Deluxe Sewing Center

Today I trimmed up the parts that were roughed out yesterday.  This is entirely done on the table saw, using very light ripping passes to smooth and square the long edges and bring the widths to exact dimensions, then using a cut-off sled I carefully trim the ends of each piece to square and precise length.

It isn't exciting, but it takes a while.

Then I jointed, clamped and glued up the resawn panel halves into the 11 filler panels we'll be needing.

This is one of those steps that takes up a tremendous amount of time, yet logs only a few billable man-hours.  After the center joints are made perfect with a fine tooth blade so the seam will be invisible and each panel is marked to keep pairs together and properly oriented, it's a matter of applying glue and clamping until I run out of clamps or horizontal places to set clamped panels while the glue dries.  Most of these are small panels; just two pieces, so gluing and clamping each takes only about 5 minutes.  Once I run out of resting places or clamps I have to go away for an hour or two and let the glue tack up.

Because there is no stress in these joints, I can remove the clamps and gingerly set the panels aside while the glue finishes curing -- and use the clamps for another round.  It took three rounds to get all the panels for this project glued up; about an hour and a half of billable labor, but just over 6 hours of actual shop time consumed.  Because these panels are covering every work surface in the shop, there is no place to do any other work.

Not all panels would go this quickly though.  These are being made from quarter-sawn lumber, which behaves nicely even when sawn thin.  Thin pieces like this in flat sawn lumber tend to bow a little.  When building a panel, I need to place two pieces so one bows up, the other bows down so they negate one another and yield a flat panel.  I would also need to use narrower pieces and alternate annular ring directions to control cupping... both mean more time spent on planning out and building the panels.  These joints would be forced into alignment during clamping and under stress, they would need to remain in the clamps for at least 4 or 5 hours to allow the glue to harden enough to hold them firmly in place.

So our panels today went fairly quickly... all things considered.

Man Hours: 7
Materials: None

Project Home