Official Luthiers Forum!

We haven't had a " Doofus Move" Thread in a while , So let's all fess up and share or moments ! Remember , this is about fun and knowing we all wear the doofus hat at some point. Maybe someone will jump in and offer help on fixing the Situation.

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

I like to keep my CA in the fridge. I let it out because it was nearing empty and I had dripped some and it now had an anti tip cardboard bottom. I forgot to put the top on tite and knocked it over. I managed to get everything off the bench and nothing important was coated but it did a nice job of refinishing my workbench top.
I no longer keep the big bottle anywhere near my bench. Nothing worse than having your favorite beverage become part of your workbench.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

working on my friends 12 string epi.. neck reset .. it was messed up by someone else (pics in repair thread ) So I drilled and set the inserts ..... THEN thought ummmmmm I better check the scale because its a zero fret guitar .... scale was off because I went from nut to 12th instead of zero fret sooooooooooooooo dig inserts out, make plugs, reglue , reset, get new inserts yada yada yada ....

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

John, when I was first tooling up and apartment based, I kept everything on a wire shelf in a spare closet. I went to grab my Lie-Nielsen jack one day and realized the bottle of Hot Stuff on the shelf above it ate through the bottle and completely emptied itself all over the plane.

My turn..

On my current build (a 12 frets slope D in sassafras/bearclaw sitka), I wanted to make a shell purfling for the 1st time of my life on the soundboard edge.

So I cut the binding channels by hand, try to make a clean job.
I install the wooden purflings, the teflon strips and the ebony bindings.

Then I remove the teflon strips and begin to fill the gap with the little 1" shell pieces I had bought at australian MOP.
Right from the start, I found weird that the strips were standing really higher than the purflings, and there was a lot of room between the shell and the wall of the gap left by the teflon strips.
Another weird thing: the shell didn't look to be as shiny as I supposed it would be..
I was thinking to myself "well.. I will have to fill all this room with ebony dust and superglue, it will be messy.. and the shiny part of the shell will eventually appear after levelling by sanding"..
But anyway, I continue gluing those high, floating, not shining shell pieces one by one, with medium viscosity CA, adding some ebony dust on the way.

I work my way from the soundboard center seam to the waist of the treble side of the body, and suddenly I have a flash in my head.
I look at the remaining shell pieces properly and find that there are 2 shiny sides and 2 greyish horrible sides..

You've got it.. I had started to glue the shell pieces on the wrong side!... I was gluing them in an upright position, the shiny sides were facing the walls of the purflings..

At no moment I realized that I was doing it wrong, I was in the process...

So I had to remove all my binding and purfling, destroy the shell with a chisel and start all this treble side again... then ordered some shell inlay, because I hadn't enough pieces to finish my job.. 10 days to wait..

I found myself to be a real dummy on this one..
Worst mistake in 4 guitar builds..

q.

Ouch , sounds like my kinda move

reminds me of the pick guard i tried to polish out and then realized it had plastic cover on it ...

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

Hate to admit it, but....been there, done that.
"Darnit! Why won't this thing polish up?"

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

reminds me, I need to take the plastic off of the last one I put on

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Here is my first of what will most likely be many this year.



Cutting the mortise on my challenge build. Taking too much cold medicine and had impaired judgement. Having some trouble with the jig and using a bit that was way too big with way too deep a cut. I thought oh I can just hold it and force it through. Then boom! Body no longer in the jig messed up slot and broken side. I won't be doing that again

My turn - When working on an OM earlier in the year I decided to use a power sander to level the sides. I paid such close attention to the binding on the side facing me, but forgot that sanding was happening on the back side as well....you guessed it.....sand through! Ugh! It pretty much went away when the preamp hole was routed out, but it was devastating at the time and for the entire rest of the build. And I can not blame cough medicine, either...it was ALL ME! Only hand sanding sides for me from now on.

Dang! Yeah, I'm reluctant to let any power tools come near a closed box. A card scraper is the ideal tool for leveling sides, IMO. Tends toward flattening, you can angle it to cut off the peaks of any ripples in a controlled and clearly visible way, navigate the waist no problem, and leaves a nice smooth surface. I just did my harp guitar a couple minutes ago, in fact Just be sure to wear a dust mask. More wood falls to the bench than with sandpaper, but a lot fluffs into the air as well. Also beware of endgrain. If you have to remove much material from the sides, the edges of the plates will be left protruding slightly and the scraper chatters over the hard and soft grain lines. Quick pass with a finger plane takes care of it... except in the waist where you have to use a knife or chisel, or just switch to sandpaper on a curved block if it becomes an issue.

I think Quentin takes the gold, though. Puzzling over the pieces being too narrow and tall and not looking shiny, without taking the time to closely examine them until there weren't enough left to redo it... that's grade A doofusry there Hope it turned out good the second time.

Yeah I redid the binding, and all..


I accept gold medal.. but not only this time!

mine was a stupid accident. I have a big Makita compound slide mitre saw. It has a depth guage and I used it to cut lap joints for the workbench I built a little while ago.

Problem is the blade doesn't cut clean thru the piece, but needs a spacing block between the wood and the fence......I used a scrap piece of moulding from a window I'd done, this means that one end was mitered, leaving a sharp point....any one guessed yet?

No dramas up to the point of finishing those cuts. After, I needed to trim a piece of something-can't remember what, but just decided to chop it off. I hadn't realised the spacer was still on the saw and in the path of the blade.....guessed yet?

The saw picked up the spacer and flung it up into my face......

Fortunately, relatively speaking, the pointy end went quite literally into my nose, with great force and eventually a great deal of pain. Until the pain kicked in, I put both my hands under my nose, and went upstairs to ask my wife for a ride to emergency.....By the time I got upstairs, I was quite liberally covered in blood all down my front, and decided to clean up a bit before going to hospital.

Needless to say, the wife was rather shocked and quite concerned at the amount of blood....

I didn't end up going, as the face and the nose particularlyare really good bleeders, and the damage was less than it seemed in the first few minutes, but lesson learned.....

NOTHING stays in the path of any moving blade, nor stationary for that matter, unless it is meant to be there and/or is clamped down....

Why did this happen? I've owned and used that saw for many years when I was building and I got complacent and careless.....

Why did I say I was lucky? Because it was my nose and not my eye.....

I bent the wrong way, flattened with a clothes iron and then re-bent the same ukulele side incorrectly two times In a row. The third time was the charm although the side was a little rough with some small cracks in the waist. Repaired with CA and usable.

hasn't happened yet but I'm sure I'll do that eventually

Consistancy is a greaaaaaatt thing !

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/