40 Hours in the Desert

Sanding. Ug. It's loud, dusty, and boring. But it's got to be done. Last weekend I made one pass over all the slats with P150 using my random orbit sander. P150 is good place to start to remove mill marks from the planer and sand away any tear-out in the curly maple. I still need to go to P220, and probably down to P320 before applying the finish.

So far I've been very careful to mark the slats, so that adjacent slats come from adjacent parts of the original board, and so that all the slats are oriented the same way. To this end I numbered the slats before they were cut, and marked each one with arrows indicating its final orientation. The problem now is that I need to sand the entire surface, including the markings. To solve this problem I transferred each number to the end of the bottom tenon, oriented so that outer face of the slat is up when the number is up. Obsessive? Perhaps. But I think it will pay off.

The next step is to glue the slats into the top and bottom rails. Once glued, however, the slats will be difficult to finish. So, my plan is to pre-finish them with two coats of shellac before they are glued, which will be much easier. The last picture shows a test strip finished with shellac on the top and boiled linseed oil on the bottom. I think the BLO is too yellow and doesn't pop the figure more than shellac. Plus, shellac is totally non-toxic -- in fact, it's used as a coating on foods, such as candy.