I spent the last few days with my parents in Alamo, TX where I learned that old people without jobs call themselves "retarded", RV-ers without houses call themselves "full-timers", and the most planned and highly anticipated event they do is "eat"; buffet at 1pm, snacks at 4pm, and dinner at 7pm. Then tomorrow we will sight-see a little...and then go to a buffet.
My parents are doing well, and they are very happy with life on the road. Which makes me happy; not happy enough to stay more than three days with them, but still happy. I'm sure they didn't mind me leaving a day early either, since life in an RV can be a little crowded. Next time I visit, I will have a place of my own to stay. Back at home, I decided to put a little time in the work shop...after shoveling up the driveway, unpacking the bags, and retrieving my 'best friend'.
Earlier last week, during some down time I planned out my separators for the shelf. Originally I had thought that I could just make them rectangular but had my doubts that it would flow with the curved designs on the sides. I had planned to make one rectangular separator and a second more elaborate curved design and then choose the one I liked better, but then inspiration struck. I had seen someone use Google sketchup to make a 3D rendering of a small dove-tailed box. If he can do it on that, why couldn't I use it to design my shelf. So I downloaded Google SketchUp and went to town on it.
After a couple of days of learning how to use the program and building this mock up I decided to go with an angled separator. I will still modify the horizontal shelves but I like how this design came out and will definitely continue to learn SketchUp for future Projects.
Back in the garage/wood shop, I decided to make a template for the separators. I would shorten then base and top 1/4-inch and then angle it near the 2 1/2-inch mark. I would also extend the height 1/8-inch and make some dados in the shelves to receive them. (I will make those by hand this time). So I drew the dimensions on a piece of left over card stock that I had from the lathe table project and cut it out, then I taped it to a thin piece of press board that I saved from a small prefab cabinet I had dismantled.
After that I traced the template onto the 3/16-inch thick press board with graphite.
I then began the cut that would form the top of the template. I cut outside of the line because i wasn't certain of my sawing abilities and figured that I would plane it down to the line after cutting the shape out.
When I went to cut the short vertical area on the front I realized that I would have to have to transfer the template to the other side in order for me to cut it.
With the short vertical cut out and the excess removed, I began to saw the angled section.
I then realized that the crosssut saw I was using would bottom out on the brace of the saw...so I had to finish the cut with a Disston 23-inch saw with 6 teeth per inch. A little overkill, but it got the job done.
Having the basic shape cut out, I made traced the lines with a sharp knife to help with the planing (I probably could have done that earlier in the process, before the sawing), and clamped it in my make-shift face vise.
I planed the angled section first, the concentrated on the shorter bits.
I check the smaller areas for square and needed to do a little touching up.
This time I clamped the plane to the table and used it like a jointer. This allowed me to have better control of the cut.
After a few hours of work, this is the template I ended up with. This will now be used as a master template to make the 15 other separators.
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