Christmas Eve for me was a full day of travel, eating and family time. I was out like a light at 9pm.
Christmas started with a cup of Door County Coffee's Highlander Grogg, an excellent local coffee blend of Irish cream and caramel, with enough kick to get me motivated. Dad and I are down in the shop shortly after 7 to get started. Yesterday, he showed me that he had made all of the cuts for the pedestals, including the angles, bases and tops. Awesome.
That morning we mock-assembled a pedestal and took a look. Both of us agreed that it still looked too big. Would it be a big deal to take 2" off? After all, we do have this gigantic Canadian table saw, just begging to be fired up. We tried ripping 2" off, and it looked okay. We also took 2" in width off, bringing the final pedestal dimension to 10" wide by a taper of 24" to 18". This looked like the perfect size, so we milled down the other pedestal parts as well. We spent Christmas day assembling pedestal boxes (glue and brads), and quit a little early to gorge on some leftovers.
That Friday, I went to work on the trim pieces for the pedestals. These are the bands surrounding the top and bottom of the tapered area. I made them out of 1x6 poplar, ripped in half. I knew that I wanted a super-tight mitre at all of the corners, and would not accept any imperfections there.
Dad was rounding over the edges of the pedestal bases, and filling the router chips with his favorite pink compound, Bondo. He also had to round the outer edges of the pedestal tops to match the arc of the sub-base plywood. Afterwards, he went to work filling and sanding the pedestal boxes, preparing for primer.
I had to screw around with the angles behind the trim pieces to get them exactly right. For instance, I had to rip an angle vertically on the top trim ring at the taper to account for the expanding angle. At the bottom, I had to run the mitre long, to compensate for the taper void. I knew the angle was 9 degrees (tangentially - thank you, Trig class), so it was just a matter of ripping and fitting each piece (16 total). I glued and nailed them together, and gave them a good sanding with 150 grit, then 220 grit sandpaper. Here are the assembled pedestals:
I was very happy at this point, so we quit and went out for a delicious Wisconsin Friday Night Fish Fry and a well-deserved beer.