I have a bit of a head cold starting and I wasn’t feeling all that energetic last night. I decided to stay away from the bigger power tools if my head wasn’t in the right place. I decided to finish up some small stuff instead.
I finished straightening up and centering the columns on the tabernacle stand. I traced around the bottom caps, on the base, then removed the columns. If the bases were still square, finding the centers would be a simple matter of drawing a line between opposite corners. Since I cut chamfers on all of these, I decided to simply grab a few of the caps for the altar columns and center them between the lines instead. They are exactly the same size with a hole located exactly at the center.
Holding the plates in place, I drilled a hole, about an inch deep, to accept the locating pin. With the plate still in place, I pressed a 3/4″ dowel into the hole, as far as it would go, and marked the top.
Just like the locator pins for the top, I tapered the ends, and glued them in place.
With the pins located, I erased my lines with my sanding block.
I moved back to the altar base to repeat the process. After I glued in the pins for the columns, I assembled the column caps for the altar columns.
I took care to make sure the grooves in the plates lined up perfectly with the grooves in the columns. If they are slightly off, assembling the raised panels will be very difficult.
Caps installed, and columns located. I checked to make sure the grooves lined up. The next step will be to move the base to the floor, then locate the top to mark the location of a matching groove in the bottom of the top. I will also need to start on the raised panels.