I made two mistakes in today’s woodworking. Firstly, I took a break because I realised I needed a new router bit of a more appropriate size. When I got back, I’d forgotten that I only needed tongues on some of the boards and proceeded to spend twice as long as I needed cutting them on all the pieces I’d trimmed into lengths earlier. Fortunately, that doesn’t compromise anything critical about the design; I just lose about 6mm off the bottom of the sides, which had a much larger overhang built in.

Worse though was making the assumption that all the boards were created equal. It turns out that some are narrower than expected by about 20%. I might be able to recover from that but I decided to concentrate on the best set. They aren’t perfect but I was able to use the previously cut tongues to cut bespoke grooves and those have been glued and clamped, ready for the next stage. I’ll proceed cautiously and see if I can finish building the design with one planter. If that works, then I can consider whether the other bits I’ve cut will work for a second.

Lessons learnt (or relearnt): measure everything and, if it isn’t consistent, don’t try to work on a production-line methodology. At least the router table works pretty well. Adjusting the bit height is quite easy and I think I’ve got an idea for how I can fine tune the interaction of the bit and the fence (since the fence runs on an angle, larger marks on the edge should give finer adjustment running past the bit, like working on an over-sized protractor).