Rookie Mistakes. Will I ever not make them?

Whyemier

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About a year ago, if I bremember me right, I made a skeg (rudder/keel) for my wife's kayak and subsequently, another for a friend of hers. Both kayaks were identical, so required the same set up.
She recently came back from kayaking with an extra Kayak on the trailer.

"Who's Kayak is that?" I pondered out loud.:oops:
"Why that's Tina's Kayak, you're going to work on." Says she.:rolleyes:
"Doin' what?" Says I.:disturbed:
"Adding a skeg like you did on mine."
"But it's different than yours" Says I in rebuttal:cautious:
"You'll figure it out." Says she with finality.:confused 3:
With that overblown vote of confidence, I had another project, unwanted kinda project. There in might lie the problem.

Turned downed the end and threaded it, faced it, cut the relief and knurled. All going well so far. I set it up to drill the two retaining pin holes...forgot to add the .100 to my measurement to allow for the edge finder dimension. "Ack!":blowup: You will notice if you look somewhat closer the holes are offset from the longitudinal center. Only had one other piece of aluminum the same size and wasn't going to trash this one yet. So I continued setting up to mill the slot...yep got in a hurry and failed to tighten the rear hold down clamp enough. Scared me silly when it jump out of square and notched the end, and then some, of the slot. DANG! :blowup: But I was still not going to trash this one and waste the aluminum. So 'Tina' gets what she gets.:oops2:

The moral might be don't let your mind wander off what you're doing. Or...don't let the wife get you to do what you may not want to do. :weight:


 
You can't charge money for that work but for a freebie, Beggars can't be choosers.
You'll know you are not a rookie when you start making the same mistakes again.
 
Every once in a while, I get a feeling that on that particular day at that particular time, I'm going to screw up everything I touch. If I try and plow through and get 'er done, I screw it up. If I'm lucky, I realize what kind of mood I'm in and clean the shop or watch tv.

Your skeg looks good. Don't tell anyone you didn't do that way on purpose.
 
Common comment at work: If you don’t touch the grey things or the black things, you won’t ever screw anything up and will be a model employee.....

Black things translates into: Our tool boxes..
Grey things are our airplanes...
 
Some days we have the "midas" touch and others we have the "reverse midas touch"...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337Z using Tapatalk
 
Persist. After a while the rookie mistakes will cease. You won't be a a rookie any more. We call them features then.
 
Personally, I think you're idea is great, and that alone deserves points. There are very few times that I make something up that doesn't have an extra hole, or something added or removed because a good thought is an ongoing process.
 
Seems like my mistakes cost more than they used to.
Dave
 
To err is human...
_AND_ nothing bad happened - safe & sound...
and the finished product looks fine and functions as intended. That is a success!
 
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