Measure twice, cut once

Sooner or later, every woodworker who blogs posts their lamentations over some project that went south due to a mistake made while holding a measuring tape.  This is that post for me, although I have to admit that on more than one occasion I have had to re-cut a piece of plywood.  I figure with my tools and a pencil, the best that I can do is 1/64 inch accuracy.  If something is 1/32 inch off, I can usually see it with my eye.  So imagine my surprise when I made shelves that were 1/16 of an inch too wide. 

That doesn’t sound like much, but this bookshelf has to fit inside the 3 by 4 inch legs of the headboard of a loft bed.  The legs are joined with a mortise and tenon joint and it is not going to move 1/16 of an inch.  So I had the joy of removing that much material from the side of my bookshelf.

I decided the punishment for the crime would be to use a hand planer to correct the situation.  That decision has the added bonus of sharpening my planer after running it through the glue used to hold plywood together.  Anyway, by the time I could go rent a power planer and take it back, I could finish the job by hand.  Smoothing, filling, and repainting my small mistake will set me back about three hours, plus an hour to sharpen my planer.

No real need to worry about the moral of the story here.  In the end, I am still making chips and dust and doing something that I enjoy.  Although doing something twice does tarnish the joy a little bit, it still beats spending time at work by a good margin.  I have to admit that sharpening a planer is not much of a punishment either.  Since I need to touch this one up, I might as well sharpen the others while I have my water stones out.