Well, I didn’t get as far along today as I thought I would. I’ll explain why in a minute; suffice it to say that when certain power tools don’t cooperate, certain tasks take a lot longer than normal.

First off, I need to apologize if you got the impression that I had no milling mistakes on Friday.

This is a result of the blind kerf I was cutting for the spline. I had a momentary lapse, the board lifted and came down away from the fence, and the result is as you see here – a short section of “oopsie” that needs to be fixed.

First step – putty. Putty or bondo is a woodworker’s best friend when it comes to paint grade projects. Fill the hole (slight overfill for shrinkage, since it’s acetone-based putty) and let it dry. Sand, and repeat.

End result – nice smooth wood, ready for primer. First, though, a thorough sanding of the rest of the frame, after removing the excess material from the plugs.

This is called a Japanese Flush Cut saw. One of the niftiest little hand saws ever invented, many hundreds of years ago, by the Japanese. The blade is flexible, so you can use the surrounding material as a guide while cutting off the pegs that are sitting above the surface. Works good, too:

Well, most of the time it works good.

So, glue the piece back in, let it dry, and finish sawing it off.

Well, the oak is harder than the poplar, and I am damaging the poplar more than I want to when the oak is being cut off. Time to save time and embrace 20th century technology. I picked this up at a friend’s garage sale a few years back, and it works quite well. Well, until the all the magic smoke leaks out.

And that is the delay factor I hadn’t counted on. When Mr. Belt Sander gave up the ghost, I had to resort to hand sanding the rest of the frames – both sides, and all edges. I got that finished, and now it’s time to run over to the sister-in-law’s house to visit the niece. She’s in town (she lives in Michigan) and she wanted to make this trip before her baby was born.

Friday, I’ll be priming the frames and once they are dry, I’ll be installing hardware and screen material. See you then.

Chat ya later…

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