Dry Run: The Side Panels Match Up

Since I wasn't able to move this operation over to my daughter's place today, I decided to test the set up for gluing the side panels together at the apartment. This took some rearranging and careful squeezing through some tight spots but I was able to make it through a test set-up.

First of all, I built a second set of saw horses. Using the cut-offs from the first set of horses and some extra 1x4s, these are 32" wide (instead of 48") and match the height of the first set.



Using almost all of the longest part of the apartment, I set up three saw horses (there just wasn't room for the fourth one here!) to support two side panels. I used leftover stock from the spruce for the supports spanning the horses.



A piece of masonite on the middle horse serves as a base to support the gluing join. Plastic wrap or packing tape will be used as a barrier between the panels and the base when the panels are glued.



The panels in place...



The clamping arrangement is a 2x4 placed over the butt strap and secured with bar clamps. This may change as I did not tack the butt strap to the side panels in this set-up. I'll experiment to figure out the final configuration.



I was please with a couple of things in this dry run. The edges of the two panels matched very well. Yes, both edges are "factory" edges but still, they matched up almost perfectly.Yes, I know they are supposed to match up, but seeing it actually happen was a big relief. Second... once this was clamped up, I bumped things a bit moving around with the camera... but when I took the clamps off I did not see any sign the panels had moved. Could just be coincidence but what are the chances?

This exercise was very encouraging.