Well, it was back to work on the hall table this weekend and although I had limited time in the shop (it was my week for swimming and karate duty), much progress was made. In fact, by the end of the next five posts, the table will be at a nearly ready to finish state!
We start off this "episode" with a shot of the form that will be used to make the bent lamination for the front apron. You will recall that I made an exact duplicate of the top out of MDF last weekend to do layouts on and that piece, in turn, becomes the form with the addition of some clamping blocks arranged along a line that represents the back side of the apron. Some wax was applied to the surface of the MDF where the lamination would "live" during glue-up to insure it would not stick to the form.
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The lamination was made from 5 plys of poplar re-sawed and planed to some thickness or another that coincidentally ended up with a 3/4" thick apron. (Yes, I really did guess at this...frankly the exact thickness didn't matter so why measure or do math? ) Titebond III was dribbled onto the pieces and spread quickly with a stick of wood, getting the best coverage I could muster. This was repeated on each layer as needed. Please note that this is not the best way or glue to do laminations, but I was using what I had on-hand. Finally the stacked layers were put on the form, arranged so they were centered, tamped down so they were all at about the same height and then clamped to dry.
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While that assembly was set aside to dry overnight, I did some final sizing of components...the first being the rear apron cut to "precisely" 31 1/2".
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All four 1 1/8" square legs required two tapered faces. After measuring one up to determine the start point for the taper and the end point that would result in a 3/4" square bottom, I tacked some 1/4" MDF scrap to my "slider sled" with a pinner. This makes it easy to remove the strips with no damage to the sled after the project is completed. (I plan on making an adjustable tapering jig someday in my copious free time... )
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And, of course, I finished out the night cutting the tapers on all five legs. (Yes, that was not a typo...umm....'had to make another leg due to, umm...well...operator error? )
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