When Worlds Collide

Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Really, nothing so spectacular actually.

One of my staff is having a baby soon, so came around to ‘the shed’ so we could start working on a cot.  He’s chosen Tasmanian Oak, so bought some lengths, around 170 wide and 45 thick. (mm that is).

We were too busy to stop for photos, sorry about that!

First job was resawing, so I tried the bandsaw, but had a few problems there.  For one, I think my resaw blade needs sharpening – it really struggled.  I know hardwood is, well, hard but this isn’t the worst thing I have been able to put through this blade.

Combined with the blade dullness, is the increase of load that creates on the bandsaw and therefore an increase in power that is drawn.  Problem number 2 then cropped up – kept tripping the circuit breaker.  Now I know that isn’t related to any fault in the tool, just a underrated circuit breaker that trips at 10A (and probably less), without any threshold.  We ended up giving it away, and swapped over to the tablesaw, with the blade at full height, and two passes to split the board.  Even with two passes (flipping the board over) wouldn’t be sufficient to cut that entire width, but all we needed was actually 145mm, so ripped the board down before splitting.  Even the 15A tablesaw was pushed with such a full-depth cut, and even when changed over to a ripping blade, so perhaps the timber was as hard as the machines were saying.

So we properly dressed the timber all round (using the combination of the jointer (planer), thicknesser and tablesaw).  This obviously isn’t your garden variety DAR – the boards are left flat and true, without warp, twist or bend.

After docking the boards to their required length, it was over to the router table, where a 6mm groove was cut near the bottom in each side, so when assembled it can have a captive base.  By the end of the session, we had made the bed section itself (that has the mattress filling the area, with a maximum of 5mm between the mattress and the sides.  The standard allows for double that).

Once all machined, and edges rounded over with the Fastcap 1/8″ roundover plane, it was onto the Domino to make slots for floating tenons.

We ran out of time to sand and finish – job for another day.

This was part 1 of about a 3 part project. Good using the tools for a bit of furniture again.