Game Piece Holder – #4 Making Thin Feature Layer & Gluing up the Blanks

Assembling the three-layer Katalox-Maple-Katalox stack to be used in the cherry bowls is next.  Here is the rendering of what that bowl looks like.

The first step is to cut the katalox and the maple to the correct size.  That’s done using the chop saw.  In the top photo the left side of the saw is set up to cut pieces to width and the right side is for trimming the katalox to establish a straight square edge.  Cutting that straight, square edge is first.  Because the katalox is so thin I am concerned that when the saw blade starts cutting it could crack or worst case shatter the thin piece.  To prevent that thicker layers above and below the katalox will reinforce it.  On the right you can see the three layers identified by the red arrows.  The left most one is a base layer, the middle is the katalox and the right is the top layer.  To use, all three layers are aligned to the left so the katalox is supported above and below as shown in the bottom photo.  The cut is made giving me a nice splinter free straight and square edge as in the bottom photo.

With a good edge the piece of katalox gets set on the base on the left side, a top layer added and the cut is made trimming the katalox to length.  That’s followed by turning the piece 90 degrees and trimming it to width so the piece is square.  The process is repeated for the two more katalox layers and the maple layer per bowl.  The katalox piece on the right side of the saw is one of the finished pieces.

Gluing the three layers together is next.  The method is the same as when I glued up the cedar test block early on.  The left photo shows the cedar test piece where the large red clamps align the edges of all the layers and the grey ones provide the vertical clamping force to hold the layers together.  The right photo shows the final clamping of the katalox and maple layers with the glue cleaned up.  A couple of things need to explained regarding this stack.  Only the two katalox and center maple layer are glued together.  The thick top and bottom layers are not glued on but are there to act as flat platens so the three glued layers stay flat and true.  When glue is applied to the thin wood layers, they absorb the moisture from the glue causing them to warp.  The thick pieces help with aligning the thin layers when the red clamps are added along with keeping the layers flat while the glue cures.

After the 3-layer feature piece has cured overnight I moved on to cutting all the layers of the four different woods for the large bowl.  Only the walnut is thick enough to make the whole bowl out of one piece.  The maple had three layers, the oak two and the cherry because of the integral katalox and maple feature layers ended up with seven layers.  All of the bowl blanks are made a little tall and will be trimmed during the turning process on the lathe.  The top and bottom cherry layers will be made oversized and trimmed later but because the center layer is sandwiched between the feature layers it has to be cut the final size before the stack is glued together.  My drawing say that layer is 1.441” thick for the large bowl so I ripped the 5 ½” square blank down slightly thick on the bandsaw then using the thickness sander crept up on the required thickness.  As the bottom photo shows it’s 1½ thousands thick which is thinner than a sheet of paper so that’s OK.

Gluing the stacks together for the walnut, oak and maple follows the same process as when I glued the prototype cedar bowl.  However, trying to glue up all the layers in the cherry at once gave me a little pause as I was concerned that I could get outside the glue’s working time before the glue got applied, the layers stacked, aligned and clamped.  To get around this the glueup will be done in two steps.  First the bottom three layers get glued together and the top two layers get glued together then the whole group is clamped.  Not applying glue between the center thick piece of cherry and the three-layer feature strip and leaving the sacrificial base off saves me enough time in glue application, alignment and cleanup that I am comfortable proceeding.

Here are the walnut, maple, oak and cherry glueups done and clamped.  All have the sacrificial base except for the cherry.  Tomorrow it will get added along with gluing the two subassemblies of the bowl together.

This photo shows the four large bowl blanks ready to start the turning process.  Assembling the medium and small bowl blanks follow the same process albeit with smaller pieces.

All went well making the medium and small bowl blanks with one exception.  When I cut the oak pieces for the small bowl to size some internal cracks showed up.  They are outlined by the red boxes but all except one are small and are located near the edges.  I think that when the square blank is cut round all those near the edges will be removed.  The last one is really tiny and while not at the edge is in the area that gets narrowed down toward the base so it may get cut away too.  I won’t know for sure until I start working on it in the lathe.  If more show up or they get bigger when I start turning then it may require making another blank.

I did have one extra step in making the small cherry bowl’s middle cherry piece which needs to be .86” thick.  After bandsawing it close to thickness it needed to be run through the thickness sander to get it to the right size and make the faces parallel.  Problem is it’s too short to run through safely so two rails were glued to either side shown in the bottom photo.  With them in place the sander reads the assembly as one long piece and could be safely run through the machine.  Once the thickness is achieved they get cut off.

Here are all twelve of the blanks cut, glued and ready to start the turning process.

Next Up – Bandsawing Blanks, Centering Blank in Lathe & Turning Outside Face