It's been a tough couple of days in the wood mines: after smugly dodging everyone else's sore throats, sniffles and brushes with this season's variety of 'flu, I've miserably succumbed to a common-or-garden cold of my very own. Colds and workshop dust don't really go together very comfortably, and at times it all just seems too wearily chore-like.
Even so, every day sees the sledge heaved a little further over the Antarctic ice towards the goal of finishing this display case before the end of this month, as well as before our departure for Edinburgh on the 4th of March.
On Monday I took the ferry over to Sidney, where I dropped off a consignment of Beeswax Polish at West Wind Hardwoods, who have very helpfully agreed to have it on sale at their store. From there I made a quick run into Victoria in order to prod the Plexiglas supplier into giving me an estimate, and to drop (an anagram of "prod" - how odd) by McGregor & Thompson, to talk about piano-hinges.
Neither visit was wholly satisfactory; plexiglas was not available with an anti-scratch coating; Lexan was, but did not come wider than 48" (I need 60"). Architectural hardware suppliers, according to McG. & T., are carrying very little inventory at present, which may mean long waits for delivery. The only piano-hinges available within a reasonable amount of time are not available in lengths over 72" (I need 75").
This left glass as the only satisfactory option, but it's much heavier. So the 4 a.m. question yesterday was: would the (too-short) piano hinges be strong enough to support a glass paneled door some five feet wide? I lay in bed trying to breath and at the same time visualize how a piano-hinge might twist and deform under the cantilevered stresses of a heavy glass-paneled door, before ripping out its inadequate little screws and requiring humiliating repair. Perhaps Plexiglas was the right choice after all? Round and round it went, until sometime in the afternoon it finally occurred to me that the solution might be to let go of the piano-hinge notion and use proper butt hinges..... although the reason why it took all day to arrive at this obvious conclusion is beyond me. Perhaps it's not possible to have a cold and think at the same time.
A few images of progress:
The dilemma of my last journal posting (biscuit or mortice & tenon) was solved with a third option, which still has its place in this era of plate-joinery: the humble doweled joint:
It's not as strong as a conventional mortice and tenon, but does have more depth than a biscuit. More importantly, I couldn't for the life of me see how I was going to cut biscuit slots in the rebate.
Drilling holes is easy though.
I found this old General Doweling Jig at a garage sale.. or did I? Perhaps it was a present from a friend who found it in a garage sale? Oh well....
It does the job well enough. End-grain is hard to drill accurately from centre-punched mark, so I drill these first, use dowel centres to mark the positions inside the rebate, drill these ( seen with dowels inserted in the first image) with the drill press, and clamp it all together.
As with the plinth, I had no clamps long enough so had to send far too much time jury-rigging some 9' bar clamps by bolting a 6' and a 4' clamp together. Every time I do this I swear I'll get some of my bar-clamps threaded at both ends so that I can just use a union. But I never do.