Another morning of finger-plane work took the edge of the back to within a half-millimetre of the
desired thickness. Other than the perimeters, both plates still have far too much material.
However, once the perimeter groove is cut, I'll have a much better thickness guide.
My notebook says to route the perimeter "using a guide". Of course a thorough search of the shop
did not turn up an appropriate guide, nor does my memory tell me what it should look like. So I
made a new one from a dowel clamp. Since one only gets one chance at this, setup is critical.
Using analog calipers and thickness gauges, I got pretty close to the proper offset and depth.
Unfortunately the throat dimension of the drill press is a bit less than required to fully guide
the workpiece around the guide pin, especially at the "C" bouts.
Since it was
getting close to lunch time, I put this challenge aside until next week. I'll bring my digital
calipers and have another look at the clearance problem. Maybe with another week's thought the
solution will be obvious!