Marking Valentine's Day With Wood
I suppose I’m a curmugeon but I oppose the very notion of spending $4-5 on a piece of paper that will end up in the trash the day after it’s given. And so, every time Valentine’s Day rolls around I’m faced with showing my Valentine(s) that I care without succumbing to the card marketeer guilt tactics.
This year I decided to take advantage of the fact that the two Valentines in my life are avid readers. I can show them I care and they can be reminded of it every time they mark their place in a book. These bookmarks were made from 1/16″ cherry and painted with General Finishes Milk Paint. These paints aren’t casein-based milk paints but are, rather, a water-based acrylic resin with the creamy, smooth properties you expect from a traditional milk paint. I just love them.
Attached to a box of candy, I think they’ll look great and for another year I have avoided the Hallmark store. I’ve got an extra one. Will you be my Valentine?
Cheers — Larry
Making Shop Bents By Hand – Part Two
In my last post on this subject I outlined my strategy to become as good a woodworker as Tom Fidgen. Having concluded, from studying his book Made By Hand, that he’s achieved his prowess by having a set of shop bents available to him I decided to build a set of my own, thus improving my woodworking skills.
When I left off, I’d been sawing and planing up a storm. I’d created all the boards for this project and was ready for joinery work. I’d like to point out that this approach is somewhat atypical for me. Those, including me, who work with power tools learn to do all the wood prep, create the parts, and then do the assembly. In short, we make a kit and then we build it. This is mostly a reflection of the time required to set up power tools and their jigs and we take advantage of a set up by processing as many pieces as we can simultaneously.
When working with hand tools, however, none of this is necessary or even desireable as there is no tool set up and/or adjustment. The single exception might be setting up marking gauges and most hand tool users own several gauges that we set and they remain set for the duration of a project. I have a mortising gauge set to the width of my mortising chisel and it never changes.
And so, while you might have gotten tired just reading about me planing and sawing for 4 hours to create the parts, normally those activities would be scattered throughout the creation process, make it much easier. But in this case, the basic parts are ready, let’s get on with the building.
Making Feet
I started with the feet, which amount to 2″ x 24″ boards that are relieved in the middle to form 4 contact surfaces. This isn’t necessary if your floor is flat. Mine isn’t. On the opposite side, a 1 1/8″ deep mortise is cut in the center to accept the upright.
I suppose there are many ways to do such a relief. I marked the center of the leg and a point 3/8″ up from the bottom surface. I also marked a point 4″ in from one end on the lower edge. I freehanded a curve between them following the TLAR (that looks about right) approach. I duplicated this curve on a piece of cardstock, laid the pattern down, aligning it with the bottom edge and the center mark. I then drew the curve on the wood. I flipped the pattern and repeated the process on the other side of the center mark and I knew where the bowsaw had to go.
I removed most of the waste using a bow saw cutting just outside my line and achieved final shaping with a spokeshave and rasp. You might note that I’m using one of the inexpensive 4-in-1 rasps . For small jobs like this I find the tool very useful as you have both rough and smooth, curved and flat surfaces. It’s short length is also advantageous in these situations. On larger jobs, however, it becomes hard to hold as you’re holding the actual teeth of the rasp.
Mortise and Tenon Joints
Though this is a simple project, on a per-board-foot basis, there are a lot of mortise and tenon joints. There are four through tenon joints that fasten the uprights to the lower spreaders and four stub tenons that attach the uprights to the feet. In my world, most tenons are 1/4″ because I own a 1/4″ mortising chisel. Technically this is a bit thin for 7/8″ wood (dogma is they should be 1/3 the wood thickness) but it’s close enough to suit me – sort of like the guy who only owns a hammer being faced with a screw I suppose. I doubt that anyone owns a .29″ wide chisel anyhow.
I’m not going to bore you with details of my mortise and tenon creation as I’ve shown that in other posts. This process isn’t as hard as it seems and there is little magic involved. Sharp chisels and an eye towards getting the inside walls perpendicular to the face are all that’s necessary. I lay out my tenons to fit exactly in the long dimension but a bit fat. I size them with a shoulder plane while fitting them to the mortise. If you don’t have a shoulder plane, that 4-in-1 rasp I mentioned will do the job as well. A sharp chisel is handy for cleaning up the base of the mortise to achieve a good, flush fit.
Once the mortises and tenons were chopped/cut, I had this pile of parts:
Notice the two darker pieces. I mentioned that the top spreaders would be cut from a “BORG 1×3″. This is them. I find it odd that these are so much darker than the rest as all was sold as red oak. It’s likely that the BORG wood is imported while the rest is local but the color difference is something I cannot explain.
Test Assembly
Fitting mortises amounts to repeated tenon trimming, followed by checking fit. The goal is to get them tight enough that you can assemble the piece without glue. If nothing else this is a woodworker pride thing but tight mortise/tenon joints are very strong; loose joints, not so much.
