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Monday, October 20, 2008

Weekends 1 and 2 - complete

Unfortunately I'm having some trouble with my video editor so it's taking me a little longer to get the video blog up. But I have completed the first major phase of the project. Prior to getting started, I visited my local lumber yard and picked up 6 pieces of 8/4 ash stock. Each was at least 7 inches wide (preferably 8) and at least 7 feet long. I'm revising my project from the plans in Popular Woodworking in that I need to shorten the length due to shop space. Unfortunately my lumber yard didn't have many boards under 8 feet, so there's more waste than I would like. But I ripped each board in half (after jointing one side) and dimensioned each piece as thick as possible, and at leasst 3 1/4 inches thick.

During the week last week, I built a flat as possible I-beam to help with the glue-ups. This weekend I glued up 6 pairs of boards, keeping each clamped up to the top of the I-beam for 3-4 hours. This left lots of time to do other small projects around the shop, so while the progress on the bench top seemed minimal, I still got a lot done. During the week I hope to get each set of 3 pairs glued up and ready to hand plane and then thickness plane this weekend. Then I can move on to the base. I have another 75 BF of ash stickered and waiting for me.

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