IT IS ALWAYS GOOD to get back to the simple life of the workshop. Today I spent a bit of time sawing the sides to shape. One inch high at each end riseing to 1 1/4 at the center. I use this shooting board with clamps to hold the sides in position for the angled cuts.
Once the sides were all cut to size it was time to thin them down to bendable thickness- so the next stop is the thickness sander.
This side is taking another pass through the thickness sander, with each pass getting thinner and thinner. Sanding the sides down like this takes quite a bit of time but I will have all six done in about forty minutes, sanded down perfectly to .80 hundredths, ready to bend. The sander is an effective tool for this. If you tried to take this highly figured maple down with the old fashioned planer you would explode it.
