Here's a picture of the final table glue up.
And the result!
With the edges trimmed:
The table top is now safely ensconced in my basement. Not only is it unwieldy and takes up a lot of space in my tiny workshop, but I wanted it in a safe environment where I wasn't liable to ding it with a tool. It will stay down there until I've finished the pedestals and am ready to add the bread board ends.
Now on to the pedestals! Here's what the bench pedestal will look like. Of course, there will be bevels and other decorative minutiae, but this gives the general idea.
I decided to start with the main hourglass pieces. The first thing to do is to rough cut them with the jigsaw (the red tool lying on the table). Maybe someday I'll have a nice bandsaw that would make this process much faster...
5 down, lots more to go...
After the rough cut I take my template piece and fix it to the piece I'm working on with a couple of screws. Don't worry, I always screw it to the insides of the pieces -- the faces will be hidden. Then to the router table. I've loaded a flush trim bit (the red cylinder next to the wood in the picture). The bearing on the top of the bit rolls against the template piece (on the top) and cuts away waste material from the lower piece, until the lower piece matches the template exactly.
Once I have all 16 pieces routed I do the glue up. Each pedestal will have four hourglass pieces face glued together. I could glue them all at once, but I decided to just glue two at a time, to make sure there are no gaps.
When clamping, the glue makes the two pieces of wood tend to slide all over the place, making it tough to keep the pieces aligned. I decided to put dowels between the pieces to keep them aligned.
Then I apply the glue and spread with an old credit card.
Then align the pieces and slide onto the dowels with a couple of taps with a mallet.
Clamp down and clean off squeeze-out. I've clamped to my table saw to hold the two pieces completely flat.
Here's the result of the three glue ups for one pedestal.
Now to sanding. The convex lower part is easy -- I'll just use my random orbital sander.
But the concave upper part presents a problem:
Using a flat sander would just make gouges and getting a nice finish would be near impossible. I poked around to see what oscillating drum sanders, the correct tool for the job, would cost. Yikes! $200 for the cheapest one. I thought about using my trusty drill-mounted drum sander...
...but it's just to small.
Getting a smooth finish would be tough and would take an awful long time, especially once I get to the table hourglass pieces, which will be even thicker. So I decided to make my own. I got a couple ideas on the internet and here's the result:
It cost me $2.50. The two designs I borrowed from glued the sandpaper directly to the PVC pipe, making changing out sandpaper a real pain. Martin had the brilliant idea of cutting a groove in the pipe and letting that clamp the sandpaper in place. It worked a charm!
And the result: a beautiful, thick, heavy hourglass piece.
