Things I learned from a Hand-Cart (Part Two)

What I learned

Sketchup plans suck

I ditched SketchUp in favour of Fusion360 simply because F360 is a much better product for the same price. Seriously a much better project.

But many people only know SketchUp and so most of the plans you'll find on the internet are made in SU. Fine, except most people use colour coding. In pretty much all cases they don't use this properly and so you end up with confusion which is what happened to me.

F360 however generates standard industrial drawings which are much easier to read and very simple to create.

Always study the plans

I had made something similar to this three years ago when I made a baby changer for Little Wookie. There are differences but largely the same. I felt I knew the plans so I glanced over them. That was my mistake and it lead to some big stuff ups.

Make notes of where you are

This project is designed to be knocked out over a day. The problem is that I have full-time work, my weekends are split with religious activities, and so my useable time is a lot less. That being said during the week I get a lot of free time as I start early and most often finish early. That however then gets split with looking after Little Wookie. He's just ticked over three and he's now at that stage where he's starting to become independent and look after himself but that is now leading to issues of having to watch what he's doing in order to set boundaries so there's that.

This means that I often end up having to spread projects across a number of days. I'm fine with this although it does make me impatient. Because of this there's a very real requirement to record where I am in the build process. This project was simple I knew where I was the whole way but other projects aren't going to be this easy.

Mark out layouts

Had I done this with the shelves then I would not have had the issue of the bad cuts. It's pretty much 101 that you measure twice cut once but you can't forget the importance of marking the cutouts.

Don't work while tired

I am a postie. My day starts with sorting mail at 5:30am until it's finished and sometimes earlier than that. Then I go out and deliver. Add to this I'm working in the middle of what is turning out to be a very hot summer. As such I get pretty tired.

Coming home and working out in the shed seems like a good idea but in all honesty I really should have a nana nap before doing so. This will get me out of the hot part of the day and rest me up making me safer in the workshop.

NEVER underestimate the power of a nap in the afternoon. After all Mexicans are pretty industrious people and it seems their siesta is a big part of that.

Conclusion

This project was full of dumb mistakes but it's complete now. I'm not happy with it but I'm happy with how it functions and that's most important. It'll get to the stage where I don't even think about the mistakes I made in its construction because it'll be proving its worth with its load.

I've learned a lot from what this project as I do most of my projects and that's key. A project where you learned nothing is honestly a worrying project.

NEVER fear failure but ALWAYS learn from those failures.