Church Altar and tabernacle stand – day 8

I had an hour or two last night to play, so I decided to get the crosses inlaid on the altar top. Before I did that, wanted to see how the filler cleaned up.

Scraping off the excess filler

I used my card scraper to clean up the excess now that it is dry. It cleaned up well. You can hardly see where the filler was applied. Hopefully it will look as nice when the stain is applied.

Large fill area scraped

Before

Here is a before and after shot of one of the filled areas.

After

Cutting out the crosses

With the filler cleaned up, I started routing out the crosses. I stayed away from the line as well as I could then came back and finished it up with a sharp chisel.

Cleaning up the edges

Applying the glue

I spread yellow glue on the back of the cross and in the recess, then pressed the cross in place.

Pressed in place

More creative clamping

Since none of my clamps have a 6″ deep throat, I had to get creative. I stretched my longest clamp across the top and slid a plywood plate between the rail and the cross. I then clamped the clamp down in the vertical direction which caused a fairly even amount of pressure to be applied across both crosses.

Other side cut out

That seemed like it would work, so I cut out the crosses on the other side then repeated the process. I decided to add another board to the side and clamp that as well. A little more pressure won’t hurt.

All clamped down