Color me DUMB!

[foggytown]

Bought a cheap drum sanding kit from ebay some months ago. Four drums and lots of sanding tubes to use on my bench drill. Worked OK but some of the tubes just would not fit well on the little drums - some too big others too small. So I've been taping up the too small barrels to stop the tubes slipping. Hey - it only cost a few bucks. Today I need the smallest drum radius and I can't get any of the smallest tubes to slip over. In frustration I thought I'd take the drum off so I see this little nut at the bottom of the drum on the shaft. I turn it counter-clockwise (universal loosen, right?) and what the hell - it doesn't loosen - it tightens up and the drum gets fatter! And the nut is reverse threaded so when I turn it clockwise, it loosens and the drum gets smaller.

Nobody ever told me you could make the drums bigger and smaller with this nut thereby making it easier to get the tubes off and on! DOH!

FoggyTown

[Jois]

Now somehow I knew about that but since I can't tell left from right I never get the drums on or off or to stay in place with out a lot of fussing around just the same. Doh!

Josie

[Robatoy]

I'm not going to snicker at your expense as I have encountered similar thing where I DOH!'ed. My first sanding drum was a 3 1/2" SandBoss pneumatic. I slipped on the sleeve and hooked up the air chuck. It clearly said not to exceed 35 psi..'cept I hadn't read that part. I figure it blew at about 80 psi.. nothing really loud.. just expensive. Later I found out they were repairable by buying a new tube... then I had two 3 1/2" drums... till I was sanding against the grain on the edge of an oak board driving a nice sliver into the sleeve and tube... just a hiss that time.... as you can see.. I have absolutely no right to laugh at your misfortune, funny as it is.....

[Bruce Barnett]

I always knew about this, but I had the other problem. No matter how much I made them thinner, I could not get the worn cyliders off. So I ripped them off, and I was never able to get new ones one. They WERE cheap. I think I got them from AMT (the Harbor Freight of the 80's... :-) They worked for the first week, but that was 20 years ago.

[Upscale]

Haven't we all done something DOH! once in awhile. Mine was six months ago when unbeknownst to me, my cordless drill slipped into reverse. Spent over two hours trying to figure out why none of my new drills bits wouldn't drill for shit.

[Billy]

My old boss thought it would be a good idea to chuck one up in router once. Very short experiment.

[foggytown]

Oh sure. DOHness is an elemental part of wrecking. I am especially proud of the time I spent at least an hour lovingly machining and sanding a decorative figured stretcher for a side table - and then glued it up backwards AND upside down. I didn't notice it until the next day at which point I discovered that the glue was indeed stronger than the wood.

FoggyTown

[Norman D. Crow]

Yep! Friend asked me to fix a back porch light sensor that was coming on too much for too short a time, burning out the bulb. Took it down and working @ odd moments in the basement, spent some time on it, was about to get a new sensor assy. when it wouldn't work. Then . . . DOH! You jacka**! It won't work with the lights on, it's designed to work in the DARK!

[Upscale]

Reminds me of back in the DOS days. Installed a new cdrom drive and then wrote up a DOS batch file so I could play some music cds. Named it cd.bat. Spent the next three days trying to figure out why when I typed 'cd' my batch file wouldn't work.

[Pat Barber]

My personal favorite is ripping large expensive sheets of plywood and measuring correctly and marking incorrectly. I have done that twice in the same day.

foggytown wrote:

[George]

I know a guy who had a pretty smooth database and output designed back in the DOS days, only to run up against an unanticipated glitch in the payroll program when it refused to compute and issue compensation to a guy whose last name was " Blank...."

[jo4hn]

During the 70s gasoline crunch, I decided to move a couple of gallons from one vehicle to another. I walked into the garage and picked up a cheap electric pump that I had. I walked back outside and held the cord in my hand for a few seconds. I returned to the garage, put the pump back from which it had come, went into the house, poured a beer and rested until my heart quit racing. glurp, jo4hn

[Tim Douglass]

I do that so often I don't even count it anymore. My favorite was installing the chain on my chain saw backwards. At the time I was cutting and selling firewood, so having it suddenly stop cutting was rather disconcerting. More so was when I finally figured out the problem after re-sharpening the chain - *twice*!

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

[Tim Douglass]

How many employees had to change their shorts?

Spinning non-router stuff in a router is flat scary!

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

[tom_murphy]

You just kind of have to accept that you're going to do that once in a while. Just the other day, I was repeating "seventy eight and seven eighths...seventy eight and seven eighth...seventy eight and seven eighths..." in my head and promptly marked 78 3/8 and made the cut. AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! That's a long piece of hardwood to scrap! I'm a newbie so I had to learn butt joinery on the spot.

BTW, I'm going to have to learn to be less vocal when I screw up. My wife came running out of the house assuming that I'd cut off a body part!

Tom

[Upscale]

That reminds me of when I had my '67 T-bird. Middle of winter went out, started up the car, turned the heat on full, went back in the house to wait for it to warm up. Woke up on the couch 8 hours later. The car was still running with all the snow melted for five feet around it, 3/4's of a tank of gas used up. Car never ran properly after that.

[Warren Weber]

Can't add to this bunch. I never made a mistake>>>>>>> But then again I may be mistaken about that. (

[Dave Balderstone]

Bought a new chainsaw a little over a year ago, display unit, fully assembled. Jonsered, nice little 16" saw.

Took me about half an hour of trying to cut through 2/" branches with little success before I thought to check whether the chain was on backwards or not in the store.

Guess what?

djb

[Glen]

A buddy of mine rebuilt/restored a '62 Corvette. He had finished, it was a true work of art. It was late on a Sunday afternoon (this was quite a few years ago) and all the auto places were closed. He wanted to try out the car, filled the radiator with water (no anti-freeze) and went for a test drive. Beautiful. He parked the car in his (NY) driveway and returned to the house. The temp dropped that night badly. So badly that when he returned to the car the next day he had a cracked block. DOH!

Glen

[Tim Douglass]

You get over the screaming pretty soon. If you make as many mistakes as I do it makes your throat hurt too much.

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass