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With the sides and ends cut, it is time to route the dovetail grooves in the trim piece. Bethany is using walnut for the trim piece and curly maple for the ends and sides. |
A push pad with a rubber-pad bottom works well to hold the piece and move it through the cutter. |
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With the trim piece routed, Bethany moves to the table saw to cut 8 1/2" sections for fastening onto the ends and sides. |
The project book shows the use of a cut-off sled to hold the trim piece. We used the Incra Miter Gauge to hold the piece firmly. Note that she has positioned a magnetic hold-down, the Grip-Tite, to use as a stop block. |
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With that set, it is easy to cut off 8 pieces in seconds. Caution: do not let the cut-off pieces accumulate on the out-side on the saw blade. Remove each piece before cutting the next. |
With the pieces cut, Bethany turns to gluing the pieces on the ends of the maple boards. She is using polyurethane glue and is carefully brushing the glue on all the tail surfaces. Since this glue cures with moisture, she will brush the mating pieces with water. |
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She places the moistened walnut pieces on the glued maple sections. These are tight joints and need no clamping. They will setup fast and can be sanded in one hour's time. |
Before sanding, Bethany hand scrapes off any glue squeeze out. Now she can use a belt sander to smooth out the assembly. |
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You can see now the walnut trim pieces joined to the maple sections. |
The book calls for marking each end at 3/32" from the tail. Since all the ends are equal at this point, we only marked one...very exactly. |
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Back at the saw, Bethany uses a straight edge against the blade to line up with the mark. |
She carefully holds the lined up piece in position and taps the Grip-Tite magnetic hold-down until it just touches the board. She can now use the stop block for the final cuts. |
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She now moves to the next step which is routing rabbets on the ends on the front and back. A total of 3/16" is cut, but she does it 1/16th at a time. |
Next, she clamps the four pieces together and makes the next series of cuts. In order to avoid chipping of the glued assembly, she makes these cuts very slowly. |
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