Spackle & Sawdust

Birdseye Maple on Cherry

The design for the top panel calls for birdseye maple. It seemed a shame to use my only piece of birdseye maple up on just one project. I decided to resaw the board. A few passes through my old Grizzly G1066 sander later and I had a beautiful 3/32″ sheet of birdseye maple veneer. Because this is going to be used for a raised panel, I had to decide on the substrate. One technique I’d seen and had always wanted to try was using a different species substrate in a raised panel. The rest of the piece was cherry and I figured this would make for a really sweet contrast.

3/32" Birdseye Maple Veneer from the G1066

Completed Raised Panel of Birdseye Maple Laminated over Cherry

Assembly & Glue-up

Last Spring I picked up a Festool Domino at my local Woodcraft. Shortly after, my wife gave birth to our 4th child and the shop was essentially shuttered for the next several months. Now I’m finally getting a chance to play with it — and it definitely lives up to it’s press. The frame went together like a dream, about as fast as using a biscuit cutter, while working on much narrower members and holding together well without clamps during test assembly. These were by far the fastest mortise and loose tenon joints I’d ever created. The front panel went together clean and tight.

Test Assembly of the Domino Joints

Glue-up

Setting the Stage

No theater can be complete without a stage. This one extends 1″ beyond the sides and 1″ front and back. Rather than nibble away a notch on each side of the stage, I figured it’d be easier to rip the board in three sections, cut the middle piece shorter, and glue it back together. The result looks great with no visible glue line and, after a bit of touch up with a chisel, fit perfectly. After sanding the piece to 220, I ran a bead of glue on the frame and stage and clamped ‘em together. Since it’s long grain to long grain, and a pretty good fit, no joinery should be necessary.

Notching the Stage

Sanded to 220, the Stage Glued In Place

The other night my wife’s best friend’s daughter stopped by to help out with the kids while we ran some errands and completed some chores. She showed them a new game. They spent the evening in the basement hiding behind a blanket draped over a couple chairs, putting on puppet shows with the numerous dolls and stuff animals scattered about the basement.

They’ve been putting on puppet shows nearly every day since…which sparked an idea for a Christmas present/project: A Puppet Theater!

After a couple hours searching the web for ideas and sketching out some plans on SketchUp, I produced a design and began preparing the wood.

Puppet Theater Design in SketchUp

I have a couple hundred board foot of beautiful cherry I got on special last year and a really nice piece of birdseye maple a friend gave me in trade for a big block of Ash he needed.

Thanks, Ali!

Click Here to Download the SketchUp File

A nice piece of birdseye Maple

The cherry boards glued up for the bottom raised panels

The top curve on vellum

Frame prepped and laid out

I had the distinct honor of hosting the DuPage Woodworkers as they toured my shop this past weekend. I had a great time talking about the shop and sharing ideas with the club members.

I had a blast meeting you all! Thanks!

It’s been a very busy past couple of months. I’ve built a couple more mantels that I still need to post some pics of and in my “day job” we’ve moved offices…which meant a great deal of planning and work on setting up a new server room. I also had the Woodcraft Magazine article matted. Clearly it wouldn’t do to purchase a frame for an article about a woodshop, so I whipped one together in the shop.

The base frame is popular veneered with resawn Cocobolo and trimmed with Panga-Panga. The Cocobolo’s been sitting around the shop, around 20 or so bd ft that was misshipped to me some years ago. I figured this was as good a use as any! The frame itself isn’t terribly intricate, but this was only the second project I actually designed in the shop “on the fly.” It was a great deal of fun and I think it came out rather nice. The finish is a bit rough since I really wanted to deliver it on a specific date and had to rush in the end..but I think it works.

It’s been a bit crazy around here.

Work (at my “real job”) has been hectic and busy …a good thing…, I’ve started back to school to finally finish a software engineering degree ...another good thing…, and now I’ve been contacted by a designer specializing in fireboxes and mantles who’s sending work my way …a very good thing.

The first piece she sent me is called the Staub Mantle. This is a painted piece, more of what I would consider carpentry than fine woodworking, but it was a fun piece to build nonetheless. One of the best parts of this particular job was it gave me an excuse to finally buy an Earlex HV5000 HVLP sprayer (review to come) to paint it. Since it was shipped, I had to crate is up as well…another first for me.

I think it came out pretty well…

Staub Mantle

Crated

It’s been a very busy summer and I opted to spend most of my free time with my family rather than in the shop. Other than a couple cutting boards (after seeing all the cool ones posted at lumberjocks.com in the past few months I just had to try a few myself!), I really haven’t spent any significant time in the shop.

