The objective for today was a little underterminded. I thought I was going to work on leg milling but I took the 4th section out of the clamps and that started a whole sequence of events.
I really wanted to see what the dog holes and tail vise slot would do when I ran the section across the jointer. Well, it looked great. No tear out at all. So I had one side flat. Might as well go for squaring the two adjacent sides. That went well. Well, then I decided to keep on going and completly finish the milling for all four top sections.
A LOT of work. These are very heavy pieces and have to be turned and rotated many times. Then checked and rechecked for 4 square. The fear is if not square the top will not mate as a flat surface. My biggest nightmare.
I got it all done. The final move was to put all four sections in order on the workbench. WOW… It really looks good. Then, of course, I HAD to see if the joints were going to mate. So I grabbed some longer clamps and pulled all 4 sections tight. NO Gaps. Another very HAPPY moment.
So the parade just kept on coming by. Might as well get these cut to the real lenght if 88″. Chop saw worked for that.
I decided that I was going to glue these two at a time instead of all four. All four is a tremendous amount of mass to deal with. I also decided I was not going to use dominos on these. I used some cauls I had made and was having success with them. So in no time I had the clamps on the bench and was lifting, yet again, sections 3 and 4 into the clamps. I used lots of glue. Snugged up the first set of clamps, then tighten the cauls. Added more clamps and progressively tightened all the clamps. I checked the alignment. It looked near perfect.
Now that will sit for at least 24 hours. I am busy tomorrow, Saturday, and will not get time in the shop.
On to day 11.
Bench Build Blog Index
Please enjoy the full set of day 10 pictures with detailed comments:
