Getting Started on the Dumptruck
The plans for the Dump Truck come from the July 2011 issue of Wood Magazine (just the Tractor Trailer) and from the April 1995 issue of Wood Magazine (the Dump truck). I will be using the Cab and Chassis from the Tractor Trailer and the Payload box from the dump truck plan.
I got started with the chassis and the hoist support. Since the dump truck was a bit smaller scale I had to do a bit of and upsize the hoist support. The next challenge was the one inch notch in the hoist support. You can see how I tackled it here:
I marked my edges, setup a temp tall fence, cut the outside edges first and then nibbled away between. Note I made a small mistake by not pushing all of the way through on my right check cut and when I went back to clean it up I added an additional 1/32th of an inch to width. I will have to make that up later.
You see in the complete pic I am using a hand screw to hold my work. This is my first project that uses small parts like this and since I have typically done case work in the past I have gotten away with not having a vise in the wood shop (still needs to be moved from the garage).
The next challenge was the hood. It was a big thick square to begin with so I used two maple turning blanks I had on hand to glue up to a large 3×3 blank. The parts were over sized, but the biggest challenge was how do I glue up four squares and not have them slide all around while drying. Here is what I came up with:
I drew a line across all four pieces and brought that line around to the appropriate sides of each piece and since they were all 1 1/2 X 1 1/2 I was able to draw the X at 3/4" from the edge (trying to use the same edge on each block). I then drilled 1/4" hole a 1/2" deep on the marks and cut a 1/4" dowel at 3/4" lengths and placed them in the holes and glued the sides first (T1 and T2 - T3 and T4) let them set for about 10 minutes and then glued top piece to bottom piece. Unfortunately for me and my plans this is when my kids were dropped off and I didn't catch the fact that I had a diamond shaped gap towards the middle. I didn't find this out until a hour had past. So I now had to do what I was trying to avoid in the first place, fix up crappy glue lines. Let's just say more glue, more clamps and a couple more clamps fixed the issue.
Upon my return to the shop after the heat of the day and looking at my glue ups I wasn't happy the lay out of the end grain (I didn't pay attention to this bit earlier). I then decided to face grain to edge grain glue a board to the front of the hood assembly. I let that dry an hour or so worked on so other pieces and here is where I am at when I rolled up last night…..