However, while shopping for a gift for my wife on the occasion of our 6th wedding anniversary, I learned that the traditional gift was candy or iron and the modern alternate was wood. In keeping with this theme, many of the online vendors were selling wooden boxes containing chocolates. This seemed like a great gift idea, but, being a woodworker, clearly I couldn’t buy her a wooden box. However, since I didn’t have time to build a nice box and don’t have any real experience with them anyway, I looked for another idea.

For the past 5 anniversaries I’ve made it a sort of tradition to get up early and, now that we have children, taking the kids out with me to pick up cinnamon rolls for breakfast. This year, I decided, I would make her breakfast instead and serve it to her, with chocolate-dipped strawberries, on a handmade wooden serving tray.

And this is the result.

This project was unique in that it’s the first project I designed entirely in my head and during the actual construction process. Typically I design my pieces in detail in SketchUp before even selecting the lumber. I must admit it was kinda fun building this way — designing on-the-fly so to speak — though I’m not sure I’ll make this the new norm.

The bulk of the body of the tray is cherry, the handles are walnut. The horizontal strips (the growth rings) are curly maple and purpleheart. The purpleheart, incidentally, was from a board my wife gave me for our fifth anniversary. Each strip represents a different milestone — the day we met, our wedding day, birth of a child and anniversaries. I labeled them with dates on the back and signed the piece with a personal message for my lovely wife.

The biggest challenge in this piece was scooping out the “dish” of the tray. I built the tray in a single day — it was the only time I could spend in the shop without letting on what I was up to. Therefore I had to hurriedly cobble together a quick-y template and jig to position and guide the router. The template slipped a bit on the front edge and the bottom was uneven in spots, requiring a good deal of sanding to make it acceptable. There are still a number of visible imperfections in the piece which, in this case I think give it character. It really does look handmade. In any event, I didn’t have much choice but to accept it as the best I could do within available time. It was a real hit with my wife and will certainly be difficult to top next year!

(PS – In case you’re curious, for her part my wife gave me a waffle iron (I love cooking from-scratch pancake breakfast with the kids on weekends and my son would eat waffles for all three meals if we allowed him) and made a generous contribution to my tool fund — I’m presently more than 1/2 way to a Festool Domino. Woo-hoo!)

It’s been difficult finding time to complete this project.

When you come home after work to two toddlers, a baby and an exhausted wife, it’s extremely difficult to then suggest you’d like to head out to the shop for a couple hours! “Disappearing” into the shop on weekends can be equally problematic. Nevertheless, we worked out a plan and I finally managed to make the time to get this crib done…and none to soon with Nathan now just over 3 mos. old!

I didn’t take many “in progress” shots — partially due to the time constraints, partially because while the build was “spread out,” there weren’t that many hours or steps,  and partially because being the my third crib, and second project with curved legs, there were fewer unique and interesting shots to take.

Modifications

The crib itself is based on the very popular “Heirloom Crib” plan from Wood. I’ve made a couple modifications to make it better match the dresser. These include broader, thicker end caps with a chamfer matching the dresser’s top, “cloud lifts” on the bottom of the ends, and curved “gumby” legs.

One of the firsts for me with this project was the joinery of the end caps. The purchased plans call for a double cap — the bottom piece is glued and screwed into the ends and the top is then simply glued on top of it. As I wanted this to match the dresser, I needed to do away with the bottom piece — but how to join the cap without using exposed screws? I briefly considered using screws and matching cherry plugs in the holes, but felt this would negatively impact the look. I ultimately decided to use dowels, something for various reasons I’d not done before. I purchased a $10 jig at Menards and cut matching holes for (5) 5/16″ dowels in each cap. This seemed to work quite well and I’m fairly confident will stand up over time.

Finish and Assembly

I sanded all the parts, prior to glue up, to 220. The first coat was a Watco natural Danish Oil. I then topped it with 3 light layers of Waterlox Tung-oil based sealer/finish. During assembly, I had some issues with the threaded inserts and the Cherry. I had no problem with the Maple version of this crib, but clearly these inserts are too coarse for use with Cherry. Even after enlarging the holes, they “mounded” the cherry and splintered the face somewhat as they drove, even with a caul clamped to the face around the hole. I’ll probably fix this with some sanding and new finish in a couple years before putting it in long term storage. For now, the hardware covers this issue and I couldn’t bear delaying the “rollout” any longer!

Installed

And here’s the finished crib in its natural habitat…

Hopefully he’ll sleep soundly in his new crib for at least the next 2 – 3 years!

Now that he’s arrived, I need to get crackin’ on a crib for our latest addition.

As with the cribs I built for Annalise and Sean, I wanted to use an “off the shelf” plan to ensure it complies with the latest safety standards as well as to make it easier to fit it with standard hardware, mattress, etc. In the end, we settled on the “Heirloom Crib” design I had used for my daughter. This one will be built with cherry and walnut and sport some minor changes, like walnut end panels and compound curves in the posts, to better match the completed dresser.

