The Bespoke Woodworker

I finally got a few minutes this past weekend in the shop, and I used the spare time to work on tasks to bring the shop back up to speed.  I did a bit of cleaning, and in the process, got all the accumulated home repair/upgrade leftovers (aka junk) off my bench and got to looking it over.  While the movers had it in storage, and in transit (twice), it got a few streaks and scratches on it.   In addition, when the old shop got waterlogged in the New England Flooding of ‘09, the leg vice detent ended up locked in place, and because the vise had to be removed from the leg to get it out of the shop, I really had no choice but to simply break it off.  I managed to save the vise chop, but the detent is gone now.  It is hard to remove what is essentially a drawbored tenon, even one a mere 1/2″ thick!

In looking it over, the chop is still in good shape, but I think rather than the traditional leg vise design, I’m going to renew my cross-braced mechanism and see if I can work out how to build that into the vise design rather than simply repeat the previous design.  We’ll see!

In the meantime, the top needed love.  I pulled out my winding sticks and straightedge, and I could see the top did not appear to need any flattening.  There’s no warp, twist, or cup. Although there were some dings and scratches, none of them were deemed significant enough to take a whole layer off the top of the bench.  Instead, I used a scraper, and some sandpaper, and merely removed the worst of the blemishes by hand.  I’ll drop another layer of danish oil on top of the bench the next time I get out to the shop, and move on to revisiting the Leg vise design.

My cleanup intent was not to make the benchtop perfect, but merely to remove surface damage and to clean the top up so that it can once again take a layer of finish.  I may try a few cleansers to remove some of the dark streaks, but I’m just as likely to label it ‘character’ and put the finish right over the top!  I’ll save cleaning that up for a time in the future when I need to truly level the surface.

… was that I was welcoming little Madeline into the world!

Once things settle down, I’ll be back at it, whipping the shop into shape.

I’ve been in my new house for a few days now, and now that I’ve made it past the initial burst of settling in activity, I turn my eyes towards my workshop.  At the moment, my tools are sitting in part of my 24×24 garage.

While this is OK for storage for now, I need to get some room to work.  We’re in the middle of a record heat wave, so I doubt I’ll be able to clean up and organize much in there at the moment.    As a temporary shop, it has convenient access to the elec panel, which is right inside the door.

panel

And plenty of breaker space, too.

In the backyard, there’s a storage shed….

shed1

shed2

At 10×10, it is too small.

Once I get some other things out of the way, I intend to study the area’s building codes, and see just how big I could expand that to be….  At quadruple that footprint, I’d be a happy camper!

Some good and bad news.  The baby is doing well, and so is my wife.  The bad news is that the recent flooding in New England did hit us, if only lightly, and some water got into the floor of the basement.  Haven’t had water in all the time I’ve lived here, but the water table in the entire town actually rose up above the floor, so the water slowly worked its way in,  ~1 inch in the deep spots.

However, with all this cast iron sitting on the floor, I had to do something.  I had the entire shop put into storage until we finish moving.  So, I’m entirely shopless at the moment.  Once we move, I’ll be back in the game, but first, need to sell the Condo!

Well, we just found out, its a girl, and my wife is due July 26th, so much good news there.  Also, we’re putting our current condo (and therefore my small basement workshop) on the market, and looking for a new place.  Most of my work lately has been of the home improvement/cleanup/packing variety, so that has been quite a time sink.

On the plus side, I’m aiming for a much bigger shop next time around, hopefully with windows and sunlight!  I’m sure there will be machine setup and shop setup work, which people always love.

This may seem an odd post, considering most of my posting consists of finished projects and hand tool work, but don’t be decieved, I’m a mixed tool user, not a pure neanderthal!

I sold a few more tools that I don’t use, including a 24″ Leigh D4 Dovetail jig, and I purchased a Byrd Tool shelix head for my DW735 Planer.  I’ve been a huge fan of shelix/helical cutters since I purchased my Grizzly 0490X jointer, and I knew someday I’d end up with a sheer cutting planer to match, and the time seemed right.

The instructions on the byrd website are hard to find.  I ended up using google to find them, buried quite well.  They are not included in the box.  They can be found here.

Now, I suggest some revisions to those instructions, as follows, in order of use, as the planer instructions go.

These tools are not listed as required, but I strongly suggest you’ll avoid a lot of cursing if you just have them on hand.

• A big socket wrench, with a 22mm socket.
• A SERIOUS heavy duty inner and outer capable pair of ring pliers.  Not the cheap $9.95 ones from a generic auto parts store.
• Blue thread lock. (to re-lock the chain drive tensioners.)
• A hair dryer (not optional for cold shops.)

