Frequent Woodworking Mistakes

Think you are the only one who makes mistakes? Think again! Yesterday, I asked folks on Twitter, Facebook and in The Wood Whisperer Community what mistakes they make most often. Here’s some of the highlights:

• “Purchasing an overwhelming tool… most recently Leigh Dovetail Jig…. uggg” – KN_SSA-r
• “measure once, cut twice.” – Yucatandan
• “Measuring twice doesn’t help if you only think once…” – Torch02
• “doing ‘just one more thing’ when tired. Always leads to disaster. Go upstairs and sleep, bozo…” – jmk89
• “underestimating the time needed to complete and overestimating my ability to get the job done” – FredCannon
• “mis-measuring in some subtle way (e.g. missing kerf or reading wrong side of line)”– Cyface
• “buying new tools before learning what my current tools are capable of accomplishing (and, thus, spending money I don’t have).” – CogWheelBrain
• “I jump in to bigger projects than I can do and get discouraged too quickly.” – michaelbclark
• “Woodworking mistakes? Let’s just say I can’t count the mistakes on my fingers.” – Aquapasture
• “Drips and runs in the finish” – Dbingham
• “Letting my mind go 100MPH … hands can’t keep up thou…lol…I NEED TO SLOW DOWN :)” – Lubos Kuzma
• “Not spending enough money for tools. The single worst thing I’ve done (repeatedly, unfortunately), is thinking that a cheap tool will work just as well as the good tool.” – Carlos Alvarez
• “chipout on the corner of a board from hand planing or routing…” – Matt Berger
• “Not buying enough raw material… always have to go back to get more. Should know by now LOL”– Andreas Schwall
• “Trying to do everything with power tools when they should be done with hand tools” – Matt Rakowski
• “Trying to keep all the good wood for yourself when you are building a project for a customer.” – Thomas Elliot Glynn
• “Having 5 projects going at once in my 1 project workshop…(and occasionally finishing one).” – Gary Aurora
• “Either under-buying wood and then struggling to match grain and color later or over-buying and ending up with too much but not quite enough for another project.” – Allen in Ohio

And this has to be my personal favorite:
“jeez, all of the above… I suck… B-/” – Bob Daniel

See! You’re not the only one who makes mistakes. :)