Sometimes, you just have to admit that the project is not going well, and just cut your losses.
I was working on building a couple of 3-dimensional cutting boards, which are very pretty but very involved. There are a lot of steps (milling up, gluing, cutting angles, planning, ripping, re-gluing, etc.). If you mess up one of the steps, you have to go back and either fix it (if possible) or purchase new material and start over again. I’ve made them before with no issue, but this time…
I was about 70% done with the boards, but in doing the crosscutting before the final glue up, the pieces kept falling apart due to poor gluing on my part in the early steps of the project. I had fixed boards that had issues earlier, even purchased new materials to replace ones that failed. In the end, though, it just did not work out. So I had to just take the pieces that did not work, toss them in the trash, and get back to working on other projects.
The key with any sort of “failure” is to learn something from it so that you do not repeat the issue again. In this case, I learned that I need to concentrate at the beginning on the milling and gluing so that I have a good foundation for the project.
Lesson learned!
Kevin