Cold Weather Ramblings

This entry was supposed to be posted back in February when it was cold, but I got distracted so its a bit late.  Now that we are under contract on our new house, my desire to get in the shop has increased once more, as there will actually be a place for my furniture to live.  Maybe my slump was just due to not having the need or room for additional furniture.

Now that I have moved a few degrees North the garage shop is not as sublime in the winter.  Luckily I have been able to do something productive with my time.  Since my lathe is inside, I continue to rough turn some bowls from the wood I picked up last month.  The cold has thankfully kept many of the blanks from checking, so I can take my time.  I had a chunk of pear I saved from my friends tree.  I figured that was dry enough to finish turn.  It checked more than I thought it would have and resulted in kind of a bowl on a stand.

Small pear bowl.

This last weekend we went up to Baltimore to the American Craft Council show.  It was a lot of fun, and was very inspiring to look at the work of some really great woodworkers and other artists.  By far this was the most impressive art/craft show I've been to, and we are already planning on making the trip up there next year, but we will take the weather forecast into account.  Brian Boggs was there and it was truly inspiring to see the level of craftsmanship and eagerness to share his wealth of knowledge.  I got home and reread his magazine articles, and watched The Woodwright's Shop episode with him.

While I still have lots more blanks to turn I really think of turning as a side interest to furniture.   So I decided to start tuning up some tools.  My hollows and rounds were sharp, but some (many) irons did not match the plane soles, and my sharpening skills have improved, so they were the first to go to the stones.  I also tuned up an interesting copper/brass soled skew rabbet plane.  All of this in preparation for making some mouldings for picture frames.

Something I have been thinking about since starting the Krenov-inspired table is skills/wood/deliberateness.   I love happening upon the perfect piece of wood.  As my skills improved (through practice) I began focusing on the grain, and which piece of wood was best for what part, and making the piece flow.  While I don't profess to be great at it, finding the right pieces for the sideboard was enjoyable, and I think the attention to that shows now that it is completed.  I tried to do that with this small table, and succeeded in someways, and there are other parts I wish I could switch for something else.  I can blame it on my short supply of maple as opposed to my ridiculous shop supply of cherry in Houston.  But I think the real reason is I got to a point and said enh, its good enough, or I rushed.  I got tired of one step, and just called it.  Now that my time is in shorter supply,  I made concessions  that I wouldn't have previously.

Additionally, taking the 6 months or so off was detrimental to my skills.  I can still cut a decent dovetail, but its not as tight as it used to be, and the chisel doesn't fit as perfectly in my hand.  So each task/process/joint took longer than I thought it should.  My shop is just as functional, but I don't have a defined workflow anymore, adding to the feeling of taking longer, and more out of touch with the work.  I also fell back into the habit of working with not quite as sharp tools, since my sharpening stuff isn't out all the time.

Eventually we will move and my shop will evolve, my workflow will be reestablished, and hopefully improved.  Until then I have to wade through an endless supply of project ideas, and questions.  Do I work on small "throw-away" projects designed as skill builders?  I would love to do that, but then I'm not making anything, one of the fundamental reasons I enjoy woodworking was that there was something tangible and useful that comes from my creativity and work/time.  For many other goals/hobbies, practice is essential, you don't become a great musician by only performing, and you don't run a marathon runner  by only racing marathons.  You take your time, practice and build up to those goals.  So why is woodworking (or any craft/art) different?  I bet Brian Boggs has cut more joints that were tests/practice than he did joints in all the chairs he's made. I would love to obtain that level of craftsmanship.  How do I get there? Do I just toss any piece that isn't right?  I guess I could save it and use it to test for next time.  Do I only accept the absolute best?  If I do will I ever complete the list of project i have made? Do I want to improve/work on techniques; hand tools or turning or just complete a project. Its easy to become an overconsumer of information, or even of inspiration.  There is an endless supply of projects I would like to take on, and the preference depends on the mood/time etc.

Is it the journey (process) or the destination(product)?  Obviously it doesn't have to be one or the other.

Krenov Inspired Table

The canoe rack went pretty smoothly, and I basically forgot to take pictures till the end.  The rails are half-lap dovetails, and the vertical pieces have giant tenons into the feet.  Each joint is reinforced with a lag screw.  I took an old plastic cutting board and made some feet to keep the wood off the ground.  I think it cleaned up the boats quite nicely.

Canoe Rack

Getting rid of the wire rack improved the living room.  However now the computer monitor sat on top of the tower, on the floor.   I thought about making a quick shaker style end table, or something quick. Then I saw the base of one of Krenov's standing cabinets, and thought that would look good as a small table.  The joinery is pretty simple if you do it while all the pieces are square.

Dry fit of the leg and "apron" joints.

 Around this point I decided to add a drawer.  Since  the "apron" isn't symmetric, and is pretty low on the sides I added something of a web frame to support the drawer and give the legs some rigidity.

