binfordm715 : Troop seat slat progress
Troop seat slat progress
Post by binfordm715 on Sept 9, 2006, 10:35pm
I've been working a lot at my next-door neighbor's woodshop getting those ratty old oak boards I got from my customer's scrap pile (my company uses rough-cut oak for crates) prepped for making troop seat slats. This has been an amazing amount of work so far. I'll bet I've got 6 hours into it so far, and the boards are only now cut and planed so we have five squared-off edges from which to work. I don't think my neighbor is too keen on helping me make more of these either as the wood is pretty crappy and dirty and his woodworking equipment is expensive and of high quality!
After pulling apart the crates in the pile outside my customer's chicken house, I lugged them all home and spent a couple hours pulling nails. Since none of the boards was straight, I had to weed out the worst of them and used a 10' board to extend the fence on the table saw, cutting the convex side of the board. Then we'd have a straight edge to use to cut the concave side. Then I could use that straight edge to cut the ends square. Then we ran each board throught the planer. That's where we are now.
Next will be running them through the joiner. Every one of the slats will have a joint in them as there was no way to get straight cuts otherwise. It would have taken a 16' board to extend the fence out, which just wouldn't work. Modern adhesives being what they are these days, I have no problem with joints. Those areas will be stronger than the virgin wood! (Seriously.)
This picture shows the joint we're going to be using. I didn't have a quarter on me, so I had to make use of whatever I could find in my pocket for size reference!
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/3...ess003akq8.jpg
Anyway, that was just a test-cut on a pine board, not the oak. It is not nearly as deep a joint as stock, but this joint is FAA approved for airworthiness (woodworking neighbor is a retired maintenance supervisor for United Airlines, not that UAL uses much wood joinery on 747s or anything....) Point is, the joint will be plenty strong, if not stock-looking. Likely 40 years ago they needed such deep joints for strength due to the lack of the types of adhesives we have today.
Here's the rack of boards we've cut. There are even more down below, out of the picture.
http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/5...ess006aow5.jpg
They range in thickness from about 7/8" to 1-1/4". We'll match boards up of similar thicknesses and grain patterns (I'm staining mine, not painting them, so I want the grains to match as well as they can), then run them through the router to cut the joint in the end of one, then flip the other over and run it through the same bit. When flipped back over, they will line up perfectly. Then they'll be glued and clamped together. Once cured, we'll cut them to their 3-inch width and then run them through the planer until they're 3/4" thick. Then we'll cut the lengths down to 87 inches and router the corners and ends. Finally mark and countersink the mounting bolt holes, then stain them with a dark walnut finish, spray semi-gloss urethane on them and mount them up. A lot of darn work.
