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The seat on a 1960 American Standard toilet had broken. It was a "designer" style fixture with a non-standard shape and mounting dimensions. |
| The seat was patched with a tie-bar recessed into the bottom, but while that made the seat functional, it wasn't aesthetically very pleasing. All attempts to find a replacement failed, so it was decided to make one of wood. |
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The outline of the seat was traced, and the tracing marked with radial lines. The sections were numbered, a copy was made, and the sections cutout. |
| Each section pattern was glued to a block of zebrawood... |
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then held with a clamping jig .... |
| ... and trimmed on the table saw. |
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A disk sander was used to precisely shape the sides of each section. |
| Starting at the center rear, sections were glued together using polyurethane glue. Clamps and wedges were used to hold the pieces in position with their patterns aligned. |
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This process continued two sections at a time until the rear half of the seat had been done. The front half of the seat was glued up in similar fashion, but the halves were not joined until the inside and outside had been rough trimmed on the bandsaw. |
| The polyurethane joints turned out to be very weak and most broke apart. |
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Close inspection revealed that the glue had formed a closed cell foam in the joint with very thin cell walls having essentially no strength. Most of the joints had to be re-glued -- this time with epoxy. |
| The top and bottom of the assembled seat were sanded flat with a disk sander. |
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A copy of the original pattern was used to make a routing template from 1/8" Masonite. |
| Double-sided tape was used to hold the template to the seat... |
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... and the outside edge was sanded close to the template to minimize the amount of wood to be routed. |
| Sticks were attached temporarily to the bottom to hold the seat away from the table during routing. |
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A 1" long, piloted, straight, router bit was used to true the inside and outside surfaces of the seat. |
| Next holes were drilled for the mounting hardware. Then a 1/4" round-over bit was used to route all around. Finally, the seat was contoured with a belt sander and files, and finished with an orbital sander. |
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New brass tubes were installed, and the springs and brass pins from the original seat were reused. |
| Four coats of Waterlox Original Sealer/Finish were applied with light sanding between coats. |
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The finished seat was installed, and is a big improvement over the patched-up original. |