Weekly Blog - November 17th

[john]

Another week has passed and the weather is starting to cool down and threaten snow. Nothing as serious as what I see on CNN though with the fires out west and tornados in other areas. Mother Nature can sure be mean when she wants to. Our thoughts are with all those affected by these disasters.

It has been an interesting week with the wine rack. After experimenting with different combinations of ebony, walnut, and cherry, I still wasn't satisfied so I went out and bought a cabernet coloured stain. The test piece looked good so it was full steam ahead. The hardest thing I had to do was to bring myself to apply an ebony stain on nice freshly sanded pine. That "went against the grain" so to speak as I love the look of natural or near natural wood.

However, a coat of ebony followed by two coats of cabernet gave me a look close to what I was hoping for, a little darker than desired, but OK. All the pieces except the top have been finished with three coats of wipe-on poly and are almost ready to be assembled. Since the top will have plugs to hide the screws, I will only be able to apply finish after assembly. Hopefully I will have pics next week.

I also have completed four bread knives to the point where all that is left is to attach the blades. Two are maple and two cherry. They are also finished with wipe-on poly. The last time I made a cherry one, I wasn't all that happy with the colour using only the poly, so this time I applied two coasts of tung oil first and am much more pleased with the result.

As luck would have it, this is the time of the year when all three woodworking magazines arrive at once. One features "gifts under fifty dollars". Some look quite interesting, and the latest Wood Magazine has a neat countertop wine rack that also looks interesting. I still have three more bread knives and A cutting board to complete before the upcoming craft show so I'm not sure what else I may get in before then.

Looks like a busy two weeks ahead of me.

Have a Safe and Fun week!

John

[charlese]

Hi! - my week was relatively un-exciting. The lack of my completing plans on what should have been an easily constructed phone seat, resulted in any number of "fix-it" operations. I accomplished one thing, learned from one of Drew's interludes, and am trying out different forms of legs for this thing. (Legs to be discussed next week)

Last week I reported I had assembled the carcase with an un-thought out puzzling assembly. It was that I had over designed the joints with interlocking parts, and hadn't given a thought to the glue up process. Not until dry fitting did I realize the complexity. All that said, I spread glue into all of the contacts and forced/wiggled/hammered the carcase together, then clamped it up in three directions.

Well after it had set overnight, took the clamps off and quickly observed it would not sit square by about 3/6" corner to corner. Remembering Drew's interlude re: using glue creep to straighten a twisted drawer, - thought I couldn't lose anything by giving it a try on this square box.

I didn't really know if 15 hour glue in mortise an tenon joints would creep, or if I would break the carcase by twisting it, I proceeded to put a 1/4" block under one corner and a 3/16" block under the opposite and clamp down the unblocked corners. Frankly I was surprised the thing didn't break!

The process went through various clampings at about four hour intervals and longer overnight periods. In three days the box was square. To my surprise only two of the shoulders of opposite joints showed an open face. nothing that I can't cover with a little filler. These are the upper left and lower right corners in the attached snapshot. Also at the upper left vertical has ruptured when the tenon was forced upward during the twisting operation. That will be hidden beneath the seat.

I think I have learned that although the "open time" of Titebond II is ten minutes, once the glue is contained within a joint, it is no longer open and only cures as the wood adsorbs the moisture in the glue. Other than adsorption, the glue stays in the similar state as it would be in the glue bottle.
I have been really skeptical that fully cured glue could be made to creep enough to cure a badly twisted structure.

The second photo is of the "chunk of coal" made for our Grandson who refuses to give us any help on gift selection. There is money in the inside of this chunk. (Used a 2 1/4" Forstner to hollow out the center, top and bottom - then glued the piece together with paper between the three layers. (This is like mounting a turning to a wooden face plate.)

Come to find out Grandson is not being too dumb here. He is hoping for money so he can buy the "Snap on Tool(s) of his choice.
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[nuhobby]

Chuck,
That's pretty interesting work on the slow creep of an already glued joint. I will have to go view that video again. Thanks!

[judaspre1982]

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[a1gutterman]

Hi Chuck,
I am glad that you had success at squaring up your project! BTW, what is that pile of sawdust doing in the back corner of the carcass???

[charlese]

Hi Chuck,
I am glad that you had success at squaring up your project! BTW, what is that pile of sawdust doing in the back corner of the carcass???

The pile of chips is part of the frass from the rabbet you see in the back cross member.

Didn't notice it until after I snapped the picture. Okay. I'll fess up! Out of square was not the only problem so far. The pile of shavings is again a result of not thinking things through be for assembly. (actually not thinking through the planning) I had the box size in mind and drew it up in "sketch up" to show the wife - used another program to design the joints, but completely omitted some very important aspects of a plan. One of these things was "how to attach the seat.

I had thought I would just rout some slots on the front and rear of the drawer boxes and drive 4 screws, with washers, through the slots into the seat. Whoops! Didn't do this before assembly, and couldn't figure a way to make counterbores (to hide the screw heads) on the inside of these boards. So after a bit of head scratching, decided to use angled table top fasteners, but first had to make a rabbet along the inside edges. Did this with the OPR and left some of the shavings in the case for the photo. Final analysis - this worked and now the seat is on the box.

Today, made some feet and put them on. Now all there is to do is drawers and some kind of back. The drawers will be a snap, but haven't yet designed the back. Am thinking of a back that is only 8" to 10" tall, curved? We'll see!

P.S. Tried to show the sketchup drawing last evening but had to first read instructions. Here - finally, although had to lose a few pixels.
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[john]

Chuck:

You have re-inforced my practice of sticking to ready made plans. As I have detailed many times, I seem to be able to foul up even when I have everything laid out for me. I can only imagine what would happen if I tried from scratch.

Having said that, your bench is looking GOOD, as usual. Can't wait to see the finished product.

Have fun!

John

[dusty]

Chuck, your furniture, as usual, looks great. I am not at all surprised at that.

Your graphic presentation in Sketchup looks equally good. You have said that you were not a computer person. Now I know you have been putting us on!

I have been playing with Sketchup for weeks and feel very accomplished when I manage to create a cube with a tunnel through it. I can not, for the life of me, put something in a drawing that looks like shelves in a carcass or make the carcass sides have thickness.

[charlese]

Your graphic presentation in Sketchup looks equally good. You have said that you were not a computer person. Now I know you have been putting us on!

I have been playing with Sketchup for weeks and feel very accomplished when I manage to create a cube with a tunnel through it. I can not, for the life of me, put something in a drawing that looks like shelves in a carcass or make the carcass sides have thickness.

Dusty- Really! I'm not the sharpest nail in the drawer, especially with computers. Reading the help section of sketchup is like reading a foreign language. I can only understand parts of it. Maybe 30%.

Try this, draw a square, push it to a cube, draw another couple of smaller rectangles inside of the front of the main cube and push them through the cube. That's all my chair cube is! The hard part is trying to get the smaller rectangles to have their edges so that they appear to be 3/4" from the outside of the cube.

One of the most important operations for me is to key in "ctrl Z". This command will delete your latest mistake. You can key that in multiple times to erase multiple mistakes. There is another command to un-do these deletions if you do too many "ctrl Y". Any advantage I have is I have learned these shortcuts (keyboard instead of clicking the edit commands) on the other CAD programs I have. It is always a help to not have to move the curser from it's position in the drawing.