Everything that I set out to do has been done. I have put in 12-14 hour days over the last week to get there, but here we are.

I learned a lot and I got some good practice in. I had my ups and downs in terms of making mistakes and recovering.

  • I learned that I couldn’t force my will on some boards with knots and checking because it was good work wasted with split boards as a finished product.
  • I found that the pressure on tight rips through the tablesaw tended to cause the edge of a board to skew up and not end up with at straight edge (something I will have to solve in the future).
  • I learned that not all cheap bandsaw blades are equal, I basically did all of the resawing using one blade even though I tried three different blades through the course of the project. One straight out of the box just didn’t cut. The first one spun off and hit the metal covers, I just threw that one out after that and didn’t try another cut.
  • My jointer is not square. I think that the blades do not sit parallel to the outfeed table. Confession – I have never changed them and that is the way they were set when I bought the tool, used in 2005. But basically, the more passes you make on a wide board, the more it takes off of the outer edge and the shape becomes more of a rhombus. The fence is square to the table, so you have to rejoint the first edge after doing the face.
  • On glue-up, I need to make sure each individual board is against the clamp face. I ended up with some wavy and curved panels because I was not paying enough attention when I did it.
  • It is hard to ‘sand out’ unevenness. It takes a lot of work and the results are not as good as a good panel.
  • Mistakes take a lot more time to correct than doing it correctly the first time. That is easier said than done, but knowing how to correct them is a long way toward a better end product. Doing a side profile drawing would have saved me making the broom cabinet incorrectly and having to build a cap (which I did twice 🙁 ).
  • I have been loading my 18ga. brad nailer incorrectly since I owned it. The brads load to the front of the magazine, unlike the Porter-Cable which load to the back. This caused a lot of jams and general dissatisfaction with performance until I figured it out, this week.

By now, you have probably nodded off to sleep, so I will stop now. It just goes to show that I have a lot to learn. So, what is next? I have vehicle problems, I have a rental that needs rehab and Coronavirus mania is picking up. I have a follow up on my political story as well.