Player Stations

This weekend I hoped to get the player stations cut and fit and just waiting for finish. Let’s see how close I got!

First up I drilled out the bottoms of the verticals to accept threaded inserts, using the same jig:

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Next up would be cutting the stopped rabbets in the horizontal pieces. Why is it called a “stopped” rabbet? Because the cut doesn’t go all the way from end to end, it stops before getting there, keeping the corner and increasing stability a bit. It’ll be more clear when you see the finished product.

First up was laying out where the rabbets would go using a marking gauge:

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I could have sawed the corners and dug out all of the waste with a chisel, but I used a forstner bit instead:

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Then, I made a jig that would allow me to chisel out the waste at exactly 90°, clamping the board in place and simply holding the chisel against the two fences:

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After a couple of hours those were looking great:

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Next was notching out the corners of the verticals to fit inside the stopped rabbet. I marked the depth with the marking gauge and then transferred the edges of the rabbet to those boards cutting the notch on the table saw:

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And they fit great! I made them just a hair proud (meaning the vertical stuck out slightly farther than the edge of the horizontal) so that I could sand them flush after everything was glued together.

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If you’ll remember, I changed the design from the original dovetails to pins, so I cut the three of those on the verticals:

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Finally, after blue-taping the vertical pieces in place, I could test how they fit and rotated on the actual table:

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After opening the station, I found that something was amiss. I knew that this particular fitment was going to be crucial, and after getting everything in place I found it less than ideal: the tray, in the open position, was 1/16” - 3/32” higher than the base of the table:

More on that in my next post, and how I plan to fix it.