Day Two: (Sept 9, 2012)
Back at it, my hardware has arrived (thanks Leland!) and now I feel like I can begin. Time to mark and cut some wood! Using the cut sheet in the plans, I begin by rough cutting all of the pieces I can out of the first two sheets of ply. Since I'm building two, I cut in pairs, that is, both sheets stacked and cut at the same time.
All goes according to plan. Until that is, I get to the smaller pieces. I ended up making one of the worst rookie mistakes (And I'm no rookie!) and cut a few on the "good" side of the line. That is to say, some of my pieces were about an 1/8th inch off. (ugh) I'm so embarrassed to even mention it- but hey, if it helps someone else avoid that idiotic move, then it's for the best I suppose.
With that ugliness out of the way, you'll notice that did not make my circular saw jig 4000ft long and I had 5x5 sheets to cut. What to do? Well, I ended up using one of the spare 5x5 sheets as my fence and that worked out perfectly.
I also learned (yet again) that plywood blades are more for the salesman than the woodsmith. Those damn things burn wood for me more that cut smooth for some reason. I don't know why I keep buying them. Never again. Fortunately my fears of shard cutting were unfounded as my trusty all-purpose carbide tipped blade made smooth, tight, trouble-free cuts from here on out.
So, now that I have my pieces cut and ready, and after marking my top/bottoms with the proper markings, I start working on what I know is going to be the toughest part- the dreaded "baffle".
I'm thinking; "Hey, I've done this sort of thing before, how tough could it be?" Answer, not so tough really, with the right tools. I'm reminded of another poster that equated building with a jigsaw equated to passing a bowling ball through ones rectum and I couldn't agree more.
I started as you see below.
Made my cuts and then examined them.
It was then I found out that, although my cuts looked nice as I was cutting them, upon closer inspection it turns out that my blades have a tendency to flap in the wind on the underside of the work! I mean really, how does a blade manage to steer around so many clusters of wood cells when it's clearly being told to fly straight? It's like the two parts of the blade are on different missions. The deception is clear, the top part of the blade is clearly covering for the whimsical nature of his brother below.
Long story short. I ended up tabling those pieces and cut new ones.
Had I only listened to another poster that suggested this type of jig:
Took a bit more time but oh man, was it worth it. Routed that sucker and happiness ensued!
Yeah, the wood burned a little (thanks to an el-cheapo Harbor Freight bit with no bearing) but rest assured, the results were night and day!
But that takes us into day 3..
Time spent day two: 6hrs
.
You know what I mean.
It was only a "little off" hehe.
