Summer Woodworking

My last post was over 2 months ago. Sorry about that. I have done a bit of woodworking since then, although not a lot. Among the other things taking up my time were:

• We dropped off Snowflake's nightlight and met the man himself - he's a real cutie.

• I spent a couple of days on the Cape with my sister, her family, their friend and her son. One afternoon I supervised the boys D and JT making stepping stones (concrete, ceramic tiles and glitter). JT was particularly excited about the glitter. I didn't stay long enough to see the hardened stones, but word has it that the boys were fascinated by how the gloppy concrete turned into solid stones.

• We spent the last two weeks of July in the Adirondacks. We've vacationed there all but 2 of the last 12 years, the last 8 in Owl Cabin at Wakanda. Although I took some things to sand with me they never got pulled out. I did take photos and dimensions of an end table (a new addition to our cabin) which will likely end up as a project soon.
• Like too many other houses, our bathroom has a window above the tub. Since the tub is also used for showers the window gets wet. Over the years water has undermined the window framing, and the wall behind the plastic tub surround. The surround on our tub is several panels rather than a single piece. Over time the seams have lost their integrity and water has infiltrated. As embarrassing as it is to say this, the wall board behind the surround has been falling apart for years. After replacing the toilet and floor, we finally couldn't take it anymore. So in mid-August I carefully removed the surround and replaced the outside wall. Note to anyone reading - cardboard is not an acceptable shim in a bathroom wall! The job proved a little bit more involved than anticipated because the window trim was glued to the framing which meant that it all had to be replaced.
  
• Since returning from vacation work has been taking up a lot of time and more energy.
• I have been giving the kayak a good amount of time in the water.

There has been a bit of woodworking as well.

Hiker Boy's Advent Calendar

The stock for all parts has been milled, and I'm ready to start joinery. The drawer stock still needs to be cut to final dimension. The picture above is the corner of one of the doors.

Softball Bat
This is a new addition to the list. Last spring many of the guys in my woodworking class made baseball bats. One evening as I was leaving the instructor commented that I was the one who should be making a bat. He's aware of my participation in the softball league at work (I help run our team, play, umpire and coordinate the umpires for the league). And when he found out that I'd never used a lathe he was even more convinced that I should give it a try. I didn't have anything else to work on for the last class, so I decided to give it a try. Here's the progress so far. I should have it mostly finished next week when class starts again.



Workbench Top

The new top for the bench is almost complete. I used mahogany to edge the plywood. It's attached using biscuits which gave me an excuse to use my biscuit joiner. I attached it so it was a little higher than the surface of the plywood and then planed it down. The only thing left to do is to apply a finish to it. I'm leaning toward using boiled linseed oil.

Footstools
I filled the grain on the footstools with a mixture of pumice and boiled linseed oil. They look great, but need a lot of sanding. I've got the top of one done and it feels great after the sanding.

Ornament

Almost every year for the last 10 I've made a window hanging/Christmas tree ornament using my scrollsaw. The one pictured above is from 2005. Much to Amy's amazement I have already got the first pass of this year's design done. I'll try this one out and then make adjustments before starting in on the production run.

New Bench Top

I've been frustrated with the top of my primary workbench for quite a while. (I have a second bench but it serves as a storage area and will soon be leaving my shop.) The frame is functional, but the top which consists of 6 2X6s is not meeting my needs. I'd long ago decided that replacing the top with a double layer of 3/4" plywood would greatly improve it. I acquired the plywood back in April and it's been sitting in the garage since. A couple of weekends ago Amy helped me cut it down to the necessary size.

Last night I decided that this was the weekend to tackle the benchtop replacement. This is what it looked like when I headed to the shop today. The clutter on the top is normal, although the exact composition changes.


Step one of the process was to clear the bench. A number of things were put away, the rest were stacked in other places - on top of the other bench, on top of the router table, on the floor... The attached items - drill bit holder, vise, the screw from which my brush hangs and the doorbell light* were also removed. Here's how it looked at that point.


