These are words I tell myself in the throes of the process:

Any fool can put something together. It takes a special kind of fool to design something to be taken apart.

That is exactly what I did. I designed it not only to fail gracefully (short of being thrown across the room, it should not fail easily) but be serviceable.

One of the components in the design is a CNC’d 60-degree chamfer on one side of a pocket that allows a 5/16” open-end wrench to slip behind the moveable fence to reach a swivel nut. This relief cut is demonstrated in my newly uploaded video, demonstrating how to disassemble the thing.

Now that I have the prototype disassembled, I can now document which round-overs I used on which parts.

I did not document that the first time through as I just went with what felt good. Meaning, when I made the prototype, after I completed all the CNC bits (with Shaper Origin), I take the parts over to the router table to gradually increase roundovers on edges in steps until the thing feels nice (or I chicken out on going further, whichever happens first).

ASIDE: I had, for example, planned on maybe taking some of the edges up to a bull-nose profile but then changed my mind while stepping up radii, simply because I like the feel and don’t want to ruin a good thing (and so often decide to stop short of initial round over plans). The scenario for this prototype was no different, and now I have to document after-the-fact which edges on which parts got what final radius. Then this new information will be both applied to the second piece (shown before any edge profiling is done) and amended to the Shaper Hub instructions I am building (which are now on version 197 and over 5,000 lines — but by-Golly! if you just step through each one it all works amazingly).

Obligatory shop-dog photo. He has to pee, so I need to take him out right after posting this. He is moaning, he must really have to go. Got to cut this short.