So, what did I do today ?
I was very interested to see how the veneers for the doors were going to turn out, so I decided to jump ahead in the project a little by sanding these down to thickness. I thought I had better make sure they were going to be OK before I went ahead and made the carcase.
To sand the veneers through the wide belt sander down to thickness I made a simple sled from blockboard which has a thin back stopper to hold the veneers from slipping. This sled is needed because the sander can only sand down to 3mm and very thin material it tends to compress into the feed belt which sometimes creates an uneven thickness.
Since my veneers vary in thickness a little I measured the thickest at 4.3mm and slowly sanded them down, 0.1mm per pass, one by one until they were all clean at a nice final thickness of 1.89mm.
For the sanding I used my Casolin Wide belt sander with straight 80 grit. It did a stunning job and I am very happy with the end result. See the process in the two videos below.
"Carcase".
ReplyDeleteThe videos are a great idea. Really brings the process to life. What did you shoot them on?
I know you want to get these blog posts up quickly, but I think you should probably use iMovie to edit out the bit where you walk back to the camera to turn it off.
Nice wide belt machine, I bet that makes the process so nice.
ReplyDeleteThe wide belt sander is the key to success.
ReplyDeleteIt does such a great job, especially on highly figured wood which you otherwise have no hope of machining.
I sand all our veneer board that we press ourselves through this machine.