~ Prep Work ~

Spent a few hours in the garage today.
A little bit of time was working on the machine, but most of my time was spent measuring and building the jig for putting a clean edge on rough cut lumber.

Although I'm not a complete novice, I definitely am not an accomplished woodworker by any means.  I have a request for some welcome signs that I am trying to deliver.  I purchased some hardwood boards from a local business called A&H Turf & Specialties.  It was probably obvious to the guy behind the counter that I didn't have a lot of experience working with hardwoods.  Even if it wasn't, I felt like he went the extra mile, explaining to me about working with exotics as well as more common woods like Oak and Maple, all while not making me feel like an amature.  I definitely will be buying from A&H in the future.

Once I got home, I realized that cutting to length and gluing up these boards was going to be more involved than expected due to the rough cut edges (see the novice here...).  I don't have a jointer or even a block plane so I got online and started looking for ideas on how to rip down the edges on these boards so I could glue them together.  While I was looking around I came across a short and sweet article on woodmagazine.com that showed a simple jig solution to my problem.  Of course I didn't follow the plan, but below you can see the version I made out of some spare MDF and a couple of 1/4"x3" screws.  It worked great!

Finished Jig for holding rough cut lumber.  It can hold stock up to 24" long and 10" wide

 Now that I have a jig made up, I will be able to true up almost any rough cut lumber I get my hands on.  I remember from high school shop class gluing up wood for chess boards and cutting boards.  It sure was different when you don't have a nice heavy layup table and running water 6 feet away.  I'll have to think about building a torsion box for laying up and gluing in the future but for now,  I used the back of my old waste board from the CNC router and managed not to glue my hardwood to it!

I cut one edge on each of these boards with the jig.
I hope to surface it this week and do a purple heart or black walnut inlay.

After getting the glued boards to a safe place in the shop, I decided that I should look into leveling the new waste board on my CNC.  I pulled out the dial gauge from my lathe and ran it around the bed.  I was really surprised.  compared to the home location, the highest spot was right in the middle, and was 0.017" higher than 0,0.  The lowest spot was -0.012" compared to 0,0.  Tomorrow, I'll head down to Harbor Freight Tools to buy a feeler gauge set.  I should be able to get the bed leveled pretty quickly by using the feeler gauge as shims.  I can't wait to get my threaded inserts installed and back to running the machine!

The newly installed waste board with machined holes ready to accept threaded inserts.