Project Update: A Better Way

As I'm working on filing and sanding the natural key tops, it occurs to me there must be a better way to go about this for two reasons: 1) Doing it by hand is an incredibly organic (i.e., non-replicable) process resulting in each key having its own, unique characteristics, which sounds far better than it actually is and 2) It's killing my delicate little fingies and hands. Since I've started the process, I can only complete two or three per day because of the chronic pain issues caused by my CTS surgery. It's not unbearable, I just don't look forward to causing myself pain every night.

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible to make the transition cut between the head and tail and also at the second score line so that I ended up with three pieces to glue. I could then use a finish router to trim the corners of the heads. I could easily build a router table that would accommodate my little finish router and it would be easy enough to run the head strips through the router even before cutting them for length. This is probably a nutty idea, but one I'm willing to consider.

The trouble with this approach is that I'm back to making astonishingly small cuts with a very fast moving blade. If I go this route, I would consider purchasing a tiny table saw (4" blade) intended to cut stained glass to make those cuts. If you have any experience with this sort of thing, please comment below. We can assume this is a crazy idea, so you need not remark about that. If you have a creative solution or two, I'm all ears. In the meantime, back to filing and sanding...filing and sanding...

Until next time...