board update: shaping

I finished my blank, and have taken it from my office to home to begin shaping. The first picture is half the blank ready to go. I've decided to try to shape the board without gluing it up first. I didn't want to mess with tearing the wood apart to chamber it, so I've run a couple pieces of dowling through the board and clamp it up while shaping. If I run a couple big clamps under the board, things stay pretty tight and I can get full length passes with the planer. This way I can also stop and pull the aboard apart and check thickness and shape by looking at cross sections. Today I had a good run at it, and just need a bit more cleaning up of the outline and I'll be ready to chamber.

The green board is the basic template I'm working from. The kittens on the deck are Ping and Pong, two cats that emerged out of the mountain sasa (bamboo) and now live in my shed. As I don't have a lock on my shed I figure they could be guard cats for my boards, bikes and tools. Don't mess with the Da Cats....