Diagonally

In the junk pile there was also a 3 meter length of teak cut diagonally to be used as a rail around a Japanese style room I think. The section of it is visible on the jointed pieces matched up on the right here. I was not sure that I would ever find a use for the timber, but the next set of table legs has provided a use. They will have a central stem and probably be held together by a long bolt right down the middle as I am so unsure of the gluability of teak. One solution for putting a hole down the middle of timber is to split it and cut a groove. I thought I could use this diagonally cut length in this way. The problem is that there is then no good way of using a power tool with a fence to cut grooves because each cut would have to be individually set up. I used the grooving tool in the photo to cut a groove down the middle of the diagonal face of each piece with the fence of the tool running down the peak of the triangle. Then I made a little additional sole for the tool with three scraps of wood. A scrap of plywood, a batten to screw the plywood and fence together and another batten cut to fit in the groove I had cut in the face of the diags. This indexed the other grooves nicely so that I could cut them with one setting and four cuts. I just screwed some scraps into the ends of the timber to allow it to sit on the bench with the diagonal face up. Perhaps difficult to follow, but I was impressed by the activity of my subconscious in coming up with this. Other tools on the bench, the torch is there from redoing the finish on one of the joints on Table one. The tin snips because I needed something sharp to pry a missplaced staple out of the guide batten in my device. That was just tacked in place. The MizoKiri is the tool in question. It is on its back here. Right way up it is a bit like a circular saw, but the rotation is much faster and the blade quite heavy. At first that seems like a bad combination, but the speed and weight make it very stable, so even these bits of wood cobbled together are suffiscintly strong to keep it on a straight path.