CHAPTER 9, LESSON 2 of 2
GOAL: To understand the importance of accurate subassemblies to the outcome of the final project.
Every project is composed of parts, and the more complex the project, the more important it is to assemble these parts in smaller groups that then are combined to form the final assembly. Building these subassemblies and ensuring their accuracy are key steps toward an accurate final glue-up. This lesson shows how to ensure accurate subassemblies.
| Checking a Subassembly
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| This subassembly involves the legs of a table. The first check is to be sure the legs are square to the rails. The second check involves sighting across the frame to check for twist. The final check is for square by measuring that the diagonals are equal. |
A fundamental technique of making a piece of furniture is to glue it up in small sections called subassemblies. In general, the more subassemblies you can form, the easier the total operation will be. At the end, you glue all the subassemblies together as the final assembly.
Assembling the final project in stages offers several benefits. First, the approach increases the likelihood of an accurate final assembly because alignment is being checked at each stage as the project progresses. In addition, working with subassemblies makes gluing up more manageable; because fewer parts are involved, you needn’t rush the assembly out of fear that the glue will swell joint pieces or dry before you get the pieces together. Finally, if you discover a problem with a part of a subassembly, you can resolve the problem without detriment to the assembly of the rest of the project. Discovering a problem while in the midst of final glue-up would leave less opportunity for correction.
As was mentioned in Chapter 9, Lesson 1, it’s essential that each subassembly and the final assembly are dry clamped — clamped together first without applying glue to the joints. This will make detection of localized problems easier and will allow for correction before the parts are glued up.
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