The Hot and Cold Glue-up Moment

[Brian Kent]

The Glue up moment.

The Hot - what a lift to see the project coming together and showing its final form.

The Cold - seeing the effect of every good and bad measurement, every good and bad cut, every place where my skills show and where I remember I am still beginning the woodworking journey.

The fixes.

The Hot - every fix is a new feature. When I made the Maloof-style rocker, I knew I had to find a fix that would be strong and would blend into the final form. A lot of the knowledge gained with those fixes will go into this.

The Cold - realizing that I don't know how to fix everything. I will either be creative, have a problem area forever, or ask my friends on the Creek and take their advice (but I'll do that later.)

What are your Hot and Cold moments?

Brian

Photos: Today's glue-up of a white oak garden bench for a memorial garden, complete with rope "clamps".

[Brian Kent]

Problem 1. After 50,000 measurements, more or less, I made the top of the back leg 2" too short. The possible solutions were to cut and rebuild the top (which includes mortise for the headrail), or to extend the mortise through the top of the back leg. That is what I chose to do. Now I will close up the gaps with fibers and wedges, and then blend the top corners into smooth complex curves. That will change the mistake into a feature.

Problem 2. I could not tell from the plans if I was supposed to glue the back slats or set them in place with room to move. The plans definitely said to glue in the spacers and to glue the wide center slat into place. The center slat came loose while moving things around during glue-up. So my question is, How best should I re-glue the center slat? I can enter some glue from the edge by prying it apart 1/8". I could also drill a hole in the center of the tenon, insert glue with a syringe, and plug the hole to look like the other dowel ends. Still thinking and asking.

[Brian Kent]

The first wedges were inserted in a pattern consistent with the existing grain. Some of the last wedges are just a few fibers thick at the tip, and I just placed them at any angle where I could add some light taps. I was also careful not to wedge the top rail out of the mortise when adding the fibers. These are barely big enough to be seen when they are cut and sanded, but are there to limit the rain and dew that can get into the joint.

[frank shic]

looks like a pretty nice bench, you got there, brian!

[Ryan Brucks]

Sweet bench. I like the theme of the post:


The Hot: Thinking you are becoming a badass... planning for expansion/contraction by doing separate panel for center of desk, so it can sit nicely in a rabbet, with a nice little uniform gap .....

The cold: then realizing that staining the pieces separately caused the parts to already expand so big that I had to sand the table edges down again



I also did the same thing with one of my teak sides. Had everything all sorted... then went to cut a piece shorter on the miter saw so I could balance it on the router table better... eyeballed it up to the desk to make the cut and completely forgot the piece needed the extra length for the half lap joints . So theres an extra half lap joint on that desk now, not too bad visually. I barely had a big enough teak scrap to make the repair. I also had to curve the sides of the desk because it wasn't quite long enough, but that made it look better anyhow.

[Brian Kent]

The structure is complete, mistakes corrected. Time to trim the dowels, sand and start applying the 7 layers of Epiphanes.