Shaving Legs

Leg shaping time again. I have first sawed and shaved the profile for the outside faces. I put some of the pieces together to take a look. I am pillowing the insides with the same tapered pillow which would make the leg appear to flare a bit on the insides even if they were straight otherwise. Looking at the "mock up" I knew it wouldn't be enough. Pictured above shows the amount of material I took off the bottom of the inside faces of the legs... a 1/16"? Is this a bit "excessive" or silly? Perhaps, but it made all the difference :).
Maybe I have mentioned before but again and again I see, well more so feel, a difference when certain elements are off "dead flat". Some things "should" to be flat, like a table top. Other elements are given life, give off a friendlier, more organic sense from even a slight breaking of straight. Careful though it all is a balancing act. It all must be thought of as a whole. Too many, too much, some here less there, with the best of intentions it could not quite end up being what one had hoped. Or maybe if your lucky, better than you hoped.


Lets get that pillow pillowed!


A day later and the main shaping has been done.


Moving on... or not. I always like to put a fresh blade on the band saw before some major re-sawing... this is why. I didn't have any on hand and thought that I hadn't used the band on THAT much. Turns out Oak and Kwila take a toll. Luckily the good people at Eide Saw here in Minneapolis were nice enough to call me back with the blades done less than an hour after I called them.
So I was off to the city. After picking up the blades I stopped by MCTC where I took the Cabinetmaking program to ask if I could use their vacuum press for an up coming veneer glue up. Turns out this week is spring break and there is no class on Fridays. This was Wednesday afternoon by the way. Which means I needed to get the piece glue on in the bag by 5:30 the next day. Alright, but I was on my way to work at the tea shop after MCTC!!! I will go insane if I have to wait a week and a half to do this. I could get material to do a crude mechanical press like I have been doing with the smaller tables, but don't want to spend the money and time for just ONE glue-up. GAhhhhh
All I could think about while at work was what to do about this situation.
I decided to go for it, I'd wake up early and really push to get it done.
I had to put the new blade on the saw, reset and fine tune the resaw setup, saw the veneer, mill bake-ins for the substrate, glue two of them, wait, cut clean and plane them, glue the other two, wait, repeat, find a layout for veneer, rip the veneer for joining, joint the almost 4 foot veneers, glue, wait, glue, wait, repeat, repeat, trim the veneer to appropriate tolerance for the vacuum press, and get to MCTC to actually do a dry run and real thing...


Got home from work at midnight, got out of bed at 6:45 am and hit the band saw by 7:00 ha.
Pretty long veneer joints, at least compared to the other tables.


Tape tape tape, glue glue glue, tape tape tape.


Made it to MCTC and in the bag by 5:20 HA!
I would normally like to stew and spend a little more time with the veneer but I came up with a game plan before the day of work and hope that it would work out. I have yet to see its true outcome, which wont come until finish is applied...