After removing the back splash, the boards of the top were removed, a fairly straight forward operation. Here's a look at the frame. The bright colored squares are rubber floor mats. I've had the floor padded for a while. I started with a small number of colored mats. When I expanded the padding all I could find were slightly larger black mats. I used both the colored mats and the new ones, but they don't interlock and this left edges to trip on which is definitely not a good idea. So, I took this opportunity to replace the colored mats with more of the black ones. This will give me fully interlocked padding.


Next step was layer number 1 of the plywood. I screwed this layer to the frame, and drilled pilot holes to attach the two layers together from below which will leave no screw holes on the work surface. After screwing down this piece, Amy helped me spread glue on it. Then we added the top layer.


The two layers were clamped together, and screwed together from below. The pieces are attached with 5 rows of three screws. I reattached the original back splash. I'll add hardwood edging once I get some milled, probably in class on Thursday.


I've already put the new top to use doing the final work on Snowflake's nightlight. The light panels and the track they ride in were sanded and the track was waxed using a birthday candle - it's almost the perfect size to fit into the 1/4" wide dado. I added the light holder, and the felt which covers the bottom. A light sanding and another coat of wipe-on polyurethane finished up the work. We'll be delivering it tomorrow.

* The doorbell light is an architect style lamp which is attached to a plug which is activated by a doorbell. The doorbell is installed next to the door to the shop. Visitors to the shop can get my attention when I've got my back to the door and ear plugs in by pressing the doorbell, which makes the light blink. I acquired this from a vendor specializing in equipment for the deaf. I highly recommend it. Amy likes it because she can get my attention without coming into the shop thus avoiding the dust and some of the noise.

Current Work

I haven't been spending quite as much time in the shop since the challenge table was completed. What I have been working on is getting finish on the other projects which are ready for it.

First up is the nightlight since we don't want Snowflake to be a teenager before he gets it. I'm finishing it before I assemble it. I've got stain on all the parts. Next up is the finish coat. I'm going to go with polyurethane for that. I should get to this on Monday.

I've also done a little final sanding on the wall cabinet. I've also decided one of the doors needs a slight adjustment - it's rubbing on the bottom. That'll be a round of planing. Then I'll stain the walnut panels on the doors and the shelves which are also walnut. I think I'm going to finish it off with shellac.

Next up will be the foot stools. I've found a recipe for grain filler that uses pumice and boiled linseed oil. I've got the ingredients, just need to find a time to try it out. The grain needs to be filled because the hickory has open grain. Stay tuned for progress and pictures.

In class (Thursday nights till mid July) I've been working on hiker boy's advent calendar. Last week I remilled/recut the wood for the case. The design of this was still evolving at that point (I finished it last night) and when I first cut the case parts I forgot to leave room for drawer handles inside the case. Last night was more milling and a little bit of cutting.

• planed the stock for the drawer fronts
• jointed, planed and cut the stock for the door stiles and rails
• I may have to repeat this since some of the pieces sprung into a lovely curve after cutting
  
• jointed, planed and resawed (explanation below) stock for the drawer sides

Resawing
When looking for a thin piece of wood there are basically 3 options - buy thin lumber which is expensive, plane a thicker piece which can waste a lot of wood, or resaw which maximizes the use of the lumber. Basically what a woodworker means when they saw they resawed a piece of lumber is that they cut the wood into thin strips. A lot of times this is done on a band saw which has a blade that is a loop (think rubber band) with teeth on one edge. This can also be done on a table saw - usually by raising the blade to 1/2 the height of the wood and running the wood through twice. Or a combination of table saw and band saw can be used - run it through the table saw to get most of the wood cut away and finish up on the band saw.

The reason the band saw is the preferred method is the blade is much thinner so there is less waste. But because the blade is thinner it is harder to get a straight cut. It's a trade off and there are lots of products to help.

Since the piece I was resawing was not very wide (2") I just cut it in one pass on the table saw. Yes, I used a push stick! Next time I'll run the cut pieces through the planer to even them up.

On tap for next week -

• recutting the pieces for the door frames
• cutting plywood panels for the doors, drawer bottoms and back
• milling and cutting pieces for the drawer supports/dividers

Night light

One of the panels from Snowflake's night light. His parents are avid skiers and I fully expect to see him on skis as soon as he can walk. I haven't installed the electrical parts yet, so I placed a small flashlight in the night light to get this picture.

