And, now for the rest of the story. I made the wheel blank by laminating 2 x 6 redwood together. Of course I alternated the grain direction so as to minimize the problems with swelling and curling. I screwed the blank down to the table to prevent it from moving and started machining early in the morning. The roughing pass didn’t take too long to complete and I got right on the finishing path and ran it all day. Since everything was running like clock-work, I decided to let it run all night. I woke-up, ran to the shop, and was so disappointed to discover that the wheel had started curling up and I machined much of the wheel too deeply. Over 20 hours of machining and a partially completed wheel ended up in the wood stove. Lesson 1 learned the hard way.
Not to be out done, lesson 2 was even a harder lesson learned. I took the customer color selection and went to a big chain hardware/paint supply store. I explained to the paint counter clerk what I was doing and asked for his recommendation for the best primer and paint and ended up purchasing what he recommended. He said both products would cover in one coat.
I was really pleased with how well the primer went on and one coat seemed to cover pretty well. Figuring the top coat would cover in one application, I decided it would take longer to mask the wheel than to hand cut around it. So I proceeded. Unfortunately, the clerk was wrong and four coats and many hours later I started removing the mask from the letters in the sign. To my dismay, as I was pulling up the mask, the paint started lifting as well. The paint didn’t adhere to the primer at all and I ended up removing all the paint and re-applying the mask, primer, and paint which added another 3 days to my already late project. Needless to say, I did wish to speak with the store manager.
