Thread: What Mistakes Did You Learn From The Most?

there are so many stories of my stupidity, but here are a few:
-I tried to rush the cleaning of a vintage razor by using a belt grinder...and made permanent uneven areas on the blade.
-Rushing cutting a pivot pin and hitting the blade by accident with a hammer...breaking it of course!
-I was doing the final polishing on a blade restore, and let the edge come up slightly while working. It was just a hair but enough to catch my finger and leave a wicked cut! My wife had a kitten when she saw that one...

Originally Posted by mglindo

The mistake I learned the most from was don't be distracted by the wife who wants to talk to you while you are trying to shave. You will most likely cut yourself as I did. Twice! Ouch!


Mike

I have to say my wife is very good about taking extreme care when I am shaving. If the light is on the bath early morning, she opens the door very slowly. Of course she is somewhat blinded by the six 100 watt fluorescent bulbs.

Originally Posted by Haroldg48

I've learned a lot from most of my mistakes, and even more by reading about mistakes members of the forum have made and the advice they get on correcting them!

I hear you. I try to learn from others' mistakes when I can.
What stinks is when you find that bit of information you could have used AFTER you make the mistake.

yeh no carpet here, but I do have those foam type lock together rubber mats along the front of my bench & around my buffer LOL
even saved a couple of clumsy drops with no damage so far (Touch wood)

Label scales to be made as left and right.
Because I chamfered the wrong side of the scale I had spent 4 hours carving.

My latest stupid mistake, that I hope I learned from, was to pin the blade in upside down. It was a nice, clean, tight pinning too.

I use to restore razors over a concrete floor till I dropped one after the final buff & it exploded into 5 pieces.

Rubber mat went down after that & I still managed to drop one that hit the only 6 square inches that were uncovered.
Damn that Murphy & his law .

The only solution is not to drop the thangs

Originally Posted by onimaru55

I use to restore razors over a concrete floor till I dropped one after the final buff & it exploded into 5 pieces.

Rubber mat went down after that & I still managed to drop one that hit the only 6 square inches that were uncovered.
Damn that Murphy & his law .

The only solution is not to drop the thangs

On my own I have figured out that solution to broken scales. For some reason my fingers fail to take my advice.
Most of the work I do is repairing what I have done.

You guys are reading my history!!
~Richard

After a few days of hand sanding and detail work, last night I finished up the polishing of a W&B "Celebrated Rattler" 7/8". It was coming out beautiful and once i was happy with it, i reached to turn off the buffer. Somehow i dropped the Blade, which promptly cracked when it hit the floor. Felt like crying...

Minor one, remove ALL the 50 grit scratches before HT.

Major one, on my second RSO attempt, I made the wedge too wide, and instead of doing the proper thing and drilling out the pin and thinning down the wedge, I got lazy and thought that grinding it down another 1/8 would be easier, ended up with a crap looking blade with a blown temper, it now hangs over my bench, and will be etched with the phrase:

Why is it that we never have enough time to do things right, but always enough time to do them twice?

That RSO was for my boss at my day job, and i had to start from square one. 20 hours down the drain, and another 20 to do it again.