One of those "lightbulb goes off" moments

I thought I’d share a recent “duh” moment I had while building a built-in cabinet and shelves for a friend of mine. The face of the cabinet is 54 inchs wide by 35.5 inches tall. It’s a corner unit so I needed to mitre both sides to a 45 degree angle in order to make it sit flush to the walls. Well, I spent the better part of 2 days trying to figure out how to support such a large plank on my table saw so I could safely run it though with the blade tilted appropriately. The only thing I could come up with was that I’d have to stop the project and build a side extension table. While this is something I intend on doing anyway, it is not even remotely convenient to do so now.

Well, the ‘slap my forehead’ moment came when I realized I can do the same 35.5 in. cut with a chamfer bit and my router. So I thought, “Cool, now I just need to figure out how to mount a simple fence to guide the router base.” Plus figure out how to set the bit depth so as double the size of the chamfer. The bit is only half as wide as I need the final mitre to be. Note: I still haven’t actually started any woodworking yet and have still not made any real progress on the case. As I was beginning to start setting up the router, it donned on me that I can do the same thing with my Stanley block plane and there’s no set up required.

Needless to say, the plane worked amazingly fast. As soon as I put the sole to the stuff, I started shaking my head thinking, “Why didn’t I think of this 2 days ago??” Arrrggghhh!

Now that I’m making progress again, I hope to finish the mitres and cut opennings for 2 doors either tonight or this weekend. And I plan on keeping my block plane within an arm’s reach.