Projects that went well, projects that went sideways [projects]

[rebeccmeister]

scrottie and I keep a list of House Projects on an envelope on a mini-clipboard* that usually lives on the dining room table.



One of the projects that has been on the list for a long time is the one highlighted by my pen, "Deal with potato rot cabinet damage." At one point, a bag of potatoes was forgotten on a kitchen cabinet shelf, and the rot seeped into the wood below. You can see the damage to the drawer on the left side of this photo, underneath this chair I reglued:



It occurred to me that if I was doing a lot of oar sanding, it might not be much of a stretch to also sand down this drawer and see about refinishing it. So I did.



I should note, this cabinet came with the house, so it's on us to ensure it looks fine when we move out. But I'm not inclined to try and restore it to exactly its original condition. Instead I figured I should use one of the cans of wood stain we have lying around to make it look better, then put some fresh coats of finish on top of that.

I ultimately settled on this whitish stain/finish:


After some coats of this and some coats of that, it's done.



As you can see in this photo, George approves, and also, we now keep our potatoes in a bowl.



So that project went well, all things considered.

The project that went sideways is one I don't have a ton of photos for at the moment. I'd been hoping to make it a gift for S when he gets back into town, but now I'm having my doubts. It is the project of fabricating steel backing plates for some oarlock sockets for the O'Day Javelin daysailer. I was pretty pleased with how things went with cutting a small steel plate into smaller pieces for each plate. Drilling holes has been a different story. I brought the steel pieces into the lab to drill holes with the lab drill press:



So far, so good. Then I went to enlarge the center hole, and ultimately learned about what happens when stainless steel overheats, which is to say, it hardens and starts to destroy drill bits.

Sigh.

Further internet searches have suggested to me that maybe the lab drill press wasn't the best choice, after all; the relatively high rotational speed of the drill press can contribute to overheating problems. So now I've packed things back up to bring them home again. I might just ask S to finish this particular project out. The better news is that I made 3 potential plates, so there's still more material to work with.




*When it's up to me, the envelope and its friends are clipped onto the clipboard. S prefers a looser approach.

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[ysabetwordsmith]

I appreciate when people share projects that go awry. So much of crafting is about figuring out how to fix the mishaps. And too much of the Web is overcurated to look perfect, when life isn't perfect. It's why I share some of the mishaps in my craft projects.