This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
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Notes -
So, the last three weeks having been a battle against the loss of morale realizing you did things kinda wrong and there is no going back. But I'll get to that.
I milled the rest of the lumber for my back chair legs, and got them rough cut out, working around knots and weirdness as best I could. Some of the layouts didn't leave a lot of room. But for the most part I got 4 chair legs out of plank, in pairs of two. This took for fucking ever with the jigsaw, and my urge to buy a bandsaw has intensified. I saw Harbor Freight recently released one with an 8" resaw capacity that's only $600 which is very tempting. Maybe if I get a Christmas bonus. Anyways, it got done eventually.
Next comes attaching the template to each leg with some double sided tape. You do a pass on the router table with a templating bit, remove the template, and then hit it again to remove the rest of the rough edge. It takes a few passes. I even had to hit this with a flush trim bit from the top after I got as far up as I could with the template bit from the bottom. Cleaning them up with a sanding drum on my drill press and they aren't looking too bad. At some point I realized, after enough really ugly tear out, that I needed to reverse my feed direction. Normally I hate this, because instead of the bit pulling the work piece in closer against a fense or other positive stop, it wants to climb the workpiece and spit it out. But I had to trade that safety for not consistently destroying my workpieces with massive tear out. The curve of the legs just offer too much chance for the bit to catch an odd grain and rip a huge chunk off. A few weren't so bad and sanded out, but one piece that tore away was so large I was able to glue it back into place and resume my work.
But I said I messed up, and here is what happened. I should have used MDF for my template instead of a piece of 1/2" sheathing. I figured sheet goods are sheet goods and it's what I had. But it turns out, sheet goods are not sheet goods. The sheathing had all sorts of warp too it, and flexed too much. Every leg I routed using it came out just a little bit different. This would not have happened with MDF which basically has no give at all because it's more glue than wood. Alas. Still, with 8 legs for 4 chairs, I was able to pair each leg off with it's closest match. So fingers crossed the final products don't drive me insane with their dissimilarity.
Next up came getting started on the jig for mortising the back legs. Fingers crossed it works out when I finally go to use it. It should handle the mortising for the back rest and the front to back apron pieces. I'll need to use a seperate jig for the side to side apron pieces and the brace down at the bottom which is going to be the most challenging mortise.
With the legs behind, I'm excited to plow on ahead towards dry fitting my first complete chair.
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