In the first post about this project I mentioned that a check existed in one of the boards and it was positioned so that it would run thru the end of the board and would be exposed on the exterior of the piece. This would not do so I set about ripping the board to remove the check and then prepping the edges in order to glue the board back together.
The two edges came together quite easily and you can see that the glue squeeze out was extremely consistent down the joint line with just 3 clamps along the length.
It was important that this piece be quite flat as it is the base for the entire piece. I used a long straight edge to sight the high spots and to check my progress as I removed material from these areas.
As I got close to flat I began using a set of winding stick. Actually these winding sticks were two of the vertical elements for the front of the cupboard. They are exactly the same size and were matched planed to match each other perfectly so besides being very accurately made components they also served as quite good winding sticks.
I then set about the same process on the piece that was to become the top of the cupboard and the picture below shows the top being held as I planed it to final width with a jointer plane, cleaning up the edge with a smoother. This old growth material was such a pleasure to plane I had to make myself stop when I hit the layout line.
A dead man and the BenchCrafted Leg vise made holding and working the edge of this large board quite easy. Below is a link to a short video showing the last passes of the plane on the front edge of the top.
http://youtu.be/NjrvNVT8f8k
Ron
Ron, very nice post and I enjoyed watching you edge plane with the smoother? I could not tell but which Stanley smoother did you use? :-) :-) Fred
ReplyDeleteFred,
ReplyDeleteThat was the quite rare ebony infilled version. I'm pretty sure only one exist. (grin)
Ron