Multitask Monday

I’m off to a little bit of a slow start today as our truck konked out over the weekend and I had to get on the phone and make arrangements to have it patched up again. Then I needed to produce the weekly radio program our church does, this time we featured the Christmas Cantata, so there was not so much talking to do, that made it easier on me! With that done I sanded and stained a 36” wide flat door for Carl & Pam’s bedroom. Over the weekend they picked up the others I had done. Some of those were for the bathrooms, when they have the bedroom door back again they will actually have privacy in their new home! I got the first side stained, that will need to dry before I can flip it over and stain the other side. I’ll get to that tomorrow. Once the stain was on and rubbed out, I worked on the oak shelves for Robert’s stopper rack. I had milled the blanks last week, so today I started by laying out the hole locations using the template. The stack of shelf blanks are stacked up and secured into a tight bundle with masking tape. The lay-out is done on the top shelf, then the holes are bored through the whole bundle at one time. Then I can remove the tape, sand off any fuzzy bits left over and use the router table to round over the front and ends of each shelf as well as the holes. I set these aside then and will sand them later. For now I moved on to Ann’s tables by getting out the template set and making sure they were all there. Then I took the stock I had set aside for the legs, which has to start out as at least 1-1/16” thick as rough stock, jointed one wide face and one edge, then started ripping leg blanks from this board on the table saw. I’ll let these over-sized blanks sit over night to see if they are going to want to bow before I spend time and effort on making them into legs. Sometimes, when cutting small pieces out of a large piece internal stresses in the wood will make the pieces being cut off bow or twist, especially in kiln dried lumber. Usually this will happen immediately, but sometimes humidity changes will cause it as well. So I’ll let these do what they will over night (when it is most damp here) and see what we’ve got in the morning.

Doing Doors

Another of the bids we put out has come home as an order, Robert would like a 4-Tier Bottle Stopper Rack in walnut and oak, so that has been added to the list and I will get started on that as soon as possible. In fact, I have a walnut 4-tier base made up already, so all I have to do is make the oak shelves and assemble it. But for now I continue staining doors. In particular I’m working on the fancy paned glass door. Because this door is poplar (or some similar paint grade wood) I need to seal the wood before staining it or it will most likely blotch badly. So after sanding I apply the sealer liberally, let it soak in, re-wetting areas that dry out, and after about 10 minutes wipe off the excess and allow it to dry for 30 minutes before flipping the door over and repeating the process on the other side. When that has set up I go back and sand again. This stuff is gummy, so it clogs the sandpaper badly and the dust clumps in the corners and crevices of the detail work so when done I use a stiff horsehair brush to clean up these details before vacuuming the entire door with a brush on the end of my shop vac hose. I move the door I lacquered yesterday out of the finishing room now that the lacquer has had all night to harden and let it join it’s brethren in the assembly room. These are ready for pick-up. Staining is started by flooding on a wet coat of stain with a rag, being careful to work it into the corners and crevices of the routed detail work. The stain will set for 15 minutes on this door (10 minutes on the oak doors) before I go back and wipe away the excess with clean rags. I allow more time on this one because the wood is quite a bit lighter than the oak doors and the stain needs to darken more than the oak doors in order to come out the same color. In some cases I have to let the stain cure for at least 8 hours and apply a second coat to get the colors to match, but in this case just allowing extra set-up time has done the trick. By the time I get some lacquer over this it will match the completed doors pretty well. Once I get to the wiping off stage I have to work quickly because at 15 minutes the stain is trying to dry out, getting the color even takes more effort and I have to pay particular attention to the detail work where the stain will settle in those pesky corners and get really dark. To keep the color even I use the chisel point end of a dry foam brush to soak up or spread out these pools of stain, squeezing the end of the brush with a dry rag often to remove the stain that the brush soaks up. After detailing, I always have to watch for smudges that appear on top of the muntins (divider strips in the glass area) and wipe those away again before I clean things up and let the stain harden. This door has plastic sheeting over the glass and under the wood, so I don’t have to be too concerned about getting stain on the glass. Once the doors are stained and lacquered, a utility knife can cut the plastic out and leave clean glass under – as long as the plastic had no holes in it. Now that the stain is on both sides, it will need to set up for a few hours before I can lacquer the door this evening. In the mean time I will pull together the lumber I need for Ann’s tables and Robert’s rack and I’ll probably be able to get started on those today, depending on what interruptions crop up.