My 2 week old son Nathan decided to visit me in the shop this afternoon to supervise the construction. He was one tough customer when it came to my modifications, but in the end, he approved.

I love my “new” drum sander.

I purchased the used machine for the purpose of sanding shop-cut veneers and inlay woods. However, with a 23-1/2″ capacity, it is capable of so much more. I first cut my teeth with this thing on the side panels. Now it was time to glue up the top — and I was really looking forward to seeing what it could do with the 21″ x 64″ x 1″ thick part.

Joining the top

I started by rough cutting and gluing up two 5/4 boards. Jointing an edge on these long, tall boards was a challenge on my 6-1/8″ Ridgid jointer’s 45″ table. One of the boards had a 1/4″ bow that simply couldn’t be removed on the short table, so I pin nailed it to a sacrificial scrap of 3/8″ plywood and ran it through the table saw.

It’s a “feature”

I had hand-selected three 5/4 cherry boards, nearly 80″ long for the top from Owl Hardwoods. The first one I chose was beautiful and featured numerous streaks/pitch pockets that I just love the look of in cherry furniture. Unfortunately I was unable to find a similarly figured board in the pile. The other two I selected were nice, but didn’t match the beauty of the first…I figured I’d sort it all out in the shop. Well…the time had come and my dilemma was that the beautiful piece was a poor match for either of the others, and the other two, while a better match for each other didn’t match the beauty of the first. After much consternation, and a determination that I simply couldn’t afford to go back to the lot to find its perfect mate,  borrowing a term from software development, I decided that the mismatch should be a feature, not a bug.

I recall reading somewhere (maybe from David Marks?) that in a situation like this you should highlight the flaw…which has me now considering doing a simple inlay along the length of the joint. Perhaps in walnut and echoing the “cloud lift” (double, mirrored) from the front and side bottom apron? Or even something more “organic” (a river runs through it?).

Any opinions on that?

Dead Flat

Once the glue dried, I scraped and then planed the joint relatively flat and prepared to see how well the old Grizzly would handle the large piece. It took a bit of work just to place the machine in the room with >6′ of clearance on either side in my small shop…but in the end, I found the space. Since I was using nearly the full capacity of the sander, I was very nervous that it’d track a bit too far to either side and somehow ruin either the piece or the machine or both. While I did manage to brush up against the duct tape on one pass — resulting in the need to stop and re-secure the paper, I didn’t experience any significant issues. The front roller’s 100 grit paper loaded up enough to require replacement part way through the process, and I did notice some loading that I was unable to completely clean up on the edges, but overall this was an extremely satisfying experience with no burns or noticeable snipe and resulted in an absolutely dead flat top! Awesome!

My only issue was with the dust collection — for smaller pieces like the side panels, the collection was absolutely sufficient. However, with this piece, while there weren’t great clouds of dust or anything like that, I did wind up with a thin film of dust covering all of the shop surfaces. Prior to this, per a fellow LumberJock‘s recommendation, I had replaced the flexible hose that came with the sander with rigid PVC. I’m sure this helped, but it still couldn’t quite keep up.

After sanding, I routed a bevel around the bottom edge with a plunge router.

Winding down the build phase

Finally, I installed some small stop blocks on the dust panels behind the drawer fronts to prevent them from recessing too far into the carcass and some “tip blocks” at the top corners so the drawers won’t dip significantly when fully extended.

Next up: Inlaying the top(?) and then sanding, sanding, sanding and more sanding!

Labor Day weekend my wife took the kids up to the family cabin for a couple days. I spent most of this time in the shop working on the drawers. For this dresser I had designed the drawers with large through dovetails. Since I don’t own a decent dovetailing jig that allows for custom size and spacing, I was going to have to do these by hand. Since I haven’t done many projects with hand-cut visible dovetails, I figured I’d better take my time with these. To make things a bit faster and more accurate, I used the bandsaw with the table tilted to 10 degrees to start the pins and the router table to hog out the majority of the waste. I’m not sure how much faster it is vs. a hammer and chisel, but it was certainly more accurate than I would be solely by hand and saves a bit of wear and tear on the chisel blades — I wasn’t keen on spending my rather limited shop time sharpening chisels!

That said, I do truly enjoy working with sharp chisels as I am here cleaning up the pins:

The pins completed on one drawer front:

Marking out the tails with an X-acto knife:

I’m very pleased with the end result. This is a dry fit of one of the drawers…

I used a simple dado to attach the drawer backs.

I had originally planned to use sliding dovetail drawer slides, but they fit so well, I decided to simply add guides on either side and a block at the top to keep it from dipping. Here’s the chest with the completed drawers:

Next up is the top. After that, sanding, sanding and more sanding.