Well, given my back is still giving me a whole lot more trouble than I thought it would be giving me after all this time, what better task for me than to put in writing more of the progress that's been made on this project?
A couple of blog posts ago, in Peeling Me Some Pine Stumps, the stumps chosen to make up the columns for this project actually started to look like they might work. The only thing is, the pieces to that puzzle hadn't yet been set up to actually be the columns in more finished form.
Conceptually speaking, I'd set them up in very rough form:
But, that set up wasn't truly representative of what they should come close to looking like in finished form. That's what today's blog post is ultimately intended to show.
Anyway, the first step in the process was to mix and match all four stumps for best "fit" with each other (see previous blog post mentioned above) to determine which two would go on top and which two would constitute the bottom of each column.
After two top pieces and two bottom pieces were chosen, the bottom pieces were set aside to work on later.
The two top pieces were set and fit as close to each other as possible, and were then eyeballed to see how much would need to be removed in order to get to an identical flat surface on both stumps:
Keeping in mind that a minimum of stock removal was critical for this to work since there wasn't a lot of extra to play with, both stumps were shimmed to accommodate that requirement (see photo below showing one of them with shim in place) all the while eyeballing and re-positioning frequently and as necessary for best alignment.
DANG, but those things are HEAVY!
Because they are so heavy, securing them to the router planer table wasn't necessary to prevent movement back and forth. However, shims were necessary to keep them stable enough so they wouldn't wobble when the router passed over.
Yep! Should work:
Measure twice....rout once! Learned that adage the hard way far too many times to remember.
Just right! There's just enough to allow for about 1/2" of stock removal to get both stumps down to the necessary height for the top two stumps on this pass:
Once the ends of these two stumps have been planed down, it's a simple matter to just flip them over and do the other ends the very same way. Then it'll be on to the bottom two stumps to do the same thing with them all over again.
But wait!
I know I'm tall, but I ain't THAT tall!
The router planer table height combined with the stump height was just too high for me, even as tall as I am, to comfortably reach while standing on the floor. So, it became necessary to rig a jig (see what I did there?) to give me a few more inches in height.
Good thing I had some scrap lumber and car ramps sitting around! The little bit of time it took to come up with a raised platform to stand on was well worth it. It actually added about 12 inches to my height....while standing on the platform, of course:
After all four stumps were routed down to height, the true test was in whether the two columns were now the same height. So, hefting those lightweights (just kidding) up on each other, this is how they look now:
And, the good news is the two columns are exactly the same height, and that height is exactly what is needed to fit on the hearth they'll eventually be mounted on:
And, just to make sure I measured right, and to give a better idea what these columns will ultimately look like with mantel slab in place, I set a flat 48 inch slab from my scrap pile on top of the columns. The actual mantel slab is 9 feet long. The final placement of the columns on the hearth will be farther apart on either side of the firebox opening than shown here just to give some perspective.
Now THAT's kickin' some serious fireplace mantel butt:
I gotta tell ya, being these stumps are so big and so cumbersome, there was an ever so slight amount of trepidation on my part that this idea, this concept, wasn't going to work, and that I'd have to go in another direction completely if they didn't.
Truth be known, there's still a bit of trepidation, though, because four stumps must now become two by joining together the uppers to the lowers, and we're not talking about false teeth here, either.
I'm thinking wood glue between the upper and lower stumps should be a good way to attach them to each other, but, just to make absolutely sure they won't come apart, I plan to use Timberlock lag screws, as well.
Holes will be drilled diagonally from top stumps into bottom stumps to accommodate the screws. Of course, the holes drilled to accommodate the screws will also need to have plugs to fill them in, but this should work, right?
Time will tell.....
Stay tuned!
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