Wednesday, April 21

Case Decoration

I’ll kick-off the day today by routing the decorative ogee on the front edges of the flag cases. This is a fairly deep cut, so I make it in three steps to avoid tear-out and burning of the wood. Then I cut the filler strips I made yesterday to length and finish sand them to width so they fit into the slot in the bottom of the cases. This covers the slot where the glass will slide in and makes it possible to replace the glass should it be broken. Next I dig out the two sleds I made up when I made Dan’s first flag case – and had the foresight to save despite my vow to be less of a pack-rat. These hold the cases vertically so I can run them over the table saw blade to cut slots into which I’ll glue splines. Two sleds, one for the 90° apex angle and one for the two 45° lower angles. On this batch I’ll cut two slots, spaced attractively. Then I begin gluing spline stock into the slots. I use dark woods in the light cases and light woods in the dark cases to provide an attractive contrast, making the splines a decorative touch as well as reinforcing the joints. After giving the glue in each set of splines a while to set up, I trim off the excess stock and glue the strip into the next set of splines. Repeat for the final corners. When those too are trimmed off I’ll let them sit overnight and sand the spline stumps smooth in the morning.

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