Looong Day

This is going to be a long one, so I’m in early. I mentioned on Tuesday that while cutting ribbon strips for Ann’s Tray Tables I also cut the maple and cherry strips for Dianne’s Cutting Board. That process went as most do, starting with jointing the blanks to establish one flat face and one flat edge that is square to the jointed face. Then surface planed them just until the other face was clean. In this case I’m not shooting for any particular thickness, in fact using some random width strips adds interest to the pattern. Because these surfaces will become my glue joints, I also used the wide drum sander to remove any ripples these machines left behind. I set these strips aside while I glued up the ribbon panels for Ann’s tables. This morning I start by removing the clamps from the ribbon panels and checking to see if they need to be scraped before machining – hardened glue globs will chip the expensive knives in our surface planer – but we’re in good shape, I did a good job of removing the squeeze-out with a damp rag after clamping. I trim the panels to finished with, being careful to take equal amounts off of each edge to keep the center of the panel centered. I put enough effort into getting a nice pattern that I don’t want to make it lopsided now. Then I run the panels through the surface planer. When we bough this large planer one of the considerations was the fact that it can handle a 15” wide tray panel. In the past we had to make these panels in two pieces, plane the halves smooth then joint the halves at the center joint and fair that out by hand. This is much simpler and worth the extra cost (about double) of going from a 13” planer to a 15”. I plane both sides, very gently; taking very light cuts to as not to cause chip-out since there are widely varying grain directions in the panel. The last 1/32 inch is taken off on the wide drum sander to produce a better surface. By the time they come out of the final pass they’re looking mighty good! Not only are they attractive, but all the joints are perfectly tight. Now I prepare the plywood backer panels. “Whoa, plywood? I thought you said plywood was bad!” Plywood is not my choice in most cases, but there are times when the special properties of plywood are desirable, even better then solid wood. This is one of those. The reason being that solid wood *will* contract and expand with humidity changes – that can not be stopped. In most cases I will design a piece to allow for movement so joinery doesn’t get popped open and panels don’t crack. In the case of these tables, the rails are quite delicate and don’t offer “meat” at the corner joints to be relied upon as the only means of holding the rails together, they need to be glued to a solid base as well. That can not be the ribbon panel because of the aforementioned expansion/contraction cycles, so I incorporate a plywood backer panel under the ribbon panel that will not expand and contract, so it can be used as that stable and stalwart base to which we can glue our frame rails. I use furniture quality veneered plywood for this, not Home Center stuff, so this is still very expensive and high quality material. After cutting a piece off of the large plywood panel (a little wider than I need) I flip it over and trim up the ”raw” edge, then flip it again and to a final trim on the first cut to be sure I have good straight, clean edges to work with. Then I use the big cut-off sled to cut them to rough length. I’ll cut to finished length later. The backer panels are cut so that they are 1/8” wider than the ribbon panels, allowing me to leave a 1/16” space on either side inside the side rails. This is to allow room for the panel to expand into and to insure that glue inside the rail groove does not adhere the panel to either the backer or the rail. I apply a stripe of glue down just the center of both backer and ribbon panel, flip the ribbon panel onto the backer, center it side-to-side and apply clamps. Once both are done I’ll find heavy stuff – full gallon cans of finishing supplies work well – to set in the middle and apply pressure so the glue sticks there too. While the glue sets up on those I pull out my cutting board strips and arrange them to obtain a pleasing pattern. It is very important while doing this to remember that the template Dianne supplied (as all these templates are) is the shape of the INSIDE of her sink opening. If I cut the board to this size, it will fall into the sink and be absolutely useless, to achieve the desired use it must have a lip around the edges that will sit on the rim of the sink. I make this lip ¾” wide, so while arranging wood strips I leave an inch all around – just to be sure. I also need to keep an eye on the orientation of the template. Because I’m