The mock up… rebuilding my pride

So I wanted to dust this blog post under the rug because I messed up (to a degree) on some of my table joints.  My execution was darned sloppy and I was a little frustrated because technically speaking it should have worked. I set up my table legs at the drill press with stop blocks and clamps and drilled for the mortises.

A mortise should live within these lines

So far so good

And somehow my set up let the forstner bit travel outside the lines. I’m still trying to figure out if my setup failed, or if my drill press is somehow out of alignment.

The perfectionist in me wanted to reverse time and/or restart from scratch. But alas I just had to deal with it. So I did my best to square them up with chisels

As it stands now I still have quite a bit of fitting left, but the good news is that the shoulders of the rails should cover up any trace of the misshapen mortises! Hooray for that!

I was glad that I’d only tackled the joints for one table and so I can try to better my performance on the next two tables! After I fit the disgraceful batch of joints I’ll address these dovetail joints next.

Since I need a little motivation to get over my goof I decided to roughly assemble the table to see how it will eventually look. oooh I can’t wait! I DO look forward to getting on with it now.

And finally here is the view from sketch up that I originally planned. Looks good so far, but I still have a lot of joints to figure out as I go. Not sure how I want the top to attach or even the drawer!

It’s funny how something that actually won’t end up effecting the finished piece and won’t be seen can really nag at a woodworker. I feel like a soccer player who has built up their performance and then ends up scoring on their own net. Boo.  Thankfully I conclude this blog post with a positive mind. Everyday at work I take pride in making the least amount of mistakes possible. But when I do make minor slip-ups I work my hardest to rectify matters and move on. So I will try to do the same here! I look forward to completing this table and NOT pointing out any of the mistakes future onlookers when they view the finished piece.