Finished Cutting

I am now finished cutting all the pieces, except the frame.  I need to get some more dark wood to do that.  The bottom part turned out to be as difficult as I thought.  There are lots of curves and I used some very hard wood.  The two pieces of White Oak were the worst.  Even with a new blade it was hard to cut on the lines.  The piece of Poplar I was using ended up being a little warped so it was very difficult to cut and now the edges aren't straight and so the pieces don't fit together all that well.  I have a lot of time ahead of me sanding and fitting to try and make the pieces fit better.  I will do that along with shaping and making the different levels so hopefully it all comes together at the same time.

Fitting this many pieces together is very hard and getting one piece to fit good throws off the next piece.  I can tell this will take a lot of practice.  I have a feeling that the joints between the land pieces won't be as noticeable as the joints between the lighthouse or the house pieces.  I think my next step will be to glue together the lighthouse and the houses so they fit together nicely then start working on the background around them.  At that point I will probably start from the top and work to the bottom, making sure every piece butts up against the pieces above it well so when I get to the bottom, I am hoping for a good result.

I have started trying to fit a few of the pieces together.  I have tried trimming them with the scroll saw and sanding the edges with a rotary tool.  The rotary tool works well but it is hard to keep a 90 degree edge.  I can tell now the benefits of a spindle sander.  That would do what the rotary tool does but it has a flat surface so you can keep perfectly straight edges.