Drawer support

Next up is shaping the curves.  This was something I hadn't done before, but really wasn't that hard.  I cut out the curve i liked on one leg, then used that as a pattern for the rest.

Copying the curves

Once the lines are traced, I cut the legs on the band saw.  The legs are curved in both directions, so to make the second set of cuts I taped the cutoffs back on to keep the leg square on the saw

Taping the cut offs back on.

I then smoothed and finessed the curves with spokeshaves. Once they were all similar I rounded over the edges.

All the curves cut, just roundovers and sanding.

The drawer opens to the sides instead of the front.  I also made the drawer sides walnut, to keep the front looking "open".  The drawer fronts are maple, and will hopefully look like part of the apron (except for the pull).  The drawer joinery is halfblind dovetails.

I decided to try my hand at very simple carving for the pulls.  I decided to leave the tool marks to give it some character.  Now in poor lighting the completed table.  All that's left is to apply the finish.

Completed table.  When closed the drawer is inset from the legs a little bit. 

"London pattern" half-blind dovetails.

Bookmatched Top

Carved pulls.

Once the finish is applied I will get some pictures in better lighting.  Just as I was about to apply the finish someone took down a tree, and I got distracted making bowl blanks:

Fresh cut wood.

Cutting to manageable size

No idea what kind of wood this is...any ideas?

1 bowl blank completed for drying.

Rounding the blanks on the bandsaw.

The wood is pretty heavy, even for green wood.  Looks to be ring porous, and the red heartwood is fading to more closely match the sapwood.  Anyone recognize the wood?

Rocking Chair Finale

Last week I made a concerted push to finish the rocking chair.  After gluing the arms I cleaned up any glue at the joints and then sanded everything one more time.  The finish is the same as is applied to the stool.  Vintage maple transtint, oil then shellac.  I wiped on the dye and oil.  

The oil really made the figure in the arms pop.

Set up for shellac

Then I decided to spray the first coats of shellac and just wipe on the top coat to even things out.  This greatly reduced the time spent applying, and I still ended up with a smooth finish.  While applying the finish to the chair I wove the seat of the stool.  Which is the same process but much less complicated than the chair described below.

Completed stool

I put on the last coat of shellac Saturday afternoon, and then decided to finish a bowl I started a few months ago.

Just starting the inside, hopefully the bark inclusion is stable.

I also found some time to brew a beer.

Belhaven 60 clone

I also started milling the wood for the sideboard/changing table.  For rough sawn wood from a store my process is similar to the reclaimed process except its faster and easier on the tools.  First cut to rough length.  Using a jack then a jointer plane get one face to sit flat on the bench.  Joint an edge, then head to the planer and table saw to bring to ~1/8" of final dimensions.  I don't worry about thickness, just send it through the planer till both sides are planed everywhere.

Cherry prepped for sideboard

Sunday morning I waxed the chair and started weaving.  Trim the foam to fit inside the chair frame, and nip the corners to make sure they don't show.  The first part is called the warp.  This runs front to back, and should be the dark colored tape since it will look less dirty.  The main thing here is to keep it nice and firm, but not so taught it bends the front rail.  I also checked to make sure the top was square to the chair.  Try to fit as many rows as possible without overlapping the tape.  To fill in the triangular corners use some small pieces and tack them as far back on the underside of the rail as possible.  Insert the foam.  Now its time to weave the woof.  Tack one end in the middle of the back rail under the warp.  By putting it in the middle you account for the slant that is required to advance to the next row.  The bottom of both the warp and the woof are tilted slightly but the top (show side) is square.  I wove the woof all the way through to the end, and then I realized that it was starting to slide toward the back of the chair.  To remedy this I added some double stick tape to the sides of the rails, to prevent the woof from sliding back.  I loosened all the rows enough to get the (sticky) tape in, then pulled the woof tightly securing it against the tape.  Don't forget to use your fingers to push/pull each row of the woof tight against previous row before sticking it to the tape.  Again this should be really tight, and towards the end is pretty difficult to pull through, and tighten.  I ended up using surgical clamps to help weave the tape.  This makes a nice firm seat, that I am sure will sag slightly over time.  Finally at the end make sure the woof is tight, and its not possible to get one more row in....and tack the woof under the warp on the bottom of the front rail.  Here is a bunch of photos showing the process

Sizing the foam

Tacking the warp

Wrap the warp

I used vice grips (lightly) to hold the warp in place as I tacked it in

Squaring up the warp before adding the filler strips

Add filler strips to each side (and trim)

Top view of the seat with filler strips

Don't forget to add the foam

Separate the warp and tack the woof under the back rail

Using a needle made from splat scrap.

Halfway there

Adding tape to reduce the sliding.

