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The Ambassador delivered one of his Michigan chocolate slabs to me on his way to the Wounded Warriors gathering in Mississippi earlier this year. The photo below was taken on March 20, 2017 when he handed it off to me.
Not that I'm the speediest guy around anyway, but when I was really ready to start the flattening process, I realized I didn't have a large enough flat area to work with. I had built a table system wrapping my table saw 10 years ago but it had seen better days. So, my first effort had to be some shop updates. I outlined those in a different thread.
I had looked at several options for a flattening system and decided on one I found at the Infinity Tools website. Here's their photo of it:
I resized it to suit my slab dimensions and added one cross-member.
Larry had got me started on knocking off the bark in March, then I finished getting the rest of it off and sanding a little. This is a photo in mid-process of bark removal.
I was able to maneuver the slab from a temporary location and onto the work area - my router table - orienting it bottom up. Next, I removed the two middle cross-members of the cage, slipped it over the slab and re-installed the cross-members.
I installed a 1.5" straight bit in an extension and then into one of my routers. To keep track of the routing location, I made index marks 1.25" apart on the top edge of the side of the cage. I made a pass back and forth, then moved the sled to the next mark.
Here's how it looked after all of the routing passes. I didn't keep track of the number of passes. Initially, I took 1/16" to 1/8" in a pass, then a final pass of about 1/32".
As of today, I have made one complete sanding pass using 60 grit with my pneumatic sander. I'll do more sanding on the bottom before starting on the top side.
By the way, before starting the flattening I had done very little trimming on the slab. I mainly sawed the end grain areas to get rid of some roughness. I'll do a bit more trimming after I flip it back to the top side and do a little ciphering on it.
As always, comments are welcome!
Not that I'm the speediest guy around anyway, but when I was really ready to start the flattening process, I realized I didn't have a large enough flat area to work with. I had built a table system wrapping my table saw 10 years ago but it had seen better days. So, my first effort had to be some shop updates. I outlined those in a different thread.
I had looked at several options for a flattening system and decided on one I found at the Infinity Tools website. Here's their photo of it:
I resized it to suit my slab dimensions and added one cross-member.
Larry had got me started on knocking off the bark in March, then I finished getting the rest of it off and sanding a little. This is a photo in mid-process of bark removal.
I was able to maneuver the slab from a temporary location and onto the work area - my router table - orienting it bottom up. Next, I removed the two middle cross-members of the cage, slipped it over the slab and re-installed the cross-members.
I installed a 1.5" straight bit in an extension and then into one of my routers. To keep track of the routing location, I made index marks 1.25" apart on the top edge of the side of the cage. I made a pass back and forth, then moved the sled to the next mark.
Here's how it looked after all of the routing passes. I didn't keep track of the number of passes. Initially, I took 1/16" to 1/8" in a pass, then a final pass of about 1/32".
As of today, I have made one complete sanding pass using 60 grit with my pneumatic sander. I'll do more sanding on the bottom before starting on the top side.
By the way, before starting the flattening I had done very little trimming on the slab. I mainly sawed the end grain areas to get rid of some roughness. I'll do a bit more trimming after I flip it back to the top side and do a little ciphering on it.
As always, comments are welcome!
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