Next is to attach the alignment guide to the inner rail
which meant that I had to remove the inner rail and spacer I had just
installed.
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| Alignment Guide Detail |
The alignment guide pieces had been sitting for a bit and
when I checked them they were straight and true, always good to see. After cutting the four pieces to length and
running them through the thickness sander using fine 220 grit paper they were
ready for use. Although not on the
drawing I decided to round over the lower edge.
Here are the pieces I will be using, clamped in place and ready to route
along with the router.
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| Routing Round Over |
A couple of passes with the router gives me a nicely
rounded edge – friendly to anyone’s knees that accidently hit it.
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| Completed Round Over |
In a perfect world, the alignment guides would just fit
over the playing surface structure.
However, I have been doing this long enough that I know it’s a good
thing to allow for problems and do a test fit before I glue the parts
together. For fitting purposes, I will
just screw the alignment guides to the inner rail. When I am satisfied, I will glue them in
place. The process for installing the
screws is about the same as in other places but a little simpler since all the
drill bits are long enough to make the holes in one pass. First, is drill pilot hole through alignment
guide into the inner rail. The piece of
tape is my depth gauge.
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| Pilot Hole in Alignment Guide |
Second, is drill the counter-sink this time going only
deep enough so the screw head is flush with the alignment guide’s face.
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| Countersink Bit and Hole in Alignment Guide |
Third, drill a clearance hole in the alignment guide so
the screw turns freely in the alignment guide.
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| Drill & Clearance Hole in Alignment Guide |
Here is what the assembly looks like all screwed
together.
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| Alignment Guide Screwed to Inner Rail |
Once I had all four done I clamped them in place to check
the fit. Everything fit so the next step
was to screw all four of the spacer/inner rail/alignment guide sub-assemblies
together and see if that group fit. I
must be living right because everything went together fitting snugly in
place. Now I could add the 32 screws that
go through the top of the spacer into the outer rail.
Once all those screws were in place I crawled under the
table and put in the long #8 x 2½” screws that go through the structural
support, MDF and into the inner rail.
The first couple of screws did not bite into the inner rail as much as I
thought they should so I counter sunk them another 3/8” into the structural
support which helped tighten things up.
Once all these individual pieces are screwed together the structure if
very solid. The only major parts besides
the top yet to do is the arm rail. Here
are the rough-cut pieces just set in place to give an idea of what a couple of
them look like.
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| Uncut Rough Arm Rails Just Set in Place |
The table top is not terribly far out in the future and
after doing some measuring and thinking I felt I had come up with a better
solution than what is currently planned.
It’s pretty simple – rotate the way the boards run by 90 degrees. Instead of running the long way they now go
across the table.
I had not started out that way because I thought the
pieces would not fit in the car. Now
that I am close to being able to start on the top and have exact dimensions I
found that they can fit in the car with about an inch to spare. Advantages to revising it:
- When moving the top, it will be easier as they are more rectangular.
- The top will be stronger as the boards are going the short dimension across the table.
- The alignment notch in the arm rail moves from being centered in the end right in front of the person sitting there to the center of the long side rail between two players.
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| Original Plan (Left) & Revised Plan (Right) |
As I said in the beginning the table plans are just that
plans and plans are subject to change.
After reviewing the change with my son and him agreeing to it I could
make a trip to El Paso to get the needed five-quarter material I will use for
the top. Yes, that’s another
change. I had planned on ¾” finished
thick material for the top but decided that by going thicker will give the top
the visual mass required. The 5/4 oak
that I got is rough sawn and is really 1 3/8” thick. My guess is that I will end up with something
between 1” and 1 1/8”. Here are the
planks that will become the top in my little trailer.
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| Rough Sawn Cherry Planks |
From there I moved them into my storage area, stickered
them and checked the moisture content which was right at 5% so that’s
good. I don’t anticipate any wild
gyrations at this point but you never know.
They will set there until I get the arm rails done.
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| Stickered Rough Sawn Planks in Storage |
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| Arm Rails |
The rails are fairly wide at over 4” which makes the
simple looking 45 degree cut at each end not that simple to fit perfectly
together. I did not want to use my miter
saw because any small deviation from a true 45 degrees would certainly stand
out. I have wanted to build a miter sled
for the table saw for some time but put it off.
Now I had a real need to be able to accurately make that cut. In addition a recent article in Fine Woodworking
had plans for just such an item. I took
their plan made some minor edits and started work. Two precisely fitted guides run in the miter
slots in the table saw. I used the
thickness sander to sneak up on the width.
A plywood base is mounted to them; a stiffening block reinforces the cut
in the base the blade makes and a particle board fence set exactly at 45
degrees to the blade plus a clamp to securely hold pieces in place complete the
sled.
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| Drawing of Miter Sled |
My first step is to glue and screw two layers of MDF
together for the fence. The screws will
get removed after the glue dries and the fence cut to size.
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| Glued Up Fence |
The plywood base is centered on the saw blade path,
pinned to runners, flipped over and the runners are permanently screwed to the
plywood along with the stiffening block.
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| Plywood Base and Oak Hardwood Runners |
The fence is cut to size and sandpaper is glued on to
provide a non-skid surface. Next is to
set the fence at exactly 45 degrees which starts by using a triangle to make a
reference mark, aligning the fence to that mark and temporarily screwing it
down. Adjustments are made until the
sled cuts four pieces with perfect 90 degree joints. This is the completed jig along with the
first set of test cuts in the below left photo.
The small gap at the top joint is the cumulative error of 8 cuts. A very slight adjustment equivalent to 1/8
the size of the gap gave me the perfectly fit final set of cuts on the right.
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| Completed Sled & Test Cuts |
Next Up – Arm Rail Miters & Flattening Rough Sawn Oak
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