By the end of Sunday I had completed the chair, and bowl, and got a good start on the sideboard

Ready to use

Showing off the arms

This chair rocks!(...really can't believe I waited to say that till the end)
(also not a hipster haircut...sweaty from weaving, cause that sounds better)

Completed maple bowl (a well used cutoff from my workbench)

Rocking Chair

There are few more thing more inspiring than a clean shop.  Two weekends ago I reached my limit and spent a day sorting through all those scraps waiting for a project.  I ended up with 3 garbage cans full, and about 30 sqfrt of additional floor space.  This is the start of gearing up for a few big builds(at least in importance); a rocking chair, sideboard/changing table and crib.  The rest of the weekend was spent making a few jigs needed for the rocking chair; lathe extension, steady rest and a steam box.

Inside of the steambox

Lathe  extension.  I can now turn up to 48"

Last weekend I finished turning the rear posts and dimensioned the back rests.  These pieces then went into the steambox on Sunday (the 22nd).  The posts are about 1 1/2" so they got 2 hours, and the back splats (1/4" thick) only required 30 minutes.  I left them in their bending jigs overnight.

Posts in their new suana

Quickly apply clamps and wait (wear gloves).

I opted for lag screws instead of clamps on this one.

While they were bending I removed the extension, and put the lathe back where it belongs(so I can walk down that aisle), and finished shaping the stool parts, front posts and stretchers.

Lots of small round maple pieces

Last week I didn't spend much time in the shop, but I made up for it this weekend.  For some reason I woke up around 3 am Saturday morning, after an hour and a half of trying to sleep I gave up and went out to the shop.  The stool and base of the chair are 5/8" round mortise and tenons.  The stool is 90* all around, but the chair is a trapezoid (110 between the sides and back, and 80 between the front and sides.  After building a quick jig to hold the posts, and an angled piece to to setup the chair.  The rest is boring (oh woodworking puns).

Front post holes at 80* from each other.

Stool dry fit

By the time Christy was awake and back from her walk I had the stool and chair dry fitted.

Chair dryfit

After assembling the base of the chair I had to fit the back splats.  I uses spring clamps to hold them in place while I messed with the spacing.

Positioning the splats

Three done, five to go.  The bevel gauge is barely visible in the foreground

I set a bevel gauge to the angle the mortises needed to be to accommodate the bend splats, and took the chair apart.  By lunch I had all the parts for the first glue up(rockers and arms come later) dry fitted.  Christy was kind enough to indulge me for a test fitting.

She looks so excited for her new chair

Good thing she did too, due to our height differences the back splats hit our backs in different ways. The curve of the back rails didn't quite match the mortise, and the top dug in a bit for her.  For me it was the third splat.  To fix that I beveled the top of the splats with a spokeshave.  Then I sanded everything, again.  As I started to sand the back posts I found some areas where the clamps/bending jig dinged the work, so I set about fixing those with a wet rag and an iron.  I had some pictures I thought would show before an afters of the webbing patter from the ratchet straps, but I think the light angle wasn't shallow enough.  Sufficed to say it worked.

Ironing...not just for the wrinkles in your clothes

Because we want this chair a little darker than the bright white of maple, I decided to dye it with some Vintage Maple TransTint.  This will give the pieces a nice aged look.  The downside of water-based dyes, is they can raise the grain.  While some people disagree I have found the best way to deal with that is to pre-raise the grain with some water, then scuff sand the tiny ridges.  This also gives you a sneak peak of any tool marks or glue you missed.

Sunday, I slept in (as much as is possible for me), scuff sanded, and glued up the stool.  While that was gluing I started sanding the chair parts.  After a couple hours I unclamped the stool, and assembled the chair.

The chair required a couple extra clamps for it to sit level on my bench.

While the chair was in the clamps I started finishing the stool, I applied the dye, and then a oil/varnish blend a couple hours later.  That will cure for a few days, then a couple coats of shellac, and wax.

Bare wood

Vintage Maple dye

With a coat of 1/3 oil/varnish

With the chair in clamps, and the stool drying I started working on the rockers and arms.  I used some maple I had laying around that had some curl.  I started by laying out a grid, then using a flexible ruler to draw the curves.  For the rockers the boards started as 4/4 so I used SpecTape to tape them together, then cut out the shape on the bandsaw and then the spindle sander.  

Tracing the patter onto the rocker maple

The arms started life as a 6/4 board, so I cut and sanded them and then installed my new Woodslicer bandsaw blade (which I can't recomend highly enough), and cut them apart.  Inside I found a surprise

Outside, just a tiny streak on one side

Inside: Surprise!!

I decided to keep the streak on the show faces, and maintain the bookmatched appearance.  I only wish I had oriented the arms with the streak(that I couldn't see).  This week I will rewet the chair to check for glue, sand the grain again.  Cut the bridle joints for the rockers, the joints for the arms(more round M&T joints, this time on rectangular stock) and then start finishing the chair.  I hope to be weaving the seat by the weekend.