This evening I continued working on the seats. First task was to fabricate
the F-637B angles. As you can see from this photo they're supposed to be
26 3/8 long.
The bottom edge is supposed to be even with the bottom of the seat back and same
with the top edge.
The plans talk about trimming the seat back if necessary to shorten it to 26 3/8 long...
...but the seat panels I have are 1/16 short already. They measure 26 5/16. I decided to just
cut the angles to 26 5/16 long. That'll mean the seats will be 1/16 inch shorter than they're
supposed to be, but I don't really have a choice.
After locating the material, I cut four pieces to 26 5/16 long, then trimmed the lower flanges at
a 45 degree angle. The Dewalt mitre saw works great for this. I did notice, however, that the cut
wasn't as crisp as I'm used to. It may be time to get this blade sharpened.
Then I used a circle template to draw the 3/8 inch radius at the top end of the angles and used the
disc sander to round the corners. A little work with the file had them cleaned up. I like this photo.
Even though each one was done independently, I managed to get the radii to match up pretty well.
(Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day ;-)
Tomorrow I'll take these pieces to work and use one of the milling machines to make the notches at the ends
that are .040 deep X 9/16 inch wide. I figure they'll come out a lot nicer on the mill than what I could
do by hand.
Then it was onward to the F-637C angles. Two of these need the outer vertex of the angle
extrusion radiused. Being the lazy butt that I am, I decided to have a go at it with
my router and 1/8 inch roundover bit.
This is my most used bit...I used it to round over all the handrail spindles on my deck.
The routing really started out well. This is gonna rock!
Unfortunately I didn't think about the router face running off the end of the angle
and I got this big gouge. Sigh...one more piece of scrap for the pile. No biggie...I
just chopped another piece to replace this one. I resolved the router tipping problem
by clamping the other radiused angle end for end with the one I was routing. Worked great!
The router made a nice pile of aluminum snow on the floor. :-)
Here are the two F-637C angles after routing.
After a little more cutting to get all four pieces to the right length, some filing,
and polishing with scotchbrite, I had these done. Good night tonight...2.5 hours in the
shop. :-)