And width three and a quarter inches for the top inches and four and a half inches for the base.
Now with all of our pieces cut to width, it is time to cut them to length and before you do that though, I just like to jointing and planting operations that are easier when these pieces are in this longer form. It is probably not a bad idea to go ahead and sand these at this time too, rather than dealing with the tinier, small pieces. This way you can run more of a sander across really easily.
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I was actually just about to cut the bottom pieces and I realized my hatoba board, you can see that, has a little crack in it and sometimes these things do not show themselves until you start milling through the pieces and exposing what flaws might lay underneath. So there is a couple of ways we are going to deal with it. I am not going to throw the board away. This is meant to consume scrap so I want to make sure I do that. So I typically do one of two things, I either use CA glue if it is a really tiny hairline crack. When this dries it is very brittle. I do not really like it for filling large cracks. It is a little bit too brittle and it tends to not look very natural.
Option number two is epoxy. I have got some five minute epoxy here and I actually prefer the longer cure epoxies but in this case I am in a little but of a rush and I want this to dry so that I can start working with the piece again so just a dab will do you. A little bit in there and since the crack is near the edge I am going to apply some tape, just in case I am messy I do not want it to go over my freshly sanded face. Just security measure here and then I am going to carefully start applying the epoxy. I am actually pushing it with this little piece of scrap wood. Pushing it into that crack let it seep down. Now you can add color to the epoxy if you feel the need. In this case the clear epoxy is going to look like a black streak and this hatoba actually has a few of the black streaks so that works out in our favor this time.
So after about fifteen minutes you can see the epoxy has hardened up at least enough for us to work with it. You can scrape it off; you could use a chisel or a hand plane. For me, my table saw is set at the same setting it was when I cut this initially so I am just going to run it through for another pass and clean it up that way. As you can see we cleaned it up and what was a eyesore and a crack and could potentially be unstable over time now just looks like a part of the grain.
All of our pieces are cut to the appropriate length using the following technique in the miter saw. I start by trimming one side square. And then measure and mark the appropriate length. In this case four and a half inches. Now since I plan on cutting multiples here, I set up a stop block. I flip the work piece around so that the square end is against the stop. Using the pencil line for reference, I lined everything up perfectly and secured the stop with the clamp. Now keep in mind that this would be a pretty dangerous cut without the use of a hold down. It is never a good idea to keep a loose piece of material wedged between the stop and the blade.
Now for the sides we have to cut a nice forty-five degree miter on every edge of the piece. So we get a nice join tall the way around to do that I am going to do it on the table saw. You will notice here that I have got a zero clearance insert for just the standard blade and my splitter and in order to do this, if we start tilting that blade left or right it is not going to fit in my zero clearance insert so I have to go back to the original stock insert that came with the saw. So before I tilt the blade to forty five I like to raise it up nice and high and then start the tilt.
So the reason I had you put the blade all the way up is because I want to get some sort of a gauge under there. Some kind of a right angle like a speed square you have this little guide blocks like that. I do not even know where I got that from but it is dead on forty-five degrees. You can even use this part of your adjustable square to make sure it is at a forty-five degree angle. The gauge gets too close to on your saw but I usually do not trust it I have to double check it with something else. So I am going to use this little guy and use this to dial it in dead on forty-five degrees.
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