I come here to humble myself...
I was assembling a nightstand similar to this:
I modified the design to make it taller to match the height of a tall bed a nd also raised the top shelf so that it is flush with the top of the side s lats. (It's a nightstand for my daughter's college apartment)
I knew going in that I had to be careful when screwing the top shelf to the slats. Being so close to the end of the slats introduced a lot of potentia l for splitting. Of course, I pre-drilled and countersunk for the screws.
I specifically said to myself "If you need to remove a screw for any reason , be damn sure the screw gun is set to extract the screw, not drive it in f urther."
Low and behold, after attaching all 19 slats to both the top and bottom she lf, I noticed that 1 (one!) slat was not fully seated against the top shelf . Simple fix: remove the screw, clamp the slat to the shelf and carefully d rive the screw back in. Easy peazy.
So I grab the screw gun and promptly drive the screw further into the wood, splitting the slat.
Now I have to set up the table saw to rip a new slat. Luckily the router ta ble is still set up the same so the round overs will be easy to match. Then there's the finish sanding. I thought I was done!
Any other mistake during assembly would have been bad enough, but to do *ex actly* what I warned myself not to do really sucks!