Happy Sunday to everyone….sorry to be a day late this week…family get together with the family after the shop yesterday. It was a nice day here with temps in the mid to upper 70’s and some breeze. The shop is buried in shade most of the day so it was very comfortable. My day started with a stop in at Metro Hardwoods to pick up the Paduk I needed for the tower top pediment and also the fence.
Got to the shop and got going right away knowing it was going to be a shorter day than usual. Over the week I hadn’t been able to finish my homework (the tower rock overlays) because I had a stomach bug a couple of days and each of the overlay sets (two sets of three) take between 2:00 and 2:15 hours to cut out. I made it through 1 1/3 of them. Saturday’s goal was to get the tower finished up….I fell short by about the two hours I cut the day short. I started by prepping the wood for the tower top hex. I followed the exact same procedure as a couple of weeks ago on the tower hex so I won’t go into a lot of redundant detail. You can access that through the website or our blog page (http://wilckenswoodworking.net/blog/). I cut the 6 pieces (and a setup piece from scrap wood) to the overall height but cut them about 1/4″ wide. I then set up the tablesaw and made my first cut on all 7 pieces then adjusted the fence and snuck up on the setting with my set-up piece for the second cut. Once I got it set up, I backed the fence off 1/64″ and cut my other pieces….they came out exact. I then laid my pieces out as I wanted them to mate up per color and grain. I then butted them together and taped across the edge. I then checked out the fold-up of the assembly and it was just a bit tight to get it to mate up (table saw angle must have been off ever so slightly) so I took them apart and kissed each angle on the belt sander and put a small radius on the inside edges….the second mate up was perfect by doing this. If you do this step on the tablesaw…..be extremely careful because your fingers are VERY close to the blade. You can also set up your sander and sand these on or set the table on your scrollsaw and cut them there. Also be careful using your sander…you can get a board out of square very quickly….square is important. I then re-taped and ran my bead of glue in each joint, folded it up, taped the last seam and then put large rubberbands around the assembly to hold it together. Once this had set up I removed the bands and tape, filled the seams with glue and did the final sanding of it. (Refer to the tower assy from a couple weeks ago). I finished by lightly sanding the top and bottom on the belt sander moving it in a rotary motion.
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