Technique notes:

On the far right hand side of the new head, you should remove the last 3 rows of planer inserts.  When you’re trying to get the bearings seated, this will make life much easier, as you can move the head around without worrying about snapping off or dulling your inserts on the aluminum housing.   Not required, but I’d advise it.

To remove the pulley, especially in a cold shop, where the aluminum pulley will have shrunk down tight and become nigh impossible to budge, take the hair dryer, set it to high heat and point it alternately at the outside and the inside of the pulley.    Even on high, you won’t damage the plastic.  You will if you try something like a paint stripping gun, which is why I don’t recommend it.  After a few minutes of alternating you will have heated up the pulley to the point it should pop off easy.  Use gloves, as that pullet will be hot, and can still burn your fingers!

Be VERY careful on the chain tensioner screws.  They’re very very shallow phillips head screws, they’re thread locked in, and they’re made of a very weak metal.  Incredibly easy to strip.  I suggest you avoid using the phillips head hole at all, file two opposing flats, and use an adjustable wrench or pliers to break the thread lock seal before unscrewing.

As far as the finished product is concerned, I’m a very happy camper so far.  I ran some dry curly maple with really random grain through it, and the cut quality was just wonderful.

I didn’t get an opportunity to do much more blogging on the trays as  I was hurrying to finish up some Christmas gifts.  Here you can see both trays completed.

I really like the way the compass rose came out.  I think I might try to see if I can do a little bit of grain filling, or look for a little bit less porous dark wood next time around.  You can see the finish gave the Walnut that I used a little bit of a darker filling in the grain lines.  Not an effect I was shooting for, but I’m sure nobody but me cares about it either!

And since this is a short post, I’ll throw in some gratuitous shots of the cutting boards I just completed.

I’ve departed at this point from working on the 2nd tray, as I’ve decided to go another route.   Rather than a veneered surface, I’m going to inaly a compass rose into a solid floating panel of curly maple for the tray bottom.  Look for that in a future post

In the meantime, I’ve put a nice thin layer of shellac with a tiny hint of dark vintage maple transtint (~ 1 drop:dixie cup of shellac) onto the panel, then allowed it to dry thoroughly.  Then I very very lightly sand that back with very high grit paper or even steel wool.

I finished it up with 3 coats of Polyacrylic from General Finishes.  I brushed this on.  For a while, I’ve been scared of brushing, preferring to wipe on an oil finish, which I find a lot less risky.   One my favorite ’simple’ finishes is Watco Danish Oil, but it takes quite a while for oil finishes to completely cure.  Poly is a lot less forgiving, but provides far better protection than a danish oil type finish, which is necessary for a serving tray, as you’ll be exposing it to light heat and the possibility of spills.

You can see the tinted shellac gives a nice hue to the panel and makes the figure stand out better.

Once the panel was fully dry, I went back to the shop and assembled the tray.

Note that the tray sides themselves are still unfinished.  The dovetails themselves needed a little bit of cleanup, and the sloping sides of the ends needed some blending into the tray sides.

The tools I used to do the blending are all visible in the photo.   Some light paring, scraping, and sanding gave us a clean surface ready to finish.  The tray itself will receive no finish treatment other than the Polyacrylic topcoat.  The Padouk looks great all by itself.  To prevent too much extra finish from pooling on the tray, I taped it off.

And now with two coats of polyacrylic.

Fin!

The stock is very uniform in color and straight grained, so there wasn’t much to match, patternwise, but I laid it out anyway just t
o be on the safe side.

I then roughed out and pattern routed the ends and the handles.

With the rough shaping done, it was on to joinery.    I ganged up the long sides, and cut the tails all at once.

At this point, it appears I may have stomped on the photos of the pin cutting.  Suffice to say, it was pretty vanilla work.

Tapped together, we’ve got a nice square tray frame.  It even sat flat!

At this point, I felt comfortable moving on to the tray bottoms.  For the first tray, I’m going to do simple veneered MDF panel of f
igured anigre I picked up in a bargain bin at the local Rockler.  There’s a little bit of splitting and wrinkling, but the flitch wa
s quite inexpensive, so I don’t mind!

I gave myself a straightedge with which to bookmatch.

Then I taped and glued the panel

While the panel was in the bag, I routed a 5/16″ groove in the base of the tray frame on the router table.  5/16″ is a nice fit of a
the substrate plus 2 layers of veneer, as the MDF is never perfectly 1/4″.

I cleaned up the panel edges from the veneering, cut to size, and did a little fitting and tuning, and then performed a dry fit.

Looking good!   Next segment, I’ll pre-finish the panel, then do a glueup, joint cleanup, and final finishing.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to take this part slowly.  There are no shortcuts that leave you with a great inlay!

Most commercial veneer is thin, 1/42nd or so.  So you don’t have a lot of room to work with, once you’ve inlaid the compass rose.  That means you need to make sure your inlay surface is ready to go.   I used this maple panel with a little bit of curl to it.  This has been pre-sanded to 320.