Catching Up

The three doors I was lacquering for Carl are done and moved out into the Assembly Room awaiting him to bring me the next batch and pick these up. In the mean time, I’m sanding and staining the remaining flat door in this batch. This sanding is all done by hand so I don't risk sanding through the thin oak veneer, and to be sure there are no swirls left by the random orbit sander. Over the past week we got a whole bunch of bid requests and one purchase of an On-Hand stopper rack. One of those estimates has also turned into Ann's order for a pair of custom built Tray Tables, construction of which will begin soon. The Christmas Season is upon us! But if these others want to get their custom items by Christmas, they’d best get the order in quickly. The photo here is of the Walnut & Cherry tables she likes, but in the Heavy Duty version. Ann ordered the Classic version, but the look of the colors will be the same, this is just the only photo I have of a Walnut & Cherry combo table. On Monday, while waiting for stain on the door to cure, I laid out the hardware placement on the oak steamer trunk. Some of it needed to be taped in place while I drilled pilot holes for the screws. I set up my drill with a quick-change chuck so I could just snap the Vix bit and screw driver bit in and out as needed. All hardware went on as it came out of the package except for the corner knuckles on the lid. Because the lid is domed and the knuckles are made for a square corner, I have to re-shape these 4 knuckles to accommodate the rise of the domed top. By 5:30 I had all the hardware installed and was ready to go home for dinner. I’ll leave this hardware in place while I build the tray that goes inside the top of the trunk, then remove all the hardware, finish sand the entire trunk and shoot it with lacquer before re-installing the hardware. Then this one will be ready to go up for sale. HOWEVER, new orders take precedence over items for stock, so work on this will get suspended while I work on Ann’s tray tables and any other items that get ordered. If anyone is interested in this trunk for Christmas, they can place an order for it. Then it becomes a paid order and I will be able to complete it quickly. Otherwise it will most likely be after Christmas before it gets completed. At least I HOPE we will be getting more orders that will keep me busy!

Shooting Doors

No, I'm not going hunting for some strange and unusual forest creature, I am full-up of turkey, dressing and yams from yesterday, thank you. The shooting I'm doing today is that of applying lacquer to the three doors I have completed staining for Carl with an HVLP spray gun.

This means that I'll actually be spending most of the day waiting for lacquer to dry, but while waiting there are plenty of things I can be doing to fill those half-hour windows between lacquer applications.

In each shooting session I apply one coat of lacquer to one face and one edge of all three doors. When it's dry I turn the doors around and shoot the opposide face and edge of each door. After two full coats are on and completely dry I scuff sand the doors with a fine sanding sponge to smooth the finish, tack rag away the sanding dust and shoot the three doors with one more complete coat. They will then be left to harden well overnight before I take them back out to the assembly room where they will be stored until Carl comes to pick them up and bring me another load. In the mean time, I still have two doors on hand to sand and stain, as well as the work on the steamer trunks to do. I will not get bored.

Banding the Case

While waiting for stain on doors to set up so I can move the one I was working on out of the way and bring in another, I work on a steamer trunk. I have already milled long strips of stock from which I will cut the banding pieces in the same way I did the banding for the lid, except that I don’t need to bevel the ends; this will be straight, flat panel work and nice square ends are preferred. But I do need to make the lock shims. The pattern is made for use with both long and short shank trunk locks, I’ll be using the short lock here, so I line up the pattern with the short lock line on the edge of my stock and trace around the pattern with a fine tip felt pen. I applied masking tape around where the pattern will lie so the lines I make will be easier to see than they would on the dark colored walnut and so that when the shaping is done I can just peel away the tape and there will be no marks to deal with. I cut out the shape on the band saw, leaving just a little wood outside of the line which allows me to sand the piece to precise shape, and remove the saw marks. This sanding is done with a stationary belt sander for the long, straight parts, a small sanding drum chucked into the drill press (shown here) and the fine detail work is done by hand with fine sandpaper glued to a tongue depressor to shape the small notches. Installing the banding is done like before; laying out the locations carefully then insuring a good snug fit between banding and rails so we will get a good glue joint. There is nothing inside the trunk to nail into this time, so fitting is especially important. When all the banding is installed I sand the exterior of the case with 100 grit paper to smooth it all out, then glue and clamp the tray supports in place inside the case.

