you you now our cabinet has been positioned in the room the cabinet leveled and we put our center piece of slate on now you want to square this center piece of slate with the cabinet make sure it's equal all the way around from side to side and end to end this can be a real pain if the cabinet's not square this is where it'll show up on you right here want to be sure and drill these pilot holes the leveling braces to insert our screws this is real hardwood the leveling braces are made out of and we don't want to split that wood when we put our slate screw in when you put your slate screws in pull it down snug but you don't have to have it as tight as a drill and pull it down at first legacy uses MDF on the back to back the slate with this product is flat when it's made so it makes a good surface to put the backing on the slate this is a little trick that I've learned along the way that eliminates callbacks for uneven slate or the seams popping loose if you'll cut some just general paper stock and use a little super 77 in three spots on your center piece of slate and glue this paper stock on there one in the center and one on each side what we're going to do with this after we get our two end pieces of slate on we get our slate seams flat we're going to take a liquid dowel or a super glue and we're going to squirt a little bit on each one of these pieces of paper that's super glue will soak down into the paper and dry and it will prevent these scenes from popping later on in the customers home I haven't had a callback for uneven slate since we started using this process well mark your slate for your paper is so you'll know where to put your glue when you get through with your scene now you want to put your two end pieces of slate up get them Square and flat with your centerpiece pre-drill your holes for your slate screws I like to start at the end so I can lean against the slate to be sure that it's pushed up against the center piece of slate go around put all the slate screws in want to be sure that these screws are pulled down all the way but you don't have to have them torque just tight as you can get it you know it just needs to be real tight but not over tight now what we're going to do is use a straightedge to make our slate flat and I recommend using this straightedge above any other method of doing the slate you can have these two seams flat here or smooth and not know that that that the slate is flat it's it's easy enough to make the the same smooth together but with a straight edge you can you're laying it over a 4-foot section of slate there and you know from that four foot section of slate that if you have no gaps in your straight edge it's perfectly flat and you just tap the wedges in that's why you when you put your slate screws in you want them tight but you don't want them torqued as tight as you can get it this gives you a little leeway here now you may have to back this screw out a little bit to give you a little more leeway depending on how bad the gap is you can use a wedge or a pounding block or several different things to slide back and forth across the slate seam and you you in time you'll be able to tell whether one of them's off or not you need to come up just a little bit down the other end of the straight edge if the back end piece of the slate is low you'll have a gap on that end you'll be able to wiggle the straight edge once the slate is flat from the center piece down to the and you'll not be able to move that straight agent of work now's when we're going to put our liquid dial in now I buy this in the bottle it seems to be cheaper to do that way where we got our glue that morning they didn't have any but you want to be sure and use the liquid superglue not to jail you want it to be real runny so when you put it on this paper it'll just soak right down through that paper now this won't be a problem if you have to go back and move the table once you take your slate screws out and pick up on the slate that paper just tears right into now this is what we use to seam our slates with Durham's rock hard water putty you can keep some plastic cups in the toolbox and put just a little bit of water in there you want to mix this up to about the consistency of pancake mix the runner it is the longer it takes to dry if over after you use it awhile you'll figure out you know the right mix and how long it takes it to drive the quicker it will drive the quicker you can get to putting this cloth on now you take your plastic putty knife and just wipe this along the seam what will happen here is you'll notice that the almost place that it leaves any putty is right in the scene if you happen to have an imperfection in the slate this is where as you wipe it it'll leave what needs to be on the slate there once it's dried you want to take your scraper and scrape any excess off of the table here there again if there's you need little imperfections along this seam what needs to be left there will stay and what needs to come up will come up with a scraper and also where you put your super glue in here if your papers sticking up a little high or if you got a little glue on the slate the scraper also just take it right off I like to take my scraper and go along the slate look around make sure there's no glue overspray glue from where they put the backing on the slate or just any trash on the slate you want to be sure to get all of that clean I like to use my scraper to this with the way I know I'm not gonna have anything under my cloth when I put my cloth on be sure to brush the table real good we like to use this 12-inch starett machinist level now that your machinist level along with your straightedge are to very precise pieces of equipment they need to be treated that way if your straightedge is not protected it won't be a straightedge anymore and this level needs to be calibrated from time to time to be sure that you're working with a level that is an accurate level you can level a table but if your level is not calibrated you know you'll still be out of level so it you need to be sure and calibrate that level from time to time now the reason I use the starett machinist level it's a very precise level it doesn't take very much at all to move the bubble just more accurate than a carpenter's level you