The boring bits

I don't have any photos of this, but I have been making progress on my wife's cabinet. When last we left the story, I had dry-fit the case, legs and webframe. So now I've torn down the whole thing and begun prepping it for glue up. The extra complication is that I want to keep the QS sycamore as white as possible, but it will be right up next to cherry and maple parts. So I've decided to finish the case and webframe together as soon as I get it assembled, and finish the legs and other parts separately.

I did have a lot of tear-out in the sycamore when planing it, probably because I need new knives in my old Ridgid power planer. So now I'm paying the price 

by sanding out the tear out. (I could use a hand plane, but at this point, I don't trust any sharp edge against this sycamore. I fear creating yet more tear-out. So I'm sanding.) So far I've gotten the case sides, top, webframe, legs and apron parts sanded down to 80 grit, but I still have a bit more tear out to conquer. This is proving time-consuming, especially since it's so noisy and I must do it while the kids are awake upstairs, which normally means I'm helping to handle them . . . not working on wood down in the basement.

Still, I grab a half hour here and an hour there, and I am making progress. Next up, a step that should be fun . . . I'm going to be putting the cherry laminate 'socks' on the four legs before I do the final sand-down and finish of the legs. Then I'm going to do the finer sanding of the case parts and glue up the case.

I'm attempting to keep it in mind that I 'enjoy' this hobby. I've been keeping the zen, mindfulness aspect of the work in mind while doing all of this sanding. It really helps me enjoy the work more.