easy wood projects to build

Rabu, 27 April 2016

The Poplar Bowl continued

Hi Everyone,
I went back down to the wood shop this morning and hollowed out the poplar bowl. Here are the photos and notes for this phase of the turn:
In this photograph I had been turning the bowl for several minutes and its beginning to hollow out. Note the center of the bowl were Ive drilled out the center with a large Forstner bit. This helps to establish the depth of the bowl and it also removes the center, which owning to the fact that the center spins more slowly than the rim, can cause it to tear instead of cut smoothly:

I put the camera down and turned the inside for another 45 minutes or so. The turn has proceeded very well as the wood is dry and its cutting easily:

Before I take it off the lathe, I turned my attention to the rim. Here you see a wide area-this is going to be divided into a rim and two narrow beads below it:

And this photo shows this area turned into a fancier rim:

I took the bowl off the lathe and took it inside to look at more. I think it still needs to be hollowed out more and deepened a little bit. Here is are two views of the bowl as it stands right now:

Im going to leave it for a few hours and think about hollowing it out more. After the turn is finished it will need considerable sanding and smoothing. Ill cover all of this in a subsequent posting.
VW

Selasa, 26 April 2016

Scrap Wood Project MYSTERY PROJECT! and Happy Halloween

Hey Everyone,
Its Halloween here in the US-time for lots of chocolate and the undead walking the streets. Kinda sounds like a normal day.
Anyway, here is a really simple project for an item I bet you could really use and you dont need a lathe to make it.
And Im not going to tell you what it is until its done!
Here are the photos:
Ok, I took two pieces of 1" x 4"x13" pine (see the previous project) and ripped them down to 1 1/2" wide. Then I took each and cut a small 3/8" x 3/8" rabbit along each edge

Then I glued and clamped them together-be careful to line up the rabbits so you have a channel that runs down the center of the block:

Can anyone guess what this will be?
Oh No! A zombie is trying to break into the wood shop! Im getting out of here!
See you this weekend.
VW

Boston Marathon

...keeping the good people of Boston in my prayers this evening.

Small Gift Boxes continued Stained Boxes

Hi Everyone,
Well, I took all the remaining boxes down to the wood shop and lightly stained them all. And they came out looking a little more colorful than they were before. Heres a photo:

The hackberry box really benefited from this as the spalted areas show up very strongly now. All in all, a good idea. Im going to let these all dry completely and later tonight Ill give them a coat of polyurethane. I plan on apply two coats and then polishing them and sending them on. Ill post finish photographs probably on Saturday.
____________
Its been blazing hot here this week and Im really tired. Im going to defer working on the bed frame until this weekend.
See you all Saturday,
VW

Senin, 25 April 2016

Sizing With Sectors For Style

Ive spent a lot of time in the last few weeks thinking and dreaming about the new shop space Ill be moving into soon. Ive drawn layouts on graph paper and planned a number of configurations for all my super cool stuff.

I made up my mind to build something for the new shop. A little premature maybe, there will be other things to build too once I get there, but I had a hankering to make something. I wasnt sure what. Then I picked up the latest issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. Packaged along with the main publication was a thinner "shop projects" pamphlet.

The first project was a tool rack built by Chris Schwarz. "Oh boy," I thought, "Im gonna end up building one more thing from the Schwarz Collection." (What else is a Fan Boy to do?) And I m fine with that. I remembered reading about the piece in the "I Can Do That" section of PW the first time they published it. I appreciated it then, but gave it a pass. This time around it just felt like the right thing to build.

A picture of the original tool rack borrowed from the PW website.

I could envision the right place for this piece in the new shop. I plan to hang it over one of the windows so the light comes through the back opening. As I thought about really building this piece more I started to have some ideas of my own.

The original article used pocket screws and simple joinery. Again, it was an "I can do that" article, so it was meant for entry level woodworkers. I planned to upgrade the joinery not because what was done was bad, but because I could, and I enjoy the joinery part of building. But that was simple. There was one other part of the design I struggled with.

A layout of the sides, This picture also borrowed from the PW web site.

The ogee shape to the sides just didnt look right to my eyes. I dont mean to say its wrong, this isnt criticism. This is 101 of taking a project you appreciate and making it an expression of you style and skill. I wanted to accomplish three things. One, I wanted to make the proportions slightly deeper. (My top shelf ended up 11" wide") Two, I wanted to dress it up a little more with mouldings, carvings, and a change to the profile of the sides. And three, I wanted to apply layers of finish to the piece to create the illusion of age and long years of service.

