the sensible thing to do would have been to make the table to go onto those trunnions
out of two layers of the precious baltic birch plywood but no i had to use the cheap chinese
import plywood with lots of voids and thin veneer on top so i cut my own veneer and glued that on
top and put edge trimming around there and i'm starting to wonder if this bandsaw build is going
to turn into a multi-year saga like wintergatan's marble machine x but let's go back to the start
of the table build i started by ripping some thin video using a really thin skill saw blade
which didn't cut all the way through so i had to use my bandsaw to cut through the middle of it
these pieces of plywood are going to be my bandsaw table but i want the top to be a little bit harder
than the veneer that's on here so i want to glue this veneer on there but to make sure it's nice
and flat i want to run this thin veneer through the thickness planer i know that's a bad idea the
planer doesn't even move the head that low so i have to run these through on top of another board
now if i just run that through there like that what's very likely is the head will catch the
front of the board lift it further into the head and just shred it to pieces so what i'm going to
try to do is to start the planer already on the work piece i need to start this board this far
in so i might stall the planer when i turn it on i have to be very careful bad idea so starting
with the head already engaged didn't stall the planer but it kicked it back so bad idea but then
i thought okay just start it without engaging it and then crank it down before it gets to the end
the only problem with that approach is that i don't get to play in the start of the board
but that's okay then i'll just feed it in the other direction and do the same thing again
to get to the same depth every time i put this clamp here so once the planer started i know i
just have to do two turns really quick to get to that depth setting and you have to
make sure the wood is really straight grained this wasn't and even though this was feeding out
it lifted it up and just pulled it into the planer head and it was gone
i'm using a nush glue spreader meant for flooring application to get an even
coat of glue on there quickly then my big piece of veneer on top and
then some plastic in case the glue squeezes through and a soft pad to get even pressure
from the sound of it i think that veneer bonded everywhere
and then gluing another layer of plywood to the other side that is the bottom of it and initially
i clamped it on the same way with a pad and the clamping calls clamping it out to the workbench
bowed the workbench a little bit so i clamped it with individual clamps instead so there's my table
i was worried it would get warped while i was clamping it and it does have a slight bow this way
this way it's much better although it has a bit of a ripple i think my veneer wasn't
consistently even thickness so i'll try to plane some of those ripples out
after that trimming a little bit off of each edge to make
sure that all the layers are flush with each other
because i'm not using very good plywood i'm adding some edge trim to it i've got
two sides glued on now i got to wait for the glue to dry before gluing the rest of it on
and you can see here here's the plywood and the hardwood veneer on top third piece glued on
once that's dry i'll flush cut these pieces here and i can put the last piece on there
and then neglected the film gluing that last piece on so here's trimming off the
overhang
now if i use baltic birch plywood i could have skipped the
veneer on top and the trim around the edges and basically i'd be at this point when i started
now these trunnions are designed for a table that is 36 millimeters thick and the slot there
wouldn't move with respect to the blade but my table sandwich is a little bit thicker than that
which means i have to cut a little bit off of the trunnions i'm kind of going off the plans
just trying to figure out where i like the table in terms of where it feels comfortable
so the table insert needs to go right about here
i'm cutting the hole in the table by routing around it with a quarter inch router pick
i keep extending that further and further and by the time i got through the table
that bit was extended way out of the router
by running around it again with a larger router bit i get this nice ledge to hold up the insert
now with the table on it for the first time i need to position it center of the slot
there and i need lots of room in front of the blade so i can get in and out through the slot
not so much room behind it as long as it doesn't hit the table before it hits the blade guides
so i'll just mark where the trunnions ended up
and then i realized i forgot to put the mounting bolts in there so i
had to take them off again and put those bolts in
so there's quite a bit that still needs carving away to make room
for the blade guides and the blade as the table is
tilted
got a nice hole carved but now i need to cut away something right here
i only filmed a few iterations of fitting and carving away and fitting
but looking at my time-lapse camera i think it was about 10 times that
to go back and forth to carve out more stuff before i get it to the full angle
finally have that space underneath the table for the blade guides carved out enough that i
can tilt the table by a full 45 degrees making an insert for the table is my favorite part
this saw is now functional next step will be the enclosure