Magazine wood working

Showing posts with label along. Show all posts

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Scooby Snacks Keep the Shop Moving Along

Over the last couple of days Ive gotten a few chances to spend an hour or two in the shop at a time. Never able to do enough for a full post but moving along step by step on getting the saw horses closer to the finish line. First I spent hacked another leg shape out, I would like to think I can just plow through all four of them in one sitting, but hand cutting them with a coping saw is pretty taxing on my tennis elbow, its better if I take my time and do them one at a time. Cut one out, do something else for a bit, cut another one out, switch jobs again. This method of work does a few things for me. One it cuts down on how beat up I feel after a day in the shop because the variety of switching it up cuts down on those nagging, repetative style nuisance injuries. And two, it helps keep me interested and inspired while Im working. I think ahead constantly, I cant help it, and sometimes when I do that I become so jazzed about the plans and ideas that I feel like I have to do something about them, because if I dont Ill obviously forget the solution I came up with. Making huge sweeping cuts with a coping saw is not the fun part of the piece to me. I love joinery, always have, so accomplishing the joinery is the fun part. I use that as my reward.

"If I finish getting this leg cut out, then I can move on to those mortices for a while" ---- you see, just like a scooby snack!

So after getting the second leg cut out and shapped, I took the scooby snack of working on the top of the horse. This did mean something exciting for me, I got to take the new dado hand saw I made out for a real drive for the first time. teaching myself how to use it was fun, getting it started was the real challenge but once it was going, plowed right down to the bottom. I think the only thing that may have made it easier is if I had set the blade to cut on the push stroke instead of the pull. It seemed more intuitive to use it that way. I wil try it for a few more times before I make the decision to change it around to what is probably the more traditional direction.

Either way it was cool to have success with it. Even using my table saw this is always how Ive liked to cut dados. cut a line down either side and hog out the center with a chisel. Now that my new router plane has arrived cleaning up the bottoms is going to be even easier. (that puppy did arrive this week too, all three cutting blades and the guide fence intact, just have to use a litle elbow grease to clean up the surface rust and sharpen the blades and were completely in buisness)

The I laid the cut leg out in the completed dados and marked where the thru mortises needed to fall. I the struck the marks with a chisel to score the lines. and took a brace and bit to each of the corners. Then I flipped the board over and struck the chisel again to connect the ouside corners and scribe the line on the back side. I then took my largest brace bit and bored out the center. Chisel and mallet later . . . I had a few nice mortises to fit the tenons on the legs through.

My only complaint is that this construction grade pine is so awful dry it splits cracks and chips out small divits around the mortise. Now I did not worry too much about being careful to avoid these things while I was doing this, one I have not surfaced the tops yet, and when I do that it will help with these issues. and two these are just saw horses man, they dont have to be overly pretty, they just have to work. I do have one thing I will have to repair, There was a knot right where one of the mortises fell, and I had to try to bisect it in chopping the mortise, ofcourse the knot fell out and now there is a pretty sizable defect about like my pinkie finger to fix.

Im still measuring my options with that, cutting a wood dutchman appeals, but then there was the epoxy treatment that Chris Schwarz was talking about on his blog...I could come up with another crazy idea between now and when I need to decide something, who knows.

Anyhow, before I move any further, I will have to cut out another leg or two, Scooby snacks away!!

Cheers!

Oldwolf

Monday, January 27, 2014

Media Cabinet Plugging along

Its been a while since I have given an update on progress. Mostly, the progress hasnt been anything too exciting, or exciting enough to write about, but I figured I should anyways. So last time I left off I had made the doors and and had begun to scrape all the glue lines for the top. I have since then finished all the scraping; I had to scrape the bottom platform and all the side pieces...basically anything that I had joined. Next I turned my attention to the two swing out doors. These are for holding games and DVDs. To keep things simple, and looking good, I decided to go with half-blind dovetails to joint the sides to the bottom (there is not top). So I set it all up in my Leigh jig, made a couple test cuts and knocked them out.

From MediaCabinet

I had a little tear out on the first one because I forgot to use a backer board. This joint is on the bottom anyways so it will never be seen.

From MediaCabinet

Next, I figured I would start on the top. It takes a while to glue the boards up so I figured now was a good time to do it because while the glue dries I can work on other items. So, the top is to be about 65" long by 22" deep. I started with a long 12/4 piece of wood. This I will resaw three times to get my three pieces need to make the top. I have an 8" jointer and this board was wider than that so I had to initially flatten it by hand. For those not familiar with doing this, a good way to get started is to use chalk and mark up your board.

From MediaCabinet

This allows you to know the areas that you have, and have not, planed. Then, you use something like a #4 and begin to work up and down the board at a pretty big angle, somewhere between 45 and 60 degrees.

From MediaCabinet

This is a shot of about half way though. You can see the center of the board still has chalk, this tells me that I have not yet gotten the whole thing flat. If you look at the part of the board closest to you, you can also see the plane marks and the angle of approach I am using. As you get it more and more flat, you begin to decrease the angle and then eventually switch to another plane to finish it off.
Here are the three, book matched, boards after being resawn and planed to thickness. By the way, resawing a 12/4 piece of wood 70" long is a real treat!

From MediaCabinet

Its not the greatest picture in the world, but I think you can get an idea for the triple book match. This is something that sets one piece of work apart from others so take note when looking at "antique" furniture and the quality of work.

Next, I needed to layout and begin routing the dados for the vertical panels. Im starting with the two outer most panels, these only come in just over half way as they are part of the swing out door assembly. I always turn into a nervous wreck when I have to do things like this because if you mess it up, all that wood and work are ruined. Anyways, I made the first two with no problem.

From MediaCabinet

So next I need to rout the dados in the swing out doors that house the shelves for the storage. This will be two dados on each side. Once I have those in, I will then glue up the swing out doors and use those to aid me in laying out where the next dados go for the middle, full length, vertical panels. More on that later though!

Be safe!