I left off last week ready to glue the pieces of cherry together.
For the strong, very water-resistant hold, I used Titebond III wood glue and tightened the parallel clamps.

I complemented these clamps with bar clamps and let the whole thing dry.

I had read differing opinions on how long to let things dry. Some said that the project could be popped out of clamps after half an hour. Others said an hour. Others yet still said 24 hours. I wasn’t going to take any chances with this one and let it sit for a full day.

Then came one of my favorite parts: Planing.
A lot of people have planers they can feed something through to take predetermined amounts of wood off a project to make an even surface.
I have hand planes.
I rely most on my Stanley No. 5 plane because the sole (flat part underneath) is very long, so the plane spans much of a project for an even surface.








I used the chamfer method to prevent tearouts. I’ll go into that another time, but it was very effective.
I planed the other side to make a flat surface I could then cut up for the next step.
Now, I’ll take a quick diversion to write about a cool thing I will be using later in this project.
During my sanding of projects in the past, I’ve had a small dust collection bag for the Makita sander, a small dust collection bag for the DeWalt sanders, and then finally a big vacuum that I had connected to the DeWalt sander, but the connection was through a rubber piece that had come with my table saw. It was not designed for the DeWalt sander and made a seal that worked but was prone to disconnection.
I saw that someone had posted on a 3D print site that a connector specifically for the DeWalt sanders because DeWalt itself does not offer a connector that allows for vacuums to be used with the sanders. That meant I was able to send the instructors to my cousin Yaakov for a 3D printed connector because he has a 3D printer. This would make it so that the sander wouldn’t disconnect from the hose while I was sanding something. He printed it, and I connected it to my sander, and I was in business!

More next week!