End Trimming

We are closing in on the end of the deck project. It seems like every time we work on it we are so close.

Today Noel got almost all the ends trimmed and rounded over.

We started with the ends all ragged. We snapped a line at the depth we wanted, then Noel clamped on the long straight edge and cut down the line, making it all neat and straight.

There was one little nubbin left, where the saw ran into the house. That got trimmed off with the handsaw.

Then Noel took the router and rounded over the bottom and top of each board end. There was a little trial and error on this, since the boards have a slight cup to them and that doesn't work well with a router. But he got it worked out.

With the ends trimmed off, he went around and cut off the ends of the plugs I'd put in.

Then more trimming, like cutting the sides of the risers to be flush with the boards on the side of the stairs. Another big win for the MultiMaster, which just did the work like a champion. I'm not sure how we could have done it otherwise.

And then trimming the ends of the steps.

Still left to do are the right sides of both sets of stairs, and of course the side boards on the right side of the lower stair. That seems reasonable to get done tomorrow. It'd be nice to be almost ready to put the sealer on.

In that last photo you can see some of what I was doing, which was digging out compost, sifting it, and putting it into what will be the planting beds under the deck. It's taking an impressive amount of compost, but fortunately I have an impressive amount of compost waiting to be used.

posted by ayse on 07/07/12