She turns the planer
on and adjusts the speed to the finishing speed. This is the slower speed, but it should
be better for running the figured maple through it.
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Beth uses a small
caliper to measure the board thickness. The arrow points to the machine's height
window. We have no experience to know how accurate the machine gauge is so we will use the
hand calipers this time. Beth measures about 1 1/16", and she wants to end up
with a thickness of 3/4" exactly.
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She feeds the board into the
planner. We have run several boards through the planer with this setup and have experienced
no snipe.
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It didn't take all that much
time for Beth to get to the final thickness of 3/4". That is exactly what she now
reads.
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At the table
saw, Beth has installed a CMT rip blade and set the GripTite fence in place. With these
magnetic hold downs set so that they just "kiss" the boards, she can feed the
board through the saw blade and have no kickback. She is cutting new edges on the
board.
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She cuts the boards in
thirds at the CMS.
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She measures the three
boards as they would be in a single panel. The width is just right and the fit of the
boards is excellent — no further jointing is necessary.
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She applies glue to the
maple edges. The arrow is directed at the maple board I had glued up earlier. These maple
pieces will be the raised panels for our doors.
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Beth lightly taps the rubber
mallet to even up the boards as she applies a little pressure to the clamps. After this
coaxing, the panel is real smooth.
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With her glue-up in the
clamps and drying, she turns to the panel that was clamped up the day before. She uses a
paint scraper to remove a small amount of glue squeeze-out.
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Beth uses the
Festool Rotex 150 sander/polisher to sand the glued up panels. While every effort was made
to glue the boards evenly, there is always a minor bit of sanding required. Beth is using
80 grit sandpaper and has switched the unit to a more aggressive sanding action. It
doesn't take long in this mode to smooth out any unevenness.
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With the panel evened out,
she changes the sander's action to random orbital.
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With the sander in the
random orbital mode, Beth can sand the entire surface to get any swirls out. In this mode,
the sander is easy to operate — it almost glides across the surface.
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With the panel done, Beth
checks the program that I used to create dimensions for all the components of the doors. I
used Raised Panel Doors, Ver. 5. It has never let me down. She has a printout
that will allow her to cut all the elements to the right size. Their website is listed
below.
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