I had all the wooden pieces for the upper cage ready to go, sanded to 220 grit. First thing to do was mix up some epoxy. How much? Duh, dunno. No guidance provided. So I took 10ml of each and mixed up 20ml. Way Too Much! About 5-8ml total would be plenty for gluing in the dowels and ends of the spacers. Too bad you can't save that stuff after it's mixed! There was a part problem at this stage involving the spacers. They have two holes drilled in them to accept part of the 1.5" dowel. But those holes were drilled a little too deep, as only 1/4" of the dowel projected out when fully inserted. The assembly directions say 1/2" should project to be inserted into the rings. In addition, some of those holes had a bit too much wiggle room. I'm hoping that enough epoxy was present to fill the gaps.
After the spacers with dowels are connected to the holes in the bottom ring in the correct orientation, the free ends are epoxied up, then the upper ring is connected. This is a bit of a 3 hand job because the holes in the upper ring and the dowels in the spacer are not precisely cut. Fortunately, it's wood! which is amenable to a little bit of controlled pushing, squeezing, and bending.
After that, I applied a bar clamp over each spacer and slowly applied pressure (not too much!). It's important at this point to have acetone and Q-tips available as the inevitable bit of excess epoxy will magically appear at the joints. Acetone does a good job of cleanup when this epoxy is still soft and will even allow you to salvage the mixing cups and brushes for re-use (and you only get 3 of each so either re-use or buy more!).Now it's time to wait 24 hours for the epoxy to set up. Geez, I could be ambitious and sand more stuff...NAH! Good for a Monday!
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