Once the glue dried on this little piece, I could get to the more serious work of the final bottom glue-up. Mr. Miller, in his eBook Most Excellent, recommends tacking wedges to the assembly table and using additional wedges for clamping the pieces. I just could not bring myself to nail into the hardened assembly table top, so I came up with a system in which I use the table saw as a stop at one end and a board clamped to the other where I used the wedges. The photos below illustrate the detail of the wedges.
In the end, I realized I could probably have been just as successful without the wedging system by simple snugging the board clamped to the assembly table against the pieces I was gluging, but I wanted to honor Mr. Miller's directions. Every time I ignore his guidance, something pretty horrible happens, yet I think this time I could have used my own system fairly successfully.
The photo below illustrates the clamping system in all its glory.
Ultimately, this worked fine and I could call the bottom completed.
The next step in Mr. Miller's eBook Most Excellent is to begin the process of putting the sides together. The first step is to make tick marks on the bentside for cutting. I will also need to plane down the remaining poplar for the spine, cheek, and tail - perhaps this coming weekend.
On an unrelated note, I had been keeping my hand planes at one end of the assembly table because I really had nowhere else to put them. I mounted a shelf I had built a few years ago to the wall above the toolbox and got the planes up and out of the way. Sometimes, it's the little things.
I also managed to get rid of a bunch of planer shavings and table saw sawdust simply by posting it on Craigslist; it wasn't up for more than two hours when a cool Craigslist dude showed up at Tortuga Early Instruments Worldwide Headquarters and took it all away.
Thanks, cool Craigslist dude.
Until next time...
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