working with the visible side of the board, the side marked as TOP must be up. I trace around the template, more to provide a means of getting the strips back just as they are now than for anything else. I reassemble the collection on top of a collection of clamps. To reduce material waste I do not try to make the board blank into a rectangle, so I end up with a challenging pyramid shape to clamp up. I remove the strips two at a time; one to glue and put back, one to allow room to work in. I start at the wide end and when I get to where I can tighten the first set of clamps I do, that way the glue does not dry out before I get the whole collection glued and assembled. When all are glued and clamped I wipe the set down with a damp rag to remove the squeeze-out. I’m not stingy with this glue-up; I’d rather waste a little glue than have a joint be glue-starved and fail. This board will subjected to repeated washing and during, so I use a polyurethane type III glue that is waterproof, but a joint that is not solidly boned together will allow water to creep in and star “working” that spot in the board, and that can break most any glue over time. I want this board to outlast Dianne’s kitchen sink, so we’ll build it right. While the glue in the cutting board is setting up I take Ann’s tray panels out to the table saw and use the cross-cut sled to trim them to finished length. By cutting backer and ribbon panels to length at the same time I insure that both end up square and even. I do the finish sanding now. Then I take them into the finishing room and shoot the ribbon panels with one coat of lacquer. Why? Two reasons. One: I need to finish at least the upper edges of the ribbon panels so when they contract they will not show slivers of unfinished wood along the sides. I also tape off the ends so I can apply lacquer to the ends of the ribbon panels – but not to the backer panels. This allows me to get a good glue joint between backer and side rail, but will prevent glue from sticking to the ribbon panel. While the lacquer is drying I plough the panel grooves into the rail blanks, round-over the inside top edge or each rail and sand the inside faces only. Sanding and routing the rest of the rails will be done later. Doing this on the inside face now means I don’t have to risk scratching up the lacquered panel by shaping and sanding the insides of the rails after assembly. I cut the rails to length, miter the ends, and fit them around the panels. I need these to be absolutely perfect: no gaps in the miter and the lengths correct. Too short and the corner won’t close, too long and the rail will not seat tightly on the backer panel, weakening the assembly. As in anything, “absolutely perfect” takes time, working slowly and being very careful. If I cut a little too much off I’ll be milling out a new set of rails. Once both trays are fitted, I glue them up by taking the rails back off – one at a time – and applying glue very carefully to the lower edge of the groove with a small artists paint brush then placing it back in place on the assembly and taking the next one off. When all rails have been glued to the backer and to each other I apply clamps to gently pull them together. This takes only firm pressure, no need to “go gorilla” on these. This assembly will be allowed to set up overnight to be sure the glue sets up well before I work with them any further. While I’m waiting on that… I trim the cutting board blank to width and joint the “hypotenuse” side of the board to make it smooth and straight. And run the board through the surface planer to smooth and flatten both sides. As with the ribbon panels, the final few passes are done on the drum sander to get a superior surface. I lay the board bottom side up on the work bench and place the template – make sure it is TOP side DOWN now! – on the blank and trace carefully around it with a sharp pencil so the line is right at the edge of the template. We can not cut on that line though – remember the lip? – so I use a good ruler to project out ¾” from this line and make a series of tick marks. When that is done I play connect-the-dots to create the final shape of the board. Now we can go to the band saw and cut out the shape. As always I cut just a hair outside the line so I have a little wood left to use the stationary belt sander in removing saw marks and fairing the shape as I sand back to the lines. But I don’t want to leave too much, this is 7/8” thick maple after all and will require some effort to remove the waste. Here is where the tricky part begins. We need to route a ¾” wide lip on the sides that will sit on the edge of the sink. How do we do that? Well, I do it by chucking a bowl making bit into the router table and setting the guide fence to limit the depth