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Locks, knobs and escutsheons
The next part of the getting the left and right gable frames and front chassis frame ready is to measure and mark out where the tongue for the locks will need to go.
Due to the hinges that I'm using, the doors will overlap the frames by 4mm and so I sat down to work out what that means with the lock, it's keyhole and the door knob. Add to that that I'll be running a profile to accept the glass in the front door and floating panels in the side doors on the inside edges of the doors, the outside edge will have the profile that you see in the shots below.
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I chose little cabinet knob (above) as I wanted to it to be unobtrusive and have a degree of finesse about it. I ran into the problem that the keyhole brings it very close to the edge profile and too close that I can't use the knob whatyercallit that sits behind the knob (below), as it goes past the face of the stile and over the profile.
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I then measured the placement of the lock in the doors and marked the tongue from my dummy to the frame edge. I said earlier that I like jigs, so I made up a simple jig to route the striker plate.
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So you lot, that's the update for today.
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Bugger and another glue up
Sometimes it takes a heck of a lot of work to seemingly get no where, then you have a day when you get no where because you bugger up and mis-calculate a measurement, that happened last Saturday when I dimensioned the floating panels for the left and right gable sides, spent a day routing them all up. Only to come back on Sunday when I did a dry fit and saw my stuff up.
So I had had to start the floating panels all over again. :~
So with the big nasty panel raising bit back in the router table I started out again. This thing scares the carp of of me, because of its size and the big gapping hole in the router lift with it in. Needless to say I have a very strict way I approach when I'm using the router table and that means my eyes are always glued on the router bit and I have a very set way I make sure the stock is well clear of the bit, hold it there, watch the bit and with my right hand hit the switch to turn the thing off, wait for it to stop spinning before I move the stock away from the table.
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With the raised panel routed, I then get the rabbet bit to do the rabbet on the underside of the panel so that it will fit into the rail and stiles of the gable sides.
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I had the timber for each gable side nicely figured out, but my stuff up with the panels meant I had to recut them. I was going to leave the timber below for something else in the clock, but it has some nice fiddleback in it that I decided to use it for the right gable side. This way I leave the really nice timber for the components that you'll see most.
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With the panels redone, I did a dry fit of one of the gable sides to have a look at things before I started the next phase of doing a half glue up of the left gable side. I always use chalk to mark on the timber which side things go and the grain direction. For any stock that runs horizontal I run the grain left to right and anything that is vertical, I run the grain down (in the shot below you'll notice I've got the larger panel running the wrong way, if you look at the arrow marked on it), using this method I know when it comes to applying the finish I know which way I'm rubbing on and off (wax on, wax off, wax on, wax off... - watching the Karate Kid all those years ago paid off).
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Happy with the dry fit, today was about sanding from 240 down to 1500 on the the routed profile of one stile and the straight edges and profiles of the rails where I wouldn't be able to get to once they were glued. To make my life easier I've started by gluing up one half of the left gable end so that it'll be easier to insert the floating panels and then do the second glue up to the gable side.
Attachment 487474
Tomorrow I'll sand the right stile profile, the floating panels and do the final glue up of the gable side and do it all again for the right gable side.
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Hot glue and flyscreen rubber
If anyone can remember back when I built that great big cabinet, when I was doing the floating panels I first put flyscreen rubber in the rails and stiles so that the floating panels would be nicely held secure (with room for movement) so that overtime as they might settle they wouldn't end up being lopsided.
So I'm doing the same again for the grandfather clock.
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With that done I then glued up the gable side. To get to that glue up, I first sanded everything down to 1,500 grit.
Attachment 487921
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Glueing up the front frame chassis and gable sides and a bit of pondering
Today was a major step forward being able to glue up the front chassis and gable sides.
Glue ups stress the hell out of me, it's one of those times that if things start to go wrong, you can hear me shouting in the shed down the other end of the street (something which SWMBO is always telling me).
I had moment when the neighbourhood would've heard me, I was running some timber through the thicknesser this arvo and I didn't take much notice of a daggy bit on one end which had a crack running through it. It was just about to come out of the thicknesser, when the corner on the end gave way and parted company (it was a good size chunk about 24mm thick) instead of getting spat out it got caught in either the head and the rollers, making the machine take a big lurch to one side with a big bang. I thought I'd killed the trusty beast. I took the cover off and a few other things and couldn't see any damage. Next thing after putting it back together was to turn it on and see what happened next. Thankfully the damn thing growled back into life, so I shoved a big long wide board into its throat and continued to thickness it down.
I've taken some of the stress out by using Titebond's Hide Glue which gives me a bit longer air time and is very easy to come back and clean up the excess glue.
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As I began to start on the next section of the g/clock I took a while to lean and ponder and sort out what timber I have left and layout some of the templates I'll be using...
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I thought I'd have some timber left over, but I soon realised this arvo that I'm a bit short, so I'll be putting the trailer on the back of the car and heading off to Matthew's Timber this Saturday to get some more Fijian Mahogany.