Okay...time to get things done. Remember the weird orange object from a couple of posts back? That was a router template.
Pictured: Because this wasn't difficult enough already.
I decided that the front skirt of the sink needed...well, some kind of
something to give it a bit of character; the blank 4" facade just wasn't working for me. So, I fired up Fusion and decided to create a few router templates for some lettering; it took a couple of tries to get them looking acceptable because I'm still pretty new to Fusion and I ran out of orange PETG filament during the printing, but at length I managed to create some that were workable.
Pictured: When Plan A fails...
There's a long story behind "Plan B" and me, and someday I may tell it...but for no, let's just accept that I write that on a lot of things that I build, and let's pretend that it in no way represents my perennial propensity for having to do things at least twice. Let's also pretend that running out of orange filament and thus ending up with one non-matching template was all according to a grand and elegant design, and not merely an exercise in ridiculously divine irony.
I was really planning on taking a good action shot of the routing process with my third arm, but midway through doing the routing I realized that I was already using that arm to control the overly-stiff excuse of a hose that Shop Vac insists upon supplying with their otherwise-effective little vacuums; thus, not having a fourth arm - which I would have probably just used to beat on the Shop Vac in sheer frustration, if I did have it - I made do with an after-the-fact shot which proves that every once in awhile, I do something right.
Pictured: Seriously, I really hate those stupid hoses.
I have no idea what font that is; I think it started as...maybe a Swiss Bold? Doesn't really look like that, but since I chopped it apart and stretched and pulled and otherwise-altered it in Fusion until I got what I wanted, it's not surprising. I like the way it turned out, though, and not least of all because the angled projections within the letter 'B" look like tiny cartoon sauropods. On that note: all of the mounting screw holes will get filled and sanded, so nobody will ever know that they were present. Also, in case anyone thinks that the letters look really shallow: it's because they are. They're right at 1/8" deep, which is why I got that unreasonably expensive Amana bit in the picture above; turns out that shallow-cutting pattern bits aren't that common, so that one was kind of a special-order thing...but it worked perfectly for these letters, even if I was running it right at the very ragged edge of its capacity. That's not something I normally like to do with any
router, but it was especially dicey when paired with my baby Milwaukee; still, the cut quality was very good, even for plywood. In fact, the only downside to such a shallow cut was that I wasn't able to use a teeny-tiny roundover bit to radius the letter edged.
Pictured: So I did that by hand.
That was
not fun to do with 220-grit sandpaper and a key file, but it turned out well and it only took fifteen minutes to break and round the edges on all of the letters. My plan - ha... - is to not worry about the sharp inside corner at the bottom of the routed edge; hopefully, the epoxy that'll get rolled on in a day or three will give that space a tiny bit of filling, and thereby ease the crevice a bit before the bedliner goes on.
After the routing and sanding was done, I decided to go ahead and lay out the screw locations for the front and rear skirts, because moving directly into doing the rest of the sanding that I needed to finish today was evidently just
way too logical of a work order for someone as organized and methodical as I am.
Pictured: Helter Skelter.
Also, as proof of my organized and methodical nature, I humbly submit this image of my makeshift workbench; I trust this will end all debate on the subject.
Pictured: Vindication feels surprisingly like depression.
See? Everything is exactly in its place; even the muffin tin looks happy! Anyway, moving on...
The rest of today's work was epoxy-related, because I decided to go ahead and prep the subframe pieces and the floor for assembly. There honestly wasn't much to document here; the effort was basically just a process of sanding with 220-grit to break the surface polish of the veneer, vacuuming up the bulk of the sawdust, and then wiping everything clean with a rag and some acetone...and let me tell you: doing even that small amount of sanding kind of sucks without a usable random-orbital sander.
Pictured: Depression feels surprisingly like vindication.
In full disclosure: I do have a random-orbital sander - a few of them, actually - but none of them are usable, despite all of them being in perfect working order. The bulk of them are in storage about 3,000 miles away from me, and the one that I do have close-at-hand just so happens to be an air-powered Dynabrade...and since I don't have a compressor in my tiny garage that's even
remotely capable of running a Dynabrade sander, the pile of sanders that are 3,000 miles away are actually more usable than the one sander that I own that's six feet away from me. Have I mentioned that I make really great life choices? Because I do that; I really,
really do that.
After that light bit of sanding and prep was done, and after I fully realized how truly
awful my life was going to be when it came time to sand a layer of cured epoxy resin
by hand, I arranged all of the epoxy supplies on a convenient work surface...
Pictured: For some reason, my other work surface said it couldn't hold anything else.
...and I got started with coating the interfacing subframes and floor surfaces with some heavily aerated epoxy. Much like the routing, there's also not much footage from this part; this time, my third arm was busy readjusting the 3M respirator that I was attempting to wear,because I don't
always make really great life choices. I did, however, manage to get one shot of some chip brush bristles being abandoned.
Pictured: There goes my joint accuracy.
Looking back at that image, I now realize that it's hard to see any of the epoxy that was on the right edge...but believe me when I say that I didn't really skimp on using it: epoxy was squeezing out of the screw holes in some areas as I was going down the fastener line, adding screws and clamping the parts together.
Pictured: Let's hope that I don't have to remove this one.
I probably could have used very little epoxy in the joints and been totally fine; in fact, I
know I could have done that, but I have plenty of the stuff so there was no reason to not use it. It did create some significant squeeze out in some areas where I went a bit heavy on the condiments, so to speak, but it was nothing that couldn't be fixed with some judicious brushing and a bit of acetone...and after that was done, I had to call it quits for the day.
Pictured: Stopping point.
So yeah...that whole assembly is gonna hang out and dry for a day, and then I'm going to do some sanding, some existential weeping, and some light edge-routing; probably in that order, no less. But, that's a crisis for tomorrow. For now I have to clean a workbench, because even though I don't
always make really great life choices, it still happens about 96% of the time.
Stay tuned.
