Wood Working

Projects along the woodturning trail

Current construction projects - minnesota department of, Mndot current construction projects and related traffic impacts. California state coastal conservancy | the coastal, 2015 sea otter grant applications due august 1. the state coastal conservancy is now accepting applications for 2015 sea otter recovery grants. the grants will be. Now atlanta is turning old tracks green - the new york, Rich addicks for the new york times. ryan gravel, who conceived the atlanta beltline as part of his master’s thesis, on the site in january. the project. The san tomas aquino/saratoga creek trail, santa clara, Introduction the san tomas aquino/saratoa creek trail is an important feeder trail to the san francisco bay trail. it brings people from residential and industrial. North country trail - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, The north country national scenic trail (nct) stretches approximately 4,600 miles (7,400 km) from crown point in eastern new york to lake sakakawea state park in. Surviving a plane crash along the iditarod trail, Excerpt from the chapter "my life-and-death plane crash" in the recently published book “chasing dogs-my adventures as the official photographer of alaska’s.

Burke-gilman trail detours | transportation improvement, Burke-gilman trail detours through west campus. view this map in google maps. bicyclists and pedestrians. at adams lane ne, bicycle travel is detoured around the. Capital projects - city of auburn, wa | home, About auburn. news & notices the latest news and information. directions find directions to city hall and other city facilities. mayor meet auburn mayor nancy backus.. The plantation trail | discovering southern architecture, 2013 is coming to a close and today i received the annual report on “the plantation trail” from wordpress. it was very encouraging to learn that some 25,000.

Native American Tribes Map

Tiger Leaping Gorge Map

Homemade Wood Lathe Plans

Da' House of Khafre

The san tomas aquino/saratoga creek trail, santa clara, Introduction the san tomas aquino/saratoa creek trail is an important feeder trail to the san francisco bay trail. it brings people from residential and industrial. North country trail - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, The north country national scenic trail (nct) stretches approximately 4,600 miles (7,400 km) from crown point in eastern new york to lake sakakawea state park in. Surviving a plane crash along the iditarod trail, Excerpt from the chapter "my life-and-death plane crash" in the recently published book “chasing dogs-my adventures as the official photographer of alaska’s.

Current construction projects - minnesota department of, Mndot current construction projects and related traffic impacts. California state coastal conservancy | the coastal, 2015 sea otter grant applications due august 1. the state coastal conservancy is now accepting applications for 2015 sea otter recovery grants. the grants will be. Now atlanta is turning old tracks green - the new york, Rich addicks for the new york times. ryan gravel, who conceived the atlanta beltline as part of his master’s thesis, on the site in january. the project. The san tomas aquino/saratoga creek trail, santa clara, Introduction the san tomas aquino/saratoa creek trail is an important feeder trail to the san francisco bay trail. it brings people from residential and industrial. North country trail - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, The north country national scenic trail (nct) stretches approximately 4,600 miles (7,400 km) from crown point in eastern new york to lake sakakawea state park in. Surviving a plane crash along the iditarod trail, Excerpt from the chapter "my life-and-death plane crash" in the recently published book “chasing dogs-my adventures as the official photographer of alaska’s.

I managed to complete my miniature chair. Unfortunately, this happened on the same week that my camera is out of town, so I finished the video using my sons old "Small Wonder" camera. Yeah, its a small wonder that it works at all. So...SORRY ABOUT THE VIDEO QUALITY!  The middle section is okay, because I shot that last weekend.

Once my camera gets home Ill post some good pictures of the project. Anyway, this was a really tricky undertaking and one that ate up my time over three weekends. Dealing with really small stuff is hard because there is not much room for error. So while I wouldnt recommend actually making this particular project, it was a good exercise to challenge myself and my tools.

Next week: bandsaw boxes. You cant screw them up!

I almost began to think that a simple economics would price me out of being able to try an operation like drawboring mortise and tenon joints. I am so glad I was wrong.

First, just to be sure we are all together, Im going to explain, a common practice to better secure mortise and tenon joints is to drill holes through the assembled and finished joint and "pin" it with dowels sized to the holes. cut the dowels off flush and you have a joint that will be mechanically stronger than the glue itself. The picture shows my daughter Fayth cutting dowel pins flush after using them to better secure her half lap joints on a frame, same idea. drawbore pins take the process to the next level. you fit a basic M&T joint but you only drill your initial holes through the mortise board. You then drill holes into the tenon that are off-set just slightly, so when you drive the pins in, the offset holes actually draw the two boards together. forming an even stronger joint that can be done without the want for clamps, and possibly without the requirement of adhesive.

