01 March 2011

Rock and a hard place.



I made the small panel last weekend and whilst easy enough, in theory, practise was a little different. I started by using the plough plane to form a rebate all the way round. This was to leave a flat that was 6mm thick (to slot into the frame groove) and around 8mm wide.















I then made four grooves to establish the raised section of the panel, leaving the section in the middle to be removed with the Veritas rebate plane. Some cunning measurement enabled me make the beveled shoulder just a fraction wider than the plane blade. An added bonus was that the adjustment screws on the side of the plane allow the blade to be shunted over a fraction so that it's dead flush with the sides, so that the chances of a 'dig in' are reduced to almost zero.


Once it was done, I made a dedicated sanding block to finaly smooth the bevel though very little work was needed...to all intent and purposes, the finish was left straight from the edge.














The finished panel is shown in the last pic and it turned out quite well, but it took a lot of concentrated effort to make all the bevel mitres line up. What was especially hard was to make the seemless transitition between the bevel and flat...very hard to do without taking off the odd slither of material where it shouldn't be taken!

Not something I want to do again in a hurry, but if a small 'one-off' panel is needed and a router cutter is just too big for the job, you're really 'twixt a rock and a hard place...this is the only way to do it!

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