Wedding-flower stands

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BuckeyeDennis
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Wedding-flower stands

Post by BuckeyeDennis »

Another year, another project for another daughter’s wedding! It’s in the rear-view mirror now, but there were some woodworking challenges that I thought might be of interest to fellow Shopsmith aficionados.

One of the groom’s sisters personally hand-made all the flower arrangements for the wedding, and their dad Bill volunteered to make a dozen tall flower stands. His plan was to slice up some ¾” plywood into 12” square stand tops and bottoms, and to use four pre-made dowels as each stand’s “legs”. The first couple of prototypes were a bit wobbly, which Bill attributed to a sloppy fit from drilling the leg mortises with a hand drill and spade bit. So he enlisted me to do the production drilling work with a Forstner bit on my Shopsmith.

I figured that would be a super quick and easy task. Bill brought all the parts over to my shop, and we proceeded to drill a couple of test mortises in some plywood scrap. And danged if the dowel fit wasn’t still sloppy. A few measurements later, we determined that the ends of the 48 oak dowels that he had bought at Big Orange, at a total price of about $150, were all seriously undersized. No way was I going to find a drill bit that matched the diameter of those things. But I figured that someone must make a tenoning bit that would let us turn the ends down to a standard size.

And it turned out that someone does. After some research, it appeared that a CMT plug/tenon cutter would be just the thing for the job.

CMT plug cutter in package.JPG
CMT plug cutter in package.JPG (80.44 KiB) Viewed 1501 times

But then, why modify a bunch of expensive dowels? I figured that they were defective, at least for joinery purposes, and the legs could stand to be a little beefier anyway. So Bill and I decided to slice up some ¾” poplar boards that I had lying around into ¾” square legs, mill round tenons onto the ends of those, and return the dowels for a refund. I modelled up the resulting stands in Fusion 360, and we got design approval from the boss.

Stand model.JPG
Stand model.JPG (35.45 KiB) Viewed 1501 times

The two tall stands were to have 48” long legs, and the 10 shorter ones (shown in the rendering above) were to have 32” legs. A Shopsmith in horizontal-boring mode was the obvious choice of machinery here, so I ordered up a 5/8” CMT plug/tenon cutter bit for about $30.

When the bit arrived, I did a couple of test cuts with it, and found that it was cutting the tenon diameters about 0.005” undersized, and leaving a slightly rough finish on the tenon. Upon close inspection, I found a couple of small machining burrs on the ID that I had missed before. So I polished those off with some fine sandpaper wrapped around a ½” dowel, and honed the front cutting edges with a diamond paddle for good measure.

CMT plug cutter.jpg
CMT plug cutter.jpg (7.55 KiB) Viewed 1501 times

Voila, my very next test tenon was absolutely beautiful. It fit snugly into my 5/8” Forstner-bit holes, with just a bit of twisting needed to persuade it to slip in. First problem solved.

Now we're getting to the part where things weren’t quite so simple anymore. The tenon lengths for the flower stand legs needed to be precisely controlled, so that the distance between shoulders would be the same for all four legs on each stand. And as the OD’s of the 5/8” tenons were only 1/16” from the faces of the ¾” square legs, the lateral positioning had to be pretty well controlled as well. I forgot to mention that the recommended bit speed for hardwood is only 300 RPM, so I had to leave room for my Shopsmith speed reducer. Bottom line, there was no way to use the rip fence as a backstop.

So a new horizontal boring fixture (end-working fixture, actually) for my Shopsmith was needed. In the next installment, I’ll show you what I came up with.
Last edited by BuckeyeDennis on Mon Sep 12, 2022 12:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Wedding-flower stands

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To locate a positive stop for those 48” legs, the new end-working fixture was obviously going to need some serious length. The key component is a fixturing beam that I made by doubling up a couple of salvaged 2x4’s and milling WoodAnchor fixturing slots in the faces. Then I made three different adjustable attachments for the beam: a length stop, a vertical workpiece hold-down, and a simple foot that doubles as an outboard support for the workpiece. Here's a shot of the assembled fixture.

