Thursday, October 22, 2009

Progress

It's been a bit since I updated last.  Since then I've finished the tip pieces.  This involved cutting about 1/2" from the bottom of each,

drilling a hole through all of them to put a bolt through,


gluing them together,



 and finishing with a little belt sanding.

I have also nearly completed the bottom (camber) mold.  Unfortunately this process did not go nearly as smoothly for me as finishing the tip pieces.  I also failed to get many pictures since I was working by myself.
My first step was to drill two holes through the entire width of the mold.  I wrongly assumed that I could do that without the help of my drill press, so I did it with just a handheld power drill.  I clamped all the strips together and drilled as far as my bit would let me, then took off the first couple strips and continued the hole where I left off.  The idea seemed sound at the time, but I ended up with a hole that was not at all square.  That in itself might not have been a huge problem, but I also ended up with the pieces all mixed together, so when I went to put the bolt through the hole nothing lined up at all.
So, I had to go back and do it the right way using my drill press, which produced much better results.

With that finally finished came gluing everything together.  I used Gorilla Glue Wood Glue which, as it turns out, drys very quickly on MDF.  I realized when I was about 2/3 of the way done gluing up the camber mold that it would have been much better had I simply glued 2 or 3 strips, made sure they were aligned, clamped, and let dry for 10 minutes, repeat.  Instead I tried to glue all 10 strips in one go.  The end result isn't horrible, but it's not as nice as I might like either.  Oh well, live and learn.

No comments:

Post a Comment