Monday, July 23, 2007

Milling Leg Caps

The solid legs for the bunk bed are made up of three laminated boards, which leaves two sides of the leg with lamination lines that are to be covered with leg cap strips. These strips will be cut from a 2x10 and planed down to 1/4" before being glued to the legs.


The glued up legs are rough cut to 7', 4 1/2" wide so I started with a 4 1/2"x7' piece of 2X lumber which is actually 1 1/2" thick. I used the tablesaw to resaw this into 3x3/8" caps. I took three cuts for the resaw, the first cut was a little less than halfway through. I used a featherboard to keep the wood tight against the fence and a push block (upper left of picture) to finish off the cut.





For the second cut, I flipped the board and again used the featherboard and push block to cut less than halfway through the board. This left about 3/8" of material to cut away.








Finally I raised the blade and cut through the remaining bit of wood. After pushing the start of the piece through the blade I inserted a scrap wedge to act as a splitter (I should have one installed on the insert).

I cut up three boards and ended up with 9 leg cap strips. For me this was a 'scary' operation on the tablesaw. Raising the blade high and running long pieces through it is a bit nerve-racking. I took my time and made sure to use the pushblock anytime I got near the end of the piece, and also kept myself away from the back of the board in case of kickback. In the end I had no problems and am glad it's over.



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