Assembling the Bench Bottom

A couple weeks ago I did finish gluing up the bottom half of the bench and haven't gotten around to making a post about it but here it is.
First we glued up the panels then glued the whole thing together.  Here are the pictures

Final in class post

Today is my final wise class.  I still have to finish my project and give my presentation.  

Our final prompt is to give advice for any students taking wise next year.  I would definitely recommend it.  I would also say that you need to do the work in the fall because it might seem kind of odd or unnecessary it will prepare you for your project.  It might not be related to your project but it will help you document and reflect what you are doing.  That is where your grade will come from and that's what you will take out of the entire class in general.  

Cutting the stub tenons

To connect the center pieces of the panels on the bottom of the bench I had to use a stub tenon and groove joint, heres what one looks like-

(I did these at my school with my mentor Mr Breigle)

On my peice the stub tenons fit into the dadoes that I cut last week.  Cutting the stub tenons was pretty difficult in terms of the set up and checking.  I couldnt just use a measurement because it might not macth the dado exactly.  So we set up whats called an auxilery fence over a dado blade on the table saw. and you move the fence over sligthtly each time until you have the fit you want with the dado.  Then you do the same thing with moving the blade up.  This process is pretty difficult to explain so here are the instructions from the plan.  

Here are some photos of my work and video of me cutting one on the table saw-

Presentation

My final presentation is going to be June 14.  That means that all my written work will be due June 7.  Last night we watched the first WISE presentation as an example.  I think that it really helped me realize how close I am to the end.  I now realize how much I still need to do.  It's not that I haven't done a lot already but I have to condense it all into my final narrative and presentation.  

Corbels and Brackets

On the bench there are these peices 2 brackets and 8 corbels that give it a classic look.  These peices are mainly for aesthetics but they are still important and were very different from anything I had done before. For the corbels I printed out the plan to actual size and used the diagrams they gave to make a stencil out of Masonite.  For the brackets I had to free hand because they didn't give an actual size diagram.  Next I cut the shapes roughly on the bandsaw and then touched them a belt sander for the flat surfaces and a spindle sander for the round surfaces.  

Cutting dados

To assemble the bench it requires you to use dadoes to hold the plywood in place

So I had to take the bottom pieces and cut the dadoes into them.  I used the table saw, which has a special dado blade kit.  Each blade is 1/8 in and since I needed a 1/2 in dado I put two blades on.  Then I did one pass so there was a 1/4 in dado on one side then I would flip the wood and do another pass this would give me a 1/2 in dado plus it makes it perfectly center on the piece.  Here's the set up.  

On the right is the fence which is locked in to keep the cut straight and on the left is whats called a feather clamp which helps guide the wood so that the cut stays in the middle of the piece.  Here's the end result.

In class prompt 5/13

Right now my biggest worry for the final presentation is that I won't have enough to talk about.  The presentation has to be 30 minutes and I'm a little concerned that I will not have that much material not because I haven't done that much but because most of my project is physical so that to explain it is harder than just showing it.  

Right now the most difficult part of my project is finding time to actually work.  It's hard to come up with a good amount of time where I can go and actually get something accomplished.