Now that I had the jig done I could start cutting the
miters for the arm rails. Because the
rails are so long I needed to set up a support to take the stress off the
jig. With that done I could clamp the
first rail into the jig.
 |
| Miter Jig & Arm Ral |
Sliding the jig cuts the first perfect 45 degree
cut.
With that cut done I clamped the end piece to the table
carefully checking to make sure the inside edge overhung the inner rail by
1/8”.
 |
| Arm Rail, One End Mitered Clamped in Place |
The overhang is to create a little shadow line on the
inner rail. I could have set it flush
with the inner rail but did it this way for aesthetics.
 |
| Mitered Arm Rail & Overhang |
Working clockwise around the table I cut the end off the
long rail and set it in place tight to the first cut in the end piece. Next I checked the 1/8” overhang at the cut
end and it was good. However, when I
checked the overhang at the other end there it was not quite 1/8” and that was
not good. When I adjusted the rail to
get the 1/8” overhang it opened up the miter I had just cut. Not much only about two hundredths of an inch
but to me it looked awful.
 |
| Gap in Arm Rail Due to Out of Square Table |
Because the test cuts with the jig had come out perfect I
suspected that perhaps the table was slightly out of square. Sure enough after doing some careful
measurements the table is out of square by 1/32”. Not a lot but enough to cause the arm rail
miter joints to not quite completely close.
Since the table is all screwed together with what seems like a couple
hundred screws it was not going to change so that left me with making minor
adjustments to the miter cut. The
sequence I ended up following is to cut the first miter using the jig to get a
true 45 degree cut. The adjustment will
be with it’s mate. For this joint I
needed to trim two hundredths of an inch off the heel of the cut. It is really pretty easy, playing cards are about
one hundredth of an inch thick so two of them set in the jig as a shim will
give me the adjustment I need.
 |
| Compenasting Miter Cut with Playing Card Shim |
Once cut the joint was tight and the reveal a constant
1/8” I marked this piece to length, cut
it a true 45 and clamped it in place.
 |
| Fitted Arm Rail Mitered Corner Joint |
From there it’s cut the next piece miter with any needed
adjustment, cut to length with a true 45, clamp in place and repeat two more
times. At this point all four of the arm
rails are cut and clamped in place.
 |
| Arm Rails Clamped in Place |
Before continuing work on the arm rails I decided to do
something different and work on converting the rough sawn oak into flat, smooth
and square planks that will be used for the top. They had set for a couple of weeks and it was
time to clean them up and set aside to see how stable they are.
There are probably a bunch of ways to go through these
steps however I am going to show what works for me. First, I trim the end to get rid of
any splits. In this case when I made the
cut it looked like I was clear but the piece broke when cut. Cutting off another half inch got me into
solid wood. With a good edge, I cut the
top plank a couple inches long.
 |
| Getting Rid of Split Ends |
Next is to take that piece and clamp a straight edge to
it. I will run my circular saw fence
against the straight edge to give me a fairly straight edge to work from.
 |
| Cutting a Mostly Straight Edge on Rough Sawn Plank |
Here is a closer view showing on the left the original
saw mill edge and on the right after cutting with the circular saw. The cut edge is not perfect put it is far
better than the original edge.
To smooth and clean up this edge I clamp the piece on
edge then run a power planer down it. I
use to use a hand plane to do this but got to say this tool sure speeds things
up.
 |
| Getting Closer to a Straight Edge with Power Plane |
My next step depends on if there is any twist to the
board which this one has. I can tell because when I set it on the
workbench with the crown face up it does not lay flat but rocks back and
forth. The fix is to knock down the high
parts with the power hand plane until the board sits flat. For this board the twist was minor and I only
had to remove a little. The flattened
part is the smooth surface roughly a quarter the width of the face. It runs off the right side of the photo almost half way down the board. Also, there
is a matching cut at the opposite corner on the reverse side.
 |
| Removing Twist from Plank |
Now that I have one straight edge and one flat but not
smooth surface I can put the flat surface down on the table saw and run the
straight edge against the fence to cut the piece to rough width. Here the piece is cut to rough width.
I can now run the piece through the planer with the flat
surface down to give me a smooth, flat surface.
If the piece had no twist this would have been the next step. With one smooth true surface, I can flip the
board over put that face down and plane the other face parallel. The partial rough face below is what happens
when removing a twist. Because I removed some wood on the face opposite this
one when flattening I end up with the rest of the board done and a rough area
here and at the diagonal corner. It’s
not a real problem I just need to make a couple more passes through the planer
to get everything to a constant thickness.
The one thing to remember the worse the twist the more material that has
to be removed to flatten and the thinner your final piece will be.
 |
| In Progress Planed Plank |
Once flattened the final step is to go back and run the
board through the table saw. While the
edges are pretty close to being straight they probably are not square with the
faces. A pass on either side takes care
of that and presto you have taken a rough sawn piece of wood and turned it into
a straight, flat and square board. Now I
will set them aside to see if they are stable or as a result of the work I did
some internal stresses are released and they move around.
 |
| Finished Board |
As a comparison, here is a photo of two halves of the
same board. The bottom is what I start
with and the top is what I end up with.
Next Up – Assembling & Installing the Arm Rail
No comments:
Post a Comment