of cut. Unlike most rounded router bits, the bowl making bit has a fairly substantial flat area on top – which is made to smooth the bottom of a shallow bowl or tray – that works well to produce an even surface on the underside of the lip. I make the lip in shallow passes, stepping the fence back a little on each pass until the bottom of the board gets to the line I traced around the template. Then I make one more clean-up pass that makes the part of the board that pokes down into the sink just a smidge smaller than the sink opening. I’d rather have it fit just a little loose – the lip is plenty wide to support it – than to have it end up too tight. You don’t want to have to pound it into the sink opening! Sanding is next. Lots of sanding. Fortunately The large flat surfaces can be sanded through the various grits (120, 150, 180, & 220) needed to achieve the soft glow we seek once the wood is oiled. OK, you caught me… I do not sand the bottom of the board all the way to 220, I stop after 150, but the visible parts are sanded, and sanded and sanded some more. The final pass, even on the top, is done by hand to get the best finish possible. Once that is complete, I tack away the sanding dust, take a sinus pill to fight the headache I’m going to get from breathing all the really fine sanding dust, and go into the finishing room to apply the first coat of oil. This is food-safe mineral oil. Never use vegetable oil or nut oil to treat a cutting board as these will go rancid in time and could bleed unpleasant stuff back into the food you are preparing that may make you sick. Mineral oil does not spoil. Nor does it form a film like most finishes that would flake off into your food. Most finishes are non-toxic once they’re cured, but if you want to try new flavorings in your food, look to some new spices not polyurethane, lacquer or shellac. The oil is applied very wet and rubbed into the wood –literally- by hand. I can use a rag, but I prefer to use the palm of my hand because it allows me to feel a little extra drag where areas of the board are especially thirsty and are drinking in the oil faster than the rest. I continue rubbing the oil for at least 10 minutes, moving it around the surface making sure that areas that need it are getting it, them wipe the excess oil off with a clean rag. I’ll let the board set overnight and apply another coat is just the same way tomorrow. I’ll finish out the day by milling out the basic parts for the latch blocks for Ann’s tables. Actually making these parts is tricky. It’s almost 10:00 PM now and I’m tired. I’ll call it a day for today and get to this step when my brain is again up to the task. G’Nite! NOTE: Turns out I was too tired to write and post this episode Wednesday night. My apologies to those who eagerly await each episode of this oh-so- thrilling blog (grin). I posted this during lunch on Thursday so please forgive any salad dressing stains you find while reading.

Strip Rippin’

OK, we have a lot to accomplish today, so lets get to it. We’ll start out by selecting a cherry board with consistent color and even graining – or as even as we can find. Because all the old-growth timber has been cut and we’re working out of much younger trees now, trees that were planted and harvested after just two or three decades, we rarely find the kind of boards that our forebears had: wide boards with straight even grain. Being much smaller trees, lumber we work with now has a lot more “direction” in the wood, and areas of straight, clear grain are small and short. But I digress. So I lay- out the board and chunk it up on the chop saw into the rough-length blanks for TV Tray Table ribbon strips. Because this board was cut from the center of the tree and contains the pith, it cupped as it dried. But that’s OK, for I am cutting it into short lengths and then the lengths into narrow strips. To salvage more useable thickness, I rip the worst pieces along the pith line, where the board bends to separate it into two much flatter pieces that will require far less jointing to flatten the first face. Which is done on a jointer. A cutter head under the red, swinging guard removes a little wood from the downward face of the board. The infeed and outfeed tables are perfectly parallel to one another, with the outfeed table perfectly even with the top of the knives in the cutter head, the infeed table can be lowered to adjust the depth of cut. Together they work to remove any twist or cupping from the face of the board. Here I’m jointing a wide board and you can clearly see (I've flipped this board over for you) how the outer edges have been cut onto and smoothed, the center part of the board is still rough because the knives have not gotten to it yet. Another couple of passes will have this