There is a requirement though, to make the joint work you need  a set of specialized tools called "drawbore pins" basically they are tapered metal shafts that will do the initial work of pulling the joint together, and will help shape the way for the incoming dowels. The biggest problem with them, They are god damn expensive!! Ninety dollars a pair at Lie Nielsen, a Google search on shopping tonight showed an antique pair for $155. That these prices I would have never been able to afford them. So I was only doing drawbores in my dreams.

Then I stumbled across a good article by my personal hero, Chris Schwarz, and he spoke about making cheaper beginners drawbore tools from an Alignment Tool (you can check out the article called "Drawboring Resurrected" HERE) and I had a slap myself on the forehead moment. I had done some concrete work while in high school, the pig farm I worked on was remodeling some of the old barns and pens with concrete walls and we used these alignment tools to pin forms together. I felt stupid for not thinking of it myself. At first I went looking on sears.com to see if I could order the same set Chris wrote about, no dice, none availible to order. So I took a little trip to Menards and went to the masonry tools, and sure enough a dozen big puppies sitting in a bin. I found the two I considered to be "nicest" bought them and went home. At six bucks a piece I had just managed to get myself into the drawboring game!

I really wanted to give them a try on the legs Im building for my version of a Joinery Bench, (to see the rest of the build up to this point click HERE) Basically the legs are a frame of 2x material joined with M&T joints. I really wanted the strength that drawboring talked about. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday cutting out th e joints. I started with the tenons. I like to mark them out with a marking gauge and saw the shoulder down to the right depth with a backsaw. Then I use a broad chisel and chunk out most of the wood down close to the marked line. Then I use a router plane set to the right depth to finish the face. I hold my hand steady on the high face of the board and pivot my way through the material. skimming it down level and even.

Then I go again with the marking gauge and this time I chose to remove an inch from each end, I mark it, undercut along the shoulder, and then chop the side of the tenon with a chisel in two or three cuts. The first to remove most, the second to pare close to the line and the third to pare onto the line. the first two cuts are with a mallet. The last paring cut is just pushed.

Then I marked out my mortise locations on the upright sections of the leg frame, I picked up the mortise chisel, looked the process of chopping out eight mortises 3/4 inch wide by 3 inches long by 2 1/4 inch deep. My injured shoulder groaned, my tennis elbow whimpered a little bit, and I turned all Nancy girl for a while. I piled everything into the van and drove over to the soon to be new location for the Oldwolf Workshop, where all the stationary power tools are currently stored. I pulled the tarp off the drill press, reset it up, attaching everything that had been removed for the return trip home from Maine, chucked in a forstner bit, and killed electron after electron.

Honestly I dont feel that bad, I could have spent two more days chopping mortises and destroyed my shoulder for a while from all the hammering, or I could get them done in an hour and a half, with time to set up the machine. This Nancy boy chose the electron path this time. A little more work once I got back to the shop to shave and fit everything for the final go and now were ready to try the new trick.

Now other people out there on the web have taught drawboring technique better than I can, and I figure why try and reinvent a perfectly good wheel. So heres the quick and dirty of how it went. I decided to use a 3/8ths inch dowel. I rived some up using my newer doweling plate the other day and I was ready to go.
 I drilled the holes through the mortise section of my leg.
 Then I inserted the tenon and marked the location using a 3/8 forstner bit on a brace, The marks have been darkened with a pencil to help identify them here on the blog.


Then I used the new mark from the scratch awl to center the forstner bit, and I drilled the tenon holes. Then, though some sources say no glue in needed, I still decided to add some glue to the mix. and I reassembled the joint together.
Now heres where I made the mistake on my first one. the drawbore pins are supposed to be used in pairs, you drive them into all of the holes to help shape the passage before you pound in the pins that have been tapered on one end. In my excitement, I forgot to shape both holes on the first corner. I pounded in the pin and then tried to force the tapered dowel through a hole that had need no drawbore pin yet. The result EPIC FAIL.  I blew the hell out of the backside. Ill fix things and glue the blown out pieces back into place tomorrow. The next corner I slowed down and got it right.
All four corners done and I have to say. a finished frame leg, no clamp time for the glue to dry, no just trusting the glue alone. the joints feel super solid from the second you say go. I think I may have just found a new addiction.


I pushed the leg into the cleat just to see how it fit and get a rough idea how it would look. I have to say Im very pleased, Ill fix up the other leg tomorrow. Until then.

