Day 38 - Outer lower shoulder collar and gunboxes

Today, I got around to making templates for the outer bottom shoulder collar, and cut them out of HDF board like the rest.  After soaking these, I clamped them on to dry, helping them out this time with a hair dryer.

With my boost helping them to dry, I set to work on figuring out the angle of the front of my shoulders so that I could get to work on the gunboxes.  I'm hoping that the angles work out okay, since the plans seem to show that the front angle of the gunboxes matches the front center angle of the shoulders.  For me it turned out to be 20°, so I went with that.

Spent some quality time with the table saw (set to 0° and, frequently, 20°) and router, cutting out pieces of 1/2" MDF and more of my ubiquitous HDF for the boxes.  With the router, I added the rabbet grooves to the side pieces per AdamSt's diary, since I really like how sturdy those look.  Where he used 6mm MDF for the top and 4mm MDF for the bottom, I just used the same thickness of HDF, and cut the rabbets accordingly.


By the time I was done with that, I checked to see that the drying collars were indeed dry, and then set to gluing and clamping them.


Tomorrow, I'll mark the recess detailing on the gunbox sides, and figure out how to route the chamfered holes in the front.  And, or course, hopefully attach the rest of the outer shoulder collar.