Day 26: More Bending and Gluing

Once I had one side of the faux body belly bent and glued up, I started on the other. Not much to report from the last entry because it's really the same drill: Bend, let cool and set up overnight, glue. I'm making progress, though it's really been too cold to glue anything for several days over the last couple of weeks.

As you can see in the second photo above, I'm less rigorous with the clamps when cooling a bend off. The final glue-up, though, take a LOT of clamps and a LOT of pressure, especially when using Gorilla Glue, which expands when activated with water.

As you may know, I'm also working on another project, the Molnar Opus 1 Harpsichord Project. I've been at that project for the better part of two years. If you've checked into the blog, you'll know that I generally cool down the build process this time of year because I don't have a climate-controlled shop and the downtime allows me to do maintenance on my tools - cleaning, greasing, oiling, etc.

This year, I'm working on getting my various hand tools - planes, scrapers, spokeshave, etc. - into shape. Some of them are quite old, so it requires the use of a wire brush and some elbow grease to get them back into working order.

Once I got them cleaned up a bit, I went ahead and threw them against the Grizzly wet grinder/sharpener to get a nice, clean edge - most of them needed it. Badly.

I suppose hat's what you get when you purchase your hand tools at antique and junk stores.

Ultimately, I'll hone all of them up using he four new, ceramic "Shapton" stones pictured in the photo above. The grits are 1000/4000 and 3000/8000. I know, it's pretty astonishingly high. Imagine sandpaper at those grit levels. I will be using the 1000, 4000, and 8000 sides progressively until I have edges that I could shave with. Plus, it's really gratifying to grind and hone your own blades.

Until next time...