Lots of Progress

I have been remiss in not posting about all of the progress I've made in the last month of so. Here's a recap by project.

Wall Cabinet
The wall cabinet is ready for finish.

Foot Stools
The foot stools are ready for finish. I've been wondering about how to fill the grain, since the hickory has a very open grain pattern. While looking for something else in my stash of saved woodworking magazine articles I found one I'd saved on non-commercial grain filler. One option is to use pumice and boiled linseed oil. I've had a box of pumice sitting on the shelf for years (for use as a sanding agent when finishing) so I bought a can of boiled linseed oil. I'm going to give this a try before adding finish to the stools.

Night Light
Ready for finish. The panels look great (pictures soon). I'm going to apply finish before I glue up the box, so I have more control over the finish. I need to get this done ASAP since Snowflake made his appearance 3 weeks ago.

Hiker Boy's Advent Calendar
I've got the plan sketched out and started cutting the parts during my last couple of classes. I've got the sides of the case ready, although I may have to check that I left room to affix the back.

CD Holder
Adjusted the height of the dividers. It's ready for dadoes and rabbets.

Challenge Table
This has been garnering most of my attention. I started to include a report here, and then realized that it make this post extremely long. So, I'll post about that separately.

Sunday Progress

I only spent a little while in the shop today, because I spent a good deal of time cleaning for Passover and also took a break to attend a Wellesley softball game.

In the shop I worked on the sizing the strips which will hold the panels in the doors of the wall cabinet.

The doors have a rabbet that runs around the inside of the door to hold the panel. To hold the panel from the back I'm using strips that will be pinned in place with brads.


I finished cutting the miters in the strips for one door. I may have to narrow the strips, so that the door handles and hinges will fit. I'll decide on that the next time I'm down in the shop. In the oops category I discovered that I miscalculated and didn't cut enough stock for both doors. The source of the miscalculation is the miter. I forgot to calculate the lengths based on the outside of the strips, rather than the inside.

I also glued up the panel for the top of Snowflake's night light.

Class Night - Snowflake's Nightlight

Picture(s) to come...

So the new session of the adult ed class I frequently take started on Thursday. Luckily the lumber stock there is in good shape (there have been whole semesters when there has been little or no wood) and I was able to find the stock I needed.

The nightlight I'm working on is one I've built before (both of my younger nephews have auntie made nightlights). It's not an original design, but one from Woodsmith magazine. Although I'm not a great fan of cats I really love the cat fishing cutout that was featured in the magazine (and in the picture here). The other feature that I love is that the nightlight is designed to have a total of 4 light panels, and storage for the ones not in use is included.

D's, the first one I made, has the 4 panels which are part of the plan - the cat, a halloween scene, a Christmas tree, and a moon and stars. N's has the cat, the moon, the Christmas tree (I think) and a custom panel with the Yankees logo (his folks are die-hard Yankee fans).

The plan is to give Snowflake the cat, the moon and 2 custom panels. Just in case Snowman or Sunshine happen upon this I'm not going to reveal the details, yet.

Which brings me back to Thursday night. After selecting my stock (walnut), I trimmed it to manageable size on the radial arm saw. Then it was off to the jointer, and planer to create some nice square boards. The insert panels are 1/4" thick and planing a 4/4" board down to that is just, well wrong - way too much waste. So after taming the board it was off to the tablesaw to split it (mostly) in two. Then it was off to the bandsaw to complete the cut. [Before those of you who are woodworkers start ranting - the shop does have a good sized bandsaw, but no fence so the instructor recommended method is to do as much as possible on the tablesaw before completing the cut on the bandsaw.]

Once the board was two boards I headed to the planer to smooth them out. A little work on the miter saw and I had 8 panels ready (two become part of the case, the others are just extras).

With a little work on the tablesaw and mitersaw the night ended with the stock ready for the sides (need to cut multiple rabbets/dadoes before cutting the sides), the top and bottom, and the panels.

Next steps - a little glue up (top and bottom), rabbets and dadoes, assembly and panel cutting.