Using a jig saw with a fine-tooth metal cutting blade
made quick work of cutting off the needed section.
The rough edges are then smoothed out and squared up
using a fine wheel on the grinder. Note
how a pair of pliers are used to hold the tube so I don’t burn my poor little
fingers. A little hand filing rounds the
sharp inner and outer edges. In its
final location I think the top edge will have a slight radius to match the top
of the tool. That decision, however,
will come later.
To remove the ridge starts with a couple of cold chisels
reground to fit inside the tube and angled to shave it off a little at a
time. No power tools here just hand
work. That’s followed by some small
files and once the tube fits over the blade the inside is sanded with 320 grit
paper for a smooth operation. Here are
the tools used. The fitting took about
two hours of not very enjoyable work per sleeve but they are done and the
blade’s post slides through the tube smoothly.
Next is to clamp the jig to the base and mark the centers
of the two holes that need to be drilled.
Here is the pattern in place and what the base looks like with the holes
center points punched.
Moving to the drill press both holes get drilled. I used a fence to act as a backup to help
keep the base from shifting while being drilled.
Once the holes are drilled a small chamfer is cut on the
bottom edges of the two circles. The
photo below shows how the base is set over a 45-degree edging bit. The upright base shows the finished routed
edge. I will not change the router bit
height as I will be using it later on to cut some more chamfers.
After routing a chamfer on the base, I ran the piece
through the thickness sander using 220 grit paper to give a nice smooth
finish. That’s followed by relaying out
the router shape using the template.
With that done the base is centered on the cherry body. Screws are then run through the waste areas
from the base into the body. That’s so
the two pieces can be taken apart and put back together in perfect
registration. That will come in handy
when they are glued together later.
Next is to cut the square hole in the body for the sleeve
the router blade will slide in. Here are
a couple of drawings showing how the sleeve goes into the body. Note that the sleeve is set at 45 degrees and
that necessitates a slightly different setup when cutting the hole for it.
The mortise machine will be used to make the square
hole. To do that a ½” mortising chisel
set is installed normally except for one thing.
Typically, the chisel set is aligned square with the fence because
almost always the mortise is square with the board’s edges. However, in this case it needs to be set at
45 degrees. That’s done using a
45-degree steel square. Below shows the
mortiser and a close-up of the angled square and the mortising chisel.
Centering the mortise left to right come next and that’s
done by eyeball. Here the body is
clamped in the mortising machine with a spacer below so I don’t drill into the
mortiser’s base.
With the body centered left to right the last step is
locating the mortise chisel front to back.
The edge of the sleeve is set just back of the edge of the hole so to
locate it the thickness of my steel square is used as a gauge.
All that’s required now is to turn the machine on and
pull the handle down to make the mortise.
The top photo shows the finished mortise up close. The bottom shows a top and bottom view. As you can see the holes are clean with no
torn edges. This was the operation I had
been most concerned about as the hole needs to be square, true and accurately
sized. I had thought it could be a real
problem to cut but as it turned out it was really easy. When I did a test fit of the sleeve it turned
out to be a nice snug fit.
Gluing the body and base together is next. Glue is spread on the body then the base is
screwed in place using the previously used screws which makes sure both pieces
are in alignment. A couple more clamps
are added and any glue squeeze out on the inside around the mortise is cleaned
up.
After letting the glue cure overnight, the clamps are
removed along with the registration screws.
The glued-up blanks are then trimmed just a little oversize using the table saw. Using the sight hole already
made in the base for alignment the body is bored through on the drill press.
Here is the body/base assembly looking at the underside
with the boring completed I will do a little sanding on the bored hole to
smooth the sides out later on.
Laying out the bevel cut where the handles will be
located is next. Here are the dimensions
of the cut.
That’s followed by the layout of the curve that gets cut
into the top. Two clamps are set just
beyond the edge of the cut, the cut’s depth marked, the center point found and
a small headless brad is driven in as shown below.
An old matboard mask is used to layout the curve with the
outside edges against the clamps and the inside face against the brad. In order to align the curve with the
endpoints tiny adjustments are needed to be made in the clamp’s location.
Here is what the finished curve layout line looks like.
Next Up – Machining the Body
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