Day 7 - Sutton

Today was full of adventures, accidents, "aww man's," and adjustments to the design of my dog bowl stand. A lot happened over the past seven hours, and I will fill you in as best I can. 

Immediately after setting down my belongings, I untaped the joints of the dog bowl stand. The miter joints turned out as well as humanly possible and, with a little glue, sawdust, and sanding, they will look great. I then measured the inner side of the stand so I could trim down the maple piece. I used the table saw and carefully made my cut. I ended up needing to go back and trim it down hair-by-hair so that it slid in perfectly. Somehow, I trimmed it one hair too many, and now there is a slight gap on the side. This may seem like a slight problem, but it will seem like nothing when you compare to the other drama I will explain shortly. 

I then spoke with Mr. Grisbee about enhancing the upper portion of the stand so that the maple piece is slightly inward and has a curve. I chose my favorite bit (the gadget that makes this "curve") and Mr. Grisbee showed me how to use the router. Well, sort of. Thankfully, he was using a scrap piece of wood and not my precious piece of maple because his demonstration was a wreck. It was not his fault - using the router is just a really challenging process because it involves carefully sliding the wood against a router that is spinning at light speed while being absolutely blasted in the face with sawdust. I was very nervous to do this to my beautiful piece of maple. Mr. Grisbee then had the great idea to start with the router bit at lower height and then raise it after each cut so that less wood would be shaved off at a time. I practiced with some scrap pieces of wood and then held my breath and did it with my real maple. It turned out pretty well!

Next, I used the sander to remove the glue that was still stuck on my miter joints. It is safe to say that that was also a drama-free experience. Then where is all this drama you are talking about, Sutton? Well, funny you ask. Right now. It all started with the miter-spline-cut jig. Cutting splined miter joints is no easy process and, to make things even more stressful, there is absolutely no room for error. Mr. Grisbee explained the intense-ness of the situation right before we started. It put me in a really confident mood. He showed me how to align the wood, adjust the blade height, keep the jig against the fence, adjust the fence throughout, and make the cut. I was a little overwhelmed but knew I could master it. He did the first cut and then left to help someone else. When I did the next cut, however, the blade somehow went straight through the entire corner and I was like "Aahh, I messed up!" Mr. Grisbee rushed over and was like "No, you didn't, don't worry." I was like, "Um, yes I did" and showed him the cut corner. He then was quiet for a while as we pondered how the blade somehow got raised between his first cut and my first cut. I can't remember if we ever figured out why. Long story short, my miter cuts are going to be a lot longer than initially intended, but they actually look really cool now!

The other drama came after lunch. We needed to cut the slivers of wood for the splined miter joints and somehow we underestimated how long they needed to be. Long story short (again), we had to scrap all the slivers we had cut out because they were all just a tad too short. This was very frustrating but thankfully, had some extra wood. I carefully cut this wood to the right size and then used the planer so the slivers would slide snugly into each miter spline cut. I used a filer to file down the slits (to make them straight/square) and sort of felt like I was working at some wood version of a nail salon. I finished the day by gluing the slivers of wood into the slits. Tomorrow, I will use a flush saw (?) to trim off the extra wood.

It is crazy to think that I am 24 hours away from the end of my junior A-Term. I am so excited to finish my dog bowl stand and am confident that, despite the challenges, it will turn out awesome!