To Build or Not To Build
A while back I talked about my desire to buy or build a router table. Today I have decided. I will build. It will be glorious. The factors that influenced my decision were many; quality, precision, flatness of the table, and to some extent cost. When I weighed all the factors the scales were greatly tilted in favor of buying either the Incra super system or the Veritas system. I choose to build, because I want to..jpg)
In a day or two, the router plate I ordered will arrive. This will cause much stress and fear, as I will likely need to drill some holes into it. It is possible that I will devote twenty to thirty hours measuring and remeasuring the placement of the holes, before I break down and call in someone from NASA. Since I don’t have a drill press or know what type of bit to use, I calculate my chances for a cataclysmic failure to be at about 84%.
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I began work on the stretchers. They are made from 2 x 4s. I have designed the table to have the same table top dimensions as the Kreg table, 24 x 32. When I say designed, I am using that term loosely, as I am actually just modifying the plans I used to build my work bench. Those plans were designed by the editor of Fine Woodworking magazine, Asa Christiana. My plans simply call for different dimensions, a set of freaking laser beams, and a Gatlin gun. It is actually going to be a router/urban assault table.I am setting each leg in from the edge by 3 inches. The legs will be made from 4 x 4s. This means that the side stretchers will be 11 inches and the front and back will be at 19 inches. So I bought (2) 8 foot 2x4s and (2) 4×4. I also purchased 10 feet of 1 x 6 oak. It was pretty and I wanted it. I may use it as part of a fence or as a mount for the gun.
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I was all set to cut my 8 stretchers when it occurred to me, that I should sand first. The voice in my head, with a thick German accent, said I was being ‘Stupid’. I didn’t listen to my inner German voice and I went ahead and started to sand. While I was sanding, I noticed several things. The first was that sanding one long piece was easier than sanding 4 little pieces. The second was that I didn’t need to clamp and unclamp everything so often. Now admittedly, I would have used bench cookies were I sanding 11 inch pieces, to do the four inch faces, but still, it seemed more efficient. The third aspect that I really liked was that I didn’t have to change the sand paper as often. I started with 50 grit on the belt sander. I then changed to 80, 150, and 220 on the mouse sander. I went through this cycle with each of the 4 sides. Obviously there would have been 4 times more grit changes, had I sanded each piece individually.
So that was all I did today, with regards to my woodworking. I sanded a 2 x 4. Not very dramatic or sexy, I will admit, but that is today’s report. I feel I have let my reading public down. I have brought great shame to myself, my family, my ancestors, my sister’s cat, and several neighbors here in Martelle. I can live with that.
On an entirely different note, today has been a banner day for the readership of the old blog. It is interesting that the eastern sea board, completely shut down by snowmageden, has had a fair number of people turning to my article on creating the cauls. The normal readership, which does not count the several hundred wonderful people which read the blog on Lumberjocks, is around 100, with the largest contingent being the 12 people from St. Louis who started reading a week or two ago. As of the writing of tonight’s rambling, the number of people who stopped by to check out the blog was 261, with 77.78% being new visits. I don’t know how many of those will return to see this post, but to those that do, I say, Thanks a bunch. I hope the snow melts for you quickly. And to the 12 from St. Louis I ask, do you know Eric Liu?