And so the time comes to put this idea to the test – the dry fit. There is something very satisfying about this stage. It is a bit hard on the arm as you wrench it around, trying to pat yourself on the back but otherwise – satisfying. Notice that at this point I had yet to notch in the top spreaders. To be honest, I simply forgot to do it before dry-fitting and taking this photo. Getting old is hard sometimes.
The one last thing I did was to mark, lightly, where the uprights and feet come together. Then, using a block plane, I went over all of the parts, rounding over the edges just to dull them, excepting the foot/upright mortise/tenon location. I did a bit of scraper work to finish smooth all the parts and then I remembered that I needed to cut the notches.
Cutting top notches
The top spreaders are removable and sit in slots cut in the uprights. The spreaders themselves are notched to form a face that sits against the inside of the spreader. My goal here was to have a press fit rather than a loose fit. This worked out very nicely and, I think, adds strength to the design.
I marked out the upright notches and used my dovetail saw to cut the verticals, followed up with a fretsaw to cut across the bottom. The bottom of the slot was squared up with a chisel. I cut the spreader notch using two simple straight cuts. Fitting was done with a paring chisel and I was very happy with the results as I can pull the joint apart but it requires a tug to do so.
Final Assembly/Finishing
Mortise/tenon joinery works best if you drawbore the joints. Not only does this add strength, it helps the joints look nice as the drawboring pulls the joint together tighter.
For those unfamiliar with the process, you pull the tenon and drill a hole (3/8″ in this case) through both mortise cheeks. You replace the tenon and mark the centerpoint of the hole on the tenon. You then drill the tenon hole slightly closer to the tenon shoulder than the marked point. Thus, when you drive a dowel through the holes, it pulls the tenon into the mortise. If you’re really well-equipped, you own drawbore pins that can test the joint before you add glue and drive the dowel. Maybe someday I’ll get some of those but, to quote Aragorn of Lord of the Rings fame, “It is not this day.”
I used hot hide glue on all of the joinery. I like it for a number of reasons, discussed elsewhere on this blog. All of the mortises are cut to 1 1/8″ while the tenons are 1″, providing some space for any excess glue to go. I slathered glue on the tenon, stuck the joint together and pounded pre-cut 3/8″ dowel segments through the holes. Use extra-long dowel segments for this, cutting off the extra using a flush-cut saw.
As this is a piece of shop furniture, I used a couple coats of linseed oil as a finish. I rarely put a surface finish on shop tools as it just gets dinged up and its hard to repair. So, here they are. 
I should say a couple words about dimentions. I made these 24″ wide because Tom’s bents were 24″ wide. For heights, however, I set the lower spreader to the height of my sawbench and the top spreaders to my workbench. This should maximize their functionality so give some thought to this before launching your own shop bent project.
Conclusion
Sadly, while I have a nice set of bents, Tom is still a better woodworker than I am. I guess I need to read Made By Hand again.
Cheers — Larry
Cabinet Is Finished – With A Finish
We’re about to finish a year and I’ve just finished a cabinet – with a finish. On all counts I’m happy as I can move into the holidays unencumbered by pressing schedules.
I’m posting this for two reasons. The lesser of the two is that I’ve talked about this project in previous posts and thought some might want to see it finished. But the larger reason is that when I did a post titled When is a Piece Ready for Finish, several people asked me the popular question “What’s your favorite finish?”
I’m not a big believer in “best solution” for anything without a bunch of “it depends” going along with the answer. And nothing could be more true for finish choices. I love the look of a plain oil finish. Properly applied I believe an oil finish is the most beautiful wood treatment and unless you’re eating off it, probably a sufficient finish for most pieces. If I feel I need a film finish I favor shellac, mixing my own from flakes and applying it in many very thin coats. Still, when I’m sending something off to a place you don’t know and to someone you’ve never met I start thinking of a wipe-on polyurethane finish.
And this cabinet falls into the last category. It’s going to a guy’s “mom” in northern Quebec. It’s also a maple cabinet and maintaining a light-color was part of the directive. A good way to finish with no color change would be something like General Finishes “water-based” polyurethane as these dry very clear and. I wanted to warm up the piece a bit, however, so I went in a different direction.
The first step in my process was to tape off the glass so I didn’t have a lot of scraping to do. If I had it to do over I would have taped a paper cover over the entire glass, though the approach you see here worked pretty well.
Actually, that was the second step in the process. I didn’t attach the back of this cabinet until everything else was done. The back was a framed panel and so while I fitted hinges and doors and did last-minute detailing I finished the cabinet back. Thus, by the time I got ready to do the rest of the finishing, I could put the cabinet on its back, supported by some of those little pyramid thingies and this gave me access to the entire cabinet without having to move it around.
I started by applying two coats of boiled linseed oil. Then I went Christmas shopping for a couple days. Before moving on, I went over everything with a bit of 400-grit sandpaper, just to put a bit of tooth on the surface.
