Windows Box Seat Pt 2 (the lid)
I had the base complete, time to make the top. I was going to glue up a lot of boards to make the required panels. I had a bunch of Jarrah boards (Jarrah is our local native hardwood - [Eucalyptus marginata - Wikipedia])
I started by laying out the boards, then commenced gluing them up.
BUT the final panel was … all collywobbles. Not even close to flat. Damn.
Double Damn. (<=== my actual words were far … stronger grin) Pipe clamps bend under load. To prevent that you need to place them on alternate sides of your panel. A rookie mistake, lesson learned. A whole lot of headscratching followed. A lot of research. I wasn’t going to walk away from all that hard work, nor all that good timber.
I rigged up a “router planning jig” to flatten that panel. Basically a “gantry” that guides your flat bottomed router bit over the face of your panel to skim the surface flat. Easy in principal. But the application requires care. Everything has to to be square, level and the router carrier cannot deflect under load. Do one side and get it flat, the flip the panel, reset the jig and go again.
Sawdust? Hell yeah!
The first of many rounds of sanding.
Then patching - clear epoxy. Fill all the various defects in the original boards. On the deeper holes I coloured the epoxy (with a black alcohol based tint). Once the holes were filled, I applied several skim coats of clear epoxy to the whole surface. A lot of scraping and sanding between each coat. Both sides.
A “put and look” to see how I was traveling. To see how sizes panned out and review my joinery options to join the "backboard and base parts of the lid
Cutting lid parts to final size, splitting the lid for a hinge and final joinery on the lid parts
Then back to the sanding. Mucho sanding. Followed by a clear oil based varnish. Again sanding between coats
Carried the parts to the final spot (tip - it’s heavy), fixed the lid parts to the base and …
Done. Thanks for looking in.
- Please - if you have any questions, post them up.
