Table Talk part 20

Things have been quiet here on the blog for most of the past week.  Three teaching days are part of that, but the biggest thing is I have been dealing with is moving into a new apartment.  All the big furniture that took assistance has been moved, so now it's just dealing with all the boxes and piles of accumulated stuff.  Not for the first time I have come to the conclusion that I have too much stuff.

But that's a concern for the future.  Today I needed to get back to work on this table project.  In my absence, Molly did some work of her own.  Above is the start of the tabletop for a round drop leaf table.  My task continues to be sanding.

Last week I had started sanding the 2x4 frames that will connect the legs to the tabletops, and I started with the frames for the four largest tables.  In the above photo from last week you see me sanding one of the long sides of one such frame (mounted on supports clamped to the work table) and more of the 5.5 foot long frames in the background.  I had done the long sides of all four frames this way, but now I had a problem.  It is far far easier to use a belt sander on a firm horizontal surface.  To try sanding a vertical surface seemed at best inefficient, and at worst, possibly dangerous.  And no man in my family is tall enough to see top of a 66" long frame.  After thinking about it for a few minutes I came to a conclusion- I needed to get taller.

Unfortunately my legs stopped growing a few decades ago, so I turned to a ladder for assistance.  I clamped wooden supports to the table again, but with a narrower gap this time to hold the 3 and 4 foot wide sections.  A couple of rungs up the ladder, one foot resting on the table for stability and balance.  Otherwise it was the same routine as last week- first some passes with the belt sander to take down the rough stuff, then a few with the palm sander to smooth things out.  With those four large frames done, I turned to the yet untouched square frames, which also were all 3 and 4 foot wide.  Got through a few of those as well, and considered finishing the last two, but the belt sander was starting to get warm, and I don't want to burn this thing out in less than a week, so I decided to clean up and go home.  The plan for tomorrow is to knock out the exterior sides of the last two assembled frames, then start on the undersides, but for those the frames can just sit on top of the tables.

Later I updated Molly by phone on what I had accomplished today.  She put in a request to prioritize certain tables to be available for some planned workshops, something I should be able to tackle on the weekend.