I know failure is a big part of learning but I am so tired of spending countless hours and dollars on projects that are perfect during the whole process and then one little event sends it all to shit. 

I’m a beginner and I know I have no right to be angry, but all I do is watch instructional videos, spend all my money on tools and wood, and do everything I can to make sure conditions are perfect, yet I have almost nothing to show for it. 

I feel like such an idiot showing my girlfriend beautiful things I’m working on and everytime she asks about it and I have to say it’s in the trash.  I have learned a ton from my experiences however and feel like the second attempts will be much better, it’s just depressing. 

Here are my happy little accidents (failures):

1) end grain cutting board - tried using a circular saw to make the cuts which was clearly not precise as there were significant gaps(also definitely not enough clampage). I filled them with epoxy before I learned it’s a knife ruiner. I flattens the big one with a router sled I made that left marks I could not remove with hours upon hours of sanding with multiple grits. Also took a chunk out of the smaller one when doing the round over and to seal it all off I smeared my brand (nervous first time on a real “finished” product). 

2) epoxy river board for mom. Didn’t anchor the corks well enough so they began floating. Thank god a video of me pushing down corks into epoxy while another one floats up as I get epoxy everywhere doesn’t exist. Eventually it started to harden and it went to shit. I tried trimming but it cut the corks in half and looked awful. Trash. 

3) wine rack actually came out nice but in my 3AM attempt to mount it to the wall, I realized I made some kind of miscalculation so they only way I could get it on the floating wall mounts was to have the top left bracket angled like that. Weird, I’m sure I could fix it but I don’t want to touch it. Not the end of the world, just covered it with a candle. 

4) cake knife came out nice (photo after a water pop) but I drilled the dowel holes with no guide or drill press. Wobble was wobbling and it was not a clean cut. Other side looks a tad worse. 

5) river board part 2 - everything was perfect. I had learned from my previous mistakes. All I had left was the top coat of tabletop epoxy but…it didn’t cure. Maybe the 1:1 ratio was off from using a used cup, maybe temperature was wrong, maybe the wood god hates me. I waited for it to mostly harden after about a week and flatten with the router sled but little pockets would open up and smear. Then the router slipped and left a huge gouge on the middle 🤦🏻‍♂️still sitting in top of the fridge for if/when I try to salvage. Sorry mom, your valentines present is gonna be late. 

6) another end grain cutting board - made little diamonds of walnut/maple/cherry on my brand new table saw. A few were slightly taller than the others but the dry fit was good. The video I watched said to use cauls and squeeze everything together but my dumbass decided to ask ChatGPT for advice and it said to glue up strips first then connect them all together after. I even screwed down a little lane to keep them all straight for the glue up and it looked great but I guess little micro-shifts made them incompatible with the next rows. No amount of sawdust and glue would have made it presentable. I angrily threw it in the closet and ordered more wood. 

Anyway, sorry for the long rant, just wanted to vent and see if anyone else is losing hair by the minute. 

Tired of failing