grain chronicles

day one

2011-08-21T00:27:00.000-07:00

i'm married. excellent day. sat on j-39 and married my girl.

jb + cj

cherry wall cabinet

2011-07-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

got this cabinet done while i was at Inside Passage this spring.

eastern cherry, east indian rosewood, spalted maple, eastern maple and norway maple.

photos by www.isphotography.com

back

2011-01-08T17:19:00.000-08:00

well, we got home the other day. so i had to get some wood ready. my dad and i bought a log a few years ago, a huge cherry, 16/4, heavy as all get out. so heavy, that we decided to split the nice board down the middle with a chain saw. it was pretty checked down the middle, so no harm done.

the log wasn't as good as we had hope, but there is still alot of wood there. the color is beautiful, but there are loads of checks to work around...

the cherry is going to become a convex wall cabinet soon.

there are a few things that need doing in the shop before i get going. sharpening knives, claiming valuable floor space with a lumber rack, watching for bugs. there's the chunk of cherry on the left.

when i was loading up the rack, i had to move a few pieces of red elm. on the elm, i found these little buggers boring hole in the sapwood. i hope that they didn't populate anything else. the elm is now in quarantine.

musée des arts décoratifs

2010-11-09T06:54:00.000-08:00

we went to the museum the other day when we were in paris. it was pretty nice. they had this mobi boom exhibit going on, so we went to see it. it was just ok. there were a few wooden pieces in it, a wall desk that i really liked, but most of it was kinda like what the guy below is sitting on. lots of 'new' materials and metal, and strange plush sofas.

the rest of the museum was pretty fantastic, although i missed a bunch of it due to inattention. spent a bit of time in the art deco room where they had alot of ruhlmann on display, maybe eight pieces or so. it was pretty neat to see the pieces first hand.

doors didn't stay flush back then either.

this was a big tabletop, around four feet by six or seven.

this piece was pretty cool too. all compound curved surfaces, and lots of curved glass. a big, imposing piece by marcel coard, from 1915.

this one's called 'chiffonier' by andré groult from 1925. all leather over compound curved substrate.

needless to say, they had some neat stuff in this museum. visiting is fun and all, but i miss being in my shop.

spain

2010-09-24T01:22:00.001-07:00

claire and i went to ireland last week, and were lucky enough to spend the weekend with the wonderful spain clan. we had a great time, one might even say the perfect vacation, because it involved both wood and machine shopping, and the food was wonderful.

fergal brought us to the local lumber yard which was mostly full of exotics like sapele and iroko, with some american woods like cherry and walnut, and then there was a stack of oak that just needed some going through. so we went through the pile, and picked out two sets of three sister planks. it was pretty fun going through a pile of lumber with fergal, and we ended up finding some nice pieces, but they stayed behind.

these are some photos of fergal's shop. he has a really nice space to work in. detached from the house with some nice windows and big access doors. in this photo you can see a wine rack that is close to being finished.

this is the machine that we went shopping for. it's a viceroy bowl lathe that is soon to be a mortiser. the business end of the spindle has a morse #3 taper that will take a chuck, and then some sort of table with shims will be used in conjunction with free hand mortising. this is a stout little machine which should serve well as a mortiser.

here's an overall of the shop. wood storage is to the right and the mortiser is just out of the left hand side of the frame, with a ten inch jointer-planer in the foreground.

cour à bois

2010-09-10T03:42:00.000-07:00

claire and i were out for a stroll the other day in france, and guess what i saw... that's right, big ol' boules. so i went to check it out some more today.

most of the stuff i saw was flitch cut. the majority of what they had was sapele, sipo (a close relative to sapele, only more stable and not quite as dark... this is what i was told), some mahogany, ash, white and red oak, iroko, and some more regular construction stuff.

wood here is sold in cubic meters, like in japan. hard to visualize this measure. buddy at the yard was telling me that a cubic meter of sapele is worth something like 1100 euro. he broke it down to this: a meter wide piece of sapele, four meters long, not sure how thick but at least an inch, went for 200 euro, about 260$ CND. not too bad.

but they did not have any boxwood, so i'll have to visit some more lumber yards. oh well.

