I got the pieces glued up and cleaned up. I used biscuits to join them. Thorrein suggested using splines. I wish I’d seen that before I did the biscuits because being only 7/16 thick, I had to use blocking to lift the material up so I could center the biscuits. Splines would have been half the effort. Probably twice the strength too. Oh well. Live and learn.

I laid the pieces on a piece of 1/4" ply and used a thin scrap between the material and the joiner fence to make up the difference. That centered the cut.

I never used gorilla glue before. Man, this stuff is messy. I got it all over.

It cleans up pretty easy, at least.

I learned something today. The glue up was not perfect. There was some lipping on the joints. After scraping some of the glue off, I pulled out my jack plane. I suck at hand planing. That’s not what I learned – I always knew that. After some frustration with the plane, I went back to scraping more glue using a wide chisel. I held it at about 90° and pulled with 2 hands. I noticed I was taking very thin curls of wood with the glue I was scraping off. Eureka! I chucked the plane and started scraping the high points instead. This worked MUCH better. No frustration, no tears, no blood, etc. And the result was great.

I finished it off with the ROS. This thing is really shaping up nicely. I was prepared for disaster – which still could come – but I’m more optimistic now.

Next up was getting my finger joint jig in shape. I figured out a way to adjust it so that’s what I did.

Here’s some scrap that I used to measure the adjustments. This is the last of about 6 adjustments. I’d say this is perfection. It’s tight but not so tight that I need to whack it. Just enough room for glue.

Looking good so far. I may be able to assemble this thing today. I’m waiting on my buddy to get back here with.. umm.. refreshments… We’ll see if anything gets finished today. I also need to shovel snow. Uggh. Will this winter ever end? I need to open my garage door sometimes.