Cheers

Oldwolf

 Sometimes the hardest thing to do on a blog is take a second to be honest enough to record your mistakes, so this post is a few months in the writing. I get limited time in the shop in the winter time, mostly due to heating issues, so I decided over my limited time this winter I would tackle what I thought would be a smaller project. I gave Chuck Benders William and Mary Bookstand a shot and with the judges decision from the first round in, hands down the bookstand kicked my ass.

I understand now what my mistake was, my big mistake anyway. I had a small amount of white oak sitting in the shop, left over from building the Medieval Hutch Chest last summer, and I wanted to use it up, I also wanted to build the bookstand, and both of those things seemed like serendipity. The result was closer to trying to fit the proverbial round peg into the square hole.

Pieces of the bookstand assembled together.

I know about making good stock selection for a piece, but I havent had a poor choice result in the piece blowing up in my face before. The biggest issue I had was getting this stock machined flat and getting it to stay flat, This resulted in never having an easy time getting the outer frame of the stand to square up and flay down flat. It also equaled what turned into a couple big gaps in my joinery. Sometimes woodworking is not as much forcing the wood to submit to your wishes as much as its coming to an understanding and partnership with your medium. This is a simple lesson I misplaced along the way with this piece.

Work on the bookstand in progress

I think I can blame myself for the bad blood that turned up between myself and this oak. I purposely went out and found it specifically to gain the experience of working with it, and it proved itself to be a difficult task master. It worked beautifully to build the chest I bought it for, but it wore me out. Every time I would read about a smaller project in a woodworking magazine my mind would immediately jump to the oak. "Aha," I would think, "Heres a good way to use that oak up."

The outer frame of the stand. Such a simple construct that for any of a dozen reasons I couldnt get it to square or lay flat.

I think it was that eagerness that was my undoing. Theres a quote that is attributed to a psychologist named Abraham Maslow that says, "If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." I guess I fell into this trap. Every woodworker builds up a collection of boards that there is no plan for, they are around to be the right thing at the right time. At one point I had a pretty nice and significant collection. If I wanted to build something I would go down to my shop and sift through the wood, looking for inspiration to strike. the wood would tell me what it wanted to become. When we moved to Maine back in early 2009 I gave my whole collection of odds and ends to a friend. Since then I have had no good way to store a decent quantity of boards, something I now realize Im going to have to remedy soon, and so I try to stuff the small amount of stock I have into whatever dream I come up with.

I guess the end question is this, "If this piece handed my ass to me once, does that mean Im done with it?" The answer is -- Of Course Not! I am too stubborn to give up, besides I do have a little bit of stock that has been seasoning a little while and by this late spring it will probably be ready to work, and once I mill some boards from it well see but I think I can hear a voice from the pile of black walnut calling out.

A pile of black walnut I had split this last fall, the logs had weathered in the woods for at least a year before I got my hands on them, They are showing me signs that theyll be ready to work some by late spring / early summer.

It only says one word

Rematch!

Cheers
Oldwolf

I recently watched a movie about Charles and Ray Eames on Netflix and wanted to share my thoughts!

Eames: The Architect and The Painter

In addition to discussing their iconic furniture, it goes into their influence on the design community and beyond, as well as the good and bad in their relationship.

A large part of the movie contains interviews with members of their studio, which gave an insiders look into what is behind the Eames name.

If you have Netflix, you may want to add it to your queue!

-- 

and the winner of the giveaway for the Ikat stencil has been chosen! Congrats Barbara R.!

Stay tuned for more Humpday giveways!

this is a close up of the original edge inlay on that table.  it had a triple band of ebony, a double band of birds eye maple, and an outside band of zebra wood.  the original table we made using about 30 detailed photos with measurements that our client took while he was visiting england.  he did a great job showing the details and we had everything we needed once we figured out how to do the many, many, individual steps.  so, since i didnt take many notes originally, this time i thought i would document the process, just in case there is a next time in another 20 years or so.  by that time, my memory will most likely be completely shot.  click the photos to enlarge them.
incredibly, i had the original jig i made to flatten the turnings where the legs join the turning and cut the dovetails for the joinery.  we even found all of the original (dull by now) bits we used.  having the jig was a great first step, but recollecting how exactly to use it fell mostly to trevor to figure out.





we had ordered a nice long and wide board (23" x 15) from our friends at irion lumber and it arrived flat as a pancake, with a modest, consistent grain, something the clients requested.  all good.



next, add the 1 and 5/8ths" wide, 1/6th" thick burl pieces, all about 3" wide, one at a time, taping and clamping as you go ... the burl and walnut radiused corner pieces trevor also cut on the cnc.  it gave him a good, humbling respect for the old 18th century guys working with hand tools by candlelight.