Over this past weekend I was able to get the rest of the dovetails cut for the shaker step stool. Here it is, dry fit to check alignment. So far so good.
On Sunday, Nick and I took a trip down the hill to run some errands. One of the things I picked up was some Old Brown Glue. I have been thinking about trying liquid hide glue for awhile and thoughts this would be a great opportunity as I was sure that glueing the dovetails would result in a lot of squeeze out. Some quick feedback from the guys on the MWA G+ community while we were driving convinced me that the OBG was the way to go for liquid hide glue.
When it came time to glue the steps in place...I learned a few things. You do get a lot of squeeze out glueing dovetails, liquid hide glue makes things nice and slippery for assembly.....and I need some shorter clamps.
Did I mention that I need some shorter clamps? or just more clamps in general. I should have glued each of the front stretchers separately or at least used a caul across the front of them.
Out of the clamps, not too bad. Still needs some cleanup. Hardest part about cleaning up the endgrain of the tails was clamping the stool well enough to keep the plane from just chattering across. I was glad I spent the time sharping all the plane irons as birdseye maple end grain is tough stuff, even with a sharp blade.
The other thing that I bought while out and about on sunday was a Bosch random orbit sander and a stack of sanding disks. The disks were on clearance at Rockler, I'm guessing because they are 5 hole disks. Luckily they seem to work just fine with the 8 hole sander. Attaching the shop vac was not terribly successful as the hose I have is pretty stiff and I felt that there was too much suction to allow the sander to really work properly. After working with the sander for a couple days I can say that the built in dust collection is so good I may not even mess with trying to get a better setup for the shop vac. I've still been wearing a respirator, but I can sand without getting covered in dust.
Here it is, all cleaned up and rough sanded. I still have a few more areas to touch up and then its time to do the finish sanding and get some finish on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment