Welcome to the next post on my journey into my www (wonderful world of woodworking). I am in the process of building a cabinet/ tool bench to house my shop vac to reduce the noise. I am modifying plans that I found on that other www (world wide web), to be a bit bigger to accommodate a dust cyclone that will reduce the amount of dust collected in the shop vac and make it easier to get rid of off the sawdust.
I purchased the wood needed and cut it down to the size for the cabinet. I did not have to change the thickness of this wood, so not as many toothpicks this time. The plans I am following require that I rout out some channels that the sides will sit in. I thought, no problem. I have a router and have it installed in a section of my table saw, so I would be able to use the table’s fence to ensure that the channels are set to the correct depth and are nice and straight and parallel. I started on the top section to rout out the first channel. No problem, everything worked as planned. Then I switched to the bottom panel to create the same channel.
My first pass was not as neat as the top one. So I ran it through again. I looked at it and noticed that I wasn’t getting a consistent depth, which resulted in a third pass. I should mention that the depth of the channel is set so I can’t go too deep. Finally, I made a third pass putting what I thought was the right pressure on the piece of wood as it went over the router bit. Everything was great until I got to the end of the board. Then I realized that I should have supported the board on the long end instead of just holding it. This resulted in the wood changing direction. My perfect pass now looks like a squiggly line that a kid would draw with a crayon. My only saving grace is that the depth of the squiggly line was perfect. If only the sides of the cabinet were squiggly. Luckily I can flip the board over and hide it on the bottom.
I don’t consider this a failure. This is what some would call a “teachable moment”. So I will take it as such and support the long end of the wood when I get back to working on it. I am sure that this is far from my last teachable moment as I progress.
BTW, there are technical terms for the channels and other things I described above, but I have no idea as to what they are. Maybe the deeper I get into the www these terms will be at the tip of my fingers and someone who is fully ensconced in the www will stop laughing and understand what I am trying to say.
I will post pictures of the finished product when I get there. Seeing as I started this project about 2.5 weeks ago, the finished product maybe a long, long way away.
Until the next time. (I really should come up with a catch phrase for ending my posts).