entire face smooth, flat and straight. After flattening the wide face, I flip the board up on edge, press the jointed face against the fence at the back of the jointer and run one edge over the cutter head until it too is smooth and flat. This also makes the two jointed faces perfectly square (at 90°) to one another. When I’m finished I mark the two jointed faces in pencil. The two triangles point to the square corner. This is called a joiner’s bow-tie and is a hold-over from the days when an apprentice in a woodworking shop did nothing but flatten rough lumber boards using a hand plane – because they had no power tools. Using these marks, the master craftsmen would know for certain which faces have been jointed and were ready for use. Then the boards go to the surface planer. On this machine the cutter head is above the wood and the freshly jointed faces are placed down on the flat bed of the machine and fed into the cutter head by a tractor mechanism or feed rollers. The cutters remove some wood to smooth the upper surface and make it parallel to the jointed face. We now have only one rough edge, the rest of each board is nicely smooth and rectangular. In most cases a rough part blank would now be trimmed to the proper width on the table saw and that last rough edge is cut away. If in doubt about whether the table saw blade is square to the table top a machinists square or electronic angle finder can be used before making that final cut. In this case I will be doing something just a little different; instead of making one cut to finish the part blank, I will cut the blanks into multiple thin strips which will then be edge glued into the tray panel. Because the wide faces I’ve been working with will become my glue-joints, I take the added precaution of running the blanks through the drum sander to remove any ripple that may have been left by the jointer and planer. Then cut the strips, setting each aside and keeping them in order as I cut them off the blank. This helps to keep the grain patterns flowing smoothly, where just tossing strips randomly together would create a rather chaotic look. When done I have enough strips cut to make 2½ tray panels, which is good because I like to have extras in case a strip or two turn out to have a defect. If so I pull it out, close the gap and bring the next piece in order into the edge of the collection. While milling the ribbon strips for Ann's table, I also milled the maple and cherry pieces needed for Dianne’s cutting board (on the left) and set them aside. Now we lay the strips out on a flat surface and look them over carefully. Ignore the burn marks; a result of close-tolerance cutting, they will be sanded away when we dress the panel. What I’m looking at is the coloring and grain patterns. Sometimes the end result is better if I flip every other ribbon over to get a book-matching effect in pairs of ribbons. Other times I need to rearrange the order, maybe taking a dramatic section from one side and centering it in the panel - yet avoiding any sudden changes in pattern that will offend the eye. When I’m happy with the pattern I square the collection up and secure them together with three strips of wide masking tape. A mass produced table would be using a piece of veneered plywood here instead of going through the trouble to make the solid wood ribbon strip panels. But our tables, being solid wood, can easily be repaired should one become scratched or dented. The veneer used on plywood – even good veneered plywood – is only as thick as 3 or 4 pieces of 24 pound printer paper stacked together and sanding such a surface is extremely risky. You can not sand through as solid wood tray! Well, OK, you *could* but it would take an awful lot of determination! When both panels are ready, I take them into the assembly room where I have a gluing fixture set up, glue pot at hand and clamps laid out ready for use. The fixture allows the panel to fold over the edge, opening the joint so I can brush in some type III polyurethane (waterproof) glue, the tape holds it together and acts like a hinge as I work down the panel. When there glue in each of the joints I lay the panel on the clamps, even up the bottom face (which will become the visible tray face) and begin snugging up the clamps. I wipe both faces with a wet rag once all the clamps are tight to remove the glue squeeze-out. This saves a good deal of scraping later and is much easier on my planer knives as well. These panels will sit overnight to allow the glue to set up good and stiff. It won’t reach maximum hold for 5 days, but will be quite workable by tomorrow. So it’s time to clean things up a bit, and go do the blogging thing. Join me again tomorrow as we clean these ribbon panels up and make them into tray tops.

