Timber Framers Guild Forums General General Forum Questions Shop mistakes/compensation

Just wondering how you guys deal with mistakes that happen while cutting joinery.

I just hired a new guy about a month and a half ago. We have been doing a mix of timber framing, running the sawmill and some conventional framing /construction.

He has been a great employee thus far. But today he made a pretty serious mistake and just before I offered him to execute the same haunched king post joint while he ran the mortiser instead. He decided to go for it.

I warned him of the importance of the joint and to specifically set the saw angle and depth and make test cuts in timber drop cut before cutting the king post.

He got the angle right but didn't set the depth. Now the king post is garbage. How much should I be responsible for and how much should he be responsible for? Like I said he is a good employee and I can't really afford to lose him.

How would you deal with this?

Thanks,
Josh Leatherman
Precision Timberworks
www.timberframingalaska.com

If you are interested in developing a great employee and future craftsman that likes working with you the answer is easy.

If not, ask yourself who would you want to be working for if you made a mistake... And then act accordingly.

If he is an employee, you are responsible for all of it. It looks like you need to be a bit more hands on. A month and a half of mixed work is not a lot of experience for a framer. If he is a good employee, then hopefully you both can learn from this and he can continue to improve.

Thanks for the replies. My employee has offered to pay for the beam and replace the labor on a new one. It seems like a lot to eat though for just starting the position and I don't want to scare him away.

Is it "garbage" or is there a decent fix for that piece? Can it be repurposed into some other scantling? I would find it hard to chuck a chunk of wood into the trash. I make silly mistakes, co-workers do, too. Creative fixes are part of the task.

We've never asked an employee to pay for a mistake out of pocket. It's part of the cost of training. It happens (to all of us). I find that my mistakes in estimating and business management cost us more than the mistakes in the shop.

I would heartily endorse Gabel's above post. That is certainly true in my experience. Stuff does happen, as long as mistakes can be made into learning experiences it's all good.

We lay out all cuts, and use blue crayon on the inside of the cut to designate
the cut. On out of square timbers (which we make each other aware of) where we have layed out snap line, it's the cutters responsibility to set the cut of depth to the shallowest cut. We operate as a collective group and profit share, so mistakes are rare.
If this guy/girl is good, keep him. I doubt he'll make the mistake again. Eat the profit loss and have him recut. The lesson has been learned, and he'll be better for his mistake. We've all done stupid stuff, and he was probably just trying hard to do the work in a quick fashion to make you money by doing it fast. I remember how hard it was to learn stuff, and figure out how to do it right and quickly, and how hard it is to find the balance between quality and speed.

Also, I think it's fair game to repair pieces, sometimes the repairs can disappear if the repair has same grain and such (can be a fun game actually) and sometimes we purposely repair so the repair stands out and is a hat's off to the powers that be that human kind makes mistakes in a kind of persian rug kind of way.

With accuracy speed comes naturally. If you do it right the first time (accuracy) then you don't have to do it again, so you process stuff faster.

Jim Rogers