To help solve goal number two, I cracked open my copy of Matthew Bickfords "Mouldings in Practice" looking for inspiration. On page 225 I found my siren in a profile of crown moulding from a federal tall case clock.

I had to figure out how to transfer this from a small drawing in a book to a pine board and get the proportions right. First I tried to figure out how I would do it mathematically Taking the measurements off the page and scaling them up to bigger measurements. I shook that insanely complicated idea out of my head. There was a better, easier way and I already had access to the tools I needed to pull it off.

A while back I built myself a pair of Sectors after reading an article written by Jim Toplin. I wrote about them HERE. Essentially they are two pieces of wood joined with a hinge at one end and marked out with 13 evenly spaced divisions.
I mostly use them for dividing up spaces and laying out carvings. I knew they could be used to scale up drawings and dimensions, thats the best reason to have a pair of different sizes, I just hadnt actually exercised that knowledge yet. The process turned out pretty simple. Tool wise it took two sectors of different sizes, two dividers of different size, a try-square and a pencil.

So first I took the picture in the book and used the smaller dividers to measure out one of the first measurement I wanted to transfer. The top, widest part of the profile.

Then I set the smaller sector on the page and line up the markings from two of the same number to bracket the outer corners of the drawing. It doesnt matter which of the 13 numbers I line up, I chose 10 at a whim. The perspective of the photo makes it look funny but the outer corners of the drawing are in line with the inner lines of the 10.

Then I take the measurement I locked on my small dividers and find where it measures out on the sector. The tips fell just inside the lines for the number 1.

Now I take my larger sector and set it up with the stock. Since I chose to use the number 10 on the smaller, I repeated that on the larger. I also made sure to take into account the amount of board that would disappear into the eventual dado joint.

Once I had the larger sector set and stable, I took my larger dividers and repeated the reading I took with the smaller, just a little inside the number 1s lines. Since everything is spaced out equally on the sectors, the spacing will be proportionally identical, within a slight factor of human error. This isnt a C&C machine Im running and a few millimeters matters little when its the over all look Im after. In the end it will look right or it wont and that will be the ultimate determination of success.

Then I use the new set dividers to transfer the spacing to the board. repeat the action over for the other measurements and youll work out the spacing and pattern. I drew the curves between the hard line elements freehand, but mostly because it was quicker. You could use the same method to plot out a few points to follow if you need to. I suggest trusting your eyes and instincts though.

With the lines all set down in pencil I went back over where I wanted the hard line to fall with a sharpie so it would stand out across the room. I also shaded in the space to be removed to help from a distance.

I picked up the book, and from across the room held the image out at arms length and judged the job I had done.

I ended up a little narrow in the top, front of the board to back, but the shape was there and it was pleasing to my eye from a distance. I decided to keep it.

I hope I explained how I made the process work well enough. If not I may consider shooting a video to help explain, however I dont want to step on Jim Toplin and George Walkers toes as I suspect sectors may be something well covered in their new book "By Hand & Eye" from Lost Art Press. Ive ordered my copy and I cannot wait to read it. You may want to consider it too.
If there are a bunch of questions, please comment, email, open your back door and scream them to the stars. Ill be able to try and answer two of those three instances.
Ratione et Passionis
Oldwolf

Continuing The Craftsman Desk Repair

Broken tenons are a problem thats fairly common when bringing a beaten up piece of furniture back to life. The best option Ive found in my time has been to create a floating tenon, but first you have to clean up the end grain nubs hanging out from the damage. A block plane works great for this

I cut mortises a number of different ways, depending on my morning tarot reading and the position of the spots on the sun relative to the phase of the moon. This time I fired up the drill press and hogged out the waste.

Then I cleaned up the mortise with a little chisel work. Because of the size of the pieces I decided it would be a good idea to downsize the mortise on the rail and leave a little more meat around the floating tenon, I had already cut the leg mortise bigger when I made this decision. This meant I had to do a little more work making a floating tenon to fit both sides.

With the structural repairs done I had another big decision. Try and fix the existing finish that was on the losing end of a twelve round prize fight or just take things back to bare and start from as close to scratch as possible.

I went back to square one with some sanding, some planing, and some scraping. The oak under the finish, beautiful.

Then I reassembled the leg section. The difference sitting next to the surviving leg was pretty striking.

Of course I had to take apart the other leg section and clean the crap off it as well.

Then I scrubbed the crap off the repaired table top and off the apron section and reassembled the desk.

The desk looked very different from were it started.

There was still some work to do. I had a drawer to repair and refit and I had to make the only major part that was missing when we found this. The bottom stretcher between the leg sections.
Ratione et Passionis
Oldwolf