Spreading the Legs

Before I launch into today’s activities, let me catch you up to date. Most of Friday morning was spent working with Tim to clear away the rest of that fallen tree. Some of it he took to his workshop to use as fuel for his heat stove, the small stuff we burned on-site and the biggest chunks we stacked until the ground dries out enough we can haul them up the hill and toss them into a gully Tim is trying to fill in. Friday afternoon was spent discussing the cutting board design with Dianne and talking with Brian about a coffee table and end-table set he would like to have built to match a console table they already own. More about that as it develops, but we had some discussing to do about details and preferences before I could start working on the estimate. Dianne and I continued to discuss (via e-mail) her cutting board over the weekend. This was not really an on-going discussion since I don’t normally spend time here over the weekends, but on Saturday I needed a tool at home that lives here, so I came in to get it and on Sunday I was working on the weekly radio program for our church, so when I saw her messages arrive, I responded. This was mostly an issue of symmetry and we have settled on a solution. I also brought in some maple for Dianne’s cutting board so it can acclimate to the environment inside my shop before I start cutting it up. That will take a few days. The board I chose has some nice graining in it, but is crooked and has a little twist to it making it unsuited for making long parts, but ideal for cutting up into short pieces for something like a cutting board. This morning I rough cut four blanks for the spreaders on Ann’s tray tables. Some of the blanks are still oversized in width, I’ll deal with that later. First I use the jointer to flatten one wide face and one edge. This also makes the edge square to the wide face. Then I run the blanks through the surface planer – jointed faces down – to make the opposite faces parallel to the jointed face and bring the pieces to the required finished thickness. Next I take them to the table saw and rip them, jointed edge to the fence, to finished width. The final cut is an important one – I need to cut the blanks to finished length, but these end cuts will butt up against the legs to hold the table together and make it stiff. So both end cuts must be square to the centerline of the spreader or it will tend to bow the leg it’s attached to and make it sit weird. I used our miter gauge on the table saw, set the flip stop to the correct length, then slipped the spreader blank under the flip stop to cut the first end while I held the blank firmly against the gauge to keep it from slipping. Then flipped the blank over end for end, set the cut end against the flip stop and cut the other end. Repeat this for all four spreader blanks. Now I’m ready to start shaping the blanks into spreaders. To do this I use a fixture I built – we make a lot of the tables and this gadget is a very handy way to save time and trouble. To start with it lays out the arches; the upper spreader only has an arch on the lower edge, it’s upper edge remains straight and gets marked with a pair of punches to locate where the latch block hole will go. The lower spreader has arches on both edges forming the bow-tie shape. Then I use the band saw to cut the arches, cutting just outside the lines, no need to be especially fastidious about this, we’ll clean it up soon, right now I’m just removing the bulk of the waste wood. Then I go to the drill press and set up a temporary fence to help me hold onto and position the upper spreader blanks while I bore two holes with a Forstner bit. The center spur on the bit slips into the nail-punches I made using the template/fixture, and this results in two holes with their inner edges *just* touching. Then I center the Forstner bit over the point between these holes and drill out the waste wood there – something a Forstner bit excels at and most other types of drilling bits can not do at all. A few nibbles along the length of the oval hole cleans it up nicely. Then it’s over to the router table, chuck up a piloted straight bit and set the depth so the pilot bearing rides on the fixture, the cutting flutes are the same diameter as the bearing so this bit will trim the spreader to exactly the same size and shape and the template/fixture. I flip the lower spreaders over to route the opposite edge. Then I remove the straight bit and chuck up a round-over bit to round off the corners of the long edges and the latch block hole. I use the fixture again to lay-out the location of the pilot holes in the ends of the spreaders, use the first spreader to set up a fixture on the drill press that positions and holds the spreader as I drill the two pilot holes in each end. All that remains in making these parts is to do the sanding. The wide faces can be sanded with a random orbit sander, the rounded edges are sanded by hand. Assembly is done without glue for now: we have one more critical dimension to fit, but can’t fit it until the trays are assembled, so just screws for now. I insert long wood screws through the counter bored holes in the legs and thread them into the pilot holes in the spreaders and use a powered screwdriver to run them in. I use longer screws than normal here because the screws run into end grain, and end grain does not hold screws as well as face grain. Longer screws add extra stength. With assembly completed we have two leg sets ready to be attached to tables once we get the tray part of the tables built. Time for lunch. After lunch I milled out the pieces that will become the rails around the edges of the table tray, which doesn’t look like a difficult task; just four thin pieces of wood, right? Not exactly. One of the things that sets these tables apart from something similar that was mass produced (if you can find such a thing, I have not yet seen a manufacturer that