Then I applied four coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal, my favorite wipe-on polyurethane. Between coats I went over the entire piece with a gray buffing pad, again, to produce a bit of tooth. Fine steel wool works for this as well. The secret to applying polyurethanes by hand, in my view, is to do it in very thin coats. Most “mistakes” I see come from attempts to slather the stuff on while hoping that its leveling properties will eliminate brush strokes. It won’t.
Once the last coat was dry I stuffed a lump of good-quality paste wax into the middle of a piece of t-shirt material. With the fabric pulled up around the wax I started rubbing it on the cabinet surface. Mostly I use a swirling motion but I’m not sure it matters as long as you get a thin, even coat of the wax on the surface. If you’ve never done this, you’ll find that the wax won’t flow until the friction of the action warms it and then it will ooze through the fabric. This provides really good control over the process. I did one or two panels and then buff it out with a clean cloth.
And here it is. I apologize for the poor photo but it’s dark here most of the time (8 hours of daylight) and it was dark and I was lazy and so “lighting” comes only from the shop lights.
Cheers — Larry
When Is A Surface Ready For Finish?
When you’re new to woodworking, and trying to learn, it must be frustrating to read “Prepare your surface and then apply your favorite finish”? This is an example of well-meaning woodworkers, and woodworking magazines, attempting to help people while forgetting that those who need advice also need the details. All of us who fall into this trap need to follow what will be, from this day forward, called Larry’s Law. Larry’s Law reads something like this: “If it’s so obvious that you don’t need to explain how, then why say it at all?” I’m still working on the exact wording and will publish the final version as soon as I can follow its advice. “Prepare your surface -> apply a finish” line is a classic example of the problem. We see it everywhere. Sometimes you’re provided details like “sand to 220″ but not enough to really understand what the experts (and guys like me) do.
How does one really determine if your spiffy cabinet, bench or table is ready for finish. You’ve sanded it, of course. But how do you know the scratches and flaws are gone? Too often it looks great until you apply the finish and then the scratches show their ugly face. Those buggers are elusive.
But there is a way and it’s easy. You need three things. Obviously you need a piece you think is finished. Here I have a door panel for a cabinet I’m working on. You need some mineral spirits. Some, who don’t like the smell, use alcohol. I prefer mineral spirits because it doesn’t evaporate away as quickly. The third thing you need is what I refer to as a shadow light. It’s simply a light you can shine at a low angle over the piece, looking for tiny shadows created by imperfections.
I have to say that in preparing this post I learned a thing or two of the difficulty in presenting this technique. The technique will reveal very small imperfections but it’s hard to get a camera to pick them up once revealed. Likewise, if the imperfection isn’t subtle, the camera picks them up without the technique. What’s a guy to do?
Cheat! Well sort of. I simply added a scratch to the rail of this door, shot photos and then repeated the process until I got a scratch deep enough that it would show up in the photos. Unfortunately, if you look very closely at the pre-treatment photo, you can see the scratch too, but pretend that you can’t. The depth of this particular scratch was determined by my ability to photograph the ‘after’ photo. Sometimes my camera-slinging abilities are limiting. Sorry about that, but I did scratch my cabinet for you. That’s gotta be worth something.
Here’s a photo of the piece in ambient (big overhead flourescent) light. You’ll have to click on both photos to see anything as these thumbnails don’t show much of anything.
My process is to wet a cloth with mineral spirits. With the cloth in one hand, and the light in the other, I wipe mineral spirits onto the surface just ahead of the light. Moving along the surface I look for problems. Very small dents, scratches or other rough spots are readily visible using this technique. The mineral spirits does evaporate away quickly, however so, and you’ll probably think I’m crazy, I’ll often use really tiny Post-It Notes to indicate areas I need to fix. They make really tiny ones to use to mark book pages and they’re ideal.
And when you’re done fixing the problems, you have “prepared your surface.” It is now ready for “your favorite finish.”
Cheers — Larry
Scrolling Pumpkins from Maple – Happy Halloween
My daughter loves Halloween. I love my daughter. Put the two things together and when October rolls around I start thinking of what to make that will make her giggle. This year, along came Steve Goode, the guy who runs the blog called The Scrollsaw Workshop. He posted a set of patterns for some pumpkins, lit by candles and they seemed like a dandy project.
I’ve been working on a maple cabinet and had some maple that was less than a nice light-colored maple and I decided the streaks in it would enhance my pumpkins. I planed the board to 1/2″ thick stock and cut some parts. Using a #7 reverse-toothed blade, I cut out the pumpkins. A bit of sanding, a bit of glue and a couple coats of boiled linseed oil and I had 3 pumpkins. I attached very thin paper to the back, bought some candles at the dollar store and my pumpkins were lit and shining bright by the time my daughter got home from school. And yes, she giggled. Gave me a hug too.
Cheers — Larry
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