30 June 2010

Outside in


Things are certainly moving on now with the Media Unit. Much progress has been made over the last couple of weeks, so much so that I'll shortly be starting to clean up the interior faces ready for the first of the big glue-ups for which I think I'm going to have to enlist some help...no matter how I do it, it's unquestionably a two person job.

The first pic shows the backs being fitted, simple enough you might think. However the substrate is 3mm mdf with 3mm veneers each side, going into an 8mm groove. Even a mathematical genius like wot I am can work out that there's a mm of oak to plane off to fit the grooves...but would someone like to explain to me why it had to be the hottest day of the year to do it? The timing could have been a tad better....I think I must have sweated off at least 5lbs!




Once they were fitted, I could then mark out the rectangular holes for the cables (you thought I'd forgotten them!) after which they were then lined with some 'inside out' picture frames...ie the rebates were on the outside rather than the inside of the frame. If you look a little more closely at the pic, you'll be able to see that the panel is being cramped from the far side of the bench. This is because when I built it I installed removable tool wells for just this scenario...cunning or what?

On a completely different note, one of the things I noticed at the YOKB a couple of months ago was an Xtreme Xtension collect in the demonstrator's router. This meant that router cutters could be changed in the merest twinkling of an eye with a 1/4 turn of an allen key from above the table...so no more groping underneath with a spanner. I fitted one of these devices to my table the other day and it does exactly what it says on the tin...fantastic bit of kit.

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