Before adding the center infill panel shown highlighted
in the top drawing, I need to install the infill plug that blocks rain from
entering the groove in the bottom rail discussed in the last post. The area where the plug goes is circled in
red in the drawing. It will fill a
small gap shown by the red arrows. The
left photo shows the plug ready to install and the right photo has it installed
closing up the small gap. 
With that done the center panel can be added. It is not glued in but held in place using
the stainless-steel pin nails at its center.
This way it’s free to move within the grooves as humidity changes but
will always be centered. The photo also
has the right or since the gate is laying down the top panel just set in place.
The final major assembly is next consisting of the last infill panel and the highlighted stile. When
the left panel was installed, it was glued to the stile and clamped in place
while the glue cured. That process won’t
work for the last panel since the center panel is where the clamp would
go. To get around that problem spacers
are put in each of the tongue and groove openings (red circle) sized so the
edge of the right panel is just a tiny bit proud of the tenon’s shoulder. Being proud makes the stile provide the
clamping pressure when it is installed and the spacers keep the center panel
from moving. The red circle is the
enlarged area in the bottom photo.
Making and installing the square plugs that fill where
the screws were installed in the stiles is next. There are five square mortises in each stile
so in total 20 plugs are required. The
top right drawing has one of the mortises identified with a red arrow. The blanks (top left photo) for the plugs
were made in post 6 Cutting Tenons, More Mortises & Making Plugs for Screws
and have been sitting until needed. In
checking them, they have developed a little bow along their length. This is not a problem as they are
oversize. Correction is simple because
they are short so the high points can be set against the table saw fence and
the crown cut off. With that done the
freshly cut straight edge is set against the fence and the opposite edge is cut
straight. Now square and flat the blanks
get ripped to a 64th of an inch oversize (bottom photo).
Using the thickness sander the slightly oversize blanks
are brought down to just a couple thousands of an inch oversize for an
interference fit.
Cutting the plugs to length is done on the chop saw. Because the length of the plug is not
critical, I just drew a pencil line on the blue plastic piece. The inset is a closer view and in it you can
see the pencil line (red arrow).
To make installation of the plugs a little easier a
slight taper is added to about half of the plug. The angle is set by tilting the table on the
big disk sander. That’s shown in the top
photo where I used a .010” feeler gauge to set the tilt. I wasn’t sure how much to tilt the table so
used a feeler gauge allowing additional small adjustments to be easily made. The bottom left photo shows the plug getting
its taper added and the bottom right photo is a closer view. When sanding the exposed top of the plug is
face down on the table and the plug gets rotated a quarter turn to get all the
faces.
The plugs are epoxied in place and to install the door is
set at a comfortable working height using the adjustable part of my work
bench. The red arrow is pointing to one
of two pipe clamps that lets me raise or lower the support shelf so the work is
at the desired height.
To glue the plugs in place the mixed epoxy gets applied
to the inside of the mortise then the plug is driven in until it’s just proud
of the stile. That’s shown in the top
photo. I did not wipe off the excess
epoxy but left it in place to fill any gaps that there may be between the plugs
and the stile. After an overnight cure
the plugs are sanded flush with the stile ending up with what’s shown in the
bottom photo.
As an aside here are dotted lines showing the mortise and
tenon joint along with the square mortise where the structural screws were
inserted. The red arrow points to the
approximate depth of the plug.
The Zia
installation is next. In order to look
right the parts that make up the Zia need to be centered and square with the
infill panels. When I was working on the
center panel, I marked the center of that board and used that line to set its
left to right location centering it between the middle and bottom rails. This gives me my vertical center reference
line. The horizontal center line is
added as follows. To start, a pair of
spacers are cut the same length and slightly over half the height of the infill
panels. Next, they are set in the panel
between the rails and half their overlap is marked then cut off on the chop saw
shown in the top photo. They are set on
the panels again and if still too long another cut is taken. It only takes a couple of tries to get a
perfect fit. That’s shown in the bottom
photo with the inset showing where they meet.
These two guides are set against the stiles and up
against the center rail. A cross piece
is butted up to them and a couple of other sticks are used to wedge the cross
piece in place. Now it’s easy to mark a
perfectly centered square line using the left side of the cross piece (red
arrow) across the panels. If there was
only one Zia to install, I would not have gone to this trouble but there are
four and they need to line up perfectly to look right. With all the measuring needed to locate the
17 pieces in the Zia there is a lot of room for error and this reduces that
chance.
Next Up – Installing Zias, Completing Edge Roundovers,
Jig for Hinge Pockets & Problems with the Door Hardware
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