Everything Turned Upside Down

 Note: I am halfway across the country from my home and may not have internet access on a regular basis for a few days so if your comments aren't published right away, that is why and I apologize in advance. I will try to get them published and answered as soon as time allows.

I have been dreading this step ever since the Good Samaritan got in his vehicle to go back home after helping me lower the base to floor level. I needed to create attachment points to allow for the top to be bolted onto the base after it was moved inside the church since the doors of the church aren't wide enough to allow the entire thing to be carried in as one piece. I was able to attach brackets to the base but I needed to get the top centered onto the base and mark the holes for the brackets onto the bottom side of the top. To do that, I either needed to lift everything high enough in the air to crawl underneath OR I needed to turn everything upside down. I thought with some planning, I might, just might be able to flip everything upside down by myself.

I slid the top off my workbench and onto a protective blanket on the floor with the good side facing the blanket. I then wheeled the base over on the dollies and from the backside, was strong enough to get it tipped up onto the front top edge of the base right at the balance point. I then walked around to the front side and gently lowered it down onto the upside down altar top. After centering everything up, with the aid of an upside down 5-gallon bucket, I was able to crawl in through the bottom of the altar base and mark all the holes. Then it was just a matter of reversing everything to get the base back onto the dollies right side up and the altar top onto my workbench where I could complete the next step at a more comfortable height.

The next step was to drill holes at the locations I marked and to install threaded posts. These ingenious devices have threads on the outside to bite into the wood and threads on the inside to allow a bolt to be threaded into them. I smeared a little bit of epoxy on the inside of each hole and using the included allen wrench tool, threaded the insert down into the hole so it was just below the surface of the alter top bottom if that makes any sense. The epoxy will hopefully keep the insert locked into place.

Then I just did a little sanding to get rid of my markings and make the bottom of the altar top smooth and it is now ready for the next big scary step. Color matching it to the client's wishes. Below is the top after all the inserts were installed. You can see the now plugged holes where I had used screws as clamps during the lamination stage of building the top. They will all be hidden as well as the insert holes after everything is installed. I used twice as many brackets and bolts to connect the two pieces as probably necessary but that is the way they came packed and I figured it was better to be overdone than to have them cluttering up my garage and wish I had added one more.