You start by solidly taping down the inlay in its final position.  Note the X on the work.  I’ve also drawn a corresponding X (unseen) on the edge of the work so that I can return this to the correct position later.   Although your inlay may seem to be uniform, I assure you, it is not!

Then you begin to trace the inlay with an exacto knife (with a fresh blade) around the outside edge of the inlay.  When using an exacto like this, you want to make sure you’re using the inlay itself as a reference surface, and that you are performing a light scoring cut.  You want to cut to the depth of the inlay (a little deeper actually works fine), but you don’t want to try and do this in one pass!  You start with a light scoring cut, then you go over it again and again until you’ve got depth.  If you try this all in one pass you’re going to do one or both of these bad things:  You’ll slice into the inlay, or you’ll cut off path off into the inlay surface.

I tried to show, in this fuzzy photo, the light scoring cut.

Here you can see I’ve finished the scoring of the outside of the inlay.   Before I route, I like to use a pencil (a chalk bag also works) to highlight the lines so that they’re easier to see when I am routing.  A work lamp you can position closely also helps in the next step.

Router prep, I use a 1/4″ downcut spiral bit, followed by a 1/8th, to remove the bulk of the waste inside the inlay.  I think the Festool OF1010 is one of the better routers for this step, because you can index your zero against the work surface, as in this photo.  (See the screw pillar on the right, with the bit resting on the surface, but not scratching it.)

Then, with the router locked into position, you take a piece of scrap veneer the same width (don’t use the veneer tape covered inlay itself, as you’ll cut too deep!), and you slowly raise the microadjust on the depth stop until the veneer just barely goes in between the post and the depth stop.

You begin slowly, working around the outside, then eventually clearing up to the center with the 1/4″ spiral bit.

You want to stay clear of the lines.  You aren’t cutting TO the lines, just fairly close.  I’ll be chucking up a 1/8th afterwards for cleanup and to get closer into the corners.  Once you’ve got the inlay routed as close as you dare, you switch to chisels for cleanup.    This is a similar task to cleaning up your dovetails, but there won’t be any mallet work involved.  A sharp chisel and hand pressure should be sufficient to free up the 1/42nd inch you need to remove to seat the inlay.  If you’ve taken good time to clean up the edges of the inlay, you can use a large chisel on most sides.    Since you’ve cut deeply enough with your exacto, you should not need to cut the outside edge, as in this photo.

But merely flip the chisel, using your bearing surface to make the chisel work like a chisel plane, and slowly pare to your xacto line.

You can see I’ve finished one of the minor points on the top right in this photo.   This can be a fairly slow process, but ultimately worth the painstaking time.  Here’s a closeup of the same point.

There are a few hairs of grain on the right side that I’ll carefully trim back with the exacto.  After another hour or two of careful work, I’ve finished the first pass in the inlay’s final resting place.

Now I begin the dry fit.   Keep in mind the inlay is thin wood.  Once the water based glue comes in contact, there will be a tiny bit of gap filling going on, so the inlay should not be so tight you have to force it in place.  Take the time to check each of the major and minor points of the compass rose and make sure the inlay does two things; that it seats properly flush with the surface of the wood (don’t count the veneer tape, which should be above the surface) and that the sides line up cleanly.  Remove any hairs or impediments to the inlay seating properly with your sharpened fine chisels.

Glue up!  Now would be a good time to cross your fingers and pray to an appropriate diety.    I fill the inlay, right to the edges, with an appropriate layer of Titebond 3.  Don’t overdo it on the glue, or soak it too hard.  Make sure the layer is thin, but covers the bottom of the inlaid surface.  Don’t put any on the veneer itself!   Position and tape the inlay into position.  Double check now for any protruding surfaces.  Once you clamp or bag it, the clamps or bag won’t “fix” overlapping veneer, they’ll just ensure it ends up glued tightly.  Then, bag it up and leave it overnight.   This is one time when you don’t want to count on a 2-4 hour glue set up time.  Leave it.  Trust me.

Once out of the bag, inspect for overlapping veneer.  Provided you don’t have any, its time to move on to removing the veneer tape.  I have a small spray bottle of distilled water.   Then i use a card scraper and start to work through the layers of veneer tape.  Since you have several layers, you’ll probably have to spritz a few times to get all of it.  Keep paper towels handy to wipe the veneer schmutz off your card scraper.

Take your time and let it dry thoroughly.  Again, no rushing here.    I left mine overnight in a warm part of the house to make sure the water wasn’t going to mess with the surface.    The next day, I hit the shop again, gave it a very light sanding, and a wipe down with mineral spirits to see how it came out.

Didn’t require any cleanup!  Ready to finish!