This restoration has been a serious pain in the butt. I ruined one of my carefully laminated side panels in my last effort, (See part two for that story.) and would need to make another panel. I had enough scrap material to join and make a new panel, so I gave it a try. It worked out well and I figured that after laminating it, you’d never know it was two pieces. Unfortunately during the sizing portion, I cut about 4″ more off the bottom than I should have. Measure twice, cut once, words to live by. I bit the bullet and purchased another piece of material. This time I got it right.

I carefully lined up the new, pre-cut blank on top of the other blank I had already laminated but not cut. I then used screws through the carriage bolt holes to secure the pieces in place. No movement this time.

Once secure and clamped to the saw horses I used my trim router to cut out the shape. I took about a 1/4″ per pass until I had only a bit left. Then I flipped it over and finished it off on the black laminate side. I was concerned about chipping the laminate and this worked out perfectly.

After completing the panels, I started to layout the blocking and nail it in place. I used the remaining old panel to measure locations. Everything was coming together nicely.

I also cut the blank for the new bottom piece and cut the air vent holes on the drill press. I used the blast cabinet to strip the rust of the brackets that were mounted on the bottom. They had seen the most water damage and had some serious rust. A little zinc primer and a coat or two of black and they are good to go.

I’ll let the parts dry a bit and then I’ll attempt to dry fit everything before I start fastening it all in place. Since I was planning to reuse the front section and the top angled pieces a dry fit will be important to make sure I judged the sizes and blocking placement correctly. Let’s hope so, more to come!

Tags: cabaret, Phoenix, phoenix cabaret, restoration, Restorations

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Gameroom, Machines, Phoenix, Present, Restorations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.