Stand Assembly 1

After rough shaping the four legs for the Accent Table, I turned to final surface preparation of the end rails. The Hock Tools plane iron in my shop-made wooden smoothing plane is my favorite tool set-up for shearing the surfaces of this yellow birch.

Below, I'm using a metal block plane to soften the edges. First, chamfering to visually establish the radius, then rounding with multiple passes of the plane.

With all four end rails ready for the first glue-up, I returned to the legs with a freshly honed plane iron and gave the surfaces their final finish. Even with a sharp plane iron, fibers lining the pores of the wood tend to bend up causing a slightly rough feel to the wood, so I completed the surface preparation with a light pass of 800 grit sandpaper followed by 1,000 grit.

Below I use the spokeshave to soften the concave edges of the curved legs.

Some proper clamping cauls are needed for the glue-up. Below, you can see I have two shapes. The four on the right will be used first when clamping the angled surfaces of the legs to the end rails. The four on the left are reserved for clamping the end assemblies to the front and back stretchers. In case you're wondering... the peak on the cauls is the contact point of the clamp which allows me to precisely align the clamping force with the center-line of the joinery.

Here's the first end assembly glue-up. You can see me measuring the spread of the legs to make sure that the clamping pressure is adjusted to maintain good alignment.

Next time, I'll be shaping and preparing surfaces of the front and back stretchers for the final stand assembly and glue-up.

Hej då!

Craig