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Sometimes they get to be too much. I'm taking a break and building some handplanes. Maybe some bench appliances and other stuff until I'm not so aggravated about the last error. Instant gratification zmthings so I can feel good about my woodworking again. Everyone is asking, you not building guitars? No just need a break.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I’m still a noob so I feel it man. That said I’ve seen some VERY experienced builders make some pretty rough mistakes too.

With me I find that my mistakes are of 2 types
1- inadequate skill to achieve my desired result

Or

2- poor measurement and or execution

Both of these can be improved upon. One thing I’m working on is my neck building / carving.
I have 4-5 2nds neck blanks that were cheap, and I’m simply working through my process and giving a few skills and problem areas.

I’d encourage you to take a break but don’t give up. clean the shop, build some jigs or new molds .... then identify the areas that need work and find ways to concentrate on that one thing. If you are screwing up because of needing a particular tool that will make like simpler consider just getting what you need to progress.

You got this!


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Thanks, yes I'm taking the time to think about how to make the fix without making it worse which is where I'm at. I'm still hav6fun in the workshop and that's all that matters.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Curious as to what error you’ve managed to achieve?:)


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I'm not ready to talk about it.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Nice plane. I made a convex bottom plane to rough out a cello. It sort of worked, but self destructed! I made a different one to carve out my arch-top, and it works great. Lei-Neilson scrub plane blade. I need to get an arch-top belly, or a cello back and sides, I have a cello belly, and a couple pieces for arch-top backs. It is fun to make and fun to use, but it is too big for violins or violas. Makes a ton of chips. I'm not a gouge guy.

I'm doing my third varnish on a violin I made a couple years ago. Can't get it right. So far I haven't wrecked it.

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Why be normal?

Know how you feel.
Got a build ongoing, at the finishing stage, and it's not been smooth going.
One major one was problems with the binding and purflings, and had to rout them off and start again.
Got to the neck carving and had yet an another "accident" (carelessness basically)
Realized that the treble shoulder of the neck was "lumpy" - felt quite good in the hand but it was going to show badly under finish - I was pore filling with epoxy at the time.
So took some time out, and went for a nice country walk today, took my time to think about it.
Realized I'd not really been paying enough attention to what I was doing, so I have "improved" my neck carving support jig to give better access to the shoulders of the neck by dropping 45 degrees to the side each way and still be firmly held in a vice.
Looks like it's worked out well, and it will be a help in future, but I was well sickened at first.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

A few months ago, I made a pretty bad mistake, and it caused me to have to replace the back on the guitar after I had closed the box, but before the binding had been installed.

The moment after it happened, I threw an honest-to-goodness violent tantrum and beat a poplar board against the cast iron legs of my workbench. It didn't harm the bench legs, but it tore the crap out of the poplar board.

That got the anger out of my system. I then moved on to replace the back.

I think that it is important to use every guitar at the early stages as a learning experience, something that is necessarily going to be imperfect; maybe even deeply flawed. Then I can learn from those mistakes and make the next one better than that last flawed piece of work. Improvement can only occur with continued work, continued flow. If you shut down, the work never gets better. Ever.

So, I recommend getting back on the horse. But I also highly recommend a good destructive tantrum in the moment that won't cause harm to you, your family, or any stuff you care about. It did wonders for me. Not unlike a good cry can help some folks get past their feelings. You need an outlet for the anger.

I've chucked workpieces across the shop in a fit of rage. I try not to do that anymore as it obviously makes for more work to repair, so now I just try to walk away immediately to cool off. I do like the idea of having a poplar board handy, tho!

I took a 7 year break, mostly to raise my children, but also because I was finding guitar building as a novice very very frustrating. It takes time to learn how to make your guitars great, and to spend seemingly countless hours building something to just have it turn out garbage is pretty defeating.

I will be finishing up a guitar that has had multiple catastrophic mistakes happen on it, when i string it up i will know if it was worth it or not...

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-Marcus
http://www.bailieguitars.com
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In the "old days" when I made a bad mistake ,I would give up and wreck the piece or just saw it up ion the band saw....