End view.jpg
End view.jpg (93.55 KiB) Viewed 1447 times

This application uses only three of the four fixturing slots that I milled in the beam. But I wanted the beam itself to be a general-purpose component, and who knows what I might use it for in the future. One likely application is to mount it horizontally above an assembly table, and use multiple vertical hold-downs for applications such as face-frame assemblies.

But back to the application at hand, I used my existing quick-and-dirty small-parts sled to mount the fixturing beam to my Shopsmith's main table. The sled has a MicroJig ZeroPlay miter bar installed on the underside, which captures the sled in the miter slot. For this application, I added a couple of Shopsmith T-nuts to the sled, in line with the miter bar, so that I could also lock it down longitudinally in the miter slot. Three countersunk through-bolts in the front of the fixturing beam thread into WoodAnchor nuts, which fasten the beam securely to the fixturing slots in the top of the sled. Here’s a shot of the sled’s underside, as well as the 3D-printed cam clamp that I used to secure the workpiece horizontally.

Sled underside.JPG
Sled underside.JPG (93.3 KiB) Viewed 1447 times

This arrangement worked out well, except that a Shopsmith T-nut really should be in the center of the sled, with miter bars on either side of it, instead of the other way around. As it is, to the prevent the vertical hold-down from rolling the beam a bit and lifting the center of the sled, I needed to F-clamp the front of fixturing beam to the underside of the SS table. But it worked just fine that way, and I can pretty it up when I get around to building a nicer sled.

Here’s a side view showing the fixture fully assembled, with a workpiece clamped in place. The cam clamp conveniently mounts to an existing fixturing slot on the sled.

Side view.JPG
Side view.JPG (95.71 KiB) Viewed 1447 times

And finally, here’s a close-up shot showing workpiece clamping details and a freshly milled tenon. Check out the nice polished finish on that tenon!

Quarter view closeup.jpg
Quarter view closeup.jpg (135.29 KiB) Viewed 1447 times

Next up, I’ll share a little bit about leg-production mode, and a beauty pic of the finished products at the wedding.
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SteveMaryland
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Re: Wedding-flower stands

Post by SteveMaryland »

I usually don't have the patience to build fixtures like that beam. A labor of love for sure.

I guess one object of the design is to not expose the dowel or any fasteners on the table top, so no thru-bores in the top?

That homemade t-slot beam looks good. But may warp over time. 80-20 aluminum extrusion would have been an alternate. I don't know if 80-20 t-slots can accept Shopsmith t-nuts.

Since these flower stands are 48" tall, might be a good idea to attach some weight on the base plate - like 2-3 bricks at least. We don't want these stands toppling or getting bumped over in the middle of a wedding!

Will these stands be draped over? If so, then no-one will see those bricks...

Also, might want to glue on small wood triangular blocks, 2X2X per leg, where leg meets top and base. To insure against lateral collapse.

Glad the whole $150 oak dowel order could be returned. That's a wedding present right there!
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Wedding-flower stands

Post by BuckeyeDennis »

No through-bores in the tops and bottoms, but Bill and I did decide to let the Forstner bit pilot poke tiny holes all the way through both the tops and the bottoms, to prevent hydraulic locking from the wood glue. Those tenons fit the bores like pistons, except a bit tighter. And these stands are basically just painted props, not fine furniture.

Regarding stand stability, we did considerable tippiness testing, and got good results with no added weights or bracing. Credit for that goes to the tight joints, and ultimately back to that CMT tenoning bit. Now I'm looking forward to using it for some real furniture projects.

The fixturing beam does look a lot like an 80/20 extrusion. Milling and gluing up the 2x4's was 90% of the work required to make it, as it takes only a few minutes to mill the fixturing slots. I didn't know it at the time, but my local Big Orange store sells 4x4x8' untreated Douglas fir lumber for $10, which would have reduced the beam-construction time to maybe ten minutes. In comparison, 3" square 80/20 extrusions cost about $2 per inch, so a similar-sized 54" long aluminum beam would have cost around a hundred buck, plus shipping. The other advantage of doing it in wood is that you can put slots exactly where you need them for a given application, instead of being limited to standard extrusion profiles. The downside, as you point out, is the possibility of warpage, although that could be mitigated by using an LVL beam. And of course, a wooden beam may not be strong enough for some structural applications.
Last edited by BuckeyeDennis on Mon Sep 12, 2022 9:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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john
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Re: Wedding-flower stands

Post by john »

Nice looking stand!

