Creating Crosses Phase 2: Testing and Preparation
Sometimes you can see someone’s mind at work when you’re taking apart what they’ve built. I saw that while pulling the trim from the chancel walls. Clearly, they started behind the pulpit and were nail happy. They put a pair of nails every 12 or so inches on each piece of trim.
But as they tacking these pieces up, you could tell they started dialing back the intensity. Frankly, they were wasting nails; there’s no reason you needed so much hardware to attach the trim. By the time they were attaching trim on the left side of the chancel, near the lectern, pieces were held up by three maybe even just two nails in total.
That’s good news for me. The first thing I had to tackle was removing all of those nails. Using my tailgate as a workbench with a trash can below, I began the frustrating process of backing out each nail with a hammer and I got really good at it. I had to knock out each nail, one by one, being careful not to bend each nail.
Hundreds and hundreds of nails later, I was ready to get after it on the table saw.
The pieces of trim have a nice beveled edge I’d like to reflect in the final design of the cross. However, I planned to mill the pieces down, ripping off the beveled face and trimming down the sides to about 1.5 inches wide.
Before committing to this plan, I started testing. I ripped the beveled face off a test strip, trimmed it to 1.5 inches wide, then cut it to length, 12 inches for the vertical piece and 6 inches for the cross bar.
I then began the process of cutting dado joint. Using the table saw created a notch in the face of the vertical bar and the back of the crossbar. I slowly increased the height and of the blade and the width of the notch until the two pieces fit snugly together.
At this point though, I realized just one piece of trim wasn’t going to be enough depth for a nice looking bevel and a secure joint. I’m going to have to double them up.
Using a concerning number of clamps, I glued two trimmed up pieces of wood together and let them set. Once dry, I started using bevel function on my table saw to guess at a good looking angle and adjust the saw blade accordingly. I snuck up on the what I thought was the correct angle by making tiny adjustments to the angle and depth of the cut.
I didn’t get the bevel right on the first time, so I got myself a digital angle gauge so I can make more accurate, repetitive angled cuts. Regardless, this is getting close to style I want.
After using a few cut off pieces to help support the beveled face, I was able to cut a dado joint and fit the crossbar and vertical piece. A few more cuts to bevel the edges and I’m happy with the result!
By this point, I was ready to process all of the wood. After a day of pulling out the last few (hundred thousand) nails I was ready to rip down the wood. 6 hours of running the table saw later (sorry neighbors) I had more than a hundred wooden slats ready to be cut down and glued up.
Next step: Make a crosscut sled for the table saw, cut the slats down, and glue ‘em up.