And that completes construction of the case of the trunk.

Side Job

A side job came in this afternoon. Carl, a fellow who used to live near here and for whom I once built a large [Gun Cabinet] is building a new home in Bybee TN and wants me to stain and finish his interior doors. He has 8 or 9 of them, most all are simple flat doors, so it is not a big hairy deal to do this. I gave him a good price and am grateful for the work. I also received bid requests on two other jobs on Monday and have produced the bids and sent them out. Now we wait. But, while we wait, I’ll stain and lacquer doors.

Assembling the Case

We will start this process by pulling out the trunk case that we have dry fitted previously and tapping off one end panel with a mallet. Because each joint was hand fitted, and we want them to fit just as well when we get done, we will not dismantle the entire case at this point. After removing one corner piece, applying glue and placing it back on the end assembly, we tap off the other corner piece and glue it up. Then we make sure the upper and lower edges are aligned and apply clamps. This assembly will sit until the glue tacks up. When it’s ready we can glue and clamp the end piece to the front and back panels. Note that none of the filler panels in any of these pieces are glued to either the rails or the corner posts, this is so the panels are free to expand and contract as needed so they won't crack in dry weather. The opposite end remains loose so it can be removed, but is left in place for now so I can check to see that the casework is square. While the glue tacks up I’ll trim the floor boards to length and rip the two outer planks so the assembly is the right width. I am careful to sand away the fuzz-bits left from the sawed edge as these will interfere with fitting the planks into the case later – the tolerances are close. Then I can remove the clamps and the loose end piece. I glue and clamp that end piece while I fit the floor boards. The floor boards are slipped into their groove from the open end, which spreads out a little to make this easier, and I make sure the splines are seated between each floor board as they go in. There is no glue used here either. These splines lock the floor boards together to keep the floor flat, and to prevent very small stuff from falling through the floor should the floor boards shrink up in dry weather. Then the other end piece is test fitted to be sure everything fits as it should, with no binding and no gaps, then tapped back off, and glue is applied. Finally the front and back rails are flushed up top and bottom on the open end and clamps are applied. I check the completed case for square and, just for giggles, set the lid in place to see how they fit together. It all looks good from here. So, I’ll let the glue in this assembly set up overnight and we’ll get started banding the case in our next episode. Before we get to that I will repeat this process on the walnut trunk but there is no point in photographing that as it is the same process as shown here.

Floor Boards

Today we will make the floor boards for our two steamer trunks. We start by cross-cutting rough sawn boards to rough length. We cut a set in walnut and one in oak.


Then we joint one wide face and one edge smooth, flat and straight.

The jointed edges are marked with triagles, each pointing to the edge they share. At this point is is easily to see which faces have been jointed because the other two are still rough, but in a while it will not be so easy.

Next the blanks are run through the surface planer, jointed side down so the planer knives smooth the upper face and make them parallel to the jointed face. Oh, and we keep doing this until the blanks are reduced to the finished thickness. That takes quite a few passes.

Once that's done I trim the floor boards to width on the table saw - jointed edge to the rip fence so the rough edge gets cut away. Then mount a 45° chamfering bit in the router table to cut small angles on the upper edges then use the table saw to cut slots in the edges of each floor board into which splines will be fitted to lock the floor boards together, yet allow them to expand and contract with humidity changes.

Finally I mill out a mess of splines and set the completed parts aside for sanding. I have 6 wide planks and one narrow center plank for each trunk. I won't cut them to finished size until I get the trunk case parts glued up so I can take precise measurements directly from the trunks themselves. That comes next.

