Unstuck, and So Close! - Router Table: Day 11

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the cabinet for the benchtop router table for Steve Ramsey’s “Powered Up” online course was bowed out on both the top and the bottom, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I was “stuck”.

As the title of this post indicates, I’m not stuck anymore. I decided to sand the top and bottom until they were flat enough.

I decided to do the sanding outside, because I knew there’d be a ton of sawdust in the air.

First I tried my random orbital sander with 80 grit sandpaper, although I didn’t have high expectations.

I have a straight edge that I only use for checking if things are, well, straight, so it got a lot of used today.

Then I tried using 40 grit sandpaper, and my favorite sanding block, a “Preppin’ Weapon”. It actually worked better than the random orbital sander. But as I suspected, it was too slow.

So I went to Home Depot and bought this portable belt sander, and some 60 grit sanding belts. It worked well enough, and eventually I got both sides flat enough.

When I bought the sander, I was all prepared to do a whole Al Pacino thing with “Say hello to my little friend”.

But I don’t like the sander enough for that. It had “hot spots”, and it was really hard to get a consistent surface. So I’ll be taking it back.

But as I said, it did well enough, since the top will be covered by the melamine top, and the bottom is, well, the bottom.

So, yay me.

Almost did another “Dan”

Next I cut out the hole in the top where the router will be.

I was getting ready to glue up the drawer risers…

When I noticed a note I had written on the riser. Unfortunately you can’t see it in this pic, but it was reminding me I still needed to cut the risers to their final width.

I was celebrating inside, and I was already planned my blog post saying how today was a virtually mistake-free day. Yeah, right.

I got all the drawer stuff installed without any issues.

I was ready to install the drawer shelf…

…when (and I don’t have a picture for this) I discovered I had cut the drawer shelf too small. But since I didn’t actually make the mistake today, it’s still a mistake-free day.

I made a new drawer shelf out of some scrap plywood. So far, so good.

So close…

I was gluing the first face stile on, and I decided to use brad nails like Steve had shown, instead of clamps.

(The clamp in this picture is only holding the stile in place until I drive the nail in.)

Silly me. I had forgotten the fact I can’t drive a nail straight, to save my life.

So much for a mistake-free day.

So, I do have to clamp it, and I wasn’t prepared to have to clamp both sides, so I have to let this one dry before doing the other side.

But I’ll get it done eventually. Not in time for me to get it in this blog post, though.

Later.

Unstuck, and So Close! - Router Table: Day 11

Almost did another “Dan”

So close…

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