Gulf Island Building.

cocobolo · 04-22-2010, 12:58 AM

Remember that awful protrusion that was at the end of the deck? Well, most of it is gone now. My buddy always referred to it as the diving board.

cocobolo · 04-22-2010, 01:01 AM

And now that things are getting cleaned up a little, here's a couple of shots from above.

cocobolo · 04-22-2010, 01:03 AM

And at long last the stairs are in. I did the staining last week when we had some decent days.

cocobolo · 04-23-2010, 01:16 AM

Well, another nice day. Unfortunately, I spent most of it inside routing the screen support cross pieces.

I have decided on a serpentine shaped screen at the back of the deck. So, one section will be concave, the next convex and so on.

I had the 2 x 4's precut to length for each section in advance. Then I needed to figure out what the radius of the cut would need to be. I wanted at least 1 1/2" of wood left in the thinnest part of the 2 x 4 after they were cut to shape.

A jig was made up to facilitate all the cutting. I guessed about 6' would be right, so I started with that. As it happened, it was just fine, so no changes needed to be made.

The router was bolted to a 6' long 1 x 2. The 1 x 2 was screwed to the bench top. Then, using the router itself as the guide, the jig was located so that the cuts would catch the ends of the 2 x 4's in the right spot.

cocobolo · 04-23-2010, 01:19 AM

In the pic above, the empty jig is screwed to the work surface. As you can see, it is much wider than a 2 x 4, but due to the fact that I need both concave and convex pieces, the jig is wide enough to accommodate both.

The 2 x 4 is placed as in this picture.

cocobolo · 04-23-2010, 01:21 AM

Then a spacer and two wedges are added. The wedges are long with a gentle taper and exert considerable pressure on the 2 x 4. We don't want it moving anywhere.

cocobolo · 04-23-2010, 01:22 AM

When the routing is done on a board, it looks like this.

cocobolo · 04-23-2010, 01:24 AM

About half the boards will be convex and the other half concave, thusly.

cocobolo · 04-23-2010, 01:27 AM

You may have noted in the above pic that the 2 x 4 was shifted to the opposite side of the jig. The inside width of the jig was worked out in advance so by simply using the opposite side would produce the concave cut, again in the right place.

cocobolo · 04-23-2010, 01:32 AM

Two things I can tell you about cutting with a router. It's noisy and it's dusty.

Use your earmuffs and a mask if sawdust bothers you.

I used a plunge router for the job. When cutting boards such as this it is best to take small bites at a time.

I started out with about a 1/4" deep cut. The first pass is made very slowly. If you try to pull an Indy 500 type cut, you'll mess up the board every time.

cocobolo · 04-23-2010, 01:37 AM

OK, you see that little gadget on the router that looks like a miniature set of steps...well, we use that to take the small bites in a controlled fashion. For those of you who may not have used a plunge router before, this is a very handy part of the machine.

When you make the first cut - at whatever depth you decide - in our case it was 1/4", you set the stop so that when it rests on the top "step" the bit will be 1/4" below the base.

cocobolo · 04-23-2010, 01:40 AM

As you turn the steps counter clockwise, you make a pass at each step. I didn't measure, but I would guess it is about 1/10th of an inch each time.

cocobolo · 04-23-2010, 01:43 AM

The 6th step was deep enough for my purpose, and the board is now cut slightly more than half way through.

The balance of the cut was done with the jigsaw. Using the pre cut groove as a guide makes this dead easy.

cocobolo · 04-23-2010, 01:45 AM

I just couldn't stop until I had at least some of the pieces installed. Sorry about it being dark...again...but some of us just don't know when to quit.

I'll get a better pic tomorrow.

tpolk · 04-23-2010, 07:03 AM

supprised you did'nt use a jig on a jigsaw