out. Moral of that story, don't use boards wider than about 3 inches and then alternate grain direction. Didn't think of that either. Oh, BTW, good thing I bought all that extra material. I needed some of it for my SECOND top. First one was about 2 inches too short... grrrrr. Don't know how that happened. I think I decided to make the cart a bit longer than I originally planned so now I have another top I can use for something else. Hmmm....
Believe it or not, even with all the mistakes, it's coming out looking pretty darn good! I am finishing sanding it now, bought some spar urethane and tested it on a small piece of cut off I sanded and it should look good. I'll post some pics when its finished. I suppose it's like a surgeon, it's not a mistake unless you close the patient before you catch it...
NEXT time I'll know what to do!
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