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Thread: two questions: cutting slats for a shelf, and filling a small hole

  1. #1

    two questions: cutting slats for a shelf, and filling a small hole

    I'm working on the design for a indoor/outdoor plant stand (see pic below) that I was hoping to get some thoughts on. For the shelves, how would you make them? I've come up with three ideas:

    1) Cut the slats separately, use a dado stack or router to cut out most of the sides (leaving the ends at full width), and glue them together via the full width ends.

    2) Cut the slats, cut separate spacer pieces a few inches long the thickness of the grooves, and glue all that together.

    3) Cut and glue the slats, use a router to route out the grooves.

    I'm leaning towards 1) at the moment. For reference, each slat will be 3/4" thick, 2" wide and 28" long.

    Second question (for an unrelated project I'm currently working on): I have some cocobolo that I've resawed and book matches together. It's really thin (1/8") and I have two holes in it (used to be 1 hole, but then I resawed...). How would you fill them? They're about 3/32" in diameter and pretty clean. I was going to try epoxy, and mix in some saw dust. Recommendation on epoxy? other thoughts?

    Thanks guys.
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  2. #2
    Join Date
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    I assume you are trying to get a gap between the slats along most of the length with no gap where they attach to the cross supports. Why complicate the design? Why not just rip the slats to the required width with the desired gap and attach to the supports with the gap? I don't think which epoxy you use to fill such a small hole will matter much. Pick up some epoxy, mix with sawdust and let it cure. If you are satisfied with the result use that mix to repair the holes.

  3. #3
    Join Date
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    I agree with option 1. Option 2 has too many fiddly pieces and extra glue joints. Option 3 if you get break out from cranky grain you lose the whole shelf. Make all your components and then glue them together. I also happen to agree with your design choice. What you are doing sets it apart from the ordinary.

    Doug has it covered with the hole repair. Cheers

  4. #4
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    Make yourself a jig and use a pilot on your router to cut the recesses along the sides. This will be much easier and safer than trying to make stopped cuts using a dado blade. Whatever you do, do not attempt the stopped cuts by lowering pieces onto a moving dado blade. Lowering a work piece onto a moving blade is extremely dangerous.
    Lee Schierer
    USNA '71
    Go Navy!

    My advice, comments and suggestions are free, but it costs money to run the site. If you found something of value here please give a little something back by becoming a contributor! Please Contribute

  5. #5
    So I finally got around to starting these (had some Christmas presents and a pair of end tables jump ahead of them in line). I started with option 1) but black locust (what I'm using for these) is ridiculously dense. It smacked the router table around even when I was removing 1/16". After doing one cut on a single slat there's no way I wanted to do it on both sides of 43 more... So I ended up going with option 2). It's a little messy, but with a couple of cauls and leaving things long I should be fine. Six out of eight are done now.



    Another thing I did was leave the spacers thicker than the slats, that let's me worry about aligning them on one less axis.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Location
    Carrollton, Georgia
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    Dave, when I made some outdoor plant stands, I cut separate slats to fit inside a frame on supports. I attached them with fasteners as I don't trust glue long term outdoors. It took 150 deck screws but it lasted nearly 20 years with constant outdoor service.

    angle design #1.JPG

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