Day 6(Alex)--Starting my personal project

Day 6(Alex)--Starting my personal project

    Today is the first day of our final week of the woodworking M-term! To start, I had to recut the largest top piece for my lap table. The original piece I had was from another section of the plywood, and the grain was not consistent across the two pieces. After this, I took both pieces of plywood and applied the edge wood strips on the outside perimeters of both. This was probably the most fun part of the day; the edge board is surprisingly applied with an iron, which I did not expect. There is glue pre-placed on the edge of the wood, and when you heat it up with the iron, it sticks to the wood below. This makes the application very smooth. Then I used a chisel to cut off the excess wood edges and used the orbital saw again to smooth all of the planes of both boards. This whole process took me until lunchtime, and when I returned, I started by cutting a long 1 ½ x 78-inch strip of walnut wood, not the plywood, to use for the edges of my lapboard. After cutting the large strip, I passed it through the planner a few times to reduce the thickness from ¾ inch to ½ inch. On a break, I continued to sketch out some ideas for how I wanted the drawer of my lap desk to function and its dimensions, and I also sketched a few ideas for the height of the legs of the lapboard. To end my day, I continued working on finishing my box from last week, although I must admit that the finishing process is a little mundane. I used steel wool to smooth the faces of my box and applied another round of finishing oil. Then, I left the box out to dry overnight again.