Banding the Lid

We start the days work by trimming off the screw hole plugs that we installed in our last episode. This is done with a flush cut saw -- the flexible blade makes it possible to get right down flat on the surface of the wood and the fact that the blades' teeth have no set to them (they don't bend over to one side or the other) it does not scratch up the surface of the wood. Because there is no set, it also does not carve out any extra space for the blade to run in and the blade tends to bind when cutting anything but small stock, like these plugs.

Then I rip the banding stock I prepared during the parts making phase to 2" wide and sand it to 1/4" thick. The banding is purely decorative and is generally done in a contrasting wood. On the oak trunk, I'm using walnut. The walnut trunk is all walnut, so the same stock can be used there, and I made enough for both.

Before I start cutting up the strips of banding, I figure out roughly where the cross cuts will be and label each block with a number and an orientation. The idea is to keep the grain pattern flowing along each strip as it is installed on the trunk. This is one of those details that many people (probably) never notice, but I tend to take pride in.

Because the rails of the lid follow along the arch of the lid, these banding pieces need to be slightly beveled on the ends to get a good snug fit. I carefully mark the length, cut it off with the chop saw then bevel the ends on the belt sander with the table tilted down about 5°.

The objective is to get a snug fit between banding pieces and the rails, snug enough that they won't just drop right in, I want to have to tap them in place. When they're all cut I sand the edges (sides) smooth and round over the upper edges (just of the sides) a little, apply glue underneath and to the rails where the banding fits in and tap the banding pieces home.

Had any been cut just a bit too loose, the banding on the lid can be tacked down with finish nails driven into the ribs below. When I get to the banding on the trunk body that is not an option because all that is under the banding is the 1/4" panel, it just has to fit right. But, that was not a problem here; they all fit very well.

Finishing assembly of lid

Today we will complete assembly of the walnut trunk lid. We start by clamping the end caps in place, making sure they fit properly and laying out where the screws will go that hold the caps to the rest of the frame. I bore and counter bore teh screw holes, apply glue and install the screws. We will be making an arch from a bunch of flat pieces. Since the panels between the rails do not bend, I want to ease the stress in the joints were teh panels fit into the rails. This will help prevent anything from splitting and will make getting it all to go together a bit easier. I do that by planing a shallow chamfer along both edges of the top surface of the filler panels. This allows for a little "play" in the joint. Not so much that the panels will rattle, just enough to help things along. Then I slip the outer panles in place, pop the middle rails onto them and slip the center panel between the rails from the end and drive it in with a mallet and softwood block. Then I can insert the screws in the top rail. I make my own screw hole plugs from scraps cut off of this project using a plug cutter in the drill press. This allows for a better match between plugs and project, especially since most commercially bought plugs are end-grain (think short pieces of dowel rod) and the plugs I make are face grain, same as the wood they will go into. All that remains is to apply glue to the inside of the counterbores and tap plugs into them. I'll let the glue set up hard before I attempt to cut off the excess length and sand them smooth.

Gluing Frame

Today I continued working on the steamer trunks by taking the lid frame that I fitted yesterday apart again, applying glue and clamping. I used a tape measure to measure across the diagonals -- if both diagonals measure the same length then the lid is square. If it's not (and it wasn't) I skew the clamps just a little to pull the lid so the long diagonal gets shorter. Measure again, adjust some more if needed until it's right. On a 40" diaganoal like this, if I can get them to measure within 1/16" of being equal I call it good enough and quit.

That took about 30 minutes, the rest of the day was spent solving problems not related to this project in any way.

For information about these trunks, CLICK HERE

Trunk Lid Frame

OK, now that the paid-for job is completed it's back to making things for on-hand stock and the items I've been working on are a pair of steamer trunks.

So I gather up the parts needed to make a lid in walnut, sand the inside faces and cut the tenons on the ends of the support ribs so they fit into the mortises in the front and back rails.

By days end I have the frame dry fitted and ready to glue up.

Final Assembly

Today I accomplished the final assembly of David's desk - marrying the base to the cabinet. That went well and I set up for a photo shoot of the completed piece. I'll get a better picture of the desk, with laptop and supplies in place later on for the product page.

Now we got to go for the best part - PAY DAY!

Details are HERE