Individual post from "Nothing In It"

This post is titled:

Project Fail

In case you think I'm perfect, and that everything I try comes out great, you should know that I'm not. So there. Over the weekend, I tried a new technique for making geta and totally failed.

Last year, I made a pair of geta from some cedar. A few months ago, I agreed to run a 1 hour woodworking demo at Pennsic. I decided at that time that I'd demonstrated making geta by hand, and that I'd attach the "teeth" of the geta using sliding dovetail joints. Yesterday, I tried out my technique, and I am totally not good enough yet at sliding dovetails to demonstrate this in front of people.

Part of it is trying to use a "Workmate" portable bench instead of my home workbench, since I won't have my bench at Pennsic. The Workmate I have is totally unsuited for the kind of planing I'm trying to do. Part of it was trying to get the whole thing done quickly. Probably if I'd spent more time measuring and checking to make sure that everything was up to specification, it would have gone more smoothly.

In any case, my wood was splitting, my joinery didn't fit together, and the whole thing was a big failure. I can demonstrate this same technique and explain that I'm still learning, or I can build them using the same technique I used last year. The one I made yesterday is going onto the "burn" pile, though.

2010.08.02 at 10:00am EDT

[Visit my web site] [Subscribe via RSS]