Altar Project: Gluing My Legs Up

 

Around the perimeter of the carcass, there are eight columns or legs. The break up the face to give it some appeal and in my case, disguise the joint between plywood panels allowing me to have grain always pointing in the right direction. Getting the material for the legs wasn't easy. I basically have two choices, (one more choice than I did for plywood), I can get the proper type, thickness and size of wood at my local LoNards Depot and pay a premium or I could drive 30 miles south of town to an Amish lumber mill who may or may not be open for business (and they have no phones to call and find out ahead of time), their lumber varies a lot in coloration and grain patterns so may not match, may or may not have the proper thickness and requires me to spend a lot of time milling it to the correct thickness, but I end up paying a lot less money. Seeing that someone else is paying for materials and my labor is free, I chose the former route.

It wasn't without problems, sadly. The website said they had 7 boards in stock. I need six. When I arrived, there was only five and one of those was extremely warped. So I had to get two boards, much thicker than I need, and more expensive as a result, as a substitute. The alternative was to wait another 36 days before the helpful man told me they would be restocked. I then spent a couple hours back home resawing them closer to the needed thickness and then planing them to the same thickness as the other four boards. I cut a 45 degree bevel on one side and got ready to start joining four pairs of them together to form the legs on each corner. I cut in the slots that will allow me to insert wooden splines to strengthen the joint but will be hidden once together. 

Once again, it was too cold for proper glue curing so I warmed up the shop and got a cardboard curing pad positioned in the kitchen. It was finally glue up time.

Above was the first glue up and it went beautifully. Notice the jigs of scrap wood that I made up ahead of time to help provide pressure to allow me to hold the miter joint together while curing. I moved onto the second leg and succumbed to the pressure. Glue has an open life of about 10 minutes before it starts to set up and by the time I applied all the internal strengthening splines with glue, get them in place, apply glue across the mating face and get the other half of the leg put into place and clamped, it takes me all of 10 minutes. I was counting on the colder garage to slow things down a bit. 

For some reason the second one didn't assemble as easily as the first and it was probably getting close to 20 minutes before I got it clamped where I wanted it and moved inside the warmer kitchen to start setting up. Although there is a minute gap on one part of the leg, I think it will go away with sanding and finishing.

I started cutting the slots into the remaining two leg pieces and broke my special bit that I need to drill them. Nobody has them in the area, or even near my area, so I had to order another one online and now wait three days for delivery. (This occurred on a Friday afternoon.) Option two was to use a larger spare bit. I tested it out and found out it would work so recut all the holes on the last four legs pieces and got ready for glue up.

This time, I got my all but the clamps squeezing the joints together in place and tightened ahead of time to hopefully buy me some more time. I applied the glue and started joining the two halves. However, as I was squeezing the joint together, there was some sort of hidden defect and I ended up with several large splinters of wood right at the joint flaking off. I'm not sure if I can salvage that leg or not. As I write this, it is curing and then I will do some sanding and repairs to see if it can be salvaged or not. If the answer is no, I can go back to my local LoNards Depot and buy another thicker board to remake the leg which will cost twice as much money and blow another two hours of time getting them cut down to the proper thickness, or I can drive to another LoNards Depot an hour away where they may or may not have 10 of the proper sized boards in stock. It is probably faster to just drive the 2 hours round trip to buy some of their stock. Right now I'm leaning that way. At least they aren't Amish so I can call in advance and confirm ahead of time.