in this last photo, the pile is about four feet wide, and probably twelve quarter. i think this was sapele.

i could be a footnote

2010-09-04T14:05:00.000-07:00

lark books has just published it's new book in the 500 series. i got in it with my spalted maple cabinet (http://endgrain.ca/gallery1.htm). lots of people from inside passage have pieces in this book as well. it's a nice book. maybe i'll get to be a footnote someday.

the things one aspires to...

view from the base-ment

2010-08-04T09:16:00.000-07:00

i swear this was done in july. this is the first project that i have fully completed in my shop, and it was a good learning experience as to how to work in the space. the main lesson: get rid of all the junk, and get more space. haven't figured out how to make the basement bigger yet.

after the top was done, it was time to move on to the base. everything was mostly mocked-up and decided, but i did leave room to move, and put a few things through the planer after all the joinery was complete and i had a better idea of the weights.

everything starts with the layout. a good trick i learnt from lord godfrey is to use envelope stickers to mark stuff out on dark woods. works like a charm.

the long rails have a slight angle on the ends of them. i put the joinery parallel to the rail and angled in the legs. consistent spacing between the tenons is gotten by using a spacer to go from the top one to the bottom one. this operation happens 24 times, i'll spare you the photos.

fitting the tenons. i did a bunch of them by hand because i don't have a round over bit for every size. it took a while... and then daisuke said, ''don't you have a chamfer bit''. so smart.

everything in this photo is dry fit. that means that the joinery is all done, but no glue has been applied yet. at this stage i marked out what needed to get some shape and had a better look at the whole thing with the top.

the shaping for the three short rails was done on the drill press. such a nice detail and so easy to do. this accentuates the floating of the top.

after all the shaping was done to the legs and correspondingly to the rails, it was time for getting a finished surface. daisuke brought a few shapton stones on his visit, which he was gracious enough to leave with me, and boy oh boy, my planes have never worked to nicely. thanks daisuke.

all the parts got finished before the glue up. at this point, i find it hard to let the finish cure long enough. i just want to glue the thing together... cooler heads prevailed and i waited.

the glue ups went very well. i broke this down into six glue up. it went just like butter.

the finale glue up.

i tried something new to me for attaching the top to the base. these elongated washers are from lee valley and offer hidden attachment. since the top floats, i thought that these would be more fitting for this table.

... and here it is, all done, and before august ...

part one: table top

2010-07-06T04:30:00.000-07:00

if you read carefully, you would have read that i had a coffee table to do and that i wanted to do it before may. what i really meant was before august. so here we are.

this table is a commission for some friends of ours who recently got married. the design is based on a jens risom table from 1959.

i've tweaked the design a bit, but i've also kept the principal elements of it. one thing that really drew me to this table is the elegant base with the floating top. another detail that we (claire and i) really liked was the rap-around pencil roll.

i finished the top yesterday, so i thought that i would give a little photo tour of it.

here are the two planks that will make up the table. the one in the foreground has produced the parts for the base; and the other, the top. the one is a little darker then the other, a fact that i'll accentuate with the finish.

the old fashioned way, or i don't have any other way to do it.

i split the portion of the one plank for the top on an angle to get at a more rift sawn face. there is some really nice color in this piece.

sawing the veneers on my old beast of a saw. things got a little hot on the top wheel. live and learn.

i veneered this using some torsion boxes and clamps and cauls. it went pretty well.

the top received some applied edges with the pencil roll shaped into them. these and the top received a groove to align the parts come glue up.

my beloved mouse from mr. don. a most handy tool indeed. here it was used to mark where the top and the applied edge meet.

the initial profile was wasted out on the router table. after this, there was alot of hand work to bring the shape into existence.

some of the tools used to carve the inside corner of the pencil roll. i debated whether or not a miter in the corner would be advantageous in this situation, but i decided against it.

after the shape was in the applied edges, it was off to finishing. i wanted to keep the top light, so i went with shellac and wax. i've got about 15 coats of shellac, and i'm still waxing. the table will come with it's own set of custom coasters.

the top has a series of slip matches on both sides of center and then a random match down the middle. the random match was by far the nicest option. it created a sort of an eye in the center of the table and some nice tan lines running almost parallel along the length of the table.

take parts and just add beer...

2010-06-01T05:18:00.001-07:00

i spent the first two weeks in may at the inside passage school, and i had the time to finish my box.

most of the work was done by hand, with the exception of the bottom panel rabbet, partition grooves, and mortises. this was not for some grand spiritual reason, it was mostly because the machines were off at night.

this was my third go around at the school at this time of year, and i must say, it is my favorite time. the evenings in the shop, with a small group of people working hard to finish projects is downright invigorating.

sorry i don't have any more detail photos of the joints, i left the camera at home.

parts is nice

2010-04-24T06:34:00.000-07:00

i'm glad to have some wooden parts on my bench.

i've been wanting to make the all end grain corner box joint for a while now, and i figured this was as good a time as any. the joints have all been laid out and are just waiting for me to cut them. as with the other japaness joints i've tried, this one needs alot of focus to layout as it's not the kind of thing where you cut one side out and lay it over to trace the other. you kinda got to go for broke and lay out both sides at once and hope the fitting goes well.

the box sides need to go together from the top/bottom, so the bottom of the box needs to sit in a rabet. this means some veneer for the bottom panel. the top is going to be solid, and i'm going to let it sit for as long as possible to stabilize.

so far the wood has been behaving nicely. the maple planes beautifully and has a really nice quarter sawn shimmer to it. this little plank (the one on the saw horses in the last post) came from my grandfather's land, and has been sitting in my uncle's shop for more then a decade. needless to say, it is thouroughly dry.

little tour

2010-04-13T06:02:00.000-07:00

well, the shop is as much done as shops tend to be. there are only a few minor things left to do, things like a sharpening station and rest for the grinder, and a lumber rack would be nice. so i thought i would give you folk a little tour.

i even cut out pieces for a project.

here's my bench with wagon vise in the end. this was built out of common 2''x12'', a found vise and a veneer screw.

the bench is in the back corner on the right, my toolbox is on the left, behind the drill press.

here's my cobbled together mortiser/lathe. the motor looks like frankenstein because i'm using a four way switch to reverse the direction for either operation. this works well, but there is a little flex in the setup, so one has to mortise lightly.

it's quite lovely to finally be using this saw. it's not without bugs, but it works well.

jointer, also not without bugs, but quite a machine.

started to haul wood in, makes it look more like a shop.

movement of sorts

2010-01-29T16:54:00.001-08:00

i've made some progress in the basement, namely i put some insulation on the wall and then some drywall, and i also made some windows and put those in. and just yesterday i wired for the jointer and the bandsaw. i still need a starter for the bandsaw motor, trying to find heaters for an old one i've got, but that's been a dead end so far... i won't bore you folks with my list, but it's both moving along and i still have loads to do at the same time. anyhow, the plan is to have a coffee table made down in the basement by may.

here's a more recent shot of the saw. can't wait to cut something.

kickback blues

2009-12-13T07:32:00.000-08:00

i lost the tip of my middle finger, left hand, on my uncles table saw yesterday. i've got the kickback blues.

blue skies and bondo

2009-11-21T06:18:00.001-08:00

well it's been a while... i've been busy with lots of things not made of wood. we got the house insulated, worked on some drainage around the foundation, taking a tax preparation course, moved some machines into the basement...

ahh, machines. the first one to come in was the poitras 4800. i took most of it apart to move it, and it went pretty well. the tables came off of the main casting, the main casting came off of the base, and then two people can move it. not too bad. spent a couple of days putting it back together, i put the five horse motor that i got with the bandsaw into this guy. i still need to mount the electrical guts to it, and wire the shop for 220V. this thing is heavy, about a 1000 pounds. got the knives sharpened, but i'm holding off putting them back in until it's not going to move anymore.

next was the rest of the gear. i went to my folks place for a weekend and spent it packing. it's amazing how much stuff i've accumulated over the years. it's all in the basement now, thanks in large part to kevin, claire's brother, who cringes every time i ask him if he's busy.

thankfully there's a door leading to the top of the basement stairs from outside. we hauled the saw out of the van and then walked it down the stairs. it went surprisingly smoothly. one step at a time.

then i decided to paint it. it got scuffed during it's voyage, and the green with red wheels had kind of a christmas thing going on, so paint and bondo and more bondo. i decided to paint it blue, with dark blue wheels. i put the first coat of paint on the small parts, and just put the last layer of bondo on the main casting. the bearing still needs to be poured, but i've got all the necessary bits together, thanks to mr. keeble, who is sending me a babbitt scraper in the mail.

using the poitras as a temporary bench for cleaning and painting. i'm getting anxious to start woodworking, but i'm a ways off. i want to get new windows and giprock the walls and paint and fix the water problem and wire it and get lights and ...

flat curves

2009-08-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

got some pictures of the showcase cabinet i finished in may. i think it went well, and i really enjoy the interplay between glass and wood. so much so, that my next project may have something to do with that very thing. unfortunately, my next project is a little ways off right now. claire and i just bought a house and it needs immediate attention and money. so august is looking like renovations, and then six weeks of work away from home, and then setting up a shop in the basement. not an ideal basement, but it appears that i must work with what i got.

sometimes i feel like an addict

2009-06-24T10:56:00.001-07:00

sometimes i buy wood without necessarily being in a position to do so. but i can't help myself. behold, two green flitches of 8/4 maple with great heart colour and curl. starett square for comparison.

bench work

2009-06-17T17:33:00.000-07:00

i've been back home for a couple of weeks now, after spending the month of may out in british columbia. i had a great time out there, but now it's back to reality. the first order of business was to get moving on my bandsaw. i spent a bit of time and money in a machine shop one morning and walked out with a new bottom shaft, a new brass bushing for the top wheel, and the top shaft cleaned up. i'm pretty happy with the work they did. now all i need is babbitt for the bottom bearing. that stuff is a little tricky to find, but i've got a couple of leads.

after that was all said and done, i got down to the task of flattening the top of our bench. i was inspired to get my ass in gear on this after seeing people do there's at inside passage. i figured it was time to do this one. so, like most jobs, there was something to do before getting started. i had to tune up my great grand-father's no. 8 jointer. didn't take much but grinding out a nick in the blade. it runs like a champ.

the bench had a pretty serious dip in the middle, and i had to make an awful pile of shavings, but i pretty much got it pretty flat. it's hard to get too accurate without a long straight edge to check with, but, close enough.

after that was all done, i started on a bench for myself. the other one is something that my father and i built six years ago. it stays in his shop. but every bird needs to leave the nest at some point, and i'm pretty sure my number got called. so a bench is needed. i'm basing this one off of some photos of seth janofsky's bench in woodwork #55. it uses a veneer press screw and a trapped block as a tail vise. this most definitely will have some shortcomings, but the price was right. the bench is going to be about six feet long and two feet wide with some three inches of depth. i went with round dog to simplify my life. all the other holes are for plugs that will replace the knots that were there. this thing is being built out of common 2" x 12". now i just need to find a wide thickness sander to flatten this puppy out. once that is done, off to the base.

no show case

2009-04-19T10:26:00.000-07:00

i'm getting to the point where the list of jobs i've got left to do has gotten pretty small. so small, that i need to do what i've been putting off. glass and pulls. since last time, i got the hinges installed in the doors and the pressure buttons and levelers done. these are the things that hold the door in the closed position. a little button in the bottom and a spring loaded button in the top which acts as both a catch and a stop. after that i started working on the glass portion of the cabinet. the posts were planed to have the appropriate angle on either side of them, and then they were grooved on the shaper. after the grooves were run, the post needed to be fit into the glass rabbet height wise. this was achieved by scribing with a knife and then a little chopping to get the shoulder cut. they still need to be shaped and finished. after that, i guess i'll have to cut the glass and fit and shape the holders that keep everything in there.

i'm still undecided as to what to do for pulls. i've only got about 3/16" worth of space in between the doors and the drawers front. i mocked a little block up, and it was a little shallow for someone with larger fingers. the solutions appears to lie within the drawer fronts themselves. i think that i may opt for the 'hole through the front' kind of pull on this cabinet. the door has got me thinking of doing a little lip that would protrude from the bottom of the door past the edge of the cabinet. just a small little pull that does not detract too much from the lines of the cabinet. i'm thinking of using dark imbuya for this.

i also got the wall hangers done and installed. i had to make them so that they would get screwed into the top and bottom of the carcass as opposed to the typical side mounting. the side post had a little too much going on in them to have the hangers as well. i used machine screws for this application, and i must say that i'm very impressed with their holding power. in the above photo, the two top screws are full length, but the bottom ones are directly into the back panel, which is only 3/8" thick. as such, the screws only have about 3/16" worth of thread in the wood. it's surprising how much hold so little thread will give you. i opted for four hangers, because this cabinet is getting pretty heavy. i think that it will be sturdy enough on the wall.

on a different subject... has anyone ever used a bandsaw with only one thrust bearing? my 26" silver just really has a top guide. the bottom is simply two angled pieces of wood for lateral support of the blade. i guess i'm just looking for thoughts on running a saw with this setup. it can't be all that bad if that's how they were doing it back then, but i guess i'll have to try it out and see what happens.

i started having a more serious look at the saw, and now i can see why i got it so cheap. ha. both wheel bearings need some work. the bottom wheel runs on a babbit bearing, and the top on a bronze bushing. both show significant wear. whoever was running the saw for the last little while, didn't have oilers to lubricate the bearings, but instead had grease fittings. the problem with grease is that it's not thin enough to make it's way into the bearing. the bottom wheel shaft developed some significant wear. the solution for this, i imagine is either to get the shaft built up again, or to turn it down and repour the bearing. the bearing still has some shim left, so i think i would rather get the shaft back up to it's original diameter and refit it to the bearing, add some oilers and that one should be good to go.

the top wheel is the one that runs on a bushing. the wheel was so loose that it came off quite easily by hand. both the inside bore of the wheel and the bushing show some wear. i think what needs to happen here is for the wheel hub to get bored to a bigger diameter and a replacement bushing made up for the shaft. i'm uncertain whether the wheel spins on the bushing or if the bushing spins on the shaft.

back drawer

2009-04-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

got the joints for the drawers down. i'm glad to have them done. the drawers themselves are pretty close, i just need to secure the bottom to the back, and round some edges. i think i'll have room for some pulls, otherwise i might think about the 'hole in the drawer' kind of pull.

the bottoms are out of a piece of western maple. half of it is pink, and the back half is kinda greyish. it's a nice little piece of wood.

the back panel got glued in once the drawers were fit. i find that this glue up is the most demanding. having to pull the joint tight in three directions all at once makes for nimble hands and lots of clamps.

the cabinet is moving along well. i'll be fitting the doors next week, and then working on the wall hangers and the glass. i'm going to try cutting my own glass for this one.

drawers and boxes for them

2009-03-26T15:37:00.001-07:00

i'm using imbuya for the drawer front. it smelled good at first, but now it's starting to give me a bit of a headache.

i've got some quarter sawn eastern maple for the sides and backs, and some colorful western maple for the bottoms. it dawned on me the other day that flat sawn stock might be better for drawers that are fit with let go. too late now. it's amazing how much wood moves out here in the maritimes. there's such a big humidity differential with the cold winters and humid summers. it can really cause some serious havoc.

the drawer box got glued in the other day and i got the rest of my hinges in the mail too. i could have sworn that i ordered enough for both doors, and the lady at sanderson even confirmed this, but i could not for the life of me find the other set. oh well, maybe i'll find them in the car or some non-wood related place in the future.

i started cutting the dovetails in the drawer fronts this week. i can now see why krenov seems to have avoided them to all cost during his career. and all the info that i find is for concave front, as opposed to convex. it's supposed to be the same procedure, but i think there may be some little differences. at least, that's what i'm going to keep on telling myself.

dowels

2009-03-04T17:29:00.000-08:00

i got the doweling done yesterday, it went well. i decided to drill the above holes on the drillpress cause of runout on the mortiser. sorry about the bad photo. the mdf t thing just hold the side up square. i had to clamp the jig to the side because of brad shortages. after i drill out the big holes, i just popped some dowels in the holes to solidify the whole thing and then drilled that smaller holes. i had to take the clamps off for those, hence the dowels.

then i just laid the jig onto a full size plywood jig that i made to the same size as the top and bottom. i just shaped the top and jig off of the bottom, which was shaped off of a template. i packed out the jig to get something to flush up at the back and so the sides would be over the applied edge joint as well. i flipped and did the other side.

then i laid the real size plywood jig down onto the top and bottom and drilled those holes out. i had some stops glued onto the back to register it.

i routed out the back panel rabbet today. it was fun.

guards and progress

2009-03-02T18:06:00.000-08:00

so here's the general idea. there'll be a partition with some drawers behind the panels in the doors. i got some imbuya that i'm going to use for the drawer fronts with some eastern maple sides and western maple bottoms. these will be my first curved dovetails, should be exciting.

i'm going to be doweling tomorrow, i think. i'm going to have to do this on the drill press. our mortiser has too much runout. it's mucho visible to the naked eye, so i'm going to have to go vertical. i kinda wish i had my table set up on the lathe. the machinist i got to mount the chuck did a bang up job with it. oh well, i'll have to concoct something to hold it upright. after i dowel i'll have the applied edges to do, and then all the hardware holes and door fittings, and the rabbet for the back. it's nice to be working on a small cabinet again.

here's the david ellsworth saw. he turned some huge segmented donuts and hinged them somehow. i just got the thought that maybe they lift off instead of hinge. anyhow, that's what i'll try to do. i don't think i'll turn them, that's just a sure way to have something explode. so i'll have to rout, carve, file, sand, chainsaw some kind of big glue up. any ideas? those are some pretty good colors too... my saw is green with red wheels, don't know what i'll paint the guards.

electrolysis makes things pretty

2009-02-27T04:03:00.000-08:00

i picked up a tiny bench vise the other day for 6$ at a local antique place. it was a bit rusty, and i've been curious about electrolysis for a little while now, so i gave it a shot. well, it worked, and it's the easiest thing in the world. all you need is baking soda, water, rebar, a bucket, and a battery charger. plug it in and wait. it actually took longer then i thought it would, but i had it outside, so maybe the temperature slowed down the chemical reaction. anyhow, if you have something that's rusty, it's kinda fun to see the rust magically come off the thing.

this is my sketch and list for the cabinet i started up in prince george. i worked on it a bit during the summer, i had some parts to redo, and then it sat for quite a while. i've got the shop to myself for a few weeks, so i decided to pull it down from the self. i'm going to try to have it done for the end of year show at IP, but i know my dad wants in the shop, so i'll have to see what kind of shop time i can get between now and then. my plan is to have a carcass by the time they get home.

oh yeah, i bought a bandsaw. it's a silver 26" from the turn of the century, or there abouts. it comes with a five horse motor and all the trimmings. it's in northern new york state, and my folks just happened to be out there next week, so they're are going to bring it back for me. i'll have to make guards for it, but i saw some really neat ones that david ellsworth made. he essentially made two big donuts that only cover the outside of the wheels, it looks pretty.

two things down, ten million to go...

2009-02-08T14:27:00.000-08:00

i finished the sofa last night, and it feels pretty good. the glue ups went together very well with no obvious problem, except for one. i don't know how i'm going to take pictures of this beast. i usually just hang a king sized sheet up in the shop, but i fear that this is slightly larger then a king. it's going to be photoshop madness to get this thing onto a grey background. and then i'll need some more photos once the cushions are all done. i'll be hitting the road this week to deliver both this and the stereo cabinet. and while the glue was drying, i dug out my drill press.

i picked this up in gibsons while i was at IP, i paid 85$ for it with no motor. i spent my spare time from school fixing it up. a fresh coat of paint and some bearings, and all i needed was a motor. well, time ran out in roberts creek, and still no motor. so i drug it home and there it sat for a while. when i got it, it had a weird chain drive setup, so i hunted down a pulley for it. the chain drive was setup for a really slow speed, and i wanted to be able to choose different speeds. i got the pulley in the mail, and it didn't quite work. it had the correct splines for the quill setup, but it was for a bigger walker-turner machine, so i had to cut off the bigger part of the pulley. oh well. so now i have a three step pulley, but i can only get the belt on the upper two. two speeds are better then one. my pops had a motor for me, so i slapped that on and gave it a try. to my surprise, it had next to no runout. that made me a happy camper. so now, i just got to find a pulley for the motor and i'm off to the races.

and if i really want to add more speed options, i can always add a third pulley in between. i got all the parts for that with the chain drive setup. it's a pretty nice press. it's got a quill lock, no runout, and it weights a ton. now all i need is a shop.

next up is getting the arbor flange on the table saw trued up, and finishing the cabinet i started at klager's house.

almost there

2009-01-25T14:04:00.000-08:00

so here's the compete structure, almost. there is a second front rail with a panel in between the two that is missing from the photo. that panel has the cutouts as well. since this picture i've done the shaping and i started sanding today. it's moving along at a good rate, thanks in part to a 1/8" roundover bit. i feel like skywaker, slowly being pulled over to the dark side. i must say, it's nice on that side of things, but sometimes it's a little dusty.

i found some brass machine screws at the local hardware store, and bought them all. those buggers are pricey. i was looking for some steel slotted head screws, but those are probably impossible to find nowadays, so i bought these instead. i'm going to use them to attach the slats to the frame work. the slats have some bow in them that i intentionally left there to add some give to the seat. i drilled some oversized holes through the slats, and i'll have to tap the adjoining hole. i just happened to have the right tap for the screw as well, must be a common size.

i wasn't crazy about the yellow brass with the oak, which is going to get some water based stain, so i did a quick search about patination. i found a pretty good blog conversation in a sword makers forum, and the guy suggested gun blueing as an option. we had some, i gave it a try, and it worked great. it gave a nice dark brown which will go quite nicely with the stained oak.

moving along, one conundrum at a time

2009-01-07T16:50:00.000-08:00

after a good holiday break, i got back to work on monday. the side assemblies are all done as of today. i saw the pattern for the cutouts in kitchen cabinets in the fisher household from hbo's six feet under. i liked the pattern, so i thought i would use it here. i checked out other options, but this one still came out on top. it was a fun little detail to do. didn't take long, but it adds a lot of character to the sides. i'm going to have a panel in between the front rails, and i'm going to have the same detail on the horizontal up front. i've yet to decide if it's going to be a whole piece or if i'm going to break it up into three, to further echo the sides.

now here's the conundrum, how do i support the back... i'm going to have four vertical supports topped off with a long horizontal rail running along the top of all four verticals. the two verticals on the ends are no problem, i'm going to have a bird's mouth style joint at the bottom with a dowel running into the top of the rail, and a horizontal pin through the bird's mouth. i'm not worried about the end ones because i'm going to notch the arm rest to accept the back support, and i can also pin into the leg. those two won't move, but i'm worried about the other two. most members of my family are of the large sort (this is going to an uncle's house), and i'm thinking that this is not going to be enough to support three of me. so, what's the solution? i was thinking of adding a metal plate on the front of the vertical that would go from that piece into the rail. a kind of strap. i think this would hold even me. what do you folks think?

the sofa has begun

2008-12-14T08:14:00.000-08:00

i've been working on an elongated morris chair for the last little bit. it's been interesting to work on something that is to be sat in. it's definitely a different ball game then what i'm used to. the lady i'm making it for is a seamstress, and is going to be taking care of the cushions, to be made out of leather and four inch foam. i laminated the arm out of five plies, and they have a nice grain graphic on the top of them. they appear to be hugging the sitter. all of the mortises have been punched for the frame of the sofa, except for the top curved rails. i'm going to fit the arm onto the legs and use that as the template for fitting the top rail. i'm still scratching my head as to how the back is going to be supported, but i guess i'll figure that out later, when i get closer to that part of the project.

