Class went pretty well on Wednesday. One of the reasons I enjoy taking this class is that it gives me access I wouldn’t otherwise have to expensive professional grade tools. On Wednesday, I used a couple of these tools to put together the face frame of the armoire. The face frame is attached to the front of the armoire to give it stability and a nice finished look.
First I cut the pieces I needed to exact size and lightly sanded them using the huge belt sander at the shop.
Then I drilled pocket screw holes in the ends of the cross pieces. This machine, shown below, is really neat. It similtaniously drills a hole in the end of the piece of wood and also routes out an angled hole so you can drill a screw into the wood and it won’t poke out of the board.
Then I screwed the cross pieces (putting glue on the ends) to the side pieces and ta-da, we have a face frame!
The last step was sanding the face frame smooth. For that I again used the huge belt sander in the shop. I LOVE this machine. The face frame is really wide, about 41 inches (it barely fit in the sander) and it would have been really difficult to sand it smooth by hand. This sander is also great for sanding tabletops and things like that.
Well, that’s all I got accomplished this last week. There are only 3 more weeks of class left! I’m going to have to modify my original design if I want a chance of finishing on time. I’m not going to make drawers any more; I’m just going to make two long doors and have shelves inside. With the change in my plans, I’ll hopefully be able to finish on time. I guess we’ll see!
how fun! I can’t wait to see it all finished!