Now that I have all the wood onsite and more or less marked, and a jig to help me drill straight, I decided to start in on the build.
In the videos, PH-D (the author of the book and owner of buildyourCNC.com) starts with the Z-axis. There are lots of little parts and he can show off his miter box skills.
In the book, however, he starts with the X-axis. Essentially, take a guy who’s pretty green and hasn’t picked up tools in awhile, and start him on cutting the largest pieces of wood in the build.
I’m not sure this is the wisest place to start.
I understand that once the X-table is built, you can start taking critical measurements that help the rest of the build. Honestly, it probably *is* the right place to start, if the builder is a skilled woodworker. But I have messed up several times already, and I worry about how much I can get done before the hardware gets here so I can test-fit some of these holes I’ve been making.
Among things I need to remember:
– If you are going to counterbore a hole, make sure to use a pilot hole first!
– The router doesn’t like chewing off large chunks of plywood at a time.
– The chamfer bit has a “straight” part that needs avoiding.
– Try out the new jig on a test piece of wood first.
– I need a drill press. Drilling straight holes is not as easy as advertised.
– Routers are loud and can only be run until the kids go to bed. Get routing done early.
– sawdust goes everywhere. Do routing outside. Drilling and sawing are not as bad, but do those outside, too.
Here’s what was done tonight. Whether it’s “progress” or not remains to be seen.
one edge of 4 is chamfered (ran out of time before bedtime).
6 holes are drilled through the two table pieces, two of them are counterbored and have 1 1/4″ taper-head screws in them. In theory I could un-clamp the table halves from each other. Oh, the halves are clamped. With all 4 edges even. Speaking of which, the table is now 1/8″ narrower than it used to be, since I had to route one edge to get it flush, and… well… I haven’t used a router in awhile and I messed it up. By the time I got it more or less OK, I’d eaten away some serious wood. sigh.
I have the holes drilled in one end of the table that will eventually hold the table leg on. That’s six 1/4″ holes and three 7/16″ holes that intersect pairs of them. I don’t know if it’s the jig or my drilling, but the holes are … not quite right. It will be interesting to see whether I can salvage this, but I’m not drilling anymore until I get my hands on some cross dowels.
I’ve made progress I hope. At least, there are holes. and I cleaned up some sawdust off the floor. I may have ruined two nice pieces of plywood, but I have 2 more.