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This has been to long in coming. After several false starts, several prototypes, and a few not-so-nice words spoken to various machines and tools in the shop, I've completed the first four urns in the first style I wanted to build. I have two more styles on paper, but that's another story.
First (in my best, but poor, imitation of a Glenn Bradly show & tell) let me show you some of the background story. It started with a couple of lengths of 6/4 mahogany, resawn to give me one 1/2" board and one 3/4" board (after planing and sanding).
I needed a way to cut the fingers and had tried several methods but found this jig to be the fastest and most accurate. It's made with three pieces of plywood face glued together and then fitted with 1/2" MDF fingers. You use a pattern bit set to the depth of the wood plus whatever extra you want to protrude from the joint. Its pretty slick, but, boy, it makes a lit of little shavings!
Forming the round-over on the fingers was something else I tried to do in several ways. Sorry Glenn, I just do not have the patience to sit and sand every profile by hand. After looking around for a faster way I happened on an ad in Fine Woodworking for this Amana bit. Its a 1/16' round over with a very small bearing. It allows me to get right up into the joint and leaves me with only some final shaping and sanding to do.
The next hurdle was how to join the sides. I knew that if i tried glue it was going to get all over my joints and I might run into problems in the finishing. So, I decided to go without glue and used 6 x 1 pocket hole screws - 5 on each corner. I tightly clamped the box together and did one end at a time. The screws pulled everything tight and square with no gaps. And - no waiting for glue to dry!
Last came the plugs. No improvement on making them. I still use the disc sander to get the initial shape, then twirl the ends of the blank around on sandpaper, 150, 220, 400, and then go to the buffing wheel for a final polish. What I did do to make getting the plugs somewhat uniform was to drill a hole in a piece of scrap to a depth that equaled the reveal I wanted. Using that, I could pound in the plugs till the scrap was flat against the box side. This got me close, but most still needed a little fine tuning.
Picture on the following post......
First (in my best, but poor, imitation of a Glenn Bradly show & tell) let me show you some of the background story. It started with a couple of lengths of 6/4 mahogany, resawn to give me one 1/2" board and one 3/4" board (after planing and sanding).
I needed a way to cut the fingers and had tried several methods but found this jig to be the fastest and most accurate. It's made with three pieces of plywood face glued together and then fitted with 1/2" MDF fingers. You use a pattern bit set to the depth of the wood plus whatever extra you want to protrude from the joint. Its pretty slick, but, boy, it makes a lit of little shavings!
Forming the round-over on the fingers was something else I tried to do in several ways. Sorry Glenn, I just do not have the patience to sit and sand every profile by hand. After looking around for a faster way I happened on an ad in Fine Woodworking for this Amana bit. Its a 1/16' round over with a very small bearing. It allows me to get right up into the joint and leaves me with only some final shaping and sanding to do.
The next hurdle was how to join the sides. I knew that if i tried glue it was going to get all over my joints and I might run into problems in the finishing. So, I decided to go without glue and used 6 x 1 pocket hole screws - 5 on each corner. I tightly clamped the box together and did one end at a time. The screws pulled everything tight and square with no gaps. And - no waiting for glue to dry!
Last came the plugs. No improvement on making them. I still use the disc sander to get the initial shape, then twirl the ends of the blank around on sandpaper, 150, 220, 400, and then go to the buffing wheel for a final polish. What I did do to make getting the plugs somewhat uniform was to drill a hole in a piece of scrap to a depth that equaled the reveal I wanted. Using that, I could pound in the plugs till the scrap was flat against the box side. This got me close, but most still needed a little fine tuning.
Picture on the following post......
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