Well bugger me! . . . . a cat with manicured nails .! . . you dont get that
very often . . .!!


"David F. Eisan" wrote in message
...
Back in 2001 I made an ash coffee table for a friend and his wife,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/table.jpg

He called me recently to tell me one of their three cats had knocked over
an
open bottle of nail polish remover and there was some damage to the top,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/damage1.jpg

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/damage2.jpg

The nail polish remover had totally removed the oil based poly finish down
to the wood.

I decided to run the top through my drum sander to remove all the old
finish
and then to refinish the top. I made this table before I had a drum
sander.
There was some pretty bad grain reversal in the top and I had to scrape
away
a lot of tearout,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/i...ishremoval.jpg

I ended up sanding off a lot of material to get all the finish off. So
much
in fact, that I sanded out the 1/16" walnut inlay,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/i...uchsanding.jpg

Opps.

Time to cut new grooves for new (and deeper) inlay,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/newgrooves.jpg

New inlay,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/newinlay.jpg

Okay, top all sanded, lets just break the edge with a 1/8" roundover. Grab
Makita Laminate trimmer, looks like the right bit and right height, fire
it
up and start rounding over,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/wrecked.jpg

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/wrecked2.jpg

Totally wrong roundover bit, totally wrong height, beads everywhere. Smash
laminate trimmer on floor, take chainsaw to top and start over.

Nah, I didn't break anything. I wasn't really happy with how things were
going all along, every step just didn't seem to go right and even if I
hadn't used the wrong router bit, I would not have been happy with the
finished project, it was just too thin now for the rest of the table.

Off to the basement to grab a little ash,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/ashpile.jpg

These are nice 8/4 boards that I got for about $0.50 a BF at auction a
while
ago.

Here are the rough boards for the top,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/roughash.jpg

The reason I did the inlay in the old top in the first place was to hide a
big knot hole in the centre of the board that only fell out after final
planing. I told Scott I had ruined the top and since I was making a new
one
I asked him if he wanted the inlay. He did. To make it less work, I just
glued up the top with walnut strips rather than the extra work of inlay
(which was just a cover up last time),

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/glueup.jpg

I ran the top through the sander and they cut it to length with my
crosscut
sled,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/cutoffsled.jpg

Here is the top all sanded and rounded over with the correct roundover
bit,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/sanded.jpg

Here is a pic of the new top beside the old top,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/sidebyside.jpg

The new top is *no where* as dark as it looks in the photo.

Installing the new top,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/install.jpg

Finished table,

http://www.federatedtool.com/david/img/done.jpg

With 20/20 hind sight, I should have just made a new top off the bat. I am
a
better woodworker now then when I made the first top and I had/have tons
of
ash on hand. Oh well.

David.