Showing posts with label at. Show all posts
Showing posts with label at. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Well at Least Something Was Accomplished
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I got a moderately decent start on the "secret project" this weekend. Again, its secret from the blog because the recipient does on occasion read whats going on here and I dont want to ruin any surprises. I can fill you in on a few things as I work on them though, without giving away the whole goose.
I am working with some beautiful white oak, I got it from my supplier very rough sawn so Ive been trying to get some of the beginning pieces milled up and workable. I have never worked with such rough lumber before, and Ive not worked with white oak before either and I have to say that I was very impressed with the figure and grain of the wood as my hand planes revealed what was under the rough texture. Full of beautiful iridescent ray flecks and nice straight grains. I am very impressed.
Working the White Oak has been a chore though, the seller at Big River Lumber told me when I said I admitted that I had not worked with it before, that it was more fussy than red oak, and harder to work. He wasnt really wrong, Im dulling plane blades like crazy and I have to pay a whole lot of attention to reading the grain or I get some good tear out. All these things are good for me as Im learning how to handle the hand planes better and better every day.
The biggest frustration for me this weekend has been something I knew was coming but had been trying to hold of. The building and rebuilding of various shop jigs and accessories. I had no real workbench when we made the original move out to Northern Maine so I had no real accessories for it. I was really just learning how to use it when we decided to move home to Wisconsin. To save some room in the Penske truck I held off on making some items and I also trashed a few that I knew I could easily remake.
I use 3/4 inch dowel for bench dogs, so replacing those was no big deal. I also replaced a plane stop using a section of pine molding from a scrap pile. Just a couple of shorter pieces of dowel and some crazy glue and I was back in business.
So I had that accomplished, continuing on with trying to get something accomplished with the white oak. I took one of the boards, laid it out on the saw benches and cut it down to some basic sizes
With the plane stop made I went to work getting the boards flattened. This lead to a lot of sharpening of plane blades, not a big deal as it just takes a few minutes each time, but I had to replace at least half of the abrasive paper before I got started.
I should probably replace the 400 grit as well, but Ill hold of a while. At least until tomorrow.
All the planing was followed up by a good amount of card scraping. Im not sure if a lot of you out there use card scrapers instead of sanding or not, I am still getting used to them myself. (Confession: I still did touch the boards up with a the random orbit when I was done, hand tool purists ready your rotten veggies and launch at will) But to best use a card scraper you have to hold a bend in it, and that is tough on the hands. So I took another break and some red oak scrap and cut a quick and rough jig to hold the bend in the scraper while Im using it.
It works fantastic, needs a little rounding and refining yet, but it holds a good bend and makes it easier to get the work done. How did I decide on the curve. I judged about how much I flex the scraper when I use it, and I eyeballed it.
Now came one of the bigger challenges, I got all the starting boards planes and flattened and I started working on trying to square up the ends. I flipped and flopped on how I was going to do it, and finally decided that I needed to make a device I should have made a while ago. a shooting board.
I had some 1/2" plywood floating around and it really doesnt take a whole lot to make one but it was still one more pause in the progress. Some guys live for building jigs and appliances, things for their shop. They use the best materials they can find and fine tune s jig or appliance into a beautiful piece. I realize that a lot of the recent posts on this blog revolve around my shop, whether its been doing the set up in Maine and building the Nicholson style workbench, to setting up shop at the Wood Shop Jr. and going through and rehabbing my hand tools to building a pair of Saw Benches and a Joiners Bench, to now setting up the Oldwolf Workshop 5.0 and doing all thats involved in that process. Building these jigs included. But all of those things arent me.
I like to build furniture, not shop accessories, the more time Im building jigs and appliances, the less time Im building furniture. Taking time out for distractions in the middle of a process is never good, it only leads to something like this.
Heres two boards that will eventually be opposing sides of the "secret project." As you can see once I got them onto the shooting board I realized that I skipped a step while I was sizing and surfacing, I overplaned one board on one end and didnt notice it until now. I wanted the boards to be 10 1/2" when I was done. The narrow end on top is 10 3/8".
I had to close down the shop and come home earlier than I had planed. On Twitter I let loose about how I was feeling and that I was on my way home. My wonderful wife caught this on her Twitter account and when I walked through the door, she told me to go take a shower cause she was taking me out to lunch. As I write this I am still annoyed at my screw up and at the delays, but I am ready to go back and deal with them tomorrow, I have a plan, kind of . . .
