Worktop disaster!!

[jaykay2]

HELP please can someone tell me what went wrong?
see picture at http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g209/jaykay2_photos/90d33e6c.jpg

and

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g209/jaykay2_photos/DSCF1635.jpg

cut the female joint with the jig & router on the right hand top, then laid it over the left hand board as the walls were out of square, & scribed the joint, then overlayed the jig on the scribe line with the allowance for bush guide etc. my problem is that the left hand worktop is now cut to exact length from the one on it's left, i do have 26cm to spare on the other end of the right hand worktop, so question is can i move it up & redo the female cut, or is all lost?
HELP!!
cheers for reading this tale of woe
john k

p.s. the joint in terms of fit is the best one i have cut sofar!!

 

[Scrit]

The female part of the joint looks good, so at a guess you've not registered the male off the back edge of the worktop properly, so the mitre part of the joint is cut too deep. You either need to recut the female edge of the joint deeper and longer (tricky, and the left hand top will then be too short), trim the left hand shorter by recutting the joint (again tricky and the left hand top ends up too short again) or trim something off the front edge of the left hand worktop (which might make the top too shallow for the units)............ Not nice, but hopefully you have a piece trimmed from elsewhere which might make a breadboard (crosscut) end for the left hand piece (and thus long enough again). One thing I can suggest is to drill hole near the edge with a large Forstner bit (to cut-out the "bad" part of the joint), then fill the resulting hole with an "accent piece" in a contrasting timber, like these sketches (size of "plug" exagerrated):

The shape doesn't need to be circular, it could just as easily be a triangle or another shape, but personally I'd go for a contrasting timber to highlight rather than hide on the basis that being blatant probably looks more "designed" (so long as it's well fitted )

Scrit

 

[jaykay2]

Thanks for that! I think we had resigned ourselves to adding a triangular bit as well, you live & learn as they say, you would think at 59 i should have learnt by now!

I still do not understand how it occured & need to understand for future reference
thanks again for the good advice
I appreciate it
John

 

[jaykay2]

Thanks for that! I think we had resigned ourselves to adding a triangular bit as well, you live & learn as they say, you would think at 59 i should have learnt by now!

I still do not understand how it occured & need to understand for future reference
thanks again for the good advice
I appreciate it
John

 

[Scrit]

The male cut is done with one pin inserted at the right-hand edge of the jig to align to the back edge of the worktop (as is normal). If you "cock" the jig to take into account a corner which is more than 90 degrees (which I think this might well be) it is probable that you have inadvertently introduced the error because the alignment pins are not centred with the cutter line and cocking the jig magnifies the errors. The other possibility is that your jig has pin positions for, say, 600-605-610-616, etc and you've simply used the wrong pin hole on the male cut in error, e.g. 616 instead of 610. These jigs are designed to cut right angle solutions therefore cutting "cocked" corners can take a bit of trial and error (as well as a few pencil marks to show where the jig was placed!) and requires a couple of inches of spare material. I always trim the ends to length AFTER cutting the joints.....

Scrit

 

[big-all]

as scrit says you always[try to] finnish with the simplest cuts whatever job your doing so you get one or more attempts at the difficult cuts

if they are both the same do the least obvious one last so any mistakes or corrections are less obvious

 

[jaykay2]

Hi Guys!

Just added another picture to show the length,

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g209/jaykay2_photos/wideworktop.jpg


i had already cut the other end, so this one had to be the final precise length cut, which i pride myself on getting exatly right apart from the obvious!
cheers for all the good advice
jk