Plinko Board Build, Day 3: Dry Fit and Some Chaos

Liz and I have started to get into a rhythm now. Every day we’re actually stopping at 5PM, and walking away from our desks… throwing on our work clothes, and heading straight into the basement.

The work we do involves a lot of tools, and tends to be a littel noisy. Table saw. Chop saw. Belt/Orbital sander.

All of our neighboring buildings are very close to one another (folks built right up to the property lines around here)… so we wanted to be conscientious about the noise we were making, particularly as the night got on. So we aimed to stop any of the really noisy stuff around 7:30 or 8PM.

Which meant we really had to hustle, every night, to try to get as much work in as early as we could.

Dry fitting some of the borders – looking good!

Putting on some wood glue, and getting the pieces installed.

A big issue: in trying to get our pieces fully in, I was hammering the frame pieces in with a mallet. Despite me using a block of wood to lessen the direct impact, I was trying to really get the frame pieces to fit in.

Turns out, the dado cuts weren’t big enough. And my hammering ended up splitting the bottom frame. And we also damaged part of the right frame.

At this point in the night, we came to the demoralizing conclusion that we needed to get more wood – and needed to recut and rebuild nearly all the frame pieces. And start over.

We tried to pivot, and focus more on the other tasks we had. So we tried to use Bob’s belt sander to finish some of the dividers and leg pieces. But we soon found that our belt was pretty worn down. So our alternate plans were also starting to fall apart.

At this point, we opted for a Home Depot run. I’d go and get more wood for the frames (and some newer belts), and Liz would paint the board and finalize the dowel rods.

By the time I got back home, Liz was putting the finishing touches on the dowel rods. A bit of a set back tonight, but we tried to make the best of it.

Related:
Plinko Board Build, Day 1: Dado Cuts and Layout
Plinko Board Build, Day 2: Dividers and Dowel Rods