After a number of trials and tribulations the octagonal lid of the font has been glued up and awaits sanding

 

Things never go exactly as intended. When I glued up the eight pie shaped pieces of the top last week, everything went smoothly until I attempted to fit the last wedge in place. As planned all outside edges of the octagon should have equaled 8 inches on a side. After fitting seven pieces together, I discovered that the outside width of the last piece to be fitted was only 7-1/2 inches! Arrggghhhh! I went ahead and cut the last wedge's width down to fit the gap and glued everything together, hoping for the best. I ended up with a usable but visually awkward lid. Six of the top's corners lined up beautifully with the angles of the molding. Two did not. And no fittling or turning the lid would make what wasn't right right. So, after coming to the decision that the top had to be redone, I cut eight new wedge shaped pieces, taking extreme care to make sure that my 22-1/2 degree angles on the miter guage were exact and consistant from piece to piece. Clamping the new pieces together dry, damned if I didn't have exactly the same problem as before. To get everything to fit properly I needed to cut exactly a 1/16th of an inch off of the bottom width of each wedge. The cut had to be tapered along the side of each piece with the apex of the triangle left intact. What I was doing in effect was to change the angle of each side from 22 1/2 degrees to 22 degrees, taking  an equal 1/32d inch cut of both sides of each wedge to keep everything symmetrical. Everything I was doing was seat of the pants, with no assurance what the result would actually be, and by this time I had chewed through the last of the wide mahogony. Sheer agony and nerves as I dry fit the cut down wedges.......into a perfect top! Thanks to all the gods of woodworking! My bacon was saved, even if I broke every law of geometry and can't explain mathmatically what I did.

 

Oh Well, on to the next thing. Thanks for dropping by. Have a great day.