Tim Malyszko

After doing a dry fit, I sanded the Louvers to clean them up. I found the easiest way to do this was to mount my Festool RS 2E 1/2 sheet orbital sander upside down in the bench vise and lightly sand each louver with 120 grit paper. Since they are made of Basswood, it doesn't take much to remove the imperfeactions. Using the sander right side up was too aggressive.



Before priming, I will sand each louver with to 180 grit using the ROS, but the method above did a great job with the initial sanding.

After doing a dry fit, there were a couple of louvers that were just a bit off. In addition, I needed to move the louvers closest to the middle rail 1/8" outward so they didn't hit the rail. I did this by drilling out the existing holes to 3/8" and then using my 3/8" plug cutter to cut plugs from a scrap piece of poplar.





Once the glue dried, I flushed up the plugs and redrilled the holes. Once the stiles are primed and painted, you won't even be able to see the modification.

Here are the flushed up plugs:


Here are the redrilled holes: