In The Shop Notes

Building a TARDIS

2012-01-28T18:18:00.001-05:00

I had absolutely nothing at all to do with this project, but I just loved the video and thought I'd share it with you while you're waiting for me to come up with something of my own. This is just adorable.

To be clear: It's not this German schoolteacher's do-it-yourself quest to build a dimension-hopping time machine that's adorable, it's the manner in which she does it. She recognizes her shortcomings as a craftsman, but doesn't care. She just boldly goes forth and builds herself a pretty smart-looking TARDIS. It's a long stretch of a video, but totally worth it. And the finale is worth waiting for.

2012-01-27T14:05:00.001-05:00

On Wednesday I assembled the stand for Robin's tray table set, finish sanded it and shot it with three coats of lacquer. This was another long day, working until dinner time (about 7:00 PM) then going back after the meal to shoot the final coat.

Yesterday I packaged the trays and stand so they will do no harm to one another in transit, bundled them together with stretch wrap and packed them into a box for shipping.

I probably go into overkill on my packaging. So many things we get are just tossed in a box with a few air pillows or foam peanuts for cushioning. I feel a possibly irrational need to make sure the piece of furniture is secured against shifting and protected against being tossed around by dock apes.

We've only lost one shipment to the handlers in transit, and they ran over that one with a truck!

Robin's tables are on their way. My orders queue is empty and I'm planning for new things. We do have a few projects on the slate that you may find interesting; a big headboard made from old barn wood, and a tabletop/desk organizer for bills and mail. But I won't do those as a day-by-day posting, they'll go up as finished articles. In between project articles I'll post lessons and tips on woodworking techniques. I plan to post new stuff weekly.

I hope you'll continue to pop in from time to time.

Have a great weekend!

2012-01-25T17:16:00.003-05:00

I spent the day today making the parts for the stand, shaping them. boring pilot holes and counter bores, sanding them and assembling them with glue and screws.

I sanded them again, tacked off the dust and am lacquering them now. The tables are done.

I will be packaging this set for shipping in the morning. And that gets me caught up with orders. Most everything I do from here out will be for stock. I do have a couple of special projects for local friends, but mostly I'll be turning my attention back to writing, planning this years garden and building up a supply of stock items for next Christmas.

Thanks for watching. I'll begin posting woodworking lessons next week.

Completing the Legs

2012-01-24T19:28:00.001-05:00

On Saturday I came in to finish making the leg spreaders for Robin's set of TV Tray Tables

I also finished lacquering the trays and applying a polyurethane skim coat to the top of the ribbon panel - this help protect it from modern living. Sweaty glasses and hot plates can ring lacquer.

Today I bored all the screw holes in the legs, sanded them, assembled the leg sets and plugged the crew holes.

I'm shooting the lacquer now. These will be done before I go home for the night.

All that remains is the stand, and I'll address that tomorrow.

Completing the Trays

2012-01-20T18:22:00.000-05:00

The majority of the morning was spent hand sanding the tray rails, leg blocks and latch blocks to 180 grit. This is the finish sanding. It takes a while to get it right.

Then I glued and clamped the parts together.
When the clamps came off I re-sanded the spots where the clamps were just to remove the shiny pressure spot that is sometimes left behind.

Then each tray went into the finishing room for a good coat of lacquer. I want to get at least one full coal on all the trays today

I had planned on finishing my lumber stacking tomorrow (Saturday) but the weather guesser is saying that we have an excellent chance of rain for tomorrow. So between lacquer shoots I went out and worked on moving the dry cherry lumber from the rack in the foreground on top of the new cherry stack in the back ground. It's already higher than I am tall. It's OK as long as I can stand on the low stack to reach up to the top of the tall stack, but as the front one gets lower and the back one gets taller I'll have to get out a ladder and start scurrying up that to reach the top of the Cherry stack.

By the end of the day the lumber is all put away and I have one coat of lacquer on each of the trays. Since I spent time today doing tomorrows work.I'll come in tomorrow and finish up today's work of lacquering the trays.

Latch & Leg Blocks

2012-01-19T17:58:00.000-05:00

I came in at my usual time this morning and set about taking care of the bookkeeping and communications chores that *someone* has to do if this thing is going to run smoothly at all (and since I'm the only one here anymore that kinda points the finger at me). Then, just as I was getting up to go out into the shop... the place goes dark; power outage.

With no power, we have no lights, no power tools, no way to get much work done. Fortunately I do have windows, and the window in my assembly room admitted enough light that I could remove the clamps and do the construction sanding on the trays.

I'm only going to build the three tables and a stand that I need to fill current orders right now. I have parts made for the other 4, but will complete those later so I don't delay these.

When the power came back on I rounded the outer edges of the trays and set them aside for a bit.

Then I made up the leg mounting blocks and the latch blocks.

Then I made the latch tabs, fitted them to the latch blocks and assembled them. When the glue was set up sufficiently I sanded the assemblies. They are now ready to attach to the trays. I'll do that tomorrow.

Tray Rails

2012-01-18T17:34:00.001-05:00

I started the day by pre-finishing the tray panels with one coat of lacquer. I do this to prevent a sliver of unfinished wood from pulling out of the groove in the rail when the weather dries out. It's almost always humid here in the Smoky Mountains, so unless you live in Atlantis it will probably be drier where you are than it is here and the panels will draw up some.

While the lacquer dries I mill out the tray rails. I miter the ends as I cut them to length, mill the panel groove and round over the inner-upper edge. Then I sand the inside face only.

Because I cut the rails from a long piece of stock I mark the mating corners with making tape to be sure I'll get them back on in order so the grain flows around the tray.

Dry fitting (no glue) to test the fit.

Very carefully apply glue in the strategic places and apply clamps. These will sit overnight to let the glue reach maximum hold before I remove the clamps.

Panel Trimming

2012-01-17T18:34:00.000-05:00

A good part of the morning was spent stacking lumber; I still have some of the cherry and all of the walnut on the ground. Sort of. I have boards under the piles so the lumber is not actually in the mud and wet, But it's out in the open and piled in just a loose stack. Not good.

It needs to be sticker-stacked on a drying rack with spacer sticks between layers so the air will flow through the stack and let the boards dry evenly. This is as far as I got last time. The pile is about chest high on me here so the going gets a little rougher from here on out. Thank goodness for Aleve!

By about 1:00 I had all the fresh-cut cherry stacked and I was starting to move the dry cherry on top of the fresh cherry. This consolidates the species, and the dry adds weight to help keep the fresh boards flat as they dry.

I got about 1/3 of the way through the dry cherry stack when it started to rain again so I had to put the covers back on and go work inside. By the way, the really long boards sticking out will get cut off with a chainsaw later on.

Today I need to trim and sand the tray panels. I'll use my big cut-off sled to trim the ragged ends of the panels smooth and to finished length. I do enough of these that I've made a permanent mark on the sled to make this as easy as possible.

Here the panels are trimmed and rabbeted and I'm ready to start sanding. That will take the rest of the day at least.

A New Direction
When we started this blog back in 2005 the main purpose was to allow our custom furniture clients to watch over our shoulders as we built their furniture. This was a wildly popular feature and we got lots of comments from our clients about how much fun it was to see their furniture taking shape. It also instilled a new awareness of how much thought and work goes into custom furniture. You'd be surprised how many people think we just knock this stuff out in a few hours.

A fellow once tried to get me to display in a street festival. It was a week away and I told him I had nothing made up to show or sell. He said, "You have a week, whip up a half dozen pieces, put them on display and take orders." He had NO clue!

However, we're not doing custom work anymore, so this blog will degrade into doing the same old thing over and over most of the time. Rather than allow that to happen I've decided that I'll change the format. I will no longer be posting daily progress reports, but will instead do a weekly post and each post will discuss a woodworking technique. Each post will be longer and will cover a complete process. I'll try to include more video. We think this will be more useful to my readers that watching me build tray tables over and over. If we do something unusual; a special project, I may toss that in for you to watch as an example of putting the techniques I've been teaching into play.

Comments are welcome.

Dressing the panels

2012-01-13T17:26:00.000-05:00

When i came in this morning I trimmed the ribbon panels to their finished width.

The first step in dressing these ribbon panels is to use a flush plane to scrape the glue pips off so they don't nick my planer knives. If I've done it right, these little pip of hardened glue pop right off with the flush plane.

Then I run the panels through the planer once on each side, taking light cuts on each pass. The ribbon strips were cut only 1/16" thicker than the finished panel will be, so doing a good job of getting them even during the gluing process is important: there's not much excess to take off for smoothing.

Note that there is *no* extra room on the sides of these panels: these tables were designed to just fit like this, so when someone said, "Can I have a set 2" wider than normal" and were shocked that the price almost doubled, it's because such changes upset a lot of carefully planned things like this.

Most of the smoothing is done on the drum sander. After the first pass or two I noticed that the panel was not sanding evenly across it's width, so I had to stop and calibrate the sander's head. That took an awful long time just because it's not easy to do.

Once I got back to sanding, I spent the rest of the day sanding these down to the finished thickness taking off only 1/128th of an inch on each pass using a fine sanding band.

I closed out the day by gluing the ribbon panels to the backers. These will sit until next time when I'll trim the completed panels to length and mill the rails. See you then!

Ribbon Strip Panels

2012-01-12T20:16:00.001-05:00

This day began with cutting red oak boards into billets on the chop saw. I've got rail stock for 6 rails milled out, so I want to end up making 6 ribbon panels to go with them. Calculating how many ribbons that will take is a bit tricky, so I try to make a few extra just in case.

The first step of course is jointing one wide face and one edge of each billet. The jointer flattens the board, removing any cupping or twist.

By flipping the board up and running the just-jointed face along the vertical fence I joint an edge, straightening and smoothing that *and* forming a good square corner between the two jointed surfaces.

Getting the wood "square" is quite important if you want pieces to fit together well, and in a glued-up panel a good fit is paramount to success.

Next it's on to the surface planer where I run the just-jointed face down on the bed, the cutter head inside the upper part shaves off a little wood at a time to smooth that face and make it parallel to the jointed face - that "getting it square" thing again. In most cases I will run all the boards through the same number of times so they all come out the same thickness, but this time that doesn't matter at all so I set each blank aside as soon as the upper surface is dressed. I use the finishing speed (slower feed rate) for a nice smooth surface. This is important because the wide faces of the boards are about to become my glue joints.

The completed parts blanks (rough boards get cut into rough chunks called billets, the billets get dressed out into parts blanks. The blanks get shaped into parts. Parts get assembled into furniture. that's how that works, in case you were confused.

The table saw is equipped with a thin kerf blade and used to cut the blanks into a series of ribbon strips. Care is taken to keep the strips in order and oriented. This step can take a while when doing it all by myself. When I had help the helper would stand on the back side of the saw and take the ribbon strips off as I cut them. I could cut them one after another: zip-zip-zip and the job was done in short order. Doing it by myself I run the blank through to cut one ribbon strip, then walk around the saw to take it off the back (because leaning over a whirling saw blade to try to reach the strip to remove it is an extraordinarily stupid and dangerous thing to do - especially when you're short like me and have to really reach to get to that cut off piece) set the strip on the right table wing, walk back around front, pick-up my push stick, cut another ribbon, lay down my push stick, walk around back, take the trip off and set it on the wing, walk around front, pick-up my push stick... tedious to read about? Try doing it non-stop for an hour or two.

To break up the monotony I cut enough ribbons to make a panel, flip them down flat and play with them until I get a pleasing look. Oddly enough, my goal here is to get it to look like plywood - no obvious seams, and a pleasing "continuous" pattern to the graining.

I use a couple of strips of masking tape to bind the panel together, fold it over and take it to the assembly room.

The masking tape works like hinges to allow me to open up each joint individually to apply glue. I work quickly but carefully. When all the joints are glued I spread out the clamps and lay the panel in place on the clamps: 3 below, 2 above, just snugged up. There should be no need to apply excessive force here.

While the glue sets up, I go cut more ribbons, arrange them into a panel, tape it, fold it and bring it in for gluing. I do this all day. As I'm writing this my 5th panel is about ready to come out of the clamps. As soon as I'm done with this I'll go take the 5th one out of the clamps, glue and clamp the 6th panel, then scrape the 5th. The 6th one can sit in the clamps overnight. It's getting late, I'm getting tired. Tomorrow we'll dress these panels.

See you tomorrow!

Dressing Legs & Rails

2012-01-10T21:43:00.000-05:00

Most of this day was spent preparing for, unloading and stacking a lumber order. This was fresh-sawn cherry and a little walnut. And by fresh, I mean fresh, the truck was bringing it to me as it came off the mill and they were milling at the site where the tree had been cut over the weekend.

To prepare I needed to lay some thick boards down in the driveway where the truck would unload. This was to keep the lumber out of the gravel and mud - it's been rainy. Then I needed a place to put a little over 1000 board feet of lumber. To free up a drying rack I moved some red oak off of an outside rack on top of a stack of red oak in the lumber shed. Then moved the rack (which is made of landscape timbers) around to where I plan to extend the lumber shed, mounted it on 6 concrete blocks, and leveled it up. But first I had to remove a pile of dirt and a stack of cedar logs that were in the spot I wanted the rack. I dug up the dirt and threw it into the wagon behind the lawn tractor to haul that off, then moved the cedar logs to a pile out of the way.

I had just gotten all that done when the first load of lumber arrived. We pulled it off the truck and stacked it on the grid of boards I laid down. When the driver went back for the second load, I started carrying the lumber around to the drying rack and stacking it there.

To air dry lumber you have to lay in a layer of boards, then lay in spacer sticks that allow air to circulate all around the lumber so it dries evenly. So it was carry, over a layer of boards, lay in the sticks, carry a layer of boards, lay in sticks... all afternoon. This is a pretty simple thing to do if all the boards are the same length, but I got boards that were 6 feet long , most were 8 feet long, and a few that were 10 feet long. That made things a bit more challenging!

I worked at it until it got too dark to see, then went home for some dinner (and some Ibuprophen!)

After dinner I came back and worked on the tray tables for a few hours. I surface planed and sanded the rail stock and dressed out the legs. I have enough rail stock for 6 tables, enough legs for 4.

Dressing the legs involved two adjacent faces to get those smooth and straight and a good square corner between them. Then surface planing the two opposite faces, to smooth and square them. I left them just a tad over-sized, then used the drum sander to take off the planer marks and do the construction sanding. These are now ready for lay-out and boring the screw holes.

So, this is a good point to stop for the night.

Tomorrow I have to take the truck in for servicing first thing in the morning, then I have to meet someone at noon, and have a church Session meeting to go in the evening. I won't get much of anything done tomorrow! But I'll be back at it full force on Thursday.

Lumber Prep

2012-01-09T17:03:00.005-05:00

Over the weekend we went to town and bought a 4' x 8' sheet of cabinet grade birch plywood. Today I broke it down into 12 tray table backer panels. The first step is to lay out the cuts then make the first cross-cut with a hand held circular saw; my shop is not arranged for working with full sheets of plywood and I do not have 6 feet of empty space to the left of the saw.

Once the panel is cut into two smaller pieces I can make the remaining cuts on the table saw, which yields much straighter, smoother cuts.

The panel is cut into 4 segments with a left-over that will get set aside for use on something else.

Then I cut the smaller panels into backers. I get 12 backers out of a sheet of plywood. I'll set those aside for now.

Next I select a few nice, straight grained boards. One gets ripped it into 3 segments. These get resawn on the band saw to make 6 rail blanks. Don't worry, these are overly long and I will cut off the wormy bit on the end of the middle one.

The other boards get ripped into 1" square pieces that will be cut to length and milled down into legs.

And I'm about out of time for today: a short afternoon because this is Monday and most of each Monday is spent working on a radio program and updating web sites for my various clients on that front.

Hope to see you gain tomorrow!

Boxing the Cradle

2012-01-06T10:53:00.001-05:00

All too often I get to the end of a furniture project and, once the finish is on, think that no one will be interested in the rest. But so many times we've gotten comments from customers about the way we package our furniture. One said, "I'm not sure which I'm more impressed with; the quality of your workmanship or your packaging!"

This cradle offers some special challenges on packaging; you might be interested in how I deal with those.

My first step was to build a fame underneath the cradle that will keep it from rocking and keep it positioned in the box. I used scraps of maple lumber; one rail under each rocker and a pair of connectors that keep the rails positioned; shaped like a giant Roman numeral 2. Blocks of foam shaped to fit under the rocker ends and rockers secured to the frame with stretch wrap create a stable base. The rails are cut to just fit inside the width of the box.

The box I'm using was from a new sink I just installed for Marie, the Styrofoam is what cushioned the sink, so it exactly fits the interior of the box. I needed only reshape the inside surfaces with a hand saw to make a snug fit for the cradle. How fortuitous that these events lined up!

Of course the cradle is much taller than the sink, so I will raise the flaps that formed the top of the box and strap them together to increase the box's height. It's still not quite enough, but I can deal with that.

Here I've added cushioning around the sides, back and top of the cradle cover.

For the next step I go out to the lumber shed and drag in a scrap of crate board. Scrap?! Yes, this is just a cut-off; a full sheet is something like 7' x 12'. I used to use a lot of this when we were making large furniture pieces. I'd have to use crate board to design a custom box, then frame the box in wood and make a pallet under it so the trucking company could move it around with a forklift and stack other crates on top of it.

This crateboard is 1/2" thick, triple wall corrugated cardboard. Much lighter and just as sturdy as the 1/4" plywood I had used for crating before.

I cut panels, partially slit them down the center so they'll fold and insert them as corner reinforcements and lid-holder-uppers. I also cut a panel to fit between the corners at the foot as a hold-down to keep the foot of the cradle in place. This way no amount of bouncing will cause it to shift in the box. The dock apes can even turn the box upside down (and don't think they won't!) and everything will be held in place and protected. By running the corrugations vertically in the corner pieces they have enough strength to prevent crushing the box even if another is set on top of it.

Yet another panel of crate board forms a sub-lid that will further prevent crushing. This is not bulletproof, but will help a lot to prevent mashing the box if they're careful at all.

Another large standard cardboard box is cut up and shaped to form the cap that slides down over the corner braces. Everything is taped securely, yet can be opened easily by slitting the band of tape where the cap meets the lower box. The cap will simply lift off. Slit a few pieces of tape to remove the inner top and corner braces, slit the flaps turned sides, fold them down and lift out the cradle to remove the foam. The foam is held in place with stretch wrap - lots and lots of stretch wrap. No tape there; we wouldn't want any sticky gunk getting on the cradle.

Remember to recycle the cardboard. The styo: well, maybe you can find a way to re-purpose that one more time. Eventually it will end up in a landfill, and that pains me, but it's hard to avoid sometimes.

Now, we're done. All that remains is to await payment, run a shipping label and summon the FedEx man. He won't be any too happy to see this beast sitting on my dock, and I'll be sure to be watching so I can help him with it. It only weights 67 pounds, but at 40" long, 27" wide and 35" high it is a handful for one person to be sure!

2012-01-05T14:07:00.000-05:00

Gary and I have managed to connect regarding payment and shipping of his cradle, so I'll begin the process of making inserts to cushion the cradle and fitting it into a large box: I knew the monstrous box our new kitchen sink came in would prove useful! I'll have to strap the flaps together to become part of the sides and make up a new top as well as fitting blocks of Styrofoam to keep it positioned and supported during shipping, but I've done all that many times. Note to self: make sure it will go through the door once it's done!

I also brought in walnut and oak for the TV Tray Tables I'll be building next. We're just about out of walnut - and good walnut has become very scare around here, thus exceptionally expensive - so this will be the last round of tables in walnut and red oak. I'll probably switch to cherry and red oak, possibly cherry and maple. I'll have to make up a test piece to see how each looks.

As I get ready to prepare the stock, I also pull down my template and fixture set. These bits of plywood and lumber will be all the instruction I need to build the Tray Table sets and insure that they come right.

I don't know that I'll do a step by step series on these again - we've done that quite a few tikes on this blog - but I will post progress reports for those who are waiting to order tables.

Thanks for checking in!

2012-01-03T14:39:00.001-05:00

With the final coats of satin lacquer applied and hard, it's time to assemble the three components into a completed cradle.

I start by running a half-dozen screws up just through the bottom plate. I'll use the tips of these screws to engage the related pilot holes in the lower edge of the sides. Because the sides angle outward the shank holes through the base also angle, making it unwise to run the screws up very far before trying to engage them with their pilot holes. This requires some peaking through cracks and wiggling.

Once those are in and snugged up I install the rest for the screws.

Mounting the rockers is easy by comparison. I use a ruler to get them centered side to side and front to back then run the pocket hole screws down into the base to hold them secure.

And we're done!

All that remains is to decide how I'm going to get this cradle to Gary in Arizona (anyone going that way?)

In the past we had an account with a trucking company and would crate and ship all larger furniture that way. But LTL trucking fees have skyrocketed with the rising fuel costs and we haven't used that company in a couple of years, preferring to focus on smaller pieces that can be shipped FedEx.

I will be checking with FedEx to see if they will accept this as an over sized shipment or if it would be considered too large and have to go via their freight division.

I have much to do, I'd better go do it. Thanks for following along with this project, I hope you enjoyed it!

2011-12-31T12:16:00.000-05:00

Plugging and smoothing the screw holes is my quickie task for today. I have much to do around the house and yard, but I want to get caught up before the new week begins.

For me, the key to making great looking screw hole plugs is to use scraps of wood from the project being built so the color is as close a match as possible and then cutting a generous number of plugs so I have a variety to choose from. They important thing is to find plugs that show grain patterns as close to the grain in the surrounding wood as possible. This will result in as near an invisible plug as possible.

Apply just enough glue to the inside of the hole. You want enough to hold the plug in securely but not so much it gooshes out making a mess when you tap the plug home.

Line up the selected plug and tap it into place with a mallet.

When the glue has tacked up, cut the excess plug away with a flush cut saw. If you choose to do this with a heavy chisel (called a slick) make sure you know which way the grain runs in the plug: if the cut chases the grain down into the hole you will have to drill out the plug and do it over. Slice so if the plug cracks the grain will carry the crack upward where you can shave or sand away the excess.

Sand everything smooth and pretty with 120 grit paper and you're ready to begin the finish sanding phase. I'll get into that next time. See you then!

2011-12-31T06:24:00.002-05:00

Today (Friday) I intended to complete construction of Gary's Heritage Cradle. The final step is to make and mount the three roof panels. Knowing today would be a short day - Marie and I have plans to attend gospel concert featuring two of our most favorite groups this evening (Greater Vision and The Booth Brothers) - I was in early and got right to work.

First up was to shoot the final coat of lacquer on the base plate.

All day yesterday I worked on filling and sanding (and re-filling and sanding more) the worm tracks: filler shrinks as it dries so I have to fill deeper tracks with multiple applications. For some reason the filler seemed to be drying aggravatingly slowly. I could understand this if it were raining, but it has not seemed that humid over the past couple of days.

But I keep at it until all the tracks have a good, tight, solid fill and the board is sanded smooth and to finished thickness.

The thickness sanding opened a new pocket in which I needed to dig out the worm poo and fill, But I decide to forge ahead while I wait for this last bit of filler to dry so I can sand it.

I lay out the cuts so that the center roof piece is exactly the size needed, the two side panels are a bit long. I want the grain to flow across the roof in an uninterrupted pattern, cutting the center piece long and trimming it down (by very much) would cause a disruption in the grain. This has to be done right the first time.

With the panel cut into sections (and marked for alignment) I set the saw blade to 75° to make the bevel cuts where the three pieces join to one another.

It may be of interest to note that this Wixey angle gauge measures the angle on the opposite side of the blade. If I had it attached to the right side of the blade it would read 105°, which is great if you like doing math and figuring complimentary angles. If not, just pop into place on the left side of the blade.

A little sanding with a block to get the fuzzy bits out of the way of the new joints and I line the parts up, fasten the joints together with masking tape on the upper surface (works like hinges) and set the roof into place to check the fit. Not bad. I need to trim the center piece by just a smidge to make it perfect. A smidge in this case is about 1/32 of an inch. Translating that makes it easier to set it up on the saw's fence scale.

Trimmed, re-taped, re-fitted and approved, I bore pilot holes in the roof panels for the finish nails that will hold the roof in place. Then I measure out the 1" overhang on the front and clamp blocks in place as stops.to make alignment quick and easy.

I can lift each joint to open it up and apply glue, then apply glue to the upper edges of headboard, sides and crown. Lay the roof in place and tap in a few nails to hold it securely.

Yeah, right: "tap in". I had forgotten how much I hate using nails in hardwood. And ash is indeed a very hard wood, similar to hickory. The ailing did not go well and I quickly decided to switch to screws for the rest of my attachment points.

I was already running late - I needed to get the roof fastened down securely before I left so the glue could set up properly - so I'll plug and trim the screw holes and fill the nail holes tomorrow. Then I'll be ready to do the finish sanding and lacquering of the upper body on my next woodworking session.

I need to begin preparing lumber for my next project: at least one two-table set of TV Tray Tables (with stand), but I've been delaying that until a new set of planer knives arrives. The set that are in the machine now are getting dull and need to come out and sent in for sharpening. Those should arrive this evening while we're in Morristown for the concert. I will try to get those installed and adjusted tomorrow as well. The little Delta planer had self-setting knives, making replacing them a snap, but they were also single use, disposable blades which proved costly and wasteful when used heavily and long term. The Grizzly has heavier knives that can be sharpened many times. Having two sets means I can swap them out as needed and not have to take the machine off line for a few days to a week because the knives have been sent out.

We're almost done with this project. Please stop in again next week as we finish it up and begin the next, and I hope you have a happy (and SAFE) New Years Eve.

2011-12-29T17:38:00.003-05:00

My main task of the day in to mate up the base plate and the cradle body. I start that by setting the cradle body on the base plate, centering it, and tracing a line around the bottom of the body inside and outside.

Then I set an angle gauge to 8° and use it as a guide to drill pilot holes centered in the track I traced, through the base plate.

I then clamp the cradle body to the base plate and stand it up so I can get to the underside where I drill up through the pilot holes and into the cradle body. I countersink the the holes so the screw heads will be slightly recessed.

I set the rocker assembly in place just to be sure I didn't drill screw holes in places that will be made inaccessible by the rockers. We're good.

I brought in one board that is 12 inches wide for use as the roof. I select the part of that board I want to use, cut it out of the board and surface plane it down to finished thickness.

I do not joint this one first because it's 12 inches wide and even my big jointer won't handle a board that wide. The board has no twist to it, just a little cup, so I will be able to flatten it well with just the surface planer.

The roof board was chosen partly because it is wide enough to get the roof panels out of a single board - no glue-up needed - and partly because of it's "wormy" condition. I have to dig out the worm "leavings" and fill their tracks with wood filler. This will make for a beautiful touch of character on the roof.

While the filler dries I remove one side at a time, apply glue to the edges of the headboard, footboard, and crown and reattach the side with screws. Then I plug the screw holes, trim off the plugs and sand the whole exterior of the body.

I will lacquer the base plate separately from the cradle body because I'm not going to glue the body to the base. The base will need to be allowed to expand and contract a little across its width. The headboard and footboard have their long grain running across the base, so they will not expand and contract with it. They are matched up to the sides so all will expand and contract vertically together.

By lacquering the body (after I've installed the roof) without the base, I'll be able to shoot the entire interior easily. So I take the time to do a good job of finish sanding the body.

All that's left is to make the roof panels, please stop in again tomorrow.

2011-12-28T17:03:00.001-05:00

Making the footboard and crown are my tasks for today, so I start by cutting the 8° bevel on the lower edge of the blank. Then, using the sled I built, trim the footboard sides to the required 8° angle.

Next I line up the lower edge with the lower edge of a side and determine where the upper edges will be. Using the template I trace the shape into the blank and cut it out on the band saw.

Using my spindle sander (here equipped with the oscillating belt sander attachment) I smooth the cuts, work the shape to the line and by tilting the table impart the 8° bevel on this edge.

The tight area in the V at the center is smoothed and shaped with a sanding stick I make by gluing sandpaper to a large craft stick or scrap of plywood using spray contact cement.

The crown piece is next. Here I start by cutting the sloped sides on the miter saw. I strap a backer block to the lower edge with masking tape on both sides to make the part more stable against the fence as I cut these slopes. This saw does not cut quite all the way across, so I'll finish off the cuts with a back saw, then sand the nib smooth on the belt sander.

I do not cut the scrolly lower edge yet: I want to take the width directly off the cradle rather than trusting a template, so I wait until later to complete this piece.

I chuck a round-over bit into the router table and round off the upper edges of the cradle sides and footboard. This is not a large round-over, just enough to break the sharp edges where a young one might bonk a noggin.

Then I begin assembling the sides to the headboard and footboard to form the basic box of the cradle. I'm drilling counter-bored pilot holes and using screws to hold it together. No glue yet; I still have some finish sanding to do on the interior, but want to do that last - just before final assembly.

Done.

Now I can fit the crown piece so it fits precisely between the arms.

I cut the angles on the ends of the crown using the miter saw while I still have a straight, solid lower edge to set against the fence.

Then I cut it out on the band saw and use the spindle sander to smooth away the saw marks and take the final shape down to the template line.

Again the center part is shaped by hand with a sanding stick.

Test fitting the crown piece, I'll sand a little more here or there to get a perfect fit at the ends. When I'm happy with it, I bore a screw hole in each end and insert the screws.

I need to round-over the lower edges of this part as well, but I'm out of time for today. I'll finish this piece off tomorrow, then mate the cradle body to the base plate.

Thanks for dropping in, hope you come back again tomorrow for more.

2011-12-27T18:05:00.000-05:00

Making the headboard is the task of the day. But first I sanded the side pieces that I completed yesterday. these are now ready for installation.

Then I roughed out the lumber I need to make the part blank for the headboard.

The grain needs to run side to side - so that it will expand and contract at the same rate as the tall part of the side pieces - so I've made up several short pieces that will be jointed and glued together to make the panel for the headboard. But first I need to flatten one side and one edge on the jointer, then surface plane them to 3/32 over finished size. This panel will not go through the surface planer, so I'll need to take it to finished size on the big drum sander. Removing very much wood this way will take a very long time, so I work with minimal overage.

Jointed, planed, trimmed to width and jointed again to smooth the edge trimmed on the table saw, I arrange the panels for the best appearance and mark the panel with an alignment V.

Then it's off to the assembly room to glue and clamp the pieces into a panel.

While that sets up I begin roughing out wood for the foot board and the crown piece. I like this piece for the crown because the wild graining will look great when it's cut to shape.

I process the pieces to make the footboard blank, joint the center edges and glue them up.

When the big panel is ready I begin sanding it down to remove any glue-joint ridges and smooth it. The open ended design of the drum sander allows me to sand a panel up to 32" wide by doing one half, flipping it around and doing the other half.

Many, many light passes gets the job done.

Then I make up a little sled for the table saw with an adjustable foot support and movable hold-downs. I use it to cut first the side tapers, then adjust the foot support (using my template as a guide) to cut the "ears" at the top.

I took photographs of that step and of the completed panel, but something happened to those and they are not on my camera.

All that remains is some sanding and the headboard will be ready to join to the side pieces.

Tomorrow we'll make the footboard and we'll be ready to put together the cradle body.

See you then!

2011-12-26T17:08:00.003-05:00

Normally I don't get any woodworking done on Mondays at all, this is my day to do the weekly radio
program, catch up on maintenance of the various web sites I've built for people, and do our weekly
computer system back-ups so we don't lose everything on a computer should one of them go kablewie! But all that went very well today and I got done early enough to get some woodworking done.
I started by using the new oscillating spindle sander to shape the inside curves of the top-side
pieces. This gadget does a very nice job of sanding to a line and leaving a much smoother surface (no scratches) than a standard drum sander does because the sander pumps up and down while it spins. This one also has a short belt sander attachment that can pop into place of the drum: it oscillates too.

Next I cut the 8° angles on the ends of the lower sides using my monster miter gauge on the table
saw.

Now the jointed lower edge of the head piece and the jointed upper edge of the lower-side mate up so I can glue them together for a nice continuous look.

I use a scrap of the strip I cut off of the bottom edge when I trimmed the lower side to width and
beveled the lower edge to lay against the bevel to protect it from crushing by the clamps. It has
the same bevel as the bigger piece, I just put it back in place and use a couple of spring clamps to keep it from riding up the bevel when I snug up the clamps.

I use three bar clamps just as a rack to support the pieces with enough space underneath to allow the spring clamps to be used. They are not clamping anything.

I'll let these set up hard and head home for the evening. Back to a day of woodworking tomorrow.

See you then!

2011-12-23T15:59:00.002-05:00

My focus for today will be the upper side pieces, but I'll be working on other things as well.

I start by cutting off the excess along the top. I leave a little wiggle room, but I don't need this much - that will just make planing and sanding harder to do.

I run these upper sides through the surface planer to thin them down and smooth the rough side. I plane the lower sides as well so they end up the same thickness.

This is a peek at how the pieces will relate to one another. There is an 8 degree bevel on the lower edge (to lean the sides out), a 22 degree bevel on the top edge (for the roof), and the headboard and foot board lean outward at 8° as well, so almost nothing in these parts is square.

I start withe the 8° bevel along he lower edge. I use my electronic angle gauge to get it set precisely: 90° plus 8° = 98°. That's easy. making sure I cut the boards so they don't both lean to the left, that's a little trickier.

I stand them up side by side and mark on the ends which way each board will lean. This helps me make Sure I get it right. It wouldn't make any difference, I could just flip one around, except I've already grain matched them to the upper sides and marked the parts for orientation. Having to flip one around would mess that up.

With this much done I go ahead and drum sand all four parts to bring them down to the proper final thickness and make them smooth. The planer leave faint wash-board waves that must be removed.

The knives on the surface planer are also getting dull and this causes chipping in areas of steep grain pitch. I use a pencil to mark the pits and sand until all the pencil marks are gone.

Then I take a break and assemble the rocker parts with glue and screws, plug the screw holes, trim the plugs flush and do the final sanding.

I take this assembly into the finishing room and shoot the first coat of lacquer.

While that's drying I go back to the side pieces.

Using my template I trace the shape of the upper side piece onto the parts blanks. The headboard leans back (out) the top slopes up from the back, and the roof is peaked, so there are many odd angles to cut here. My big miter fence and some ingenuity with wedges come in handy. Especially when it comes to cutting the 22° bevel on the top edge when the top is NOT parallel to the bottom, nor square to the back.

It takes a while, but I finally get it all done. All that remains to do now is to sand the bandsawn curve to finished shape and I have a brand-spanking new oscillating spindle sander due to be delivered this evening, so I'll wait to do that till next time. Besides, Marie wants to close the shop a little early and get our Christmas celebration going.

Thanks for watching, hope you come back next week, and a very merry Christmas to you!

2011-12-22T16:00:00.002-05:00

Today I'll make the parts that will become the side pieces of the Heritage Cradle. This is done in two steps, a long piece for the lower box, and a short piece that forms the side of the hood. Let's start with the long part. I rough out four pieces, two per side and joint one face and one edge, then surface plane them.

I arrange them for best color and grain match, then glue and clamp them.

Cut-offs from the first step can be used to make up the shorter section for the hood sides. I arrange them for a good look, and the ability to work around any gnarly bits, then make lay-out marks to help me keep them in position.

They they too get glued and clamped.

Normally I could now go back and work the long parts while the glue dries on the short parts, but I want to surface plane all the parts at the same time to be sure they come out the same thickness because the hood sides will mount atop the front section of the long sides. So, I'll wait until these catch up.

Beside, this evening is the mandatory company Christmas party - meaning that Marie and I are going out to dinner and then drive into Gatlinburg to see their light display. Always spectacular! So i need to get home and get cleaned up and changed.

So I'll pick this up again tomorrow. See you then!

2011-12-21T17:45:00.000-05:00

Completing the base plate of Gary's cradle is my mission today. I start by taking the glue-up from yesterday out of the clamps and surface planing the pieces to 1/32" thicker than the 3/4" finished dimension.

This dresses yesterday's glue joint nicely and leaves a small enough excess that I can remove it with a drum sander without having to run it through 100 times.

The pieces then go back to the assembly room for the final glue-up.

While the glue sets up I work on sanding the rocker assembly.

When the glue is set up enough to work with the panel I trim it to finished size on the table saw. My monster cross-cut sled is a big help in trimming and squaring large panels like this.

Then it's over to the big drum sander. I sand both sides to smooth them down and remove any ridge that may have developed at the glue-joint.

When that's done I set up my hand-held router with a 1/4" radius cove bit and route the decorative edge. I do this in multiple steps in order to get a nice smooth finish to the cut. End grain is especially prone to tearing out if too much is removed at once.

The final step of machining the plate is to route out a pocket on the underside. Gary has bought several of these cradles from us - one each time he is notified of an impending grandchild - and he has us do this special thing for him. This pocket will house a special note to his grandchild and is covered my a plaque. In time the grandchild will be encouraged to remove the plaque and find the letter from his/her Grandpa.

I use double sided tape to hold the template in place. The clamps just set the tape well while I set up the router, they will be removed when I'm ready to go.

I made a template for this and I use the router equipped with a template guide and a straight router bit.

I ran into a bit of a problem. The 1/2" shank router bit isn't long enough to reach down far enough to get the pocket 1/2" deep. The shoulder hits against the guide sleeve. I remedied the problem by switching to a 1/4" shank bit, installing a collet adapter and running the bit down as far as I dared.

This bit is old, kind of dull, and the 1/4" shank flexed just a bit so it howled and hollered as it cut through this hard wood, but it got the job done, and it looks pretty good.

All that remains now is to do the final sanding and this part is done. I will have to bore holes through is for screws that hod the sides and ends to it later, so I'll hold off on that final sanding for a bit: I'd just have to do it again after drilling the holes.

Next up: side pieces.

2011-12-20T17:06:00.000-05:00

Building the base plate was my assignment for the day. I had planned to get it completed today, but things popped up that needed attention and I did not get quite as far as I had planned.

I started out by making up a mess of screw hole plugs using a scrap of lumber from the rockers. This will result in a good color match and these will be face grain plugs, not end grain like nearly all commercially made plugs. Besides, have you tried buying screw hole plugs in Ash lately? Forget about it!

Then I selected a couple of boards, cut them into rough-length chunks on the chop saw then used the jointer to flatten one face and one edge. Doing this also makes sure the edge is square to the face. This will be important in making glue joints.

Then I run them through the surface planer, jointed faces down, to smooth the rough face. This also makes the two faces parallel to one another.

Finally I trim the rough edge off on the table saw. This makes the final edge parallel to the jointed edge and, if I have my saw set up properly, square to the two faces. I'll joint this edge in a bit just to be sure.

I lay the boards out and play with them to get the best match in color and graining. These are all center-cut boards (quarter-sawn) so the grain runs almost perfectly vertically. This type of board will have very little tendency to warp over time, making it great for this base plate.

When I'm happy with it, I mark the joints to keep the alignment and run the sawn edges that are involved in glue joints through the jointer just to remove what little saw-swirl is there.

I have found over the years that if I start with dry wood and superior glue joints, dowels or fancy edges are not needed. For a long time I doweled every glue joint, then I tried a glue-joint bit that makes tongue & groove type edges to increase gluing surface, but abandoned them both after I got my big jointer because they were no longer necessary and added labor and time to the project.

Because this plate is 15½" wide (or will be when I trim it) and my planer is 15" wide I'll glue up just one joint now, then surface plane the pieces to nearly the finished thickness (making one perfect joint) glue up the second joint, and smooth the whole panel with the wide drum sander.

I put all three boards into the clamps so the clamps will press against the outside edges, not edges that have been jointed for gluing. The outside edges will get trimmed anyway, so light dents won't matter. Ash is almost as hard and dense as hickory, but I'm protective of those glue joints.

I'm about out of time now so I'll pick this up again tomorrow. Thanks for popping in!

2011-12-16T17:24:00.000-05:00

This morning I continued picking through the ash lumber I brought in from the lumber shed previously and sorting it out so I know which boards I want to use to make what parts. This has been here for 4½ years, so it is good and dry now.

I'll make the rocker assembly first, so I take the board earmarked for that and lay out the cuts. Then I use the chop saw to cut the board into blanks for the two rockers and the spreader.

The spreader come from an end piece that is kind of wormy, but I can cut away the bad parts to leave a large enough piece down the middle.

The scrap pieces will go into the firewood box. I'll need to save a piece from which I can make screw hole plugs, but the rest will heat our home

While jointing the three parts blanks I am reminded that the bed of the jointer has been "draggy" lately, making it harder work than necessary to joint the boards.

So I break out my can of paste wax and give the jointer bed a good coat, applying the wax with fine steel wool. Once the wax flashes I take an old towel and buff it off.

Much better! I joint one face and one edge on each part blank

Now that the surface planer is fixed it's a simple matter to get the blanks completed. The boards are all well over 1 inch thick, so I plane off a fair amount of stock to make the 3/4" thick parts, but that's OK, it just insures that even if the board started out a little bowed or crooked I can flatten it.

When the blanks are prepared I bundle the two rocker blanks together with masking tape.

Then I line up the top of the rocker template with the jointed edge and trace around it to transfer the shape to the blanks.

Most of the shaping process will be done with these two boards fastened together to insure they are the same shape. This is especially important for the rocker bottoms so they rock smoothly with no wobble or wiggle.

I cut them out on the band saw.

Then smooth away the rough edges and do the final shaping of the outside curves on the stationary belt sander.

I use a drum in the drill press to dress the inside curves.

Then pretty up the rockers by rounding over the edges on the router table. I leave the top edge square of course: this will mate up with the bottom of the cradle.

Then I lay out the screw holes that will attach the rockers to the spreader. I drill the pilot holes and counter-bores into the rocker faces then set up the drill press to drill matching pilot holes in the ends of the spreader.

I assemble the rockers to the spreader and check to be sure it all came out square and even. I'll take it apart again to sand the parts, then reassemble them with glue in the joints. Then I'll glue in screw hole plugs and sand those smooth.

But this completes the construction of this assembly.

Next time we'll mill out the cradle bottom.

Have a great weekend!

2011-12-16T16:52:00.001-05:00

Yesterday (Thursday) I completed the stopper racks by attaching the hangers with #4 brass screws after having let the lacquer set up overnight o be sure it's good and hard.

Then I packaged them into boxes we order specifically for these stopper racks. Once the boxes are all taped up I move them into the storage area and post them to the web site as available.

They are now ready to ship.

I got started in the cradle but things went wonky on me and I got called away to take care of some other issues. Life is like that sometimes.

2011-12-14T15:38:00.000-05:00

Yesterday evening the UPS truck arrived as I was closing up shop and left a box on our shipping dock. I thought it was kind of hilarious that they used such a big box for this one little bar of metal. This is all there was in there: no packing, but I guess packing wasn't really needed.

This is the "part" I've been waiting for so I could fix the surface planer.

This morning I cut off piece of this bar (machine key stock is the official name for it), filed the ends smooth and slightly rounded, and reassembled the big planer. One of the tools I needed for this was something we had to buy special: these Monster Channel Lock Pliers.

Once it was all back together I fired it up and it sounds fine again. Now we should be all set to get started on Gary's cradle. But for now I tuck it back over in it's corner, I still have some things to take care of first.

I set up the finishing room, don my protective gear, and get started shooting lacquer on the first of the wall hung stopper racks I've been building.

I look like something out of Star Wars, don't I?

I'll give the rack two coats, scuff sand it and give it a third. Then all that's left is to attach the hangers and it'll get boxed up and be ready to ship.

In between lacquer shoots I locate the template set I'll need for the Heritage Cradle I'll build for Gary.

I check the included notes to see how many board feet of lumber I'll need to pull.

Then I'm off to the lumber shed and my stack of Ash lumber. Or ash pile!

The first couple of layers I pulled were pretty wormy and split, and I was worried for a bit, but then I remembered that this was the first time I've gotten into this pile. When I stack a new shipment of lumber I always toss aside the really rough stuff so it doesn't get counted in the bill I pay to Tommy. But he has no use for the scrap, so I put that on top pf the pile as added weight to help keep the lumber straight and flat as it dries. I also add concrete blocks. Now that it's three years dry I won't need that added weight, so I can cut up the scrappy stuff for firewood.

I bring in the scrappy stuff and enough good stock to build the cradle and stack it all on the floor where I can get at it easily.

It's a very nice day today, but it may well rain the rest of the week. Having all the lumber I'll need in here will make things more pleasant.

The ash is the white stuff in front, the walnut is for our entertainment center that I've been working on in my "spare" time for the past 3 years. Sigh. One day I'll have all this floor space clear again.

I'll continue finishing stopper racks for the rest of the day and get started on the cradle tomorrow morning.

Thanks for watching!

2011-12-13T14:59:00.000-05:00

Today I get "down ta bidness" on parts-making for the wall hung stopper racks.

Yesterday, being Monday was spend doing my radio program, maintaining web sites for my clients and catching up on some bookkeeping.

I start by boring the holes through the shelf bundles I made up last Friday. I use a Forstner bit chucked into the drill press because this bit makes very clean, smooth-walled holes with little tear-out. If I'm careful. If I rush and force the bit through the wood too fast, tear-out will happen.

Once all the bundles are drilled I remove the tape and separate the shelves.

Now I use a round-over bit in the router table to ease the edges of the stopper holes. This is mostly decorative, but can help prevent "denting" corks that are a bit larger than the holes.

I drop each hole in the shelf over the bit and give it a swirl (a bearing on the end of the bit prevents the bit from cutting too deeply), lift, move to the next hole and repeat.

I also round-over the front edge of each shelf, but I want to do this in a very precise manner so the rounded part does not creep into the groove in the side piece, making a pocket that will have to be filled. I want the "ear" on the shelf to just touch the front edge of the side when the backs are flushed up.

To do this consistently I set the fence on the router table behind the pilot bearing of the round-over bit just enough that the bit starts cutting around the corner. The shelf then rides out on the bearing to trim the long front edge and drops back at the end of the run.

Setting this up is a trial and error process: I start shallow and sneak up on a perfect fit. Once it's set I lock everything down and run all the shelves I've made.

Then I sand.

I use blocks for the flat surfaces and wrap a piece of sand paper around my thumb to sand inside the holes. This takes a while.

I'll sand the five shelves I need for one rack now and move on. I'll come back and sand the rest after the first rack is done. I only have an order for one rack, the rest will go into stock. No rush on them.

Then I set up the dado head to cut the dado in the side pieces that will house and support the shelves.

A stacked dado head uses a circular blade on the outsides of the stack and one or more winged chippers in between to remove a swath of wood the proper width. The width of the cut can be fine tuned by adding shims between the cutters to achieve just the right cut width.

This too takes some time. I practice on scrap stock, cut a dado, fit a shelf into the cut and see if it is too tight or too loose, add or remove shims to adjust. Repeat. It has to be snug enough the glue will hold, but not so tight I have to force the joint together. Aligning the parts with glue in the joints will be much harder if the joint is too tight. Too loose and it may one day fall apart.

Once that's done I cut all the side pieces. To do that I use a special fixture I built. It uses a stationary bar which barely fits into the dado I just cut to space the next cut. I use a special spacer on the first cut to get the top shelf positioned, the rest are self spacing and automatically squared. I took a mess of pictures, but it's difficult to see what's happening in them, lets try a video...

As you can see it is a quick and painless process when done using the fixture - I just need to remember to make opposing sides or I'll end up with all right sides or all left sides. Not Good!

When this is done I sand the side pieces. One more piece to make, then we can assemble the rack.

I like to get a bit fancy with this skirt in the bottom. To start with I cut down an undrilled shelf blank to fit snugly between the sides. A good fit here is critical, so I'll make the first cut just a bit long and sneak up on a perfect fit.

To do that I use this little trick. If you have a micro-adjustable stop on your saw, you don't need this. If not, pay attention.
The teeth on any carbide saw blade (or as steel blade for that matter - because of their "set") are just a smidge wider than the saw body. To shave off just a few thousandths of an inch, lower the chop saw blade (don't turn it on) and *lightly* press the end of your part against the body of the blade - avoid all teeth. Press down hard to hold the part in place, raise the saw, start it up and bring it back down. This will remove wood equal to the difference from one side of the teeth to the blade body. Repeat as needed to get the fit you want.

Now that it fits perfectly, I use the template to draw the arch on the part, use a band saw to cut away the waste, leaving 1/16 to 3/32 of an inch of wood outside the line.

Now I set up the router table with a flush trim bit and adjust the height so the bearing runs on the template (above the part). The cutter removes the wood below so it ends up exactly the same shape as the template. The template is made with a pocket that holds the part securely so it doesn't shift while trimming.

A little sanding and I'm ready to dry-fit the rack. I pull the joints snug with clamps and check the fit everywhere.

If it looks good (and it does) I take one side off, apply glue to the end of the skirt and inside the dadoes, put it back in place, remove the other side, apply glue, replace and affix clamps to hold it snugly together while the glue tacks up.

While I'm waiting I'll sand another set of parts and get them ready to assemble. When I'm done I'll have three of these racks assembled and ready for finish sanding and lacquering.

We'll get to that tomorrow.

Have a good evening and I hope to see you back here again tomorrow.

2011-12-09T17:04:00.001-05:00

Making parts blanks was my task of the day.

I started by thinning and sanding the shelf pieces as I discussed yesterday. That took a while.

Next came trimming the lumber for the sides and shelves to finished size and shaping the side pieces with the band saw and stationary belt sander. The shelves had their ends trimmed and squared then I bundled up enough (upper right corner) to make the three racks that are in progress.

After bundling, they get punched to locate the centers of the holes that will hold the stopper corks.

This much actually took all afternoon because of the lack of a surface planer.

The parts I ordered from Grainger should have been here by now: it's been over a week. I logged into their web site to check on the order. I used order number from the printed receipt, date, and item number, but they kept saying "Order not found". Even my order history showed that I made no order - even though they sent me three (count them: three) emails confirming account set-up, order and payment. In other words, I'm not getting any machine keys from Grainger. So I started my search all over again. My second choice was Fastenal. They don't sell individual keys, but a 12 inch long stick that I will need to cut to length. I called the store in Morristown hoping they'd have them in stock. They don't. Neither does the Sevierville store. Maybe the Knoxville store, but I'm not spending half a day (or more, depending on the traffic) driving to Knoxville and back for a $2.00 part. The guy at Fastenal said he could could still get an order in for shipment today and have it drop-shipped to me here. I should have it by Monday, Tuesday at the latest. That sounded good. I'll let you know on Tuesday if that worked out.

I hope you have a GREAT weekend!

2011-12-08T17:41:00.001-05:00

We absolutely have to get this memorial candle rack delivered to SMHH&H's Newport office today so they can get it to their Morristown office for a service this evening. Therefore I was out before dawn to wrap and load it into the truck so Marie could take it with her when she goes to work this morning.

I received confirmation later in the morning that the hand-off went well and it was on it's way to Morristown. I always feel better when a piece arrives safely.

I got right to work on those cherry wall hung stopper racks. I selected the lumber and passed it over to the shop ghost for jointing. He made one face and one edge smooth and flat and square to one another.

All the lumber we use comes in the door as rough sawn, log run lumber. Rough sawn is, just as the name implies: rough lumber. This board was cupped and the part in the middle planed down to smooth wood, I took this shot so you can see the difference between rough and dressed lumber. The rough lumber is fuzzy, often has ridges and swirls from the saw blade and makes it pretty difficult to see the color and pattern of the wood below. It is also eager to poke splinters into your skin, gloves are recommended.

After dressing the lumber (jointing one face and one edge, then surface planing the second face) I cut the lumber into parts blanks, working from the jointed edge so the rough edge gets cut off and discarded. Shop scraps too small or ugly to use in the shop go into the firewood pile.

I need two dimensions of lumber for this project: the thick side pieces and thin stock for the shelves and skirt. These boards are thick enough that I can resaw them and get one of each from the same board, wasting much less wood than I would if I simply planed the thick lumber down to reach the sides dimensions. I like to reduce waste wherever I can.

If you've been following along you know that the big Grizzly surface planer chewed up a drive shaft key and is convalescing. I've been using an old Delta planer as a stand-in, but that too has been making some ugly noises. Today it popped a circuit breaker and smelled of melted electrical insulation. I think it's done-for.

Parts for the Grizzly have been ordered but until they arrive I'm pretty much sitting on my thumbs. I can't dress rough lumber without a surface planer.

Fortunately I did get all of my heavy surfacing work done before the Delta died. I was working on the resawn pieces when it croaked.

The longer pieces were side/shelf parts and need only a little wood removed to dress them out nicely. The shorter pieces were split in half to make two shelf blanks and they need to have about 1/8" taken off. How can I keep working?

My Jet 16-32 drum sander can serve as a thickness planer, but it will only take a few thousandths of an inch off with each pass. The other tools use cutter heads with knives in them, this uses sand paper. However, if I take most of the excess off the short pieces with the jointer, I can then run them through the sander to take off the last bit and make the second face parallel to the face I originally jointed.

The jointer will remove excess wood and smooth the second face, but would do nothing toward making sure the piece is a consistent thickness throughout the piece. Since the shelves mount in grooves cut in the side pieces making them precisely the right thickness and a consistent thickness is very important.

Thanks for watching, I'll see you tomorrow!

2011-12-07T16:14:00.001-05:00

Shooting lacquer was the primary order of the day.

With the issues I ran into yesterday resolved I attached the top cap (had to set the thing on the floor because it was too tall to work with while up on the work bench) and began the final round of sanding.

Then I move the candle rack into the finishing room and shoot the first coat of lacquer.

The rack will get three coats with a scuff sanding between the second and third coat to smooth the finish.

While I wait for lacquer to dry I dig out my template set for the wall hung stopper racks and sort through my short lumber stash. I'm going to whip out a few of these rack because I have a request for a cherry rack and making three or four of these will go quickly if done in a batch. Then it's on to Gary's Heritage Cradle.

When it's done, this is what the candle rack looks like. I only have one of the candle cups, but it should hold 252 of the candles. Hopefully that will be enough to serve their needs for a while.

I have to go clean up the finishing room before I go home. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you tomorrow.

2011-12-07T08:13:00.001-05:00

Final assembly of the rack is what I have on the docket for Tuesday. Although I did not get this posted last night, I got nearly all of it done. That was partly due to the fact that I spent some time over the weekend in here working on the candle rack so it will be possible to deliver it Thursday morning - they need it for a service Thursday evening.

I started by routing a generous curvature on the upper edges of the front and ends of the shelves. Except for sanding, this completes the shelves.

I also milled the parts for the toe cap, the legs, the leg spreader, and the leg mounts.

Over the weekend and Monday evening I also glued all the front baffles and the toe cap in between the front legs. That was a lot of fun, let me tell you! The rack is almost 4 feet wide and holding both ends of the baffle in perfect alignment while I installed a long bar clamp to press the sides (legs) in position against the baffle ends, without smearing glue all over everything, and doing this single handed, took some rather clever arrangements of clamps to position the parts while I placed and tightened the bar clamps.

With the body of the candle rack assembled I can do my construction sanding and first rounds of finish sanding. I use my random orbit sander for the large open areas; a block and detail stick for the tight corners.

I'll save the final round of finish sanding for after the candle rack is assembled to be sure I take off any rub marks or pressure spots left by clamps.

Then I drill the screw holes and counter sinks in the leg parts. I'll use a simple screw-pivot for the leg-to-mount joint and the spreader is fastened to the legs with 2½" long wood screws, since the screws are passing through the legs and going into end grain in the spreaders.

I sand all the parts and prefinish the areas inside the pivot joints.

I assemble legs to spreader with glue and screws and assemble the pivot joints of legs to mounts, then attach the leg mounts to the top of the front legs.

While the glue dries I'm sanding the outside surfaces of the shelves.

When the glue tacks up well I stand the rack up, square up the back legs and mount the leg stays. These fold up to allow the legs to lay in flat behind the front legs for storage and transportation, but lock the legs in position when open to prevent anyone from bumping the rack and causing the legs to scoot and ending up dumping flaming wax all over someone's church.

That would be a bad thing!

The final step of assembly is to attach the shelves to the candle rack body. I apply glue to the tops of the steps in the front legs and the baffle below the shelf and to the lower front edge of the baffle behind the shelf. I use clamps to press the shelf back against the baffle and legs (most baffles took on a little bit of bow either inward or outward, the clamps make sure everything lines up properly) then drive brads down through the bottom of the shelves into the sides and front baffle. Once the brads were in I can remove the clamps and move on to the next shelf.

The top cap gave me some trouble that I did not get resolved before I was called away for the evening, I'll finish that up Wednesday morning then get into the finish sanding and shooting of lacquer.

It rained all day Tuesday and is expected to do so again all day Wednesday, the high humidity makes things like wood filler, glue and lacquer dry much more slowly than it would on a dry day, so these will be long days since I HAVE to deliver it Thursday morning. Just one of the joys of custom furniture making.

See you next time!

2011-12-02T15:06:00.001-05:00

Now that the long shelf parts have been glued up it's time to cut the stub ends and glue them in place.

But first, I'll finish off the long edges. Although I was careful in my alignment and clamping, there will be some small amount of misalignment as well as some glue squeeze-out. I'll run these shelves through the jointer with the bottom against the fence to take a light cut from the front and back edges.

The result is a nice clean edge that very nearly looks like a solid piece of wood, and needs only a little sanding to remove the planer ripples to dress out very nicely.

Now I work at making the end filler pieces. I start by cutting the ends off of each shelf using the miter saw. Because the piece I cut off is needed, I have to insure that it does not get chewed up or tossed off someplace.

But these parts are far too small to risk holding them by hand, so I clamp the long piece in position, then use a piece of scrap wood as a hold-down to hold the end bit in place as I cut it off. This way I don't risk losing any fingers. I'm rather fond of my fingers.

Because the long piece is clamped firmly in place and is positioned precisely on the blade's cut line, it makes a great cradle for cutting the end piece to length so it will fit between the front and back rails.

With that cut - and any shaggy bits sanded off - I apply glue and clamp it in position.

Once the glue dries these ends will also get a light trim to even up the parts.

But for now I work at sanding the inside of the trough - which I can do with the clamps in place - by cutting a scrap block so that it just fits in the trough with sand paper wrapped around it.

With this I can sand the bottom as well as the inside edges of the rails. I don't bother with any of the outside surfaces yet because we are not yet done shaping these shelves. But this is as far as I'll get today.

See you next time!

A Season of Giving

2011-12-01T07:11:00.001-05:00

The Christmas season is upon us, and while to many this time means stressing out over too many parties and searching for the perfect gift for everyone, it can also be a time to look around and find someone who needs a hand.

My friend Sonia Rumzi has some great ideas on this, be sure to check those out [on her blog].

This year Marie and I have decided to adopt Sunset Gap Community Center as our Christmas project. More about them in a moment. Part of our gift to them will be 100% of my receipts from book sales and blog subscriptions in the month of December. And, to make it even better, a local business offered just this morning to match all the funds I can raise. Therefore, during the month of December, if you buy any of my products, everything I would make from them will get doubled and given to Sunset Gap.

Sunset Gap Community Center is a Christian based organization uniting people of all faiths and providing programs that contribute to the physical, social, economic and spiritual growth of the people of Cocke and Sevier Counties. They offer many programs of their own including an early learning center as well as adult education, a food pantry, a thrift shop and community services. They also serve as a command center for the Summer Works programs where young people from churches all over the nation come to volunteer their time and energies to help the local poor by fixing up their homes to make them more inhabitable. The Rural Access Medical (RAM) program also works with Sunset Gap to provide periodic free medical and dental days where doctors and dentists volunteer their time and skills to help those who cannot afford care. For more details, visit [their web site]

Sunset Gap does a lot of good in this region and they exist primarily on the gifts of people like you and me. Please help us help them. If you have no interest in my work personally, perhaps someone you know would. Consider giving it as a gift and triple your holiday spirit. For info on what I offer, please go to the [My Books] page of my author’s web site.

2011-11-30T14:03:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I jointed and surface planed the shelf blanks that were produced by resawing thick lumber the day before. While surfacing them, the Delta planer started sounding really angry again and this time I was not able to tighten anything up to make the sound stop. I suspect it's in the bearing next to the drive pulley. I managed to do what needed doing that day, but it will probably have to go to Knoxville to be rebuilt again to get it working properly. I'm not sue I want to put that much into it again.

Then the shelf blanks were drum sanded to smooth away the ripples left by the jointer and surfacer.

I laid out my cut pattern on masking tape so I could see the lines clearly. From each edge of the blank, I will cut a strip (I must also remember to allow for the saw kerf) the strips will get flipped up and glued on top of the shelf leaving a trough down the middle.

By doing this, the edge of the shelf - particularly on the front - will match up especially well and should look like a solid piece of wood with no joint at all.

I set up the table saw, mark the blanks to help me keep the strips oriented properly to the shelf base and rip the strips. I am very careful to keep the strips with their shelf base.

Now I get out a whole mess of clamps and the glue pot. Making sure that the edge strips are oriented so that from their original position they simply roll up onto the shelf base, I apply glue and clamps.

These will not have to sit for long, just long enough for the glue to tack - an hour or so - then I'll remove the clamps and use them on the next shelf. I won't work with these parts again until the glue has set up hard. It will take two days to get all he shelves through this step.

While I'm waiting for glue to tack I begin setting up to cut the front legs. This starts by taping the template to the two leg blanks stacked together. I use the template to cut the angles on both ends.

The stair-step shapes that support the shelves will be cut on the band saw. I've been waiting for a special blade to come in, and it has arrived.

Because of the steep angle of the first cut, I have to turn the angle gauge around backward so it will sit on the table and securely hold the leg blanks as I make the cuts. I test the set-up on a piece of scrap first.

When I know it's set properly and will hold the bundle like it should, I use a quick-clamp to hold the bundle against the miter gauge as I make the first cuts that will remove the triangular areas for the shelves.

To make the second cuts I re-orient the gauge and make the base cuts.

The right-most cut-out could not be cut because the left end of the bundle hit the wall. The saw is bolted to the floor, so moving it out a bit will be a chore. It was easier to cut that one last, swing the gauge around the other way and lay-out that final cut on the back of the bundle. That only took a few moments because I have a good gauge that is accurate and fast to set.

With the bundle broken down I now have two identical front legs that will support the candle shelves. If my figures are right, this rack will hold 224 of those memorial candle cups. That ought to handle it for a while!

I'll continue gluing up shelves for the rest of this day. In between I'll sand the baffle parts that will be attached between the front legs. They are stacked behind the legs in the photo.

See you tomorrow!

2011-11-29T09:39:00.002-05:00

The project Doug is currently working on is an enlarged version of a memorial candle stand for Smoky Mountain Home Health & Hospice. They hold a memorial service each December to commemorate all their patients who passed away that year. Family members are invited to come forward and light a candle for their loved one.

A few years ago we built them a rack that was based on the design used for the bottle stopper racks. But they have outgrown that and want a larger one. Using that same design will not work out well, so we decided to use a “step ladder” design instead. Rather than solid ends this one will have pivoting rear legs that fold in against a front leg/shelf support so it will transport and store more compactly.

The racks must be designed to hold these candles. The first design used shelves with raised lips along the front, back and ends to contain the candles by cradling the little “foot” on the bottom. Doug considered using a thicker, solid shelf and boring holes to accept the candle bases, but the bases are a strange size and we can not get a Forstner bit that is just right. He’d have to bore a larger hole that will be quite a sloppy fit. So we will stay with the original shelf design. This also gives SMHH&H the option, should they need fewer than the maximum number of candles, to space them out along the shelves.

Doug began by designing the front leg template. This will be stair-stepped to hold the shelves. He made it of 1/8” Baltic Birch Ply and covered it with masking tape so he can easily erase the lay-out lines since this is an on-the-fly design. Once he determined the depth the shelf supports need to be he used double-stick tape to affix a piece of scrap wood to the back of a lay-out triangle and used that to draw in the cut-outs.

When completed, the template is shaped just as the legs will be. He do not cut out the stair-stepping. This is a one-off project, so he’ll save time by taping the template to the leg blanks and cutting the template and legs all in one step.

Preparing the lumber came next by selecting and rough cutting the lumber into parts blanks. Then Doug used the jointer to smooth and flatten one face and one edge. The surface planer is used next to smooth the opposite face of each blank and make it parallel to the jointed face.

Work was interrupted for a few days prior to Thanksgiving because we volunteered to help the local Senior Center serve Thanksgiving dinners to 150 or so shut-ins who would otherwise not get a fancy meal on Thanksgiving. Our contribution included roasting four 20 pound turkeys, de-boning them and bagging the meat. Because Marie has a real job requiring her to be in town all day every weekday, this task fell primarily to Doug. On Thanksgiving day we went in to help serve the food as well.

About that same time our big surface planer: a Grizzly G0453, began making an ugly noise. Doug checked it out and found the sound to be coming from the drive pulley. He disassembled that and found the key that locks the drive pulley to the drive shaft of the motor had grooves worn in the sides that were allowing the pulley to move just a little on the shaft. Not much, but enough to cause the hammering sound.

Doug searched every hardware store and a few machine shops to get a replacement key, but to no avail. Most had an SAE key that was similar: just a tiny bit smaller – but smaller is bad. It turns out this key stock is metric and no one around here carries metric key stock. We’ll have to order a replacement part from the manufacturer.

In the mean time Doug remembered that we have an old Delta 22-580 planer tucked away. This had been replaced by the Grizzly when we needed to step up to a 15” planer and we planned to sell the Delta, but never got around to it. So he pulled that out, put it on a stand and began using that to surface the stock. On the second day, that too began making an ugly noise. Doug tore that one down and found – the drive pulley was loose. What is this an epidemic? Fortunately, tightening the nut that holds the pulley on the driveshaft was all that was needed to fix this one and in an hour he was back in business.

The stock for shelves needed to be resawn so we didn’t waste so much wood. Doug got all this done before Thanksgiving. We took Friday off. Saturday was Doug's yard work day and he spent it gathering and grinding leaves to go in the compost piles. Sunday we don’t work. On Mondays he produces a weekly radio program, burns it to CD and mails it off to the radio station. But today, he’ll get back to this project. Time is growing short: they will be wanting this rack soon.

And that gets us all caught up to date.

2011-11-16T20:09:00.001-05:00

Today I finished finishing the 35 holer stopper rack for Robert. That involved shooting a second coat of lacquer, when that dried scuff sanding the rack to smooth the first two coats, tacking the dust off and shooting a final coat.

When that was hard I attached the silicone "feet".

While waiting for the lacquer coats to dry I worked on another hoop house for my garden. Two down, three to go. These make it possible to continue growing some vegetables all through the winter.

Then I packaged the rack in a suitably sized box padded with air pillows. These are great for packaging; they are very light weight - which helps to keep shipping cost down, and they are made of recyclable plastics so when they get where they are going, please remember to recycle.

This project is done and ready to ship as soon as payment is received.

Next up: a memorial candle rack.

2011-11-15T17:54:00.001-05:00

Pegging the stopper rack is my assigned task for today.

This begins by affixing pieces of masking tape to the shelves and body where I will be making lay-out marks for the peg locations.

I do this to avoid making pencil marks on the wood that I will later have to sand back off again. I will have to sand: to level and smooth the pegs, but the pencil can cut into the wood requiring that I sand deeper to remove them. That changes the shape of the shelves, requiring more sanding to restore the curves... it's just much less hassle to mark on the tape. On the walnut parts, the pencil marks are hard to see, so the tape provides much better visibility as well.

After drawing the lay-out marks and punching the centers I move to the drill press to bore the holes that pass through the shelves and into the body below. The pegs in the body side pass through that and into the base plate.

After knocking out the wood chips I apply glue to each hole with a small artists brush, tap in a length of dowel rod until it bottoms out (the ping, ping sound changes to a thud sound) then use a flush-cut saw to remove the excess dowel, sand a slight bevel on the sawn end to help it go into the next hole smoothly and continue. I use a small piece of scrap set up against the face of the rack to prevent the saw from scoring up that part when it cuts through the dowel - these are close quarters on those rear-most pegs.

Once all the pegs are in I sand them flush with 100 grit paper on a block, then smooth with 150 grit paper.

A final finish sanding and a good once-over with a brush and a tack rag prepare the rack to go into the finishing room for lacquering.

I got the first coat on before other obligations called me away for the evening. I'll complete the lacquering tomorrow and it will be ready to box and ship as soon as that's done.

Because this is not a standard item I will not add it to the web site, but will send a PayPal e-bill to the customer who requested the rack. We'll wrap this one up tomorrow, I'll see you then!

2011-11-12T16:54:00.001-05:00

I sneaked away from my regular Saturday chores today to glue and clamp the shelves to the rack body. This way I'll be ready to start inserting the wooden pegs on my next woodworking day.

On Mondays I do a radio program, so my next session will probably be on Tuesday.

2011-11-11T16:54:00.001-05:00

Sanding and assembling the body of Robert's 35 hole stopper rack was my primary task for this afternoons woodworking session. I got that done and finish sanded the shelves so they will be ready to attach on my next session.

I'll leave the clamps in place overnight to be sure the glue sets up hard. There are no nails or screws used in assembling the body: just superior glue joints. Wooden pins will be inserted along the bottom of the sides and into the base plate later on.

That will do it for today. Remember to take a moment and be grateful for the men and women who have, are, and will be putting themselves in harms way to defend the freedoms we all enjoy.

Happy Veterans Day!

2011-11-10T18:14:00.001-05:00

Completing the shelves and cutting the body parts was the order of the day for my woodworking time.

I started by rounding over the front, sides and holes on all the shelves, this gives them a much classier look and feel, sanding everything smooth completes the shelves and they get set aside.

Then I lay out the body parts. The sides use a stair-step set-up to support the shelves, the base plate needs to be cut to exactly the same width as the baffles that go in under the front edges of all but the lowest shelf. I use the big miter fence to be sure this happens.

The sides get bundled together and cut as a single piece to insure that the steps are exactly even on both sides. This just avoids hassles in the assembly stage.

I still don't have my surface planer fixed, so I'll have to pull out the "spare" tomorrow so I can finish making the parts I'll need for this rack.

Our contribution to the latest Habitat for Humanity house is complete now, so I'll be able to put some longer hours into the woodworking here on most days. I still have other obligations to fulfill, so it won't be full days, but more than what I've had for the past week or so.

See you tomorrow.

2011-11-09T18:10:00.000-05:00

My woodworking time today hit a speed bump: The surface planer broke down - something gone wonky in the drive pulley. Unfortunately I don't have the tool I need to pull the pulley off and see what's what. Someone I know may have one, but he is not at home. So until I get the tool I need the surface planer is out of play.

I needed to smooth and thickness the walnut "plank" I made for the rack body and base. Without the surface planer I had to use the wide drum sander; which does a good job, it's just really, really slow about the thicknessing part of the task because I can't take off more than 1/64" per pass. the planer can take off 1/8" per pass if I want to - I generally don't, but I could if I wanted to. So, instead of taking 10 minutes to dress the plank, it took over an hour.

Then I moved on to the shelves. Yesterday I milled the stock as long strips. Today I cut the strips to the proper length using my big miter fence on the table saw. I cut only the 5 shelves I need for this project, the rest of the strips will be set aside to be cut to the proper length for standard racks the next time I make a batch. Making the shelves now would just slow this project down.

Once all the shelves are cut to proper size I bundle them up and mark them with the template for the holes.

Once the first five holes are punched I'll poke a punch rod through the hole in the middle of the template, place that in the fifth punch mark then mark the final two holes.

Then it's over to the drill press, with a Forstner bit installed where I bore the seven holed down through all five shelves at once: this insures the spacing side to side and front to back is the same on all shelves. The wood curls whirl around as they some up out of the hole - it's kind of fun to see how long they will hang together; sort of like peeling an apple and seeing if you can keep the peel in one long piece.

With all the holes drilled, I'll round off the front corners with the stationary belt sander then remove the tape that binds the stack together.

And that's all I have time for tonight. Tomorrow I'll finish the shelves and cut the body parts.

See you then!

2011-11-08T19:11:00.000-05:00

Starting the 35 hole stopper rack means pulling the template set back down from the wall and selecting some lumber. I have to crunch some numbers to get the dimensions of the walnut pieces I'll be making: the templates are for 3 or 4 tier racks with shelves that hold 5 stoppers each. This rack will have 5 shelves and each shelf will hold 7 stoppers, so everything changes.

Lumber prep comes next: joint one face and one edge of each board smooth, flat and straight, then run them through the surface planer with the jointed faces down on the bed so the cutters smooth the upper side and make them parallel to the jointed face.

Then I rip the remaining edge on the table saw and joint it if it's going to be a glue joint edge.
Now I can arrange the pieces for the best look and glue them together into the wide plank I'll need for making the body sides and base.

I resaw some maple, then surface plane the band sawn faces smooth and to the proper thickness. I made up extra - lots extra - because it just makes sense to do so. We're not *supposed* to be making anything one at a time any more.

That's going to do it for today. I spent a longer than normal day working on a Habitat For Humanity house this morning. Normally my crew works about 4 hours, but we've got bad weather moving in on Thursday so we need to get the roof on before it arrives; that means working longer days to get it done, and that means working late into the evening to get my daily assignment here done. And now I'm very ready for a hot shower, some Advil and some supper.

See you tomorrow!

2011-11-07T10:42:00.000-05:00

I brought in the packaging materials over the weekend and began slicing up the 4'x8' Styrofoam sheet and blocks of Styrofoam (saved from various shipments we've received) for the padding and filler pieces I'll need to insure that the tables will arrive intact. A few of our past customers have commented that they weren't sure whether to be more impressed by the craftsmanship of the tables or the care we put into packaging them!

We have boxes custom made for these tables by a box company in Morristown TN. They are sized to be *just barely* within the range of a first tier oversize shipment. Any larger and they'd slide into the next tier and shipping cost would increase significantly. This being a two table set instead of the usual four table set, I could cut the box down by about 3 inches, but the effort and time spent doing this is wasted because there would be no reduction in shipping cost, so I simply use foam blocks to fill the empty space.

Once the packaging is done, I seal up the box, run a shipping label and order a pick-up from Fed Ex for Monday. The shipping process allows me to have an eMail sent to my customer so they know the shipment has been processed and will have the tracking number so she can follow it's progress and/or get an estimated delivery date. Because this package is insured for $500, a signature will be required upon delivery so Fed Ex does not just drop it on a doorstep and leave.

That completes this project. Today (Monday) I'll clear away the packaging supplies, put away all the templates and jigs for the tables and start on the 5 tier stopper rack. Beyond that I have a memorial candle stand to build, then a Heritage Cradle in ash wood, and a batch of wall hung stopper racks, at least one of which needs to be all cherry for a request. Then I'll get started on a barn wood headboard as my wife's Christmas present. So, I still have plenty of sawdust to make before the year is out. Thanks for following along!

2011-11-03T18:09:00.000-04:00

Today we finish the tables. I started by doing the finish sanding and final inspection. I find that doing the thorough job of hand sanding a piece as the final pass of sanding is a great time to closely inspect the piece for any little thing that I may have missed during construction and assembly. And corrections or adjustments must be made before shooting it with lacquer.

Following the sanding I moved the tables into the finishing room with the stand. The stand only needed to be scuff sanded and it's final coat of lacquer, the trays will get three coats with a scuffing between second and third. I do this only to provide a wonderfully smooth finish coat.

All that will remain to be done is to let the lacquer on the tables set up good and hard overnight, then I can apply a skim coat of high grade polyurethane to the tray tops - this protects the lacquer against "modern living". So many folks these days are so accustomed to plastic coated furniture that they've forgotten (or never knew) how to care for fine furniture with a traditional finish. The skim coat helps protect the tray tops from white rings that can form under sweaty glasses or hot dinner plates. Lacquer does that. The Poly takes at least 24 hours to cure out before I can package the tables or I risk the packing foam sticking to the poly and ruining the finish. Don't want that!

Since these are essentially done, I'm going to post them to the web site as available so that payment can be accomplished and we will be ready to send them on their way Monday. See you tomorrow.

2011-11-02T16:34:00.001-04:00

Yesterday (Tuesday) I came in to remove the clamps from the tables finish making the screw hole plugs, then needed to drive Mom to a doctors appointment in Morristown.

Today I launched back into completing these tables. I started by sanding the outside faces of the tray rails. The first pass is done with a power sander to remove mill marks and nicks left from construction. I use filler blocks in the vice so I'm clamping to the tray panel not the more delicate tray rails while I sand.

At this point the outside edges of the rails are still square, after sanding the rail faces smooth, I use the router table to round-over the upper and lower edges with a generous curve for a pleasant fit in your hand when you carry the trays. I use a smaller radius round-over on the inner edge to help keep things on the tray.

Once the round-overs are made I sand with a fine grit of paper to smooth the new round-overs and the scratches left by the power sander. From here on out all sanding is done by hand.

Next I lay the table base on the table tray and check the fit. The leg mount blocks need to fit snugly in the corners, but there can be no binding at the top or bottom of the legs. At this point I can disassemble the leg set and trim a smidge off the spreaders if the fit is too tight, or I can add a washer or two to the mounting block joint(s) if the fit is too loose. These are just right, so I can move on to the next step.

Which is to glue in the screw hole plugs in both table bases and the stand. Once the glue tacks up a bit I can trim off the stumps and sand them flush.

Then I can glue the leg mount blocks and the latch block to the underside of the trays. These are important glue joints so I'll let the glue set up over night before I work with them further.
But I can and do proceed with the finish sanding and first coat of lacquer on the stand.

That uses up this day. Tomorrow I'll finish sand and lacquer the tables. I'll be "in the field" in the morning, but will spend the afternoon here. I expect to get the lacquering completed tomorrow, the skim coat of poly will go on Friday and I'll give that the weekend to set up good and hard. If nothing unexpected pops up, these tables will be ready to ship on Monday.

2011-10-28T17:30:00.000-04:00

Final parts making was the order of the day - and it was a long day today because it's raining out and I was stuck inside anyway.

I started by sanding both sides of the panels. The plywood backer did not get as much attention as the oak side, but it did get sanded smooth. The oak side got sanded to the finish stage.

After sanding I took the panels into the finishing room and shot the edges with lacquer. There are two reasons for doing this. One concerns the fact that the solid wood ribbon panel will expand and contract with changes in the humidity. It's been raining yesterday and today, so it will be expanded. Finishing the long grain edges insures that after assembly if the panel contracts (and it will) an unfinished stripe of wood will not emerge from the groove in the tray rail. That would be unsightly. The other reason for finishing the corners is to help prevent glue from bonding the corners of the ribbon panel to the corners of the rails.

While the lacquer dries I sand and begin assembly of the stand. I'll continue working on this any time I've got down time in building the trays.

To cut the tray rails I install a jig that serves as a backer to prevent tearing out the back side of the rail stock as I cut the miter joints and it is calibrated with the exact length each rail needs to be for a perfect fit. As long as I got the tray panels the right size there should be no tedious paring away at over length rails to sneak up on a proper fit,

The rails are cut from long strips of stock and each piece is cut sequentially so the grain in the wood wraps around the corners in a most wonderful way. I hold the corners together with masking tape and check for a precise fit at all corners and to the panel.

Once I'm satisfied with the fit I take each rail piece loose so I can apply just the right amount of glue to just the right places and slip the rail back into place. The tape helps hold everything in place as I work.

When all the pieces are glued I apply clamps to firmly hols the pieces in place. I'll leave these in place overnight to allow the glue to achieve maximum hold before I work with them further.

In the mean time I finish assembling the stand.

I also shape and assemble the latch blocks. These parts will hold the tray table legs in teh open position while the tables are in use. I should probably try to patent these, they're really quite clever.

One last chore before the girls and I head home for some Chinese food and a schlocky Sci-Fi movie (our standard Friday evening fare) is to make up a mess of plugs that will be glued in over the recessed screws to hide them. I use scraps from the table to the color matches well.

And that's going to do it for the day and the week. next week I'll do the final assembly by jointing the trays to the bases, plug the screw holes and do the finish sanding. Then all that's left to do is to apply the finish and they'll be ready to box up so they can ship out as soon as they're purchased.

2011-10-27T17:44:00.000-04:00

Completing the tray panels will be my primary task for today. I start by removing the clamps and the tape that held the panels together during the gluing and clamping process.

Then I use the surface planer to smooth both faces of the panels, removing any glue ridges that may have snuck past my damp rag yesterday and bringing the panel to the finished thickness of 1/4".

Then I cut the backer panels I need from a chunk of Baltic birch plywood. This material is solid birch, no voids and is expensive stuff made for use in furniture and high end cabinets.

At this point I cut the panels to finished width and rough length. You'll see why in just a bit.

Then I center the ribbon panels on the backer panels and glue the two together. The backers are needed as a stable surface to which to glue the tray rails. The ribbon panels, being solid wood, will expand and contract a little across their width, making them a poor foundation for the rails. This assembly leaves just a scosh of expansion room inside the rail assembly yet allows me to glue the rails solidly to the backer.

While the glue on those tries I make the parts blanks I'll need for the tray stand, pieces. Rail stock has already been milled, I'll cut it to length later.

I apply masking tape to the walnut where I will need to make pencil lines so they are easy to see. The templates give the the shape and the centers for the various holes I'll need to bore to make the stand.

I cut out the curves on the band saw and finish them off on the big belt sander.

When the glue in the tray panels assemblies is dry I mount the big crosscut sled and trim the panels to finished length by trimming both ends so they are square and the ribbon panel is exactly flush with the backer panels. The ribbons will not expand along their length, so I want the ends flush for maximum strength.

I also got the stand parts made and the sub-assemblies put together. I'll let the glue dry overnight because I 'm out of time for today. Time to pack up and head for home: Marie will be arriving soon with a truck-load of groceries and I'll need to help carry then in the house. Tomorrow I should complete assembly of the tables and possibly the stand as well. All that will be left then will be the finish sanding and applying the finish.

I'm running a little behind on the scheduled completion time because I was sick as a dog for a week, but even with that I'm only a couple of days late now. And we are no longer promising delivery dates, because we are no longer doing custom work.

See you tomorrow!

2011-10-26T14:29:00.003-04:00

Making ribbon panels will occupy most of today's woodworking time, but first I assemble the table bases by attaching the spreaders I made yesterday to the leg pair sub-assemblies made earlier. This is done with screws alone - no glue as I may have to take them apart and adjust the width. I won't know that until I get the trays done.

I prepped some parts blanks previously, I pull those out now and slice the boards into 5/16" thick ribbon strips. I am careful to keep the strips in order as I cut them off so the grain pattern flows effortlessly across the panel when I'm done.

I make the panels by laying the ribbon strips down flat and arranging them for the most pleasing look possible. Once they are edge-glued into a panel all the seams will disappear and the panel will look like a single wide piece of wood.

Sometimes I like to include a special feature as a center stripe in the panel, but i do this only if I can get the grain to match up - no sudden pattern changes allowed. I cut more than enough strips to make the two panels and will make up as many panels as I can. The extra will get set aside for next time.

I use a square to even up one end of the panel then use three strips of wide masking tape to bind the strips together into a panel. this then can be sort of "rolled up" and put on a special gluing fixture I made that opens up one joint for gluing then supports the glued section keeping those joints closed up.

When all the joints are glued I move the panel over to a set of clamps. As I apply pressure I check to be sure the strips are aligned well: I only have 1/16" of wood I can remove in the smoothing process, so it has to be pretty close to perfect before I start.

These panels will be allowed to sit in their clamps overnight to achieve maximum glue hold before I work with them further.

The rest of the afternoon will be spent roughing out stand parts. Then I'm off to help Marie with a brush-pile burning project as part of our fall clean-up process. It's supposed to rain again tomorrow, so this needs to be done today. Burning a wet brush pile does not work so well!

2011-10-25T16:09:00.000-04:00

Today I made the spreaders, the part that holds the legs in position and prevents side-to-side wobble.

I started by selecting rough cut lumber for the parts blanks. I can use pieces that were set aside from other projects as long as I can cut around any defects. I do prefer to be able to get both the upper and lower spreader from the same board so the color matches. I'll also make some extras as a hedge against mishaps. If not needed they'll go on the parts rack to be used another time.

The lumber is jointed, and surface planed to smooth and flatten it then bring it to finished thickness.

The final step is to trim the parts to finished width and length. Now I use my template (above) to lay out the curved edges and the latch block hole on the upper spreaders.

I rough-cut the curves using the bandsaw. I'll leave 3/32 or so of wood outside the line and I don't have to be especially finicky about cutting a smooth curve. On this step I'm just removing the bulk of the waste wood.

I slip the parts blank back into the template/jig and use a piloted flush trim bit in the router table to finish the curves. The bit rides along the curved edge of the template and trims the part to the exact same shape.

Next I bore the latch block slot - an oval made by boring overlapping holes using a Forstner bit; about the only tool that will drill overlapping holes. Any minor nubbins that are left will be sanded out later.

The router table is next, where I round-over the long edges and the tab-slot.

Then I fit the drill press with a right angle fixture to hold the spreaders vertical so I can drill pilot holes that will mate up with the counter-bored screw holes I drilled in the legs previously.

The rest of the afternoon is spent sanding the parts smooth. I use a pair of sanding blocks on the flat faces and a piece of folded sandpaper for the rounded over edges and slots. It's tedious work, and I bounce a light off the surfaces regularly to be sure I've sanded out all the ripples left by the planer and jointer. It's much easier to do this now than after the bases are assembled.

By the end of my woodworking time I have the four spreaders I'll need for this two table set all done and ready to be assembled to the leg pairs to make the table bases. I'll get to that tomorrow. Right now I need to get the tractor out, hook up the wagon and haul a load of firewood up to the house; we're expecting colder weather this weekend and I want to have wood laid in ahead of time.

See you tomorrow!

2011-10-21T17:06:00.001-04:00

Today we make legs.

The process starts by rough cutting the lumber to approximate size, jointing and surface planing it smooth and trimming to finished size. Then I use my leg templates to lay out the six pilot holes and 5 counter bores and 1 countersink that will allow me to use screws to assemble the table bases. I bore these holes with a drill press.

Then I sand.

After that I pre-finish the insides of the scissor joint where the legs pivot and the pivot point at the top of each outside leg that attaches to a mounting block. I use washers to prevent the wood of the legs from rubbing heavily together and assemble the joints with wood screws. Most of the screws will be hidden under wooden plugs once I'm certain everything fits properly.

By day's end I have four leg-pairs made up and ready to go - enough for the two tables we need. These are the first sub-assembly of the table bases.

Why aren't I making up enough for a dozen tables? Mostly because that would delay production of the set that we've promised by the end of the month. I'll do a run of tables later, after I got the things that I was foolish enough to promise by a certain date done. I'm not supposed to be doing that anymore, but old habits die hard.

Our shop is closed on weekends, Mondays are Radio Program day so check back with us on Tuesday.

See you then!

2011-10-20T18:14:00.002-04:00

I was reminded today that there is an order for a pair of tray tables in line ahead of the oversized stopper rack, so, even though I'm already in stopper rack mode, I need to put all this stuff away and drag out the tray table stuff.

But first, I boxed up the three stopper racks and stuck them in the store room, this way when an order comes in all I have to do is run a label and out they go.

We bought flats of boxes sized to fit these racks so I would not have to be forever scrounging for boxes the right size. They also look nicer.

Packing, on the other hand is whatever I have on hand, mostly what I've saved from incoming packages when I order supplies. I appreciate the corn starch "foam peanuts" because a little water (like rain) will cause them to instantly melt away to nothing, unlike Styrofoam which hangs around for a bazillion years. I also save recyclable plastic air pillows for filling larger voids and shredded paper.

Once that's done I clean up a bit, put away the stopper rack templates and supplies and get out the tray table templates, jigs and fixtures. I also find that I have some parts left over from the last run, so I start off with a leg up on the process.

Now I need to decide what parts I will need to make and select lumber for them. Then I'll start the milling process by prepping the lumber.

Wednesday Oct. 19, 2011

2011-10-19T14:01:00.000-04:00

Today I'll be shooting lacquer, so I begin the day by assembling and filling the HVLP spray gun I use with semi-gloss lacquer and setting up the finishing room. I have a 3 foot diameter spinning table that helps quite a lot in finishing multiple items like this. Lacquer is deadly stuff... wait... let me rephrase that: lacquer THINNER is deadly stuff. The lacquer itself is quite harmless once all the thinner that makes it a sprayable liquid has evaporated out of it. But the thinner itself is another matter - it is a carcinogen that can be absorbed right through your skin as well as inhaled. If inhaled it inhibits brain function and kills off brain cells - wearing gloves and a respirator with an organic vapor cartridge is required while working with the stuff. I also set up a fan to pull contaminated air out and open a second window to allow fresh ait to be drawn in by the fan. This helps keep the rest of the shop free of the lacquer stink that will cause nausea and headache if I breathe the fumes.

The racks will get three full coats and a fourth coat on the shelves. I'll scuff sand the racks with a very fine sanding sponge after the second coat just to smooth the finish.

Once they're done I'll let them sit over night. I do this not so much to let the finish dry: it dries quickly, but to let them air out a bit before sealing them up into boxes and placing them on the shelf ready to ship out to some lucky people.

Once these are boxed and stored away I'll clean up the shop a bit and start in on our next project; a special stopper rack that is 5 tiers high and seven spots wide for a total of 35 stoppers displayed. Why didn't I build that along with these? Because this is so atypical that it doesn't really flow in with the steps it took to make these 3 tier racks. this is a re-creation of a custom job we did for the fella a couple of years ago. Technically we're not doing custom work any more, but he is a past customer, and he begged. OK, no he didn't, I'm just an old softie. Gonna have to lose that habit.

Tuesday Oct. 18th

2011-10-18T15:04:00.002-04:00

Did I say I'd be back on Monday? I'm sorry I meant Tuesday. Although technically I was here Monday but as I have mentioned before, Mondays are Radio Program day.

Today I need to pin the three racks I've been building. This time I'll pin the shelves with walnut dowels.

Last time I placed masking tape tabs on the shelves and used a pencil and Incra ruler to lay out the pin locations. Then I used a snapper to punch the pin hole centers. I've set up the drill press with a twist drill the right size for my dowels and have set the depth so it will drill through the shelf and 1/4" into the rack body. I'll drill the holes in all the lower shelves, adjust the drill press table to drill the middle shelves and drill all of those, reset it again for the top shelves and finally drill the back band.

I have hope I did my lay-out correctly because the rear pin holes are very close to the edge of the next shelf. If I was off by just a a little the drill will crew a divot out of the front of the shelf, and that means more time and effort invested into sanding that out and re shaping the shelf edge. Since we don't have time to spare, I try not to use it up in foolish ways.

Next I apply glue to a pair of holes and drive dowels in until they bottom out. You can tell when they bottom because the sound they make as you hit them with the mallet changes from a woody 'ping' to a deep, solid thud.

Once they've bottomed I use a flush cut saw to trill off the dowels, glue another pair of holes and drive them in again.

Between each driving I sand a small champher on the end of the dowels to help them go into the holes smoothly.

After removing the masking tape it's time to sand the pins flush and smooth. I use sanding blocks for this, one equipped with 100 grit paper. for fairing the stump (it only protrudes by the thickness of the masking tape, but this is enough to get a good smooth surface after sanding) and 150 for the finish sanding.

When this is done I'll blow the dist out and set them aside. Tomorrow I'll load the HVLP gun with lacquer and spend the day finishing. I' not looking forward to that. Lacquer always makes me sick to my stomach (my beard prevents the respirator form sealing up as completely as it should) and I'm still feeling puny from being sick last week. But, at least i do have a dedicated finishing room. I can go in there to shoot the lacquer then while it dries I'll retreat to another part of the shop and work on something else between shooting sessions.

Saturday October 15

2011-10-15T07:41:00.001-04:00

I’ve been sick as a dog this week, in fact on Wednesday I even had a sick dog to commiserate with; Zadie got into some bad road-kill or something and spend the day laying near the fireplace. Occasionally she’d lift her head and look bleary eyed at me laying on the sofa as if to say, “Are you still alive?” I’d nod and she’d lay her head back down and go back to sleep. By evening, Zadie as her usual exuberant self again, my malady is taking a little longer.

I am doing better though and hope to be back in the shop on Monday.

Friday October 7th

2011-10-07T16:58:00.002-04:00

My woodworking time today was spent hand sanding the shelves for the 3-Tier stopper racks then gluing and clamping them to the rack bodies. Sanding takes a bit of time because of the gentle round-overs on the shelf edges and the holes. As I sand each shelf I glue and clamp it to the rack body. By the time the second rack is done I can remove the clamps from the first rack and use them on the third. I can keep this rotation going for as long as needed.

Once the glue dried and I could remove the clamps I took the racks back to the work room, affixed tabs of masking tape and laid out the peg holes in the shelves using my small Incra ruler and a thin lead mechanical pencil. When all the shelves are laid out I'll use the drill press to bore holes for the walnut dowels that will be my shelf pegs.

Positioning these holes is fairly important to insure that the hole does not bust through the wood of the side pieces. Even just getting too close to the side will allow glue to weep through the wood when I drive in the dowel - and that makes a mess when it comes time to finish the wood.

This session is about used up, so I'll let the glue set up overnight and bore holes next time. See you then!

Thursday, October 6th

2011-10-06T19:04:00.001-04:00

My woodworking time today was spent pegging the 3-tier bottle stopper rack bodies that I've built.

First I lay on a strip of masking tape. This gives me something to write on to lay out the hole locations, protects the wood from glue and offers a teeny bit of "stump" on the pegs when I use a flush-cut saw to cut the dowel off so I can sand them flush with the rack body.

I bore the holes with a drill press, drilling through the side piece and into the base plate so the pegs will serve as a fastener as well as decoration.

These pegs are maple to match the shelves. Pegs I install through the maple shelves will be walnut to match the rack body.

Now we're ready to install shelves.

Wednesday Oct 5th

2011-10-05T15:11:00.001-04:00

I'm back to making bottle stopper racks today - and gardening - and dealing with the produce. I'll have bodies for 4 3-Tier racks when I'm done, but only have shelves made up for 3 racks. The extra body will get set aside and saved for the next run.

Following this I'll make a 2 custom rack: one a stopper rack that holds 35 stoppers the other an enlargement of a memorial candle rack we built some years ago. That big monster on the assembly table behind the stopper racks is the old one - they want one twice that size!

Then I'll get started on some tray tables.

Old Timey Days entrance & signs

2011-10-04T09:22:00.003-04:00

I spent last week building a n entryway arch and 10 large sign boards for the Old Timey Days section of the county's annual Harvest Street Festival. It had been raining on and off, so it was necessary to build them inside the shop. The entryway proved to be just a bit snug! It's 15 feet long and 8' high.

We used wood from a 60 year old barn that was recently torn down, most of it is red oak, but I encountered some white oak, poplar and even maple as I cut the boards into parts.

Somehow it did not seem nearly as massive once it was set-up on the street downtown. Still, we received many great compliments on our rustic entryway. The Tourism Department Director and volunteers did the decorating. Pretty nice huh?

Once the event was over, the entryway breaks down into four parts (two fence panels, two uprights) and the branch/arch with the removal of just 8 screws. This makes it easy to take down and store away until needed again, and just as easy to put up again next time.

Wednesday Sept 21

2011-09-21T16:19:00.000-04:00

The two four-tier bottle stopper racks are built and - even as I type this - are in the finishing room being lacquered. They will be added to on-hand stock on our web site momentarily.

Our local Tourism Counsel has asked for my help in building an 8 foot high by 15 feet wide entryway trellis for an event they're hosting. Naturally the event is just around the corner and to get this done in time will require putting teh three tier racks and tray tables on hold for a time. This should not be a hardship as no one has reserved or shown interest in these as yet.

I have a week to produce the trellis. Once that's been delivered I'll get back to work on these other items.

Friday, Sept 16, 2011

2011-09-16T17:14:00.002-04:00

My woodworking time for this week has been spent milling lumber and cutting parts for 6 bottle stopper racks - 4 Three-Tier Racks and 2 Four-Tier Racks. The bodies are walnut, the shelves are maple, except for one of the four-tiers which will have shelves of white oak - just for a change.

So far I have all of the parts made and the two four-tier racks are well along in the assembly stage. I began assembling these first because we have a customer who want one, and told me he wanted one, so I'll make his a priority. The others will all go into on-hand stock and be available for the christmas shoppers - who typically start looking at our stuff about now.

When these racks are done I'll start on TV Tray Tables. At one time these were our hottest selling item. The crashed economy has dampened enthusiasm for them considerably, but we still sell a few, especially at Christmas time.

I am not doing step by step photo journals of these projects because they have been done so many times on this blog already. I'll reserve the step-by-step listing for unique projects. Two of which are on the slate to be worked in when I can make the time. One is a counter-top bill organizer/secretary the other is a lap-top computer desk modeled after a campaign desk.

Phil & Terri's Entertainment/Library Cabinets

2011-07-13T22:22:00.092-04:00

Phil & Terri want a pair of matched tables or cabinets for their living room. One will hold A/V equipment and have a pair of doors over most of it. The other will have shelves for books. They are to be made of red oak and stained very dark brown. The styling is nice, patterned after a piece they found in a catalog, but they want it built of solid wood not particle board and crafted to last many years, so they came to me. If you have been following along with this project you may Jump to the [New Stuff].

The first step (after working up the design sketches and pulling lumber) is to make templates for the oddly shaped pieces. The side and front of each cabinet lean in at the top, and the lower rails on the front and sides are arched on the lower edge. This makes for an attractive piece of furniture, but is tricky to build. Templates help get the trickiest bits consistently shaped.

Making Top Plates
Cutting rough lumber to length using the chop saw station.

Using the big jointer to flatten one face and one edge and get that edge perfectly square to the flattened face.

Trying out pairs of boards to find the best matches. I want the center joint to be as nearly invisible as possible, that means color of wood and grain pattern needs to be very similar.

After matching them up, I take the first pair into the assembly room and glue them together. I use clamps above and below to keep from bowing the assembly.

The black iron pipe used in the longer pipe clamps will leech oil out where glue touches it and make black stains in the wood that go deep and are hard to remove. To prevent this I put tabs of masking tape under the joint line. No need to cover the whole pipe, just where the glue will be. Silver pipe does not stain, but is not as stiff as the black pipe, not suitable for longer clamps.

After the glue in the paired-up boards has set I remove them from the clamps, scrape off the glue pips and smooth the rough face in the surface planer. One light final pass on the jointed face will remove any minor irregularity there.

While glue sets up in the paired up boards I work on making parts blanks for the lower rails and legs - the oddly shaped bits. I use the templates to help me lay out the parts so I make maximum use of the lumber, working around the ugly bits and nesting the parts to reduce waste. Then I cut them out on the band saw.

Stacked parts after roughing out.

Now that all four pairs of boards have been glued up I arrange the four pairs and look for the best matches to pair these up and make the 20" wide cabinet tops. When I find the best matches I mark them and joint those edges.

Back again to the assembly room, glue and clamps.

I have one knot hole to deal with. I like to leave tight, small knots as character marks; these enhance the look of our furniture when properly used. This one turned out to be in a perfect location, but the center was loose. I could try gluing it in, but that seldom works well, so I knocked it out and mixed up some epoxy putty to fill it with. I use UTC powders to tint it, mixing them through the doughy epoxy, but not mixing to a perfectly uniform color. I like to leave the colors variable to look more like natural wood, that way I don't have to go back afterward and "paint" in the proper detail to keep it from looking like filler.

I pack the hole with the epoxy, which will set up as hard as wood and will machine, sand and stain as well as the wood.

Then I spend and afternoon drum sanding both sides of the two 21" x 40" blanks. The drum sander takes only a few thousandths of an inch off with each pass and feeds the wood through slowly. The open end of the drum allows me to sand panels wider than the sander; run it through once, spin it around and run the other side through. The surface planer is faster, but will handle boards up to 15", these are 21" wide.

When done, we have two very nice looking panels. See the little knot near the far end?

Here's a better look at it. Looks quite natural.

The final step is to trim the panels to finished size. I use the rip fence to cut the long sides in multiple steps to be sure they end up straight, then mount the big cut-off sled to trim the ends to length. measuring across the diagonals tells me if I got them square - perfect!

Than I stack the two panels, good-faces together and bind them with clamps around the edges. This will keep the most important faces safe from damage and discourage the large panels from warping while I build the rest of the cabinet.

Making the Legs

Now I use the leg template to set up the chop saw to cut the 3° angle that is required on the top and bottom ends of each leg.

Then I install and tune a taper jig to cut the long straight taper on the inside edge of each leg. Tuning it in for a perfect cut the entire length takes many practice passes.

Making the Arched Lower Rails

I use the template for the side rails (short rails) to set up a stop block on the chop saw so I can cut the short rails to proper length. This length includes material needed to form a tenon on each end.

I make use of the fence and stop block to keep the template aligned while I trace the shape onto the part blanks.

After band sawing the arch to just outside the line, I finish it off using a sanding drum. this removes the saw marks and allows me to smooth out any lumps I may have left.

Competed parts blanks stacked and awaiting the next step of their evolution.

There is one last step to do in creating the legs; that is a slight bevel on teh inside edges inder the arched rails. Just a decorative touch, but a nice one. I lay out one leg, use an angle finder to measure the angle formed from the base.

Then I use this gauge to set the angle on the chop saw (compound miter saw). I also install a disposable back board by clamping a smooth piece of scrap stock to the saw's fence.

I make a plunge cut through the disposable fence to determine the path of the blade.

I can use this cut to line up the cut line on the part with the path of the blade...

...when that is lined up I can install a stop block that will make positioning all the other legs automatic. Then I these angles, set the legs aside, and take all this stuff off of the saw.

Next I want to start the tenons on the lower long rails. I begin by installing my mega-miter fence. This is long enough to support the entire length of the rails despite having arches cut in one edge. I adjust the stop to make the cut on the waste side of the lay-out line, and make my first cut. Then I roll the rail 90° and make the next cut, roll it again, make the third cut, roll it one more time and this cut completes an uninterrupted cut that runs all the way around the board and mates up perfectly at each corner. Flip the rail and repeat the process for the other end. Then repeat the whole process for each of the other three rails.

Now I set up the band saw to remove the waste at the ends of the tenons. I am careful to stop pushing just as I approach the shoulder cut so the blade does not jump across the shoulder cut and slice into the end of the rail stock. On a straight rail I'd just flip it over and cut the other edge the same way, but the arch on that edge prevents this.

So I adjust the fence backward, run the straight edge along the fence and trim off the excess on the arched edge. I'll wait to cut the tenon cheeks (the wide faces) until after I've chopped the mortises that the tenons will fit into.

I finish out the day's task by milling stock for the top long rails (no arches) and repeat this whole tenoning process on them, except that the tenons up there are 3/4 inch long, not 2 inches like these guys.

Cutting Mortises

Because the legs for these cabinets are tapered, I need to support them at an angle so the mortises get cut square to the edge. I could built a cradle to hold the narrow end up enough to level the leg out, but I decided not to bother with all that for just 8 pieces. Instead I just tilted the bed of the drill press. I clamped a leg to the table, strapped a bubble level to the leg with masking tape and used the level as a reference to getting the leg perpendicular (square / 90°) to the mortising bit; which I have not installed yet in this photo.

Then I change the machine from being a drill press to being a mortising machine by installing a mortising head and chisel/bit. This rig allows me to drill a series of square holes, one next to the other, so the end result is a nice, rectangular mortise. There are other ways of doing this, including a jig for a plunge router, using a router table, drilling and chiseling, and hand cutting them. But this is my favorite.

When I'm done I have mortises cut for the upper and lower front and back rails. I'll finish up by clearing all the chips from the mortises, then check the bottoms of them and clean up any nubbins that may have been left in the corners.

Completing the Tenons

Now I match up legs into pairs, and match those to rails to get the nicest look for each of the frames I am to build, and decide which ones will be front frames and which will be back frames. I mark them with labels made from tabs of masking tape.

Then I cut the waste from the cheeks of the tenons. I do one - actually just part of one; about 1/3 of a long tenon as a test run in case I get the saw set up to cut too small. It was actually a little thick, so I'm good.

Using a block plane and chisel I shave the tenons down to a perfect fit. Perfect here is one where the joint slides together with a nice "snick" sound. No slop and wiggle, but no need to pound on it to get it to go together.

I shave a little, and test. Shave a little and test. Repeating until it's perfect. Perfection takes time.

When I'm done, I have four frames, two fronts, two backs all fitted up. Now I'll move on to the sides.

Preparing for the Side Panels

The ends, or sides, of these cabinets will consist of framed panels. The panels will lodge in grooves cut on the inner edges of the rails and the legs (which serve as stiles). So I need to cut these grooves now.

I set up the table saw and mill a centered groove end-to-end on the inner edges of the upper and lower rails.

Then I cut the mortises for the side rails in the legs

And connect the two mortises with a groove for the panel. Because I do not want the groove to run the full length of the leg: the lower portion will be visible under the cabinet, I use the mortise as a terminus for the groove and drop the leg onto the dado head on the saw – or lift it off; depending on the orientation of the leg – so the groove does not extend beyond the dado.

The grooves in the rails and in the legs must match up perfectly or the panel will bind and assembly will be seriously complicated.

But the groove must not extend to this part of the leg where it would be visible.

Completing the Case Frame

The final step in building the case frame is to lay-out and cut the angles on the front ends of the side rails. These angles are necessary because the front of the cabinet slopes inward just as the sides do. Calculating this angle and rail length could be done with mathematics, but I’ve never trusted mathematics all that much; they tend to lie to me. Or maybe I’m just not that good with them… whichever, when I have to get a compound element like this (rail length AND angle have to be dead-on for this to work) I find it better to simply take my measurements from the piece itself. So I set-up a Rube Goldberg looking arrangement of rulers, clamped to the other case parts to get exact measurements between the framing parts, and set the front frame inside the side frames, held in position with clamps.

Then I simply strike pencil marks on the side rails to tell me the angle and exact length of upper and lower side rails. Nothing could be simpler, right?

Next I use a protractor to measure the angle from the lower side rail – it’s wider and gives me a more accurate read of the angle than the narrow upper side rail would – and set that angle on my miter saw. I cut a piece of scrap stock, lay that on top of my side rail and compare the angles to be sure it’s correct. We’re good there. Oops, setting the angle to the left means the lower rails will be sitting with the arched edges to the fence. Not good: no support for the end being cut. I could install a backer-fence to offer support…

…but it’s easier just to swing the saw the other way and lay the lower rails with the straight edge to the fence. I use the rail itself to determine the position of a stop block and cut all four lower rails. Reset the length for the upper rails, which are shorter, and cut all four of those.

Then it’s time for the acid test: put the side rails back into the casework, use clamps to hold the front frame in place and see if the angled front edges of the rails sit against the front frame without any tell-tale gaps… drum roll… TA-DA - perfect!

So I take the case apart again and drill my pocket holes in the side rails. These will house face frame screws that hold the front of the side frames to the front frame. Normally I’d use mortise & tenon joints here too, but we’re short on time and cutting perfect tenons on an angle is time intensive.

The final step in casework is to cut grooves on the insides of the upper rails that will provide a secure hold for the steel Z clips that will be used to attach the top plates to the casework. I can’t just screw the top to the casework because the top plate will want to expand and contract across the grain with changes in humidity, if it were solidly attached to the case, this expansion force would tend to pop the cases joints. Allowing for seasonal movement means using an attachment method with some “give” in it. These table top fasteners will do that. The only danger in this is that when the shelves are installed and one filled with books, the other with AV equipment these cabinets will be heavy. If one lifts the cabinet by grabbing the overhang of the top, there is a danger of ripping the screw out or bending the faster clips. Therefore I always enclose a “floating top” warning that directs the new owner to lift the cabinet from the bottom if they must move it around.

Now I can glue up the front and back frames, using clamps to hold the joints tight while the glue sets. I measure across diagonals and use a square to check the inside corners to be sure it’s coming out square. While the glue sets up I begin milling lumber for the bottom plates and side panels. We will look at that in the next step.

Bottom Plates

The floors of these cabinets, like the shelves are solid wood plates. These are made up just as I made the top plates above. The process starts with rough cutting boards into properly sized chunks and jointing one face and one edge smooth and flat.

Once in a while delays are introduced into the process through mechanical failure. This happens when machines are involved. In this case I was jointing boards when the cutter head started slowing down, sounding like the electricity was dropping out. After a few passes something in the base cabinet went Whunk-clunk-bang and the cutter head stopped all together. Nope, not the electricity. I pulled the side panels and found what the trouble was. This piece of key-stock was laying on the floor inside the jointer cabinet,

The belt had come off the drive pulley and the pulley had slid out almost off the end of the drive shaft. The drive shaft has a slot milled into it, the drive pulley has a matching slot milled inside its hub. The key stock or ‘key” is precisely sized to fit into these slots when lined up together, locking the hub to the shaft. A set screw in the hub is sometimes used to lock the key in place. In this case, the set screw had vibrated loose, allowed the key to slide out and the pulley to spin on the shaft as well as walk out to the end of the shaft. Naturally all this abnormal movement did damage to the involved parts, including mushrooming the end of the drive shaft where the key came out of the slot and was twisted sideways by the torque of the drive shaft against the drag of the drive pulley trying to power the cutter head as I passed wood over it.

Fortunately the key itself was not bent and I was able to clean up the drive shaft with a mill file to remove the burrs and mushrooming. Otherwise this mishap would have shut this machine down for a week or more as I waited for replacement parts to be ordered and shipped in. As it was I accomplished the repairs and had the machine back in service in about an hour and a half.

Jointing one wide face of each board to make it flat and smooth. Jointing removes any minor bowing, cupping or twist in a board. Severely misshapen boards are either cut into small parts that can be flattened, or sent to the firewood pile. With one wide face flattened, I flit the board up on edge and run the just-jointed face along the fence to straighten one edge that is now also perfectly square to the jointed face. I’ll mark these faces and corner with a “carpenter’s bowtie” two triangles with their points meeting at the squared corner to identify the finished edges.

The boards then go to the surface planer and I run them through with the jointed face down against the bed. The cutter head above the board trims off a bit of wood with each pass until this face too is smooth, flat, and parallel to the jointed face – and the board is at the proper thickness.

Again I lay the boards out and begin matching them up for the most pleasing color and grain combinations. Ideally this will hide the joints between boards so the panel looks like one wide board. I mark the completed sets with a big V to help me get them back together in the same order and faces up and take them into the assembly room for gluing and clamping.

Making the Side Panels

While the glue is setting up on the two bottom plates, I repeat the process with the pieces I’ll need to make the four end panels. Matching up this many pieces requires using all the available “table” surfaces available to me in the machine room so I can see all the pieces at once. I group them by hue. As I match up the pieces, I trim away the final rough edge on the table saw to make it parallel to the jointed edge and joint the freshly sawn edge to make it straight and square for a superior glue joint.

When the glue sets up I am ready scrape the glue pips off, drum sand the panels smooth and to final thickness, then trim them to finished size. The long grain edges are done first using the rip fence. This makes these two edges parallel. Then I install the bit cut-off sled and trim the back edge of the panel to straighten it and square it to the two long-grain edges.

The angled front edge is the tricky one. For this I take very careful measurements from *inside* the panel grooves in the front and back legs (serving as stiles), allow just a skosh of air space for expansion, and mark these measurements on the panel. Because the grain runs side to side not up and down on these panels, most of the expansion space is left at the top, but, the angled front edge requires some attention because as the panel expands that sloping front edge will bind in the groove and could cause problems. I connect the dots on the panel with a straight edge to create the cut line I need, then set up the sled to cut just to that line. To properly support the work at this angle requires a wedge installed under the left hand corner – including a little under the waste piece to prevent it from being grabbed by the blade and thrown when it comes loose.

After a few trips through the drum sander I set up the table saw with a dado head and a sacrificial fence (so I can bury part of the cutter head in the fence for a clean, all-the-way-to-the-edge cut) and mill the rabbets along the edges of the side panels. This creates a lip around the panel that will slide into the grooves I cut in the side rails and legs. I want a snug fit so the panel does not rattle, but not so snug that the panel has to be forced into place. Forcing things usually means breaking something along the way.

I put all the side rails back in place and check for a proper fit. Later I'll pull it all apart again to sand everything, but for now I'm done with these.

Back to the Bottom Plates

Once the glue has set up, I scrape the glue pips off, drum sand them and trim them to size as I have done with other panels above. Then I use small F clamps as temporary supports for the floor in the cabinet, adjust them until the panel is flush with the front and back rails, then reach under and strike a pencil mark along the under-side of the back edge.

I mill a wooden strip to serve as a cleat upon which the back will rest and glue and screw it to the inside of the back arch.

Next I snag my pocket hole jig and drill pockets for face frame screws that will hold the bottom tightly against the front edge of the cabinet. The back edge will be allowed to float as the panel expands and contracts.

With side panels and floors installed, it’s time to complete the interiors. First up I need shelf support rails. When we discussed these cabinets, Phil wanted all the shelves to be adjustable, and removable. But because we’re using European hinges, which are hidden from the outside but large and bulky on the inside, and because the cabinet front slopes inward as it rises, making the depth of the cabinet constantly changing, fully adjustable shelves are not possible.

I cut wedge shaped pieces that will be glued in as shelf support rails. These will compensate for the changing width of the cabinet by allowing the shelf standards (metal tracks) to be mounted plumb and vertical.

These get glued inside the cabinet face frames. The top most shelf will sit on top of these rails. On the cabinet with doors, this is mandatory because this shelf must remain at the top of the doors. On the book case cabinet it *could* be made adjustable, the side-to-side variance is compensated for, but the front to back dimension still varies by almost an inch and a half. A shelf that fits snuggly near the top will become loser and looser as it moves down. If the front edge is kept flush with the cabinet front, the back edge will fall off the supports. The middle shelves will be adjustable on both cabinets, but adjustment will be limited to about 6”. It will be removable on the book case. Hinges and doors on the A/V cabinet will prevent removal.

Finish sanding of the side panels is done with a random orbit sander equipped with a dust extraction hose leading to a big shop vac. This keeps most of the fine sanding dust out of the air - and thus out of my lungs. I used teh drum sander to flatten the panels with 100 grit paper. Finish sanding is done using 120, 150, 180 and 220 grit papers.

I take advantage of the chance to sand the parts of the cabinet case while they are taken apart again. I sand with 120 and 150 grit papers and will sand with the final two grits after the case is reassembled for the final time.

To make the stiffeners for the shelves, I made the shelf blanks extra wide so I could rip off the edge and flip it down to acheive the best grain and color match possible. Here I'm laying out alignment marks prior to sanding both pieces.

The alignment marks help me keep track of which edges were together and which face was on top.

Then I can apply glue, line up the marks, and clamp the stiffener to the shelf edge.

Next I cut and install the shelf standards. These slotted tracks use clips that snap into the slots to support the movable shelf. The slots are numbered to make getting the clips in the right spot easier when adjusting the shelf, so I make sure I get the number-one slot on the bottom of each track; installing one upside down would just cause confusion.

The final step is to glue the mortise & tenon joints, and draw them snugly together with clamps while the glue sets up. This is the point of no return, this case will not be taken apart - other than removing the adjustable shelf - again.

Next up is to route a bevel on the upper edges of the top plates. This is just a decorative touch that adds elegance to the piece without getting ornate. When completed I sand the faces with the random orbit sander and the edges by hand with sanding blocks.

The dimensions I planned for the doors need to be given a visual check before making the door parts, so I do a scale drawing in paper to see how they look. The original 3" frames will look awfully clunky on such small doors to I reduce the width. In addition, I use a visual design trick of making the top rails a little thinner that the lower rails and the two middle stiles - which will sit together when the doors are closed, looking like one element in the design - thinner than the outside stiles. These adjustments go a long ways toward making the doors much more appealing.

Catastrophic Stain Failure - 1st time in 30 years this has happened.

An agreement has been reached and the project goes on. I need to build a new cabinet to replace the one that was ruined, so I start by pulling another 60+ Board Feet of lumber from the stacks outside...

...and bring it inside where I can get at it easily as I need it. Normally I stack lumber vertically in eth assembly room; handy to the chop saw since that is normally the first stop but since I have two cabinets sitting in teh assembly room now, swinging lumber around in there could damage them, especially if it's hot and I'm tired and not paying real close attention to what I'm doing. Yes, it does happen. I do not need to acclimate this lumber becuase during the summer the environment inside the shop is (unfortunately) the same as the environment outside teh shop because the windows are all open and fans are sucking air in from outside. In teh winter I'd have to let this lumber adjust to being inside before I could use it.

I've been absent here for a while again, I'm sorry.

Since my last update I have:

- Pulled another 75 board feet of lumber from the piles and brought it inside.

- Ordered the new stain and more table top clips

- Made the new top plate for the A/V cabinet.

- Made the new shelf for the AV cabinet.

- Milled limber for legs and rails on the new book case

- Cut the legs to final shape for the new bookcase

- Cut the rails for the new bookcase to final size

- Laid out tenons on the book case rails

- Received the new stain and table top clips.

Last Friday I had to get some mowing and trimming done in the yard - this has been neglected for some time and I wanted to beat the predicted rain for Saturday, besides, we had out-of-state relatives coming to visit for the weekend.

Today, (Monday) I have to do my weekly radio program so I can burn it to disk and mail it off to the radio station tomorrow morning or it will not get there in time for our regular air time. I'll spend some time in the afternoon sanding the A/V cabinet in preparation for staining.

I'm not going to post pictures of the new construction because the process is exactly the same as pictured above, and when I'm back where I ought to be I'll delete these do-over notes.

OK, I will not post very many pictures...

Today (Tuesday) I am staining the loose parts of the A/V cabinet: top, movable shelf, and doors using the new stain. This looks MUCH better. As you can see, the color is far more consistent, the only variations are the natural variations in the wood. This should work fine. If this is not dark enough, I can apply a second coat after the first coat has dried and before I shoot the lacquer. If you want it darker, let me know ASAHP.

Wednesday: Spent the entire day finish sanding the carcass (basic casework - without doors, shelf and top) of the A/V cabinet inside and out, every nook and cranny four times; once each with 120 grit, 150 grit 180 grit an 220 grit papers.

Thursday: Staining the A/V cabinet carcass. Since a second coat (to make it darker) is requested, I'll wait for this coat to cure off and do it again, possibly tomorrow. It's humid today, that will affect the cure time.

MUCH better!!

At day's end the cabinet is all stained and it looks MUCH better than the last attempt. because you need to be working with wet edges, the staining process once started had to continue non-stop until completed. That process alone took about 2 hours. But it was worth it. I did not have any of the troubles I did with the Environmentally Friendly stain. Give me a good old oil based stain any day!

This will need to cure overnight and hopefully will be ready for the second coat tomorrow. I'll try to get the case and the loose parts all recoated tomorrow so they can sit for the weekend and be ready for lacquering and reassembly next week.

Friday Second coat of stain on the A/V cabinet case. Mill, route, & miter glass retainer strips. Build pilot hole drilling jig. Drill pilot holes in grass retainer strips and sand. Stain glass retainer strips. restain all loose parts (including glass retainer strips. Re-staining the project (to make it a darker color) yielded some strange results. Nothing insurmountable, just unexpected. I'm sure it has to do with the dark color. I'll let it all stand for the weekend and it should be ready for lacquering next week.

* * * [Newest Stuff Begins Here] * * *

Monday: Mondays are particularly busy days. I start with my daily visit to the garden. These visits have been greatly abbreviated for a while now as I try to squeeze more hours out of each day, and as a result the garden has suffered. Aside from the reduction of foodstuffs going onto our table and into the freezer for this winter, it inhibits my ability to fulfill my obligation to write about gardening from a novices viewpoint for Grit Magazine online. Also on Monday I produce a half-hour radio program that is aired on WGSN 90.7 FM each week. I have to do this on Monday because the completed program is burned onto a CD and mailed to the radio station. If it does not go out in Tuesday's mail, it does not get there on time for our weekly air time. It generally takes anywhere from 2½ to 4 hours to produce, package and mail this program, depending on how much editing has to be done. The late part of this afternoon was spent shooting lacquer on the A/V cabinet parts, waiting for it to dry and shooting more lacquer.

A respirator equipped with organic mist filter cartridges is a must when spraying lacquer for laqcuer thinner is deadly stuff. Once the thinner has evaporated out of the finish, lacquer is perfectly safe, but the solvents used to make the thinner cause cancer and kill brain cells if breathed. Because of my beard, the respirator does not seal up to my face as tightly as it should and a day of shooting lacquer will leave me really loopy by day's end. I try to shoot in short sessions, and get out for fresh air breaks between sessions, while the latest coat dries. I also use a fan in a window to pull air through the room and exhaust some of the stink outdoors. This would be illegal in California, but then so would be using the lawn mower I just bought.

The little strips I made as glass retainers are so light weight that they would just blow around in the air stream of even my HVLP stray gun - which uses low pressure air as opposed to a compressor driven spray gun which uses high pressure air to blow the finish on. To get around this I used double-stick tape and affixed the glass retainers to a pair of runners. These make it easy to move the enire collection on and off of my spray table ans well as keeping them from blowing around. Only the decorative sides need to be stained and finished, so being stuck to the runners poses no problems in finishing the strips.

I use a spinning finishing table to do the smaller, loose parts, but when it's time to spray the case, I break that down, fold it up and set it to the side so I can roll the cabinet - on a small whelled table - into center stage. Using the wheeled table I can spin the cabinet instead of having to walk around the cabinet dragging my spray gun hose with me. I can also work the light to optimal advantage this way. And when it's done, I just roll it back out of the way and set up the spinning table again to do the next coat on the smaller pieces.

Tuesday: Today will also be spent shooting lacquer. After everything has two full coats I'll scuff sand to smooth it and shoot two more full coats. Then it may be necessary to scuff again and shoot a final coat. Whether a 5th coat is needed or not depends largely on the weather.

Wednesday: I completed the finishing work on the A/V cabinet late last night, it has had all night to cure out. Th eplan for today is final inspection, re-install all hardware and final assembly. If all goes well I'll be contacting Phil & Terri to arrange a delivery date. It did, we're done.

A New Direction

2011-07-13T21:02:00.000-04:00

As of December 31, 2010 we closed down the custom furniture part of our business because the harsh economy simply sapped the life right out of it and I needed to look in another direction for income. I left this blog active because I figured I'd still post articles when I built items for on-hand stock, but I want to do these posts differently.
The old way of doing things; posting a daily progress report was fine when my audience was primarily folks popping in every day or two for an update on the current project, but it is an awful means of archiving project files. Everything is ankles over knickers. You come in at the most recent post and have to work your way backward through the list to the beginning. Finding the beginning of any particular project so you can work your way through the articles chronologically is almost impossible on older posts. And then we have multiple articles on some projects because each customer wanted to watch THEIRS being built.
I'm going to change the lay-out and post one long article for each new piece I build. This way you start at the top of the article with the beginning and read down the page to the end. But some folks are antsy and don't want to wait for me to finish the project and post the completed article, so I will include a link at the top that looks like this: [New Stuff] click that and it will take you past the stuff previously posted and straight to the newest addition. I'll remove it once the article is complete. If you miss a few days, well, you're on your own there.
Since most of my audience is now coming from Kindle subscribers and referrals from wood working magazines, this format will be much easier for them to make use of. between projects, I'll go back and convert the older articles to this new lay-out.
That's where we are and what-up ahead. I'm working on the first installment now. See you there!

Tray Tables - Packaging completed.

2011-04-06T16:34:00.000-04:00

I gave the tables until after lunch to cure. By then they seemed to be hardened up well.

I resume by cutting pads of Styrofoam to fit inside the upper and lower tray rails. These will support the second table and prevent the two from knocking together during transport. I also stack two smaller pads on each leg pair.

Then I lay the second table on top and use stretch wrap to strap the two together. I repeat the process with the other two tables.

Then I strap pads to the stand arms.

And set the table pairs in place. More stretch wrap straps the tables to the stand securely.

Now the whole bundle goes into the foam-lined box. Normally the stand handle sticks up to contact the foam padding at that end and the stand feet set against the foam at the opposite end to prevent the bundle from sliding around in the box. Jeff asked that I recess the handle flush with the trays, so I need to cut an extra filler piece of foam to fill that gap. Then I another to lay in on top of the bundle along the “top” edge of the tables where it’s a little narrower than at the foot end. Again that just prevents movement.

For the same purpose I fill the air space along the sides with shredded paper. Then I can lay in the final sheet of foam, close up the flaps and tape the box up securely.

All that remains is to set the box on the scale to get a weight - which is really quite irrelevant because the package is over-sized, so I will pay for 70 pounds of shipping even though the box only weighs half that - and run a shipping label.

The table boxes were sized so that they are *just* within the limits of this shipping tier, Shelly’s tables are larger, so they will get bumped up to the next tier and we’ll get billed for even more shipping.

A pick-up has been scheduled for tomorrow. I’ll keep the vicious, horrible, killer dogs inside the shop tomorrow (they won’t like that) so the FedEx man does not risk his life to get the box and it will be on it’s way to Jeffrey. Hope you enjoy them Jeff.

Now I’ll pull more foam out of the shed loft and bundle Shelly’s tables. Then I can determine the minimum size box I’ll need so we can go box hunting.

Thanks for reading!

Tray Tables - Packaging

2011-04-06T16:28:00.000-04:00

Today we’re sliding into home on Jeffrey’s tables, Shelly’s are just behind.

The first thing I need to do is to crawl up into the loft of the lumber shed and pull down a half-sheet of Styrofoam, my box of Styrofoam scraps, and a flattened shipping box. We bought these boxes from a box maker specifically for this purpose. Each of our major products has a custom shipping container made for it. We store the boxes flat, as they came from the manufacturer, and fold them out into boxes only when we’re ready to put a product into them.

We used to be able to buy something called “whiteboard” from the lumber yards: a 3/4” thick, 4 foot x 8 foot sheet of plain Styrofoam. These cost me between $4 and $5 a sheet. But recently the lumber yards have switched to a product that has a silver Mylar film on one side and a clear plastic film on the other and costs $17 to $20 per sheet. This distresses to us as we have no use for these insulative films - indeed we have to peel them off and dispose of them - and the added cost is most unwelcome.

Packaging suppliers will sell us sheets of the old style foam, but bundles of them have to be delivered by truck; generally semi-tractor trailer truck. That means high shipping costs and having to go meet the semi at a truck stop to transfer their load to our truck because a semi can not get up to our shop to unload. Even just driving along

Piney Mountain Road

scares the willies out of them; a couple have tried it and swore they’d never do so again!

We would like to switch to the corn starch foam that dissolves away to nothing when it gets wet. The cost of this product has been prohibitively high when compared to whiteboard, but is about comparable to the new insulative foam boards. If we could find a local supplier (meaning within an hours drive or so from here) we’d just make the switch and everyone would be better off.

I mount a special extra-fine saw blade on the table saw, set the fence for a 24 inch cut, peel the films off the half-sheet of foam, and cut it in half.

The first pieces I need will be 24” x 36”. The 24” dimension is done, but my table saw does not have the 54” wing that would allow a cut of 36” between blade and fence, so I lay out my cut and set the fence to the width of the excess instead. The excess piece is then cut down to 10½”. The cut-offs from that step will become pads between tables. Nothing is wasted.

I push the flattened box out into a 3 dimentional shape and fold the bottom flaps over. Then I grab my packaging tape gun and triple tape the bottom, center seam; single tape the end seams just so they don't snag as the box gets slid along things.

I flip the box over and drop one large pad in the bottom of the box and set the two end pads in place. Now I’m ready to bundle the tables.

I retrieve the tables from the finishing room. Before I start pressing foam to poly I do a quick test. In an inconspicuous spot; a corner, I press the tip of my pinky finger against the polyurethane finish firmly. If a ridgey fingerprint remains when I take my finger tip away, and it does, then the poly is not cured yet.

It is dry to the touch, but not cured out hard yet. In this state, fumes escaping the finish as it cures could soften the Styrofoam pressed against it and cause it to mar the finish. The temperature got down to the middle 30’s last night, apparently it got cold enough in my finishing room to slow the curing of the poly. I move the tables into a room with more heat and turn up the furnace to help the poly to finish curing quickly. It may only take a couple of hours.

Tray Tables - Finished Finishing

2011-04-05T17:22:00.000-04:00

I shot the walnut tables with their third coat this morning (did not get that far last night) That gave them a few hours to cure out a bit before I applied the polyurethane.

Here I have the maple tables lined up ready for their skim-coat. I apply the poly with a cloth pad, using a figure-eight pattern, and check my work by bouncing a strong light off the tray tops. Any skips or swirls will show up as a dull spot on the shiny wet finish.

If it's good, I fold up the table and set it out of the way. The skim coat is too thin to run.

When The maple tables are done, I set up the walnut tables and coat them. As each table is completed, I fold it up and stand it facing the wall to prevent air-borne dust from landing in the sticky polyurethane.

Lacquer dries very quickly, the poly will take around 8 hours to "dry". It's not really a drying out process like the lacquer is where the liquid carrier evaporates out, but a catalyzing process where elements in the polyurethane hook up and combine as the solvent evaporates. In any case, it will take 8 to 12 hours for the poly to harden enough I can start packaging to the tables for shipment. If I go too soon the Styrofoam pads between the tables will dissolve a little in the uncured poly and mar the finish. We don't want that. In cold weather getting Poly to cure can be a pain, but it's not cold now so it should go well and I can start packaging in the morning.

Tray Tables - Lacquering Continues

2011-04-04T15:55:00.000-04:00

Today I will complete the lacquering of these tables... I hope. We have a storm front moving in that is promising high winds and tunderstorms. When we get those conditions here in the mountains we generally lose our electricty for a while. Hopefully I'll get it done before that happens. Weather Radar shows that the storm is moving in faster than was predicted... but I will try.

Jeffrey's Maple tables had two coats on when I started the day, Shelly's Walnut table had one coat. I'm spraying the second coat on the walnut tables now. As each dries I move it out of the finishing room and store them on the stand. While waiting for lacquer to dry, I'm scuff sanding the maple tables so they will be ready for their third and final coat.

While the lacquer on each of those dries, I'll scuff the walnut tables and send them in for their third coat. Then all will be ready for their skim coat of polyurethane.

Tray Tables - Lacquering

2011-04-01T10:43:00.002-04:00

I'll spend the entire day today sanding, and shooting lacquer. It is times like this that I am especially grateful to finally have a finishing room with doors on it. In the past I did finishing work in the work area of the shop. That meant having to stop all woodworking, clean the shop thoroughly (including walls and ceiling) than drape sheets over any near-by tools so over-spray would not get on them and gum them up.

Now I just take the pieces to be finished into the finishing room. The doors are kept closed at all times to keep wood dust from migrating in. In that clean environment I can spray finish, then go back out to the shop and continue woodworking. In this case, I am sanding more tables.

It takes about 45 minutes to sand a table. When done, I vacuum it, tack rag it and take it in for the first coat of lacquer. While the lacquer is drying, I sand another table. When all 8 tables and two stands have one coat, I'll go back and shoot all with a second coat. When those are dry I'll scuff sand to smooth the finish, tack them off again and shoot the third coat.

Once the third coat has hardened up well (overnight) I'll apply a skim-coat of quality polyurethane to just the panel tops of the trays to help protect them from careless living. Lacquer is a beautiful finish, but it will take on white water marks if sweaty drink glasses or hot plates are left sitting on it. The polyurethane helps prevent that.

The polyurethane has to cure for at least 8 hours - more if it's cold or damp - before I can begin packaging the table set for shipment.

Tray Tables - Walnut Stand

2011-03-31T12:01:00.000-04:00

This morning I finished making the parts for Shelly's stand, sanded them, and assemled the stand. I'll take my lunch break while the glue sets up and begin the finish sanding this afternoon.

Finish sanding requires sanding everything carefully by hand with 150 and 180 grit papers. When that's done I'll vacuum and tack rag all 10 pieces and prepare for shooting lacquer.

I will lacquer both sets of tables at the same time.

Tray tables - Maple Construction Done

2011-03-30T14:18:00.000-04:00

I completed construction of the maple tray table set by attaching the arms and plugging the screw holes in the stand. I would have gotten this done yesterday but we had a funeral to go to.

Here you can see, Jeff, that I did indeed remember to recess the handle. Normally the posts cone up high enough to support the upper edge of the trays and the handle sticks up above that for easy access. But due to a special use Jeff has planned (cat roost) he wanted the handle to be lowered so it is roughly level with the top of the trays. Mission accomplished.

And this is how the set looks all nested together. All that remains now is a ton of hand sanding and the lacquering. But I'll spend the rest of this afternoon milling wood and designing parts for Shelly's walnut tables.

Because her tables are considerably larger than normal, The standhas to be custom fitted to the tables. Their size has created a number of problems. One is that when these tables are finished and ready to ship, Jeff's will pop right into one of the boxes we had made to ship them in. Shelly's tables will require another approach. I'll have to measure he bundle once it's packaged up and drive to the U_Haul store and see what they have that will fit. I'll probably have to get a wardrobe box and cut it down. It will definitely be into the grossly over sized (tier 3) category because the box we use for regular tables was designed to skate along just under the line.