Tray Tables - Gluing Ribbon Panels

Today is Monday… even though Blogger probably won’t announce this posting until tomorrow sometime; this work was done and chronicled on Monday.

But first, let me hark back to last Friday when I was unloading three truck loads of lumber.  It was the last load for the day, it was  getting late, and it was getting dark, and we were hurrying.  This is what happens when you hurry too much and drop a load of lumber on your foot.

No, I was not barefoot at the time.  Yes it hurts.  No I don’t think anything is broken.

I am grateful that it happened late on Friday so I had all weekend to get better.  And, this is Monday; I always do our weekly radio program on Monday morning, so I didn’t have to be up on my sore foot until after lunch.

Today I continued ripping ribbon strips; I ripped walnut today, and began gluing the maple ribbon strips together into panels.  This handy little jig holds the bound panel so I can get glue into each of the joints quickly, yet allows the glued part to lay flat (joints closed) so the glue does not dry out too fast.

Then I lay the glued panel on a set of clamps, make sure the surface of all the strips is as level as I can get them all the way across the panel and apply moderate clamping pressure.  This panel will need to sit for a couple of hours for the glue to tack up, then I’ll glue-up another.  I’ll keep going until all 8 panels are done.

Well, except that Shelly’s oversize tables will not fit through my 15” planer, so I’ll have to glue up her table panels as halves, then surface them and join the center joint,, then hand sand the center joint.  This will take 3 times as long as regular table panels, so I’m doing the maple first.

This is how I occupied my woodworking time today.  See you next time!