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JPG
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Re: Wedding-flower stands

Post by JPG »

If I am reading the grain pattern correctly, I would have rotated one of the 2x4 180°.(both concave out(sorta))
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Wedding-flower stands

Post by BuckeyeDennis »

JPG wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 11:29 pm If I am reading the grain pattern correctly, I would have rotated one of the 2x4 180°.(both concave out(sorta))
I would have preferred that as well. I like really how rjent did the glue-up for his router fence. If you're lucky (or plan really well), the WoodAnchor router bit can neatly excise pith near the surface of a board, similar to Dick's board on the left in the pic below.

Beam profile.JPG
Beam profile.JPG (37.21 KiB) Viewed 1336 times

It's been a few months now since I made my fixturing beam, but IIRC one of the 2x4's had a surface defect that would have compromised the fixturing slot if I had turned the defective face to the outside. So I reversed it, and buried the defect in the center of the beam. But these particular boards had already been in my shop for about 10 years, as part of a shelf unit that I recently disassembled, so I wasn't worried about them suddenly developing new warps.
Last edited by BuckeyeDennis on Tue Sep 13, 2022 11:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Wedding-flower stands

Post by BuckeyeDennis »

It took some time to make that end-working fixture, but it really paid off when Bill and I switched into production mode. A dozen stands means 48 “legs”, and 96 tenons. With the fixture, we were able to knock all those out in about an hour, with zero scrap.

Then it was time to clean up the edges. I used the SS drum sander and the shaper/sander fence to get rid of the curled wood fibers left by the tenon cutter. With the infeed fence set tangent to the sanding drum, all I had to do was feed each face of the workpiece just slightly onto the sanding drum. At eight end-edges per leg, that’s 384 clean-up passes! But the drum sander setup made pretty short work of that, also coming in at about an hour total.

The last machining operation on the legs was to put a 1/8” roundover on the long edges – all 192 of them. Which took another hour or two, using my SS overarm pin router in under-table mode. When finished, we had a sizeable stack of legs! In the pic below, Bill is finishing up the final QC inspection.

Bill's legs.JPG
Bill's legs.JPG (102.78 KiB) Viewed 1326 times

After trimming, drilling mortises, and rounding over the edges of the 24 stand tops and bottoms, I turned the project back over to Bill. He did all the final sanding and painting. (Hallelujah!) Bill was supposed to do the final assembly and glue-up as well. But much to my surprise, all the painted parts showed up at the wedding venue still unglued! Bill had made an executive decision to assemble them unglued on-site, given that the tenons fit so nicely. That way the stands could transported and stored flat-packed, saving a huge amount of space. I teased him about that decision during the welcome speech at the reception, and jokingly warned our guests about the danger he had put them in. :eek: But it turned out that Bill had made the right decision. After the reception, a couple of wedding-decorator types came over to tell us that the flat-pack design was absolutely brilliant!

And finally, here’s the beauty pic from the reception. In the foreground is one of the shorter stands, finished and decorated, with a couple more visible in the background. The lovely ladies are the groom's mom and two of his sisters.

Ladies with flower stand LowRes.JPG
Ladies with flower stand LowRes.JPG (131.08 KiB) Viewed 1326 times

The sister on the left made all the flower arrangements, and she also specified the stand dimensions and color. She’s thinking about getting into wedding decorating professionally, so those stands may see quite a bit more use. :)
Hobbyman2
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Re: Wedding-flower stands

Post by Hobbyman2 »

Nice Job !!
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Wedding-flower stands

Post by BuckeyeDennis »

Thanks Hobbyman ... it made all the ladies happy, so it was a successful project! :)
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