Glue Up Ugh

Tonight I glued up the table and ran into some issues. I had already glued up bottom piece, so it was ready to go. It was going to be a more complex glue up than I was used to, and I made the mistake of not doing a dry fit. I don't know why - I was lured into the assumption that since there were few pieces it wouldn't be difficult. It turned out that the middle riser piece had dadoes that were slightly skewed - not in the same plane. Either that or the two shelf pieces were not perfectly flat.

I had to wrestle to get the two shelf halves into the dadoes. I didn't think they were going to go in. The only saving grace was using plastic resin glue which has the longest open time of any adhesive, thus I had a lot of time to fiddle around with it. Eventually I was able to get both pieces half way in and get it come with a clamp.

Looks-wise, it's OK, but it's very tippy and there's going to be a lot of cleanup with sanding going on, and potentially a new leg to keep it from tipping over.

Glued up the base - no problems...

Table glued up

Side view

On top of the bad luck, got the recipe mixed up for the resin glue, so now there's a lot of waste.... Ugh!

Work continues on the CT.

For the bottom legs, I needed to make the mortises, so I used a 5/8" forstner bit.

A bit of work with the chisel(s) gets the round holes square.

The tenons for the legs & bottom rail were cut at the bandsaw. (Didn't use a handsaw, kind of wimped out I guess...)

Tonight it was time to create the 2 mortises for the top. The router only wandered a couple of minute times, but nothing that the middle piece won't cover up.

Almost ready to go, just need to square the ends and make sure everything fits.

Work has been progressing slowly but surely on the coffee table. I was running into a problem with my planer – my dust collection could not keep up with my new machine (previously referred to as the beast). Having been an engineer in a past life, I should be able to check out the SCFM rating on the fan and see what the rating requirement is on the planer, but I’m way too lazy to do that. I take off the suction nozzle and put my hand over it to feel if it’s sucking a little or a lot, and it didn’t have much ‘ooomph’. It was definitely not “golf ball through a garden hose” type of suction. Well, this weekend I took off the exhaust “fines” bag and presto, that was it. I guess the bag is completely clogged. The only problem is that I didn’t have a replacement. After doing some online searching, I couldn’t find an off-the-shelf bag, so I turned to Lumberjocks, but didn’t get a decent response. So I went all old-school on it and slapped an old pillow case on there so that dust wouldn’t spray out everywhere. Seems to do the trick…. Even with the new and improved suction, I was still having problems with the planer backing up, so it’s not really a ‘solved’ problem but it’s much better….

After planing up the material I needed to put a groove (well, technically a dado) into the support piece. This was the first time that I used my “used” dado set. It worked pretty well – I have no complaints other than I don’t have a zero clearance throat plate for my table saw for the dado, so it was just sitting in this big hole in the saw. Felt a little unsafe, but even if I had the insert I think it would still feel unsafe as a dado represents a LOT of cutting potential. I will need to get some zero clearance material for the next time I do that.

For the runner on the bottom, I needed to make a short tenon. I did that, for the first time might I add, using only a hand saw. No setups on the tablesaw or going to the bandsaw. It was quick & easy so I think I’m going to be doing that more often in the future.

The last piece I was able to start on was the crucial middle piece that’s going to hold the 2 top pieces together. It needed to look like a cross, with 2 tenons sticking out on either side. I spent a while at the router table coming up with this, but it eventually came out roughly how I want it. Now I have to apply a shoulder plane to it to clean it up a bit.

The last steps are to create the M&T’s for the legs and do some final tweaking before glue-up.

I love working with walnut, but I hate the fact that I can’t compost the shavings… ;o(