Monday, August 23

Tray Tables: Making Spreaders

While waiting for glue to set up on each ribbon panel I worked on making these bow-tie spreaders. The process starts, like any part does, with jointing one wide face and one edge of each part blank to make them smooth and flat and these two sides perpendicular to one another. Then I run them though a surface planer, with the jointed face down, to smooth the rough face, make it parallel to the jointed face and bring the blank to the proper thickness. Finally I use the table saw to rip off the final edge. This completes the parts blank. Then I use a special made jig to mark, cut and smooth the arched edges in the spreaders. The pieces with double arches are the lower spreaders, one arch and one straight edge are the top spreaders. Boring the oval shaped holes requires another jig mounted to the drill press fitted with a Forstner bit. The final step in making the spreaders is to round over all the edges except the ends; which will mate to the legs and need to be square. With the spreaders completed and the ribbon panels all glued up, I can quit for the day and let the glue in the ribbon panels set up hard before I do any machining on them.

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