Sanding sanding sanding.

After a fruitless search for head materials on Wednesday the next job is sanding the ribs so that a nice edge can be routed round them.  There are a lot of ribs, which are all quite similar, and the left and right sides of the ribs also look similar.  After a while, a very short while, one can get quite confused about which bits have been done and which still need to be done.  So, the first thing I do is draw a zig-zag line in pencil on the faces that I am going to sand.  If there is pencil left at the end, no matter how convinced I am that I've already finished that rib, I still have sanding to do.

Some of the jigsaw cuts I made around the ribs weren't quite as nicely rounded as I would like, due to the shape of the original pattern, transcription errors and cutting errors.  I smooth a few of these out with  a small surform plane.  I like the surform, it is quick and easy to use on any kind of wood by even a 'one step up from novice' woodworker like myself.  

I also have a little curved surform which I bought to help cut out the curves on the backs of the marimba chimes.  This works well for perfecting curves on cut inner ribs.

A drum sander electric drill attachment works well for smoothing out the inner curves.  My cordless drill is not so good for this kind of work, so I haul out the old school corded drill.  This drill doesn't get much use these days, but it is one of that last things my Dad bought me, so it feels good to use it in this project.  I wonder what my Dad would make of this project, I suspect he would be bemused.  This project is linked to my earlier trip through Africa,  photos from that trip will be part of the performance during 'Bathing with Elephants'.  I don't think Dad entirely understood that project either, but he did support it, including making custom fitted boxes to fit in the Landrover.  I wonder if I should find a way of re-using those boxes, which I still have, as part of this project.

Finally, all the edges of the ribs are done.  This has taken hours.  Elephants usually have around 18 ribs, mine has 9.  I thought I'd cut 11, but don't seem to be able to find two, and I'm glad now.  The Elephant looks good with 9 ribs, and more would have taken much longer and made the structure less strong due to their being more slots cut in the backbone.  If any pedant mentions that the number of ribs in this representational Elephant is too small I feel almost certain I will give them a bad look, and perhaps say harsh words.

I use the orbital sander on the main faces of the ribs.  This is giving off a lot of dust so I dig out the face masks we bought for the Many Hands tour of Asia during SARS.  

I still need to rout the edges smooth, but I think it would be fair to say I am just about over ribs.