Handing Off Glued Slat

Knowing that Tyler would be around on July 4th, we planned to glue up both sides during the day.  However, their neighbor decided to get crazy Friday night with the fireworks and Jodi and Tyler came over early.  They basically stayed the nights during the weekend.  So, we got one side glued up Saturday evening, and the other was glued up Sunday afternoon.

Applying Glue to Top of Slats

Using a Titebond III glue with a 10 minute open window, we quickly got into a rhythm.   I glued the end of each slat and handed it to Tyler who forced it into the bottom rail.   Next, I went back and put glue on the top end of each slat, getting the tennons covered with enough glue that it would stick well when shoved into the mortise on the top rail.  That actually was by far the trick part of the process.

Inspection By the Mom

The real person we need to please is the mom who is by now only about a week and a half off from delivery.  So, baby and mom are lingering in the eager support phase as dad and gramps get it stuck together.

I’m still not certain that it will be done on the day of the delivery, but we will be close.  There are more things to do in a day than I seem to have time to accomplish, so it is slow going.

Getting All the Parts to Come Together

As I mentioned, trying to the top pieces inserted into the mortises in the top rail while keeping everything together is the tricky part.  I kind of think that if I had 30 year-old eyes like Tyler the process would have been a lot quicker and less stressful.  I finally gave up and asked Tyler to get those tennons into the pockets while I held the top together.  Once all of the slats were in place, we then concentrated on getting the rails into the pockets of the legs.

Gluing On the Legs

Each leg has a pocket for the top and the bottom rail to fit into.  I found during the dry fit that my rails were not perfect fits, so minor adjustments had to be made.  A couple of the rails were also a bit thin after the blems were removed from them during planing and sanding.  That left a couple of the pockets just a shade big, so we glued in some walnut shims that became invisible once trimmed even with the leg and stained.

Clamping the Sides Together

Finally we added some clamps and let it dry overnight.  You may have noticed that we chose to stain and put finish on before gluing.

I recommend that because we got some glue squeeze out during the assembly and clamping.  With everything already finished, we simply used some damp paper towels and cleaned up all the squeezed out glue.  The only drawback is that you get some marks in the finish that you might work out if the wood was still unfinished.  However, I plan to apply several coats of finish yet, so I hope most of it will look just the way we wanted it to look.

Kudos to Judy for taking the pictures.