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OK, just to keep from getting harassed too much, I figure I'll post a few pics of my ongoing dog gate project...a fairly rare trip into Flatland for me.
If you missed it, here's the backstory on the gate. After some local lumber shopping. I decided to use kiln dried pine from the Borg. I priced poplar as a cheap hardwood, but couldn't justify $250 for materials alone. Lumber prices are outrageous in LA. I picked up two 16 foot long 2x6s for about $40 instead.
I cut the boards in half and milled them as 8' pieces, to cut down on loss from planer snipe. It took some rearranging in the shop to accommodate working with long lumber, but I got it jointed and planed, ending up with 1 1/8" thick stock. Little thinner than I was originally hoping for, but no biggie.
One of the four boards had a bend in it that I didn't flatten. (I didn't have enough wood to do that and maintain thickness.) I figured I could use it on the shorter pieces.
Instead of dragging out the chop saw for my rough crosscuts, I used the little cordless circular saw that came with a set. I also used the same little saw in the parking lot of Home Depot to cut the 16' boards in half to take home in my little Ranger pickup. I decided to try using one of my clamp-on straightedges as a guide. Worked pretty well.
And the end result after rough cutting to length...
Next, it was time to cut things to finished lengths. Since the two long stiles were longer than I could cut with stop blocks on either my miter gauge or crosscut sled, I clamped the two together and cut them to length...I wanted them to be exactly the same size. The exact length isn't important, but they have to match exactly.
The shorter stiles and rails were easy to cut to exact (and matching) lengths with the miter gauge. A few more crosscuts, and I had the basic frame parts cut...
Then it was time to drag out the mortiser. Did you know that a Johnson Paste Wax can is the same height as the table on a Shop Fox mortiser? Me neither.
And next, the tenons. I have a block of UHMD plastic that's exactly 1 inch thick. I use it when I want a fence-side stop block when using the miter gauge. I just add an inch to whatever length I need, and dial it in on the Incra fence. Since these tenons were going to be longer than my dado stack is wide, I set the fence for my maximum tenon length, and took out the waste in two passes per face.
More in the next post...
If you missed it, here's the backstory on the gate. After some local lumber shopping. I decided to use kiln dried pine from the Borg. I priced poplar as a cheap hardwood, but couldn't justify $250 for materials alone. Lumber prices are outrageous in LA. I picked up two 16 foot long 2x6s for about $40 instead.
I cut the boards in half and milled them as 8' pieces, to cut down on loss from planer snipe. It took some rearranging in the shop to accommodate working with long lumber, but I got it jointed and planed, ending up with 1 1/8" thick stock. Little thinner than I was originally hoping for, but no biggie.
One of the four boards had a bend in it that I didn't flatten. (I didn't have enough wood to do that and maintain thickness.) I figured I could use it on the shorter pieces.
Instead of dragging out the chop saw for my rough crosscuts, I used the little cordless circular saw that came with a set. I also used the same little saw in the parking lot of Home Depot to cut the 16' boards in half to take home in my little Ranger pickup. I decided to try using one of my clamp-on straightedges as a guide. Worked pretty well.
And the end result after rough cutting to length...
Next, it was time to cut things to finished lengths. Since the two long stiles were longer than I could cut with stop blocks on either my miter gauge or crosscut sled, I clamped the two together and cut them to length...I wanted them to be exactly the same size. The exact length isn't important, but they have to match exactly.
The shorter stiles and rails were easy to cut to exact (and matching) lengths with the miter gauge. A few more crosscuts, and I had the basic frame parts cut...
Then it was time to drag out the mortiser. Did you know that a Johnson Paste Wax can is the same height as the table on a Shop Fox mortiser? Me neither.
And next, the tenons. I have a block of UHMD plastic that's exactly 1 inch thick. I use it when I want a fence-side stop block when using the miter gauge. I just add an inch to whatever length I need, and dial it in on the Incra fence. Since these tenons were going to be longer than my dado stack is wide, I set the fence for my maximum tenon length, and took out the waste in two passes per face.
More in the next post...