Welcome to my bathroom
Doesn’t everyone share their bathroom with the world? Well, I thought I would. And yes, there is method to my madness. And yes, it does have something to do with miniatures. It also has something to do with full-size woodworking. And it has something to do with my new-found love affair with SketchUp.
I’m in the process of remodeling a small bathroom in an old house – our house. The next stop on the clumsy handyman trail is to build a medicine cabinet and an accessory shelf that will hang over the the sink area. So, I thought, what better way to get a feel for the space available than to draw the wall to scale, stick a sink next to it, and then start drawing cabinet-size shapes.
I’m learning, or trying to learn, SketchUp and so my goal was to do exactly that. I thought that sufficient challenge. I assumed I could download a sink from Google’s 3D Warehouse and how hard could it be to draw a wall anyway? One thing led to another and all too easily I ended up with this bathroom, that both daughter and wife recognized as being ours.
I admit that towel racks, electrical outlets and toilet paper rolls won’t help me design my cabinet but aren’t they cool? Besides, I had fun taking a towel from one towel rack and fitting it to the one I used. Sometimes I’m easily amused.
The thing is, this was soooooo easy that I just couldn’t stop with just a wall and a sink. All of the fixtures were downloaded and with very slight modifications plunked into the scene without working up a sweat. I drew the baseboard moldings and window moldings using SketchUp’s magical ‘follow me’ tool and that was downright fun. Oh, and you can see through the window – see? I’ve got to get some blinds installed.
So, what does this have to do with miniatures? Well, sometime ago I speculated that SketchUp might be a great planning tool for those wanting to build roomboxes or dollhouses. While you may not want to do a bathroom, I think this provides ample evidence that this is a tool worth considering. The key is the 3D Warehouse that is quickly becoming a repository for every piece of “stuff” being sold for exterior and interior use around buildings as the companies who make the stuff are putting their entire catalogs online as SketchUp models.
Cheers — Larry
Tiny tools are cool!
Woodworking magazine is one of my favorites and its editor, Chris Schwartz has a good eye for work that inspires. He’s just posted some photos of UK miniaturist David Brookshaw’s miniature tools and I wouldn’t be a miniaturist woodworker if I hadn’t yelled EEEEEEEE-HA when I saw them. I encourage you to head to the Woodworking blog and take a look yourself.
Cheers — Larry
Mini-workbench: Part 1
In the post, Sawmill and prep, miniature style I mentioned that I might use some of the maple to build a miniature workbench. I’ve decided to do just that.
Workbenches are important to woodworkers, and a constant source of discussion. I enjoy the pull and tug between old-style benches and more modern versions of them. If there’s one thing that differentiates the two its our modern penchant for adding vises to our benches. Clearly, many 17th-19th Century joiners (i.e. – Cabinetmakers) had no vise, or a very simple one.
I’m not going to debate the pros and cons here but when doing miniatures, one of the dilemmas we miniaturists face is that we must more often match what people believe is appropriate rather than what is appropriate. If I were to build a bench without a vise I’d be seen as being simple-minded and thus, my workbench will have a vise, at least one. I will confess that when I build a replacement bench for my shop it will have fewer vises than the current one, however.
An absolutely superb workbench book has been released recently by Chris Schwarz, titled Workbenches: from Design and Theory to Construction and Use.
The book lives up to its name as Chris approaches workbench discussions not only from a historical perspective but he talks about what features help/hinder the various things that woodworkers want to do with workbenches. I highly recommend this book if you’re thinking of building a full-size bench.
For my miniature bench, I can think of no better bench to build than the French Roubo bench on the cover of Chris’ book. To that end, I’ve generated a pile of 8′ long boards for the bench top, the main stringers for the base and after negotiating again with my sawmill owner, I managed to come up with material to make the 4 huge legs for this bench. They’re beautiful, 5″ square maple posts.
I’ll be showing you the joinery associated with this bench and, like many full-size bench projects on the web, I’ll present progress photos as it progresses.
Cheers — Larry
A modest box
When I was a kid I had a simple box, with a sliding lid. As I recall it was stapled together and made from cheap wood. But I loved that box and stored “precious” stuff in it. This box suffered from a lack of quality materials, my rough handling of it and, ultimately, it showed that my mother was right; my hands were always dirty.
I decided to make such a box in miniature. I tried to make it look old and worn and I hope you’ll agree that I was at least somewhat successful.
The lid slids out, using the thumb-hook as did the original.
While I was at it I responded to modern wizards around the world who accused me of going “old school” on my magic wand, posted a couple days ago. They pointed out that long wands with Phoenix-feather drivers might have been fine in Gandalf and Merlin’s day, but these days, modern wizards wield smaller, more snappy wands, using Linux-based operating systems and wi-fi connectivity.
And so, I put together this little number – a 3/4″ long redheart wand with a double-tapered shaft and 4-Gig magic capacity. It features a state-of-the-art “touch-knob” interface and hacker-proof password protection. I apologize for the the dust particles in the photo. Such is the nature of woodshops, I’m afraid.
Cheers — Larry
Might there be a better miter box?
Do you own one of these?
If so, I’d bet your square cuts aren’t, and that you are often frustrated by your attempts to create miter joints.
The problem is that the slots in these miter boxes are just too darn wide and don’t hold the saw vertical.
There is a solution, however, and as I just obtained a really nice, 60-tooth razor saw I needed to make a miter box for it and thought I’d share the process. The saw, by the say, is the Gyros razor saw from Woodcraft. It’s a considerable cut above most of the saws available from hobby outlets.
I feel that you should have a different miter box for every saw you own. The reason comes from the goal of miter boxes, which is to keep the saw vertical as you make a cut. If the slot into which the saw fits, is larger than the blade thickness, that just won’t happen, no matter how skilled you are at sawing.
The good news is that making a miter box for these small razor saws is very easy and requires only a couple scraps of wood – hardwood is preferable for durability. Mine are maple and about 6″ long. The skinny one is just thin enough that my saw can cut all the way through it. The wider board is simply the base and needs to be wide enough to hold the sorts of wood you normally cut.
The first thing you need to do is mark the small block for cutting. You’ll want two lines, one that’s perpendicular to the long dimension and the other running at 45-degrees to it.
I used a square to mark the block perpendicular. This line should be near the middle of the long dimension of the block just as it is on the aluminum miter boxes.
To do the 45-degree line I used the base piece, set vertically and I shoved it against my bench hook. I then pushed the part to be marked against it, forming a nice, 90-degree “wall” to push a 45-degree triangle against and with everything square, I marked the 45-degree line.
Now it’s time to glue the two blocks together. It’s important that the small block and larger base form a 90-degree edge to hold the wood you’ll be cutting with the miterbox/saw. The rest of the alignment is less important but for the sake of esthetics it’s nice to line the back edges of both pieces with one another.
With the two pieces glued together, it’s time to cut slots. This is a lot easier than you might think. If you’re unsure that you can keep the saw vertical while making these cuts, get a small block of wood that you can hold against the saw blade, keeping it vertical while you initiate the cut. Initiate the cut with a light pressure on the saw and saw slowly, watching to ensure that the saw remains vertical. Once the cut is started, the cut itself will maintain the saw vertical. Saw all the way to the bottom of the smaller piece.
Do this for both slots and, voila, you’ve got a miter box that will automagically hold your saw vertical every time and your cuts will become much better.
Notice how the saw sits vertical even if you’re not holding it.
Cheers — Larry
-
Blogroll
Share your thoughts...