With the four body holes drilled there are still at least four to go. One in each of the bases and bowls that will be drilled next. There is also may be one in each of the bowl’s tops but that will come later. Locating the holes in the base is pretty easy. Because the base is made from two pieces it has a glue line running down the center so I will use that for the front to back centering line. The side to side is fairly easy in that all that’s needed is to measure from the glue line at the bottom to close to the center then without changing the caliper do the same from the other side. If the points meet that’s the center if not the difference is split and remeasured. It takes two or three iterations to get equal measurements and find the center.
Using the derived center point the base gets its hole drilled. Same process is used for the other base.
Last of the major holes goes in the bottom of the bowl which already had a center point located while the bowl was clamped in the jumbo jaws and the bottom was having its final shaping done. The photo here shows how that center point and the center finder in the drill press’s chuck are used locate the bowl. Once in place the fence and clamps are used to lock the bowl down tight. From there the center finder is removed, the drill bit installed in the chuck and the hole drilled.
To do a test assembly of the base, body and bowl I need two dowels. One at each of the connection points shown by the red arrows in the top rendering. The top arrow will be an oak dowel blackened with India ink. The bottom arrow will be a cherry dowel since there will be tiny bit of it exposed where the pieces come together. More on that in a bit. The bottom photo is of the cherry dowel in the lathe ready to parted off. The little stub at the left end of the dowel is sized to fit in the hollow part of the live center that’s on the right side of the photo. It will be used to help center the dowel blank for the second dowel.
Here's how the pieces look so far dry fitted. In the top photo the top oak dowel which is a little long and the lid to the bowl still needs to have India ink applied but it gives an idea of current progress. The bottom photo is a close view of the bottom cherry dowel and shows the little bit of dowel that will be exposed. 
With all the parts completed except for the end caps and finials I decided to go back and take another look at the end caps. When the prototypes were made in Post 8 Finish Base & End Cap Prototype the overall shape was OK but didn’t look quite right. In reviewing them I think they are too thick and the overhang is a bit much. Reducing the cap’s thickness is easily done by making a few more passes with the blank set in the jig through the thickness sander. Here is the before at the top and the thinner after view on the bottom.
The cap’s overhang is also reduced. The photo on the left shows the current cap and the center photo has a new edge drawn in at the red arrow. After the cap was resized to the line using the large disk sander to cut away the excess material it looked better but was still a little bulky. Redrawing a new perimeter line all around the outside a bit over 1/32” smaller followed by sanding that off ended up looking good per the right photo even though it’s hard to tell in that photo. 
Shown here the left cap is the original prototype and the right one is the new resized thinner one. I also sanded a small radius on all the edges to go along with the curves in the rest of the piece. These changes make the cap more in scale to the rest of the piece and is how I will make the final oak ones.
Making the blanks for the caps is next. They were ripped on the bandsaw from a single thicker piece of oak. These pieces were run through the thickness sander to get rid of the rough bandsaw face and brought down to the correct thickness. Same procedure as used for other parts so no need to go through the steps again. Just like the prototype the sized oak blank is set in the jig to bevel the top face and run through the sander. Here everything is set up ready to go with the red triangles showing the area that will get sanded away.
The beveling process is to run the blank through the sander which takes material off the high side then flip it end for end and run it through again. The same thing is done with the second blank then the sander is adjusted to take off a little more and the sequence repeated. Here I am about half way done with the making the bevel. The little red sliver on the end is what still needs to be removed from each side and the red arrows mark the current unbeveled area. When the flat center section is gone the bevels are done.
This is what the completed bevels look like coming together in the center to a nice straight edge. One other way I could tell they were right is the marks that were on the right side of the blank’s jig and at the back have been sanded off. If you look at the previous photo you can see where they were.
Next Up – Making & Attaching the Caps
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