A little hitch in my get-along this week...been slow to blog. I blame it on coding and my trip up north to Philo and Ukiah. The former for a party and wine-tasting, the latter to visit a gallery and load a lot of wood, rather jankily, into the back of my friend's Tundra. See what I mean...
As gift for the sorting/moving/loading of above wood in 95 degree Ukiah heat...I received a half bottle of orange Gatorade and this 5 foot tall board of Claro Walnut! Yep...that's 20 dollar a board foot Claro, cut and milled locally in Ukiah and air dried for over 15 years. Thank you Alex...talk about a worthwhile trip!
These were very pleasant distractions from computer time, but they weren't necessarily the primary cause of delay. That goes to the feeling of daunt (never used that word that way...) over the complexity of explanation required for this next part. The making was somewhat difficult and long to figure out...half a day of jig preparation...which means that I might have to type way too much to arrive at a meeting of minds between us. But...you know what they say about fear...so let's just give it a try.
First though, a glue up:
Lots of clamps! And done. A particularly easy glue up...I think I've finally conquered my glue up related anxiety. Thank you Dune.
A few hours later, I was ready to move onto the next stage of work...the 'complicated stuff'. To start explaining, let me quote an old blog post, just from a few weeks ago. Remember this picture?
And these paragraphs?
"You'll notice the mortise is not in the center of the rabbet at the moment. That is intentional. I don't know if I can explain it very well...but I'll try (I'll pick it up in another post if I fail).
Eventually, I am going to round or radius all the corners of this piece: glass, inner-rabbets and exteriors. If I ran the rabbet to it's intended width on the router table, the corners would meet at a 90 degree angle and I wouldn't have any leftover material to round. After I glue up the frame, I'll take away more width in the straight away while leaving wood in the corners to cut with a semi-circular gouge. Make sense? Probably not."
Ok...so I now have to make sense of that! See what I mean about daunting?
Let me start explaining by saying...I need to make the rabbet bigger/increase the width of the step-down, which will allow the glass to be seated more fully within the frame. The only way I can do that now, given that it's glued up, is to use a handheld router. And the only way I can use a handheld router is in combination with a bushing (the piece of round brass around the bit) and a straight piece of plywood serving as a reference for the bushing to run against. Undoubtedly not making sense so far. Let's try pictures.
1. Bushing.
Let me start explaining by saying...I need to make the rabbet bigger/increase the width of the step-down, which will allow the glass to be seated more fully within the frame. The only way I can do that now, given that it's glued up, is to use a handheld router. And the only way I can use a handheld router is in combination with a bushing (the piece of round brass around the bit) and a straight piece of plywood serving as a reference for the bushing to run against. Undoubtedly not making sense so far. Let's try pictures.
1. Bushing.
2. Straight white plywood, on a parallel line with the rabbet of the table frame.
3. Bushing referencing off edge of plywood, which is shallow of frame edge, leads to a cut and expansion of the width of rabbet.
With the white plywood held in place, I simply rotate the frame, removing the same amount of width from each side. Definitely makes sense right? Nodding heads from woodworkers...for the rest, absolutely not.
One potential scare I had during this process was running the router too far along the frame. Given that there is a mitered corner, it could have been very easy for me to push too far and blow out the corner with the bit. Hence, the 'stop' you can see in pencil on the white board. At that point, the bit is very close to the corner and I can't take off anymore. Plan is just to leave it at the moment and do the final curve with hand tools.
I could potentially try to explain the set up a little more, I'm leaving out some details, but at some point...explanation is both a chore (for me) and a bore (to you), so perhaps, we can just leave a little mystery around the process. If you just can't stand that, write me and I'll write you back a book. But for now, let's just stick with the results from the hand router, no ambiguity over this:
4. Expanding rabbet after the first pass with the router.
5. Rabbeting complete with the mortise in the middle...sounds like a kid's game. The corner remains messy from the router, where I stopped the cut.
7. Ain't that sweet!
Yeehah! Complicated work complete! And looking mighty fine if I can say so...and I can cause I'm the author.
Think that's enough blogging for one day. Up next is another round of complicated blogging...a lap joint. Want a teaser?
.JPG)
Not a lot to glean there I know, but I'll be using a router and bushing again with this plywood template to make a mortise (of sorts) on the side face of the frame...see if you can reason out what kind of cut this will make! Or just wait...answer to come in a few days.