Board Stretching

Looking through my lumber inventory for vintage cherry boards from which to make the trim for the new bay window, I found some beauties.  Unfortunately, all the boards I had on the top of the pile were about 4″ shorter than I needed for the lintel and base trim.   The deeper into the pile I looked, the more frustrated I got as these were too short also.   Aaaargh!

After many days of ruminating on the problem, including contemplating a trip to a sawmill to get some new lumber, I settled on a plan to stretch my boards by grafting in some diamond “dutchmen” as decorative elements into the center of the boards I had.  I rough cut the boards with my circular saw and a fence, then fed them through the lunchbox planer.

I laid out the dutchman on the inlet, clamped the inlet board and the longer board together, and cut the angles with my reciprocal saw and a speed-square fence.  The kerfs were smoothed with my Iwasaki float to fit them together well.

Using pinch dogs on the verso as the clamps (indispensable accessories I first used in the foundry patternmaking shop when I worked there 45 years ago), the glue margins drew together very tight with nice squeeze-out of the PVA I was using as the adhesive.

To counteract the slight curling induced by the pinch dogs being only on one side of the assemblage, 10-pound bricks were placed on each end of the gluing-together element to press them flat on the bench top.

The next morning they were ready for me to work by hand.