Slant Front Secretary #2

The wood has had time to acclimate well to the shop by now (sure that's my excuse for not starting yet...)

Saturday was spent finishing up some last minute cleanup around the shop and then creating a couple of jigs, I don't have a jointer (I really don't plan on buying one anytime in the future either to be honest) so to get around not having one I use a couple of alternatives.

To edge joint a board I generally use the router table with a shim on the out-feed side of the fence, but if a board has a particularly rough edge it can take several passes and can be unsafe so a straight line ripping jig and the table saw is the way to go.

To plane a board you have to have one face flat first, to do this without a jointer I use a sled that the board sits on top of and runs through the planer on. this works by shimming with shims and either masking tape or hot glue to make sure the board doesn't rock (if it has a twist), if it has a cup you put the cup (concave side) down to keep the board from rocking side to side.





I plan to have follow up posts this week and next to describe how to build and use both of these jigs.

Using the straight line jig, the table saw and a jig saw I rough cut the boards needed for both sides. The panels will be 21" x 40" rough, to obtain that I will have to do a two board glue up.

once I got the boards rough cut I realized that there was almost a 3/16" twist in two of the boards! This leaves me with a dilemma, the boards are 15/16" rough now, take 3/16" off of that to get one side "flat" and then another 1/16-1/8 to get the board planed down on the flip side and your left with a skinny board (less than 3/4" or right at it if your lucky) I'm looking to have a strong 3/4 if not 7/8" in thickness - so I have two options, one, split this stock up for the drawer runners and get another board off the rack that has less twist or two cut the board in half at the band saw to minimize the twist plane them down and glue them back up.

I am leaning towards the second option. Yes, it just poplar and I could just get another board, BUT, what will I do when its a more expensive piece of Mahagony on a project down the road?? You can't just throw an expensive board out, you have to deal with it, so here is a good place to practice the technique.



I had hopes of planing the boards down and gluing up the side panels on Sunday but we had some things come up around the house so I didn't make it into the shop. I do hope to get the panels glued up before this coming weekend though, so look forward to more progress in next Mondays post! (I hope ...)

Resources

Mastering Woodworking With Charles Neil