Shop rant, I hate mirror image work

[Guest]

I should be good at making the mirror image of something by now. I have done so, or tried to do so, thousands of times.

I am not yet good at it. No matter how slowly, how cautiously, how contemplatively I proceed there is at least a 50 50 chance that the first attempt will come out bass akwards in some dimension.

Convoluted pieces of carpet are my nemesis, even with a paper this shape template, and if I am lucky the effed up cut will work on the other side.

I just cut two pieces of 3 inch minicel with exacting and multidimensional convoluted curves.

Convoluted curves accompanied by curses. Fark, that one is completely backwards. Try again with another thick chunk of minicel, band saw and Dragonskin. Ummm, I can make that one work.

My brain is not wired to perceive and create a mirror image.

 

[Pringles]

I have no idea what Minicel is, but I understand the frustration when something that seems like you've prepared to do goes miserably wrong. This may not be the least bit pertinent, but in a book I read once, someone said that if you try to draw something by looking at it and drawing, you already know what it should look like and you miss the outlines, and the lines that should be emphasized to make "it" appear as you draw it. Your project comes out wrong That book suggested that you turn the original upside down. Then, your eye doesn't see the item, it sees outlines and proportions, and it lets you pick out the important structures to draw. I don't know how to apply it to your situation, but maybe it'll give you an idea. Or, you can just ignore this as a friendly response that doesn't help in the least.

 

[Odyssey]

Carpentry and arithmetic go together like pie and ice cream, baseball and summer, pencils and erasers, algebra and swear words. Replacing an old fireplace surround with a nicer old decorative one on Saturday with my son in his home, we got to wrestling with algebra. Building a thick smooth level plywood base as a hearth over the old uneven damaged one was straightforward, and it will be tiled later; constructing the angled plywood firebox also to be tiled later was "momentarily confusing". Arbitrarily picking 30 degree angled sides from back to front was easy, but then accurately measuring where exactly to place it so combined ply and tile thickness would precisely meet 1/4" behind the leading edge of the not yet fitted surround was a job stopper. I covered the clean plywood base with pencil lines "here...no, here..." and moved on to drawing triangles, angles and lines on the walls above our stalled project. My son whipped out his phone and came to the rescue with an algebra app...but not quite. We kept getting confused over "which angles are we needing to use?...which line measurements are we missing...?" Just when we thought we'd solved it, and set the surround in place, we found a difference of 1/2" first here, then there...I must have remeasured everything a dozen times to make sure all was symmetrical and exact...but fractions kept appearing from nowhere, and later disappearing to...where? The compound miter saw and table saw was on the unlit front porch, where there was plenty of afternoon sun when we started, but by the time we had finally painfully fitted it all together we were cutting the last few plywood pieces in the dusk, squinting at smudged pencil lines muttering "I think we got it this time." Eventually we did. Standing relieved and happy in front of his new reclaimed fireplace, we could barely keep a straight face when we agreed "Good thing we knew what we were doing, otherwise it would've taken forever!"

 

[Guest]

I sympathize. Try building a LEFT HAND flintlock rifle some time after building dozens of rt handed ones. Shouldn't be to hard???

 

[dougd]

Don't know if this counts but while putting up walls in the new shed I measured upteen times and it was perfect I tell ya and then I cut from the wrong side so the 4 x 8 sheet didn't even come close to the window where it needed to be. And I thought I was so clever! Several cans of liquid courage really didn't help much!

dougd

 

[Guest]

Don't know if this counts but while putting up walls in the new shed I measured upteen times and it was perfect I tell ya and then I cut from the wrong side so the 4 x 8 sheet didn't even come close to the window where it needed to be. And I thought I was so clever!

Jeeze Doug, I never did nothing like that. Me? Moi? Never.

I never penciled my cut lines or traced a template on the reverse of something with a front and back side and magically got the mirror image of what I wanted. I think about that long and hard, especially when laying out a template to reverse sketch. Never happened I tell you. It sure as heck never happened twice in a row with the same god dang how the heck did I do that again piece.

Just like I have never penciled in something L shaped to cut out from a larger piece, and then cleverly extended all those lines, so the scrap would be cut square for future waste not use.

And then, you know, got confused and cut the wrong extended line first, watching the foot of the desired L fall at my feet.

Nope, never ever happened.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

And this is why I always start with extra material. Compound angles are my nemesis.

 

[Odyssey]

This week I'm buying a full sheet of plywood in hopes I'll only need half of it. How is that for pessimistic planning?
(And full sheets are a relative savings vs half sheet. There's that too.) With any luck (and skill) I'll have enough left over to make 2 of.