So you want to build a craps table – pt 2
Let me just start out by saying this: Jigsaws are Fun. Especially Bosch Jigsaws. And until another tool company sends me a jigsaw to sample (hint hint), I’ll continue to say that Bosch Jigsaws are the best. Go ahead, I dare any tool company to send me something to try for free and challenge my claim that Bosch makes the highest quality power tools in the world.
As mentioned in my last post, I’ve got the plans all cut out into full size paper templates.
With that all done, my next step was to buy some plywood. So off to Menard’s I went. Without a doubt, Menard’s is my favorite store ever. The only problem is that I get too many half-baked ideas when there. I hate shopping in general, more of a “get in, get out, get on with your life” type of guy. As far as I know, I think I hold the speed record for Christmas shopping. 43 minutes from locking my door in the mall parking lot to loading the trunk with a metric shit ton of gifts. But, for some reason I can wander the aisles of Menard’s for hours. I just don’t get it. They must pump something into the ventilation that tricks your brain into thinking “you really need new handles for all the kitchen cabinets”. I wonder what kind of street value a drug like that would have.
Anyways, I loaded up 3 sheets of 3/4″ CDX and headed home. The plans call for 4 sheets, but I have a half sheet left at home from a different project and I’m also thinking of changing the plans a bit to not include the planned legs. So that would save me over a half sheet right there. The reason I’m thinking of not including the legs is because the plans call for attaching them in such a way that you would never be able to remove them without taking off the craps felt layout. And that would be bad. Thinking of buying a couple table bases from a local restauraunt supply store, so they would be easy to screw on and off, but I’ll ponder that more later.
Now, I am knee deep in templates that I have to lay out on the plywood and trace. If you look closely, you can see footprint evidence of a tiny creature that for some reason thought it was quite fun to run back and forth on the plywood as I traced out templates. Refer to part 1 for an idea of what I think this mysterious creature may be.
I spent most of the rest of the day tracing and cutting, and although it seemed like I was really just making a lot of scrapwood and a heck of a lot of sawdust, I got all of the major pieces cut out.
When I got to the corner pieces, I made a stunning realization: Tracing and cutting out the same piece over and over can be a tad tedious. By my calculations I’ll have to cut out about 60 of these quarter round pieces to stack up and form the rounded corners of the table.
That’s a lot.
As you can see from the size of the stack in the photo, I have about 7 cut out. That’s a lot yet to go.
This is when I remembered that Family Guy would be starting any minute.
