A weekend of working on the honey-do list

I had great plans this weekend, hoping to cut all the mortises on the posts and get the head board cut. But like all great plans of mice and men, the wife's honey-do list got in the way.

1. Expand her vegetable garden to twice its original size.
2. Plant new fruit bushes (blueberry and raspberry)
3. Split more of the firewood that she  made me pickup last weekend - 4+ hrs.
4. Mark trees that need to be cut down
5. Order more topsoil
6. Buy peat moss
7. Plant 500 seeds into starter trays - tomatos, onions, peppers, mellons, and other vegies

So alas, I found a few muscles that I didn't know I had.

Woodworking 0

Honey Do List 7

Maybe later this week I'll get some free time to do woodworking.

Carving the lamb's tongues onto the posts

Today between a thousand interuptions, I carved out all 32 lamb's tongues onto the 4 posts. The lamb's tongue serve as the transition between the 45 degree angles and the square parts of the posts. There are two sets, one on the octagonal tapers that make up the top 2/3 of the post and the straight octagonal section making up the last 14" at the bottom of each post.

I realized much to my dismay that when I cut the 45 degree sides to make the octagons, I did not take into account the fact that the round cutter would cut longer on one face then the other. I was judging the stop points off the shorter face and when I went to layout the lamb's tongues I realized that I would need to shorten the squared section of the post by 1/4" on both the top and bottom to allow me to carve the lamb's tongue. In the picture above you can see a finished lamb's tongue on the left and the layout for the next one in the middle. Notice that the layout of the right half the profile touches the router cut line while the left is almost a quarter inch away from the router cut line. The upper mark denotes the position where the lamb's tongue was supposed to stop, the line second from the top denotes the actual end location. To be honest I don't think it makes any difference to the final product. I may need to move the headboard down about a 1/4" as well, the design calls for it to attach at the 1/2 way point of the lambs tongue, not sure if it would look right coming out off center.

To carve the profile, I began with a 1" chisel turned backwards - bevel down versus bevel up and removed the bulk of the waste. I have to admit cherry cuts like butter with a sharp chisel. The towel is wrapped around the square area in order to prevent the corners from being damaged while the post is securely held in my bench vise.

I refined the profile using a quarter inch chisel going across the grain and finished with a double cut file using a combination of the half round face and the flat face. I used the 1" chisel to make a sharp line at the base of the tongue where it meets the octagon face.  The picture below shows the lamb's tongue after completing the chisel work but before finishing up with the file. In the end it was taking about 5-7 min to carve and finish each lamb's tongue. The first few took about 10-12 min. I used 220 grit paper on my random orbital sander and carefully polished out the remaining tool marks on each profile.

The completed posts are pictured above. I began to layout out the mortises for the headboard and rails but I finally called it a night. Its been a long day - my wife decided that I needed to help her pickup some firewood logs from her friend's house. It turned out to be 7 van fulls of logs ranging between 15" and 24" in diameter and 30" long. That took a sizeable portion of my afternoon. I split a few of them before deciding that the splitting project would be an excellent project for my two teenage sons. Apparently they beg to differ :-) I have a few trees to cut down around the house so I may wait and rent a log splitter for a day and go nuts on splitting all the wood. I want to get it done ASAP though so that it has a chance to really dry out before next winter.

Making Templates

I made a little bit of progress on the bed tonight. Johannes and I scraped off the worst of the glue with a combination of putty knives and a cabinet scraper. There is still some sanding to do but all the drops of squeeze-out have been removed. We trimmed the board to length using the cross-cut sled on the table saw. The headboard is only 15" tall so it was well within the capabilities of the sled I built for my tablesaw.

With that complete I transferred the full-scale headboard pattern onto a piece of 1/4" plywood. Only half the headboard is drawn since the best way to get a perfect mirror image is to use the same template for both sides.  I added a small part of the arc that will form the other half of the headboard. I did this incase I use the router to finish the edge. This way instead of accidentally overshooting the guide bearing will start following the overshoot arc. The overshoot arc is a uses a bit steeper arc so that I'm moving away from the final shape so when I flip the template over I will still need to remove a small amount to match the other side.

I used 1/4" underlay from Lowes - the stuff with the x's on the one side. Its pretty much spot on