We fell a little short of our goal of gluing up the headboard this weekend. Sanding always takes longer than I expect. But it's not a race. Once you finish a project, you never remember how long it took. But you will always notice and remember the little things that didn't come out right because you rushed. Plus, this weekend was the Superbowl, so we didn't have as much time in the shop. (We had a great time at our friends' Superbowl party, but it was more because of the company than the game itself. Wow, that was a bad game. And a bad halftime show. And the weakest lineup of commercials in years. Thank goodness we had a good time in the shop, or this would have been a disappointing weekend!)
Saturday, I cleaned up the joinery on all those spindles. They were a little tight before, so assembling all 20 spindle joints during glue-up would have been challenging. So I trimmed a bit off each wall of each mortise, and now they slide together much easier.
Today, Jill spent a couple hours sanding. The large surfaces get a workover from my Dynabrade pneumatic orbital sander. We work through a series of progressively finer grits -- 120, 180, 240, 320, and 400. Anything over 320 is overkill, but then again, overkill is underrated. Sanding this lower rail took about 45 minutes. Jill probably takes a little more time than necessary, but the result comes out great. Boy, sanding takes a long time!
Next, we sand the edges. The sanding block and a little elbow grease is more effective on the edges than the pneumatic sander. The edges take a while because the flush router bit (which we used to shape the profiles with the template) occasionally leaves burn marks and a little tearout. It's not too bad, but it takes a long time to sand out those imperfections.
Meanwhile, I rounded over all the edges of these boards and the spindles at the router table. I also shaped the upper portion of the top rail. This shaping, the roundovers, and the yet-to-be-inlaid ebony plugs are little details that make the bed much more artful than just a bunch of rectangular boards glued together.
Right now, the roundover on the spindles stops about 1/2" short of the joint. Once everything is glued up, I'll trim that last bit by hand. I don't round it over yet because I want to avoid rounding over too far and having a little gap at the corner of the joint.
I also coated the veneered panel in Danish Oil. Normally, we apply our finish after everything is glued up and sanded once more. But this panel will get a coat of shellac to provide some additional protection. Since the rest of the bed will be finished with a hand-rubbed oil, the shellac needs to be applied to the panel now while the panel is still separated from the other parts. The Danish Oil under the shellac brings out the color of the veneered panels very nicely. Here are some pics of the upper portion of the headboard, without the legs and without the lower two rails.
We have a lot of sanding to do before we can glue this up. I underestimated the sanding. But that's OK. I'm still hopefull that we can get the headboard glued up next weekend. We'll see.
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