A Rack For Her Glue Gun Part II

With everything milled, the Dominos cut and the tile recesses made, it was time for the initial glue up. I glued up the four (4) side of box which forms the rear glue stick storage compartment. Then I glued the extra long walnut side and rear ebony block to it.

Still a bit too square for my taste.

Next I began the shaping, as I wanted to make sure I was able to work the edge I would no longer be able to reach after final glue up. The shaping was, of course, the hard and the fun part of the project. It was the first project I was able to use my Foredom rotary tool on. Using a Kutzall bit, it made quick work of the walnut and ebony. I still used my rasps for final shaping, but the Foredom was much, much faster for the rough work.

The glue stick caddy, post shaping.

Once I’d done about 70% of the shaping, I  glued the sub assemblies to the base. As you may have guesses, I joined everything with Dominos. This made for easy, quick and strong joints between the vertical components and the base.

Flaring the curved verticals into the base was easy.

The final shaping could now be done. I used my Festool RAS 115 to blend the shaped side of the base into the shaped side of the verticals. I learned from Andy Chidwick that using a hard platen on the RAS 115 with a 40 grit sanding disc allows you to use the sander like a grinder with better dust control and more finesse. As I had with the Foredom, I followed up the RAS 115 with rasps.

With the shaping done, I dealt with the small gap that was left between the ebony and walnut on the front piece. The glue up hadnt been perfect and there was about a 1/16” gap at the top of the joint. To fill it I dyed some 5 minute epoxy with India Ink. This created Epoxy almost the exact color of the ebony.

Just a touch of black epoxy made the gap disappear (I know I messed up the order).

After the shaping, I had to deal with the coarse texture.Dont forget about the +Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We talk woodworking with Guests from around the world of woodworking every other week. Subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes today.

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