These Doug Fir brackets are non-structural and will be have a paint finish but the joints need to be glued and mechanically fastened without visible fasteners. The keyhole method was chosen. The screw was fastened to the piece with the end grain and the keyhole cut in the piece with long grain. The keyhole is created with a router bit in a router with a plunge base. Plunge in, travel to just beyond the end location, travel back to the plunge location and plunge out. Consistent layout is critical for tight fitting joints.

After the brackets are assembled it will be difficult to remember where fasteners were applied. Grainchek will provide a platform for documenting methods in a way that can be organized and shared with those that may need to know how things have been done.

Porter Cable’s 1 3/4 hp router is just the right size with a slow start, variable speed and plunge base, to create the radius parts for these Doug Fir brackets. Then the Rigid 3″ belt sander with P80 grit sandpaper takes away the bearing marks and cleans up where the router bit lifts the grain fuzz. The Makita 6″ random orbital sander has lost the dust collection bag but the work area is often outside or nearly outside. The Rigid belt sander leaves a rough finish that the Makita orbital with P100 grit sandpaper cleans up.

Grainchek will be a mobile app that provides a platform to collect samples of work performed with different tools, brands of tools, accessories, fasteners and methods. These work samples can then be shared with the manufacturers and retailers that make the tools available.

The design for these Doug Fir brackets required an Ogee profile applied at the base of each leg against the wall. The PDF drawing was loaded into TurbeCAD and adjusted to scale using a given dimension. Then all necessary dimensions that weren’t given were determined. The profiles for each element that would need to be cut out were traced with be a combination of lines and bezier curves at true scale. These patterns were then printed on paper, cut out and traced onto plywood.

When the plywood patterns are cleaned up and sanded they are clamped on the finished Fir pieces and a 3/4″ Amana router bit with a top bearing is used to transfer the pattern. Then an Amana router bit with a bottom bearing is used from the opposite side of the piece to complete the shape. The combined cutting depth of the two router bits was not enough for some of the profiles and a second pass with the top bearing was needed.

This sequence can end up being a lot of information to collect, organize and communicate to the folks doing the work the next time. Grainchek will be a platform that can be used for documenting processes in a way that can be edited, stored and shared.