has been willing to try to make knock-offs of our design) is that we grain-match the rails so the pattern and color seem to flow around the table in an unbroken fashion. To do this we borrow a high-end box maker’s trick. How do you make a decorative box with grain that flows around all four corners in a continuous, unbroken pattern? Well, I’ll show you. I start by jointing up a board that will make the rails for both tables. It starts out about 36” long, 3” wide and at least 1” thick when rough. I joint one wide face, then rip the board in two on the table saw. Back to the jointer; run the jointed face along the fence to joint an edge on each strip and use the dead-flat bed of the jointer to be sure it has no bow to it – it’s absolutely straight. Then back to the rip saw to cut the un-jointed edge to finished width. Finally I cut these almost square strips in two; top-to-bottom, mark them for orientation – orientation is critical now – and sand all four strips smooth and to finished thickness on the wide drum sander. Now the tricky part: because each pair of rails were milled from one thickness of a board, the color and grain pattern match up quite well. I will cut each of these strips into two pieces, a long rail and a short rail. It’s easy to see that if I joint the long rail to the short rail at that center cut, the grain will flow around the corner well. But the ends of the boards also match up well because they are part of the same piece of wood. By “unwinding” one solid chunk of wood into the four pieces needed, the grain flows around the resulting rectangle very well. Much better than is possible when parts are made up by the hundred and assembled at random as fast as possible. This very time consuming attention to detail is the major reason our Tray Tables are pricey, but is also what makes them worth the money for those who value quality. This is just one example, there are several such processes in these. I finish out the afternoon by milling out the two latch blocks. This too looks very simple, but care must be taken to insure that the corners are perfectly square or the latching mechanism will be off-kilter. If it’s off even a little, adjusting it for a perfect “click” as the mechanism snaps into place is next to impossible. Time to straighten up, get the blog written and posted, upload the photos and go home to change. Marie has a Christmas-time field trip planned for this evening and I want to be ready on time. Tune in again tomorrow and we’ll make ribbon strips.

Table Leg Pairs

I start out the morning by going out and cutting the middle out of a big tree that fell across the driveway. Details on that are posted [HERE] if you’re interested. Once the tree was off the drive I re-arrange the finishing room so I could lacquer the bi-fold door that I stained yesterday. I will work on that on and off through out the day. The I get out the leg blanks I cut a few days ago and look them over carefully to see if any have bowed beyond usability. A small amount of bowing can be removed, severe bowing would earn it the new status of firewood. They’re all good, so I proceed with cutting then all to exactly the same length. I use our chop saw (AKA compound miter saw) with a stop block clamped to the fence to do this. Then I use the jointer to straighten and square all of the legs. On thin, springy pieces like this straightening a piece is tricky because if I just mash it down on the bed I’ll make it a bit thinner, but no straighter because the wood will just spring back up after the planning pass. So I lay each leg on the jointer bed, which is dead-flat, and check to see if and where any gaps between each face of the leg and the jointer bed are. Then I mark locations in pencil where I will want to place my holding tools so I do not mash it out flat, but allow the spring to spring. I joint one face with the pressure pushing the piece down on the bed, mark that face as having been jointed, then turn the leg 90° and press it against the fence as I run it through the jointer again. This straightens two adjoining faces and makes those faces square to one another. I mark both jointed faces. Then I set up the planer and run the legs through with one of the jointed faces down against the bed, the high speed knives that whirl above remove some wood on each pass to make that face smooth and parallel to the jointed face. I run all the legs through again and again until they have reached the 7/8” finished thickness. Then I flip all the legs 90° so the other jointed face is down and repeat the process. When done, the legs are the proper size, perfectly square, smooth and straight. Now I match up the legs into pairs that look good together. Then I get out my leg templates and lay-out where all the screw holes will go. To keep the look I want, I have to be careful that the legs remain properly oriented to one another and paired with their mate. I use a counter-boring bit to drill the screw holes, pilot holes, counter sinks and counter bores as needed. Attention is needed here to be sure I don’t counter bore one that is supposed to only be counter sunk. To countersink a screw, a shallow cone shaped recess is drilled where the head of the screw will sit so the flat, outer face is flush with the wood. A counter bore uses the same bit but goes deeper so the cone shaped recess is at the bottom of a well in the wood. This allows a wooden plug to be glued in over the head of the screw to hide it completely. Then I do the final shaping of the leg ends and sand all the legs to 150 grit. Now I’m ready to pre-finish the areas of the legs that will end up being inside the pivot points and assemble the leg pairs by installing the pivot screws. All that is left to do now is to make and attach the leg mounting blocks, being sure to pre-finish the area where they meet the legs. The leg pairs are now done, tomorrow we’ll make spreaders and assemble leg pairs into completed leg sets.