B745

2008-11-30T14:55:00.000-08:00

this is my walker turner B745 tilting top table saw. i got this from a fellow south of detroit for 85$. he had completely restored the saw; paint and bearings. that's pretty much all there is to this thing. the top is 19"x25", and the little bugger weights about a hundred pounds. i got the fence with it, but no blade or mitre gauge. i made up some zero clearance inserts the other day. i guess i got the ass kick i needed from the last ffw.

since it's a tilting top, the table is fixed onto two pivots points. this makes adjusting for parallel a bit of a mystery. i figure that the whole arbor setup gets loosened and adjusted from the bottom. one step at a time... no sense adjusting for parallel before it's setup with a motor and a table.

i decided to get a forrest blade after our dollar drop from it's high point, and i paid dearly for this. i had to order directly from forrest to get the 8" blade that this saw takes. i decided to go with a four inch stiffener for this blade. the stiffeners make a huge difference with thinner kerf blades. i'm not a fan of the thin kerf, but that's what my dad has for his saw, and the stiffener made a really noticeable difference in the quality of cut. the 8" blade comes only as a thin kerf. so after i paid the taxes on the package, i did what most nerds do when they get a new tool, i took out the dial indicator... whoa. i had .0012" runout at the blade's edge. knowing that this was much, i swore. then i checked the arbor. i had about .0003" runout there. out it came, surprisingly easily. it ended up being an interesting setup between the bearings. that long sleeve with the bolt hanging out of it allows for a lateral adjustment of the blade and/or pulley in case it is needed. if fit's snugly into the hole in the casting, but fits loosely around the actual arbor shaft.

so now i need a machinist... there's a family friend down here who is a very meticulous machinist that i'm anxious to bump into. i got him to cut threads on my lathe shaft so that i could mount a jacob's chuck on the outboard side, and he did it for practically nothing. that's my kind of machinist, very precise and cheap.

underneath is an unauthorized photo of a certain mister klager working at truing his arbor flange on his unisaw with a shopmade setup. the setup was essentially coarse sandpaper on a stick. turn the saw on, push stick onto flange. this ended up helping some, but in the end we decided to take it into a machine shop. it came back with, if my memory serves right, .0000" runout.

stand offish

2008-11-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

i milled up the wood for the base of the stereo cabinet about a week ago. it's been sitting under the bench and hasn't moved much at all. so i left it and hand planed the snipe off of one side of each short piece in order to glue up some blocks for the short parts of the base. it planed quite nicely even if it was rowed. this wood is kind of funny. the faces are heavily rowed, and yet the edges seem to have more of the flat sawn look to them. curious, since it's almost perfectly rift sawn.

the blocks went together nicely, a little bit of squeeze out all the way around. the end grain has got a nice bookmatch happening as well. there's also a nice little bit of lighter wood towards the bottom of the joint. but, i've been using a whole lot of clamps a whole lot, and my hands hurt. i'm happy to be over the hump of massive laminations, i took the clamps off of the second arm of the sofa i'm building today as well. i'll post about that latter.

so this is about where i'm at. this is my new way of mocking up. using the actual part that were kept long and big to try and see what would work. i did this for the top and bottom overhangs of the cabinet. it was nice to be able to quickly move the piece around and get a view of what reality could be without having to do a mockup with other wood. i was thinking of putting a bit of curve or angle on the ends of the members and having a half lap joint to seat the long rails into the floor members. then i'm either going to use brass tabs that i'll make up, or some short rails going between the long rails directly underneath the cabinet to attach the base to the cabinet. i'm a little worried about this thing being picked up from the cabinet and not from the base. the base is going to end up being a little heavy weight wise, and i wouldn't want it to dislodge itself from the cabinet. i think i'm going to finish this up while the rail stock for the sofa is settling. i've milled it twice already and though that i would give it the weekend to chill a little.

stereo couch

2008-11-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

here we go...

so i've got two projects on the go right now. one's a stereo cabinet that only needs a base, and the other is an arts and crafts style couch. the mahogany base for the douglas fir stereo cabinet is milled up and settling for a little while. i got it from my uncle who works in a door and window factory. they make some pretty high end things for the us market, and so they go through a whole lot of wood. they are by far the cheapest source for mahogany that i've found, and the board ended up being quite nice. straight, dense, consistent color. perfect, for about 5$ a foot. i consulted with my design guru, lord godfrey, and he suggested a japanese style base for the low cabinet. i don't have all the details figured out yet, but i'm not going to be doing what is in the photo. the idea behind this thing was to make a cabinet for a record collector. records on the right and amp and turn table on the left. that's why i needed the slits in the back panels, for the wires. the verticals ones on the right are just for show. the back panel was pretty fun to make, lots of stopped grooves and floating panels, and panel ends that cover the grooves... oh, what fun that was.