Now when I make a mistake, I am calm...….ooooooooommmmmmmmm and I walk away and think how to fix it. It make take an hour or a few days, but I usually come up with a way to fix it and honestly more times than not it works out to be "better" than my original design.

The last example I can think of was when my router collet wasn't tight enough and the bit slipped while routing the binding ledge.
The solution was to add side purfling which in this case looked better than having no side purfling since it was a "fancy" guitar.

It's always good to have two or three projects going at the same time.When you screw up on one you can move on to another. That gives you time to weigh your options and decide what you want to do. I have come back to a project hours, days, and even years later.
If this was something I did for a living it might be more stressful, but it's not. I like to try out new ideas, some of which are bound to fail. That's part of learning

I've pretty much done like banjopicks--I keep several projects going at the same time, but only two instruments (one with finish curing waiting to buff out and another being built). My other projects have been either jigs/tools or stuff around the house. If I'm feeling unlucky with instrument building, I'll either work on a jig I've been messing with that might not require the same level of fine handwork, or I'll get back to fixing stuff at the house. But I try to be like Brad--when I mess something up, I get out of the shop, take a walk, get a fresh outlook on things and then figure out what I did and what it will take to fix it. Except for those times that I cut and burn....(very infrequent any more thank goodness)

Dave

I have the very same thing with a loose collet, cut way below the binding line on the lower bout. Lucky my wife stopped me throwing it across the garden, left it for a week.
Came up with the same idea as you and side purlin was used and ended up looking good and like it was planned.

Loads of other stuff has gone wrong and no doubt more to come

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I routed the top off of a recent guitar. There was nothing really wrong with the top, but I decided the quality of it was not up to the quality of the back and sides, I should not have chosen it for that guitar.
This may sound stupid, but my work has risen to a level that I feel a responsibility not to make choices that degrade the guitar, to "not accept" a lower quality piece of wood or let a cosmetic error "pass".
I have also found that larger and larger pickguards really help!

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Here’s the guitar I was talking about.
Originally I planned on having no side purfling which in hindsight looked too plain, so I think it came out really nice with the six line purfling .

Looking at this guitar just reminded me that I had another error that was a lot of work to fix-I can't remember why, but the binding didn't come out perfectly even in thickness so I had to rout it off including the top purfling and start all over again.





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Nice save!

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Very nice save! Did you re-do the tail graft too? You shouldn't have confessed--no one but you would have ever known. But thanks just the same.

Dave

When it comes to slipping collets one thing to check for is that the router bit hasn't bottomed out in the spindle. The collet pulls the router bit down as it is tightened. If the shank of the bit bottoms out on the spindle the collet will seem to tighten against the bit but will not fully seat against the sides of the spindle shaft. When the bit is run against the work the collet will loosen and the bit will slip.
I try to tighten the collet until it barely grips the bit, pull the bit up a little, then fully tighten the collet. It's not the only reason bits slip, but it is one reason.

Fascinating. I have done this since I was a kid. My dad showed me the same thing, bottom the bit out and raise it up just a bit before tightening. I never questioned it and do it to this day with any kind of bit. I never knew the why until just now.


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I have so many of them, I couldn't think of a good example.

I recover from mistakes by accepting them. I’ve concluded that I’m going to have them. Usually, when the instrument is finished, they aren’t a big deal. I’m the only one that notices them and they only bug me. Remember the mistake on the next build.
Oh, and I should add, mine don’t get sold!

I hadn't put the tail graft in yet.

I never make the same mistake twice. With such a wide variety of new mistakes to make, that wouldn't be any fun.

I used to work on wooden boats, and a mistake there can cost some real coin, so you learn to make do. A craftsman never blames his tools, and that's why I borrow them whenever I can

Ed M

I've built around 20 6-string acoustic instruments (mostly guitars). The more recent ones have fewer errors than the earlier ones. I consider that progress.

Some of the most useful, if unexpected, skills I've acquired are in the domain of disguising errors, either to make them less evident or to make them into features.

I'm inevitably embarrassed to inspect a mid-dollar Asian-built guitar and note the quality of execution. That embarrassment generally diminishes when I play the instrument.

I agree, there's real value in mistakes. They help you refine your building process if you stop to think about why the occurred.
My building processes are pretty good these days

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com