Windy Wednesday

This is another very windy day, not as cold as last time but very noisy. I’m glad I’m working indoors today! I started off the day working in the office for a bit, taking care of some administrative chores, then moved on to scuff sanding Carl’s bedroom door and shooting it with the final coat of lacquer. The first coat of finish on Robert’s bottle stopper rack is dry so I scuff sanded that as well and applied a second coat. This one gets satin poly, so I will probably quit with two coats so it doesn’t built up and get shiny, but I’ll have to see how it looks when this coat is dry. Then the electricity went out for about an hour. Actually it went out as I was applying the poly to the stopper rack, so I finished that up and took my lunch break a little early. After lunch I tagged and removed the hinges from the first set of bi-fold doors. I have 3 to do. In theory, these hinges should all be identical and could go back in any position. In theory. In real life I find this rarely works out, so I tag the hinges as to what position they were in as I remove them, then I can be sure they will go back in exactly the same place when I reassemble the doors later. By then the lacquer on the big door is dry and I can move it out of the way and set up a table on which I can stain the doors – after I’ve sanded them. I’ll leave the stain on side 1 to dry for a while and I’ll find some useful chore or other to do, then I’ll flip the doors over and stain the other side before I go home for the day.

Two Jobs Tuesday

The snow that we enjoyed so much over the weekend is all gone now, the truck that broke down in that snow has been repaired and is back home with us – actually it’s in Newport with Marie at the moment – and I just got an order out of one of the discussions that has been on-going over the past several days; Dianne has decided to order a custom Over-the-Sink cutting board and has paid her deposit. The template we will use to make the board is supposed to be in the mail to us. This will probably be the last custom-made order we will be able to guarantee delivery before Christmas. On-hand stock is no problem, but custom stuff is now past the bubble. I started the morning by flipping over Carl & Pam’s bedroom door and staining the other side. It’s chilly and damp today but I’m hoping that this coat will dry up in time that I can get the first two coats of lacquer on this afternoon. While it was drying I worked on Robert’s stopper rack. I’ve decided that since this project is so close to being done I’d just finish it up. I had a walnut 4-tier base made up and on hand so I don’t need to make that, just the shelves. I made those yesterday, so all I have to do now is assemble and finish it. I start by laying out the locations of the peg holes in the base and drilling them on the drill press. The pegs are not just decorative, they go through the side of the rack into the base to provide structural reinforcement as well. I apply glue into each hole with a small artists paint brush, drive a length of oak dowel rod into the hole and cut it off flush with the base side using a flush cut saw. When the glue sets up some I sand them smooth, and finish sand the base. I use oak dowels in teh walnut parts and walnut dowels through the oak shelves to provide a nice contrast. Then I finish sand the shelves. The large surfaces can be sanded with a random orbit sander, but the curved edges along the shelf front, sides and holes require hand sanding, especially the holes, these are tricky to sand well; I have to wrap a piece of sandpaper around a finger and work it into each hole, varying the angles to sand the entire curved surface. I tend to switch fingers (and thumb) often or it will get quite sore from the pressure. When they’re all sanded I remove the sanding dust and glue and clamp the shelves to the rack base. I’ll let the glue set up here before I try to drill for pegs. Since my finish sanding is mostly done, I don’t want pencil marks on my shelves, so I put strips of masking tape on the lay-out areas and make my marks on that, then I can drill right through the tape, put glue into the holes and drive the dowel rod though as well. Once I’ve trimmed the dowel off I remove the tape. While the glue sets up in this I go lacquer the door. By the time I have two coats on that the rack is ready to sand the plugs smooth.

Then I can tack-rag the rack to remove the sanding dust and shoot it with the first coat of finish. Polyurethane takes much longer to dry, so this will sit overnight and we will see how it’s doing in the morning.