Monday, July 4, 2011

Aurora Nightstand - Archery, Part II

Here's a shot of another dry fit, after routing the arches on the bottoms of the aprons, rounding over all the exposed edges, and lots of fussing, fiddling, and sanding.

According to Darrell's article, the next step is to glue up the base. It seems to me, though, that it would be a lot easier to apply the finish before assembly, so I'm going to make the rest of the parts, then finish them, and then put everything together.

I radiused the corners on most of the parts using a roundover bit in the router table. But that wouldn't work on the inside corners of the legs where the waterfall profiles intersect, because there's nothing there for the router bit bearing to ride against. So I had to do that part by hand. To help keep everything uniform, I made this little tool out of a scrap of sheet metal, then formed the roundovers by scraping away at the corners of the legs.
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6 comments:

  1. Vic HubbardJuly 4, 2011 at 11:37 AM

    DAMN!! That looks good, Russ! I REALLY don't see the leg contrast at all anymore. Is it just the photo?

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  2. rmacJuly 4, 2011 at 12:28 PM

    Thanks, Vic. I'm happy with it so far.

    Sanding the legs lightened them up a lot. I had milled them a couple of weeks before I did the other parts, so they had that much longer to darken with exposure to the light/air/whatever. I also did a sunshine test to verify that the mahogany really does darken like cherry, and it does. So I'm not too worried about the color differences any more. I think the dye will even everything out quite a bit, and any variation that's left will be just because wood is wood. If I wanted a perfectly uniform color, I would slather on some nice brown latex wall paint.

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  3. Torch02July 6, 2011 at 7:37 AM

    To quote Paris Hilton - "That's hot!"

    Those arches have come out beautifully. Can't wait to see how the rest turns out.

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  4. rmacJuly 6, 2011 at 10:03 AM

    Thanks, Steve. I'm getting kind of anxious myself.

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  5. HalfInchShyJuly 15, 2011 at 2:18 AM

    Definitely looking good now, Russ... glad, too, you got the color worry out of your system.

    You're also convincing me that I need a grinder and belt sander for making one-off tools. And I just sold a bandsaw so I have cash, hmm

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  6. rmacJuly 15, 2011 at 6:47 AM

    @P-M: Yes. Everyone should have a grinder.

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