Craft Beer Flight : Part 4

As I mentioned in the last part I had basically made 1 beer flight and today had a lot of rinse and repeat, and I am a man of my word. But there was also some other steps that I had started and will finish tomorrow.

TODAY’S ACTIVITIES INCLUDED:

• Finish cutting all the glass holes

• More Router Time

• Oscillating Spindle Sander Time

• More Sanding, but with my orbital sander

• Creating the dadoes

CUTTING HOLES

Since I had only cut all the holes in 1 of the 9 flights I had to finish cutting all them holes. Nothing really new here as I documented this step in a previous part. Every Flight was to receive four 2” wide holes for the 5 Oz glasses to fit into. So it was back to the drill press to batch out this step. I did do one thing different and that was I gang cut two flight tops at a time. But to be honest I don’t think it was any faster because cutting two at a time seemed to bog down my little bench-top drill press and cant honestly say it was any faster.

Here is me starting to cut out the holes, it hadn’t dawned on me to start gang cutting them together yet.

After finishing all the hole cutting I had these little disc that I thought looked awesome and didn’t want to throw them away, not sure what to use them for YET!!!

Here is all the holes finished, next I needed to bring all these piece to the router table. This picture is of the maple and Sapele flights.

Here is the other style, I was very careful to match all pieces in order of me cutting them so as that the grain matched on the whole piece once glued up.

ROUTER TIME

As I also did in a previous step I ran the flight parts through a 1/4” round-over profile bit in the router, I like the look of round-overs and they also feel great to the touch. I spent a decent amount of time doing this as I needed to do 8 flight with 3 parts that is a lot of routing, but they did come out awesome.

Here is a picture of the flight top and I used to round-over the inside edges of the holes and I also rounded over the top face of the flight.

This picture shows all pieces after the round-over has been applied to the edges.Next is sanding

Here is a close-up of the top with the round-over profile applied.

Here is what the sides look like with the round-over applied.

OSCILLATING SANDER TIME

Now that I have completed all the router work on all the pieces it was time to get rid of the tool marks left behind by the router bit, to get all the curves I used my spindle sander and this is an awesome tool, its not a multi-function tool but all the same it is very good at sanding all them circular shapes in the wood and it will takes the finishing touches up a notch.

Here is my WEN Oscillating Spindle Sander, this tool is a real joy to use, I used my 1” diameter sanding sleeve to get into all the curves, I could have used a 2” sanding sleeve but didn’t want to replaced all the sleeves as that would have been time consuming, anyway the narrower diameter fit very well into all the curves I had.

MORE SANDING:ORBITAL SANDER

Now that all the curves were sanded it was time to sand all the faces and edges of the parts and to do that I used my orbital sander on a non-slip mat because most of the part’s were very small and I needed to keep them stationary. I started with 100 grit sandpaper on the sander and finished with 320 grit and all the parts were very smooth to the touch.

Here is a image of my sander and the non slip router mat but I use almost all the time when I need to sand something that is very small and clamps and vises are not the best options to hold down the work-piece

DADO TIME

Now this is a step that I didnt do before and that is creating the dado groove to receive the feet on the under side of the flight top.

I put a 1/2” wide dado stack into my table-saw and raised it to a 1/4” high as that was the depth of the dado, I measured 1/2” from each side so as that when the glasses were in place they didn’t interfere with the feet or sides.

Here you can see the feet sitting in the dado I just cut, the dado groove runs the entire width of the flight, I have to say that it looks great for a simple joint and it is also extremely strong.

Here is a close-up of the dado joint, fits like a glove.

Here is where I leave it for today, this is a picture of one of the flights done, just need to be glued up.

Here is how I left 1 of the flights , tomorrow more rinse and repeat.

That is where I leave it for today.

NEXT:

• Finish cutting all the dadoes

• The Glue up

• Applying the finish.

Thanks for reading and I will catch you next time.