Cheers
Oldwolf
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I am working with some beautiful white oak, I got it from my supplier very rough sawn so Ive been trying to get some of the beginning pieces milled up and workable. I have never worked with such rough lumber before, and Ive not worked with white oak before either and I have to say that I was very impressed with the figure and grain of the wood as my hand planes revealed what was under the rough texture. Full of beautiful iridescent ray flecks and nice straight grains. I am very impressed.
Working the White Oak has been a chore though, the seller at Big River Lumber told me when I said I admitted that I had not worked with it before, that it was more fussy than red oak, and harder to work. He wasnt really wrong, Im dulling plane blades like crazy and I have to pay a whole lot of attention to reading the grain or I get some good tear out. All these things are good for me as Im learning how to handle the hand planes better and better every day.
The biggest frustration for me this weekend has been something I knew was coming but had been trying to hold of. The building and rebuilding of various shop jigs and accessories. I had no real workbench when we made the original move out to Northern Maine so I had no real accessories for it. I was really just learning how to use it when we decided to move home to Wisconsin. To save some room in the Penske truck I held off on making some items and I also trashed a few that I knew I could easily remake.
I use 3/4 inch dowel for bench dogs, so replacing those was no big deal. I also replaced a plane stop using a section of pine molding from a scrap pile. Just a couple of shorter pieces of dowel and some crazy glue and I was back in business.
So I had that accomplished, continuing on with trying to get something accomplished with the white oak. I took one of the boards, laid it out on the saw benches and cut it down to some basic sizes
With the plane stop made I went to work getting the boards flattened. This lead to a lot of sharpening of plane blades, not a big deal as it just takes a few minutes each time, but I had to replace at least half of the abrasive paper before I got started.
All the planing was followed up by a good amount of card scraping. Im not sure if a lot of you out there use card scrapers instead of sanding or not, I am still getting used to them myself. (Confession: I still did touch the boards up with a the random orbit when I was done, hand tool purists ready your rotten veggies and launch at will) But to best use a card scraper you have to hold a bend in it, and that is tough on the hands. So I took another break and some red oak scrap and cut a quick and rough jig to hold the bend in the scraper while Im using it.
Now came one of the bigger challenges, I got all the starting boards planes and flattened and I started working on trying to square up the ends. I flipped and flopped on how I was going to do it, and finally decided that I needed to make a device I should have made a while ago. a shooting board.
I like to build furniture, not shop accessories, the more time Im building jigs and appliances, the less time Im building furniture. Taking time out for distractions in the middle of a process is never good, it only leads to something like this.
I had to close down the shop and come home earlier than I had planed. On Twitter I let loose about how I was feeling and that I was on my way home. My wonderful wife caught this on her Twitter account and when I walked through the door, she told me to go take a shower cause she was taking me out to lunch. As I write this I am still annoyed at my screw up and at the delays, but I am ready to go back and deal with them tomorrow, I have a plan, kind of . . .
Cheers
Oldwolf
Monday, February 10, 2014
Getting Er Done One Piece At A Time
I now have both sides and one shelf pretty much completed on my wife’s plant shelving unit. An expanded course load is keeping me busier than usual this term writing a lot of new curriculum. I am trying to take a few hours out every other day to get this project done, though.
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As I work in a next-to-nothing area, it requires some out-of–the-box thinking. Because this particular project is so large, being able to build, assemble and finish it in my shop is out of the question. My shop is my office when it is not being used as a shop and vise versa. Having a project as large as this sitting in the middle of it would kill both uses of the room. I could assemble it and finish it in the diningroom, but I tend to shy away from actions that cause my wife to come down on me heavily, figuratively speaking, of course. I had a friend once whose wife came home to discover he had piled all her furniture at one end of the diningroom and was using the space to build a new dingy. Now that I think of it, I haven’t seen him since they divorced.
With this project, I plan to build and finish each part of it as I go, each piece getting stained and given a few coats of clearcoat before moving on to the next. When everything is ready for the final assembly, I’ll sand each piece down so once it is assembled, it will be ready for more finish coats. This shelf is the first to be completed using this new system.
It is a rather strange looking thing, isn’t it? There is a reason for this design, however. The wide frame below the shelf is there for three reasons. This shelving unit is to hold a bunch of potted plants and nothing weighs more, I think, than a bunch of large bowls of dirt with green things sticking out of them. The tall frame should support the weight. Each shelf gets its own grow light; a 4’ Fluorescent tube. The light’s fixture is mounted on the back of each shelf’s face-frame and hopefully it is wide enough to hide the ugly buggers. Finally, to get as much light as possible on the plants, only the enclosed storage cupboards, which is 18” high at the bottom of the unit, will get a solid back. This means there is a chance the whole thing will rack, so I am hoping these wide shelf frames will limit that. So there is a method to my madness.
The frames are dovetailed together, getting all that long grain to mesh with more long grain for a strong joint. The shelf flat is only glued to its frame rails in the centre 2’ of the width. I drilled three pocket holes, elongating them fore to aft, 10” in from the ends and one in the centre, using brass screws to do the deed. I hope this will not only be enough to hold the shelf in place, but accommodate wood movement when the thing shrinks and swells during the seasons, or my wife spills water on it. Hopefully, it won’t pull itself apart.
I am not a big fan of oak and one of my greater dislikes of it is the fact that the soft grain areas shrink so they are always lower than the hard grain. I researched a way to deal with this and came up with a flooring product, believe it or not. The stuff is called “TimberMate”, and I found it better than any grain filler I have used before. It comes quite thick, almost hard actually, but you can thin it up with water. You can thin it enough to apply with a rag or spread it on with a plastic or stainless steel trowel or paint scraper. Regular metal will cause this stuff to oxidize and turn black, but if it does, the black soon disappears when you sand. It comes toned to match a number of popular woods and you can even tint it if required. It has turned out to be just the ticket.
I started out using it to go after only the really noticeable areas. It dried in short order but I gave it 24 hours each time. It sands very easily, making dust that is very similar to baby powder. As the wood is red oak, I used their matching product and was quite uneasy with it the first go-round as it looked like it is going to stand out like no-body’s business. Once I sanded it, though, I quickly realized that the product is removed from the high points, which is the hard grain, and left in the low, which is the soft grain, and it is a perfect match in colour to those areas. Because I couldn’t tell which parts were filled and which weren’t, I went crazy with it. At 20 bucks an 8-ounce bottle, I think I’ll use it more sparingly on the next one.
Once sanded and cleaned, I taped off some of areas. I covered the ends with masking tape to ensure that no stain or clearcoat ended up on them to compromise the strength of the glue when the piece is assembled. Because of the lights inside it, I wanted to coat the bottom of the shelves with a highly reflective coating so I covered the inside horizontal surface as well for that same reason.
Once set, I gave it a coat of stain, brushed on, ragged off. I used “Old Masters” Gel Stain for this, mixing their Red Mahogany and Provincial colours together 50/50. It is the first time I used this thicker gel stain and I really liked it. It was much easier to apply and clean off than the old, runny style of yore.
I gave it 24 hours to dry and then gave it two coats of Clear Varathane with another 24 hours between those coats. This clearcoat is much shinier than I want, but I like the sheen I get by using higher gloss finishes, then fine steel wooling their shine away and polishing it back with finishing wax. I seem to get a deeper finish starting with higher gloss then I do with satin finishes.
After another 24 hours, I applied the reflective coating to the underside of the shelf, thinking it would be far easier to do as it laid flat on the table rather than wrestling with it from the bottom up once it was assembled. Chroma a PlastiColor Company makes this material and I found it in an automotive supply store. It is decal material used to add chrome rocker panel accents to car bodies so I thought it would probably withstand any moisture issues as well as being fade resistant. It shines nice too.
I don’t think the final result looks too bad. The dovetail joints came out all right without any gapping holes to fill. I do like the design with the double bead on the shelf edge and the single at the bottom of the face. I think they will do nicely at breaking up the mass of this overall design, because massive it is.
I have created a post dealing with the dovetails, or at least my humble way of dealing with them. If you have the time, please have a look and give me your feedback.
Peace,
Mitchell
Monday, January 20, 2014
Woodworking at home dvd magazine
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Useful Woodworking at home dvd magazine Best choice
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