Green & Green Settee Part XV

After glue-up I went ahead and sanded the whole piece with 180 grit.  I'll spare you the gory details of sanding.  I had either handplaned or pre-sanded (120 and 150) most of the parts before glue-up, so this sanding phase wasn't too bad.  For a few spots I had to dip down to 150 to touch up a dinged area here and there.

Next I cut the groove for the crest rail ebony spline.  There is a bit of trepidation taking a router hand held to a nearly finished piece:

I have only a 1/8th inch wide groove cutter (it may actually be a biscuit cutter, not sure).  As you see in the photo, I had to make two passes to get the width I wanted.  Unfortunately, I had some tearout, so I had to widen the groove a bit to clear that out.  I went very slow and removed very little to remove the tearout, which produced only fuzz but no tearout at the problematic area the second time around.  Unfortunately, the groove is a bit wider than I wanted, but it still looks fine.  The problem I think is that I went the entire depth with the first cut.  Next time I will take multiple passes, with the first pass shallow to avoid tear out.

I used my bandsaw and small Jet 10-20 drum sander to make ebony splines.

It is not an exact 90 degree angle where the top spline meets the vertical spline so I had to fuss with the top of the vertical spline on a makeshift shooting board using shims of paper to change the angle:

After using a coping saw to remove most of the ebony, I use a small coarse sanding drum on a dremel to level the ebony to where I can finish with hand tools and sandpaper.  The small sanding drum is very aggressive and the process goes quite fast.   I have a vacuum hose underneath (not shown for some reason) in an attempt to capture most of that gnarly ebony dust.

I also tackle the plugs, using the same process as I did for the arms in an earlier post.  Before installing the plugs I wet the entire piece to raise the grain then sand with 220.  Sanding around plugs is not a lot of fun so better to do so before hand.

I install corner glue blocks inside the seat area.  Glue blocks add a tremendous amount of strength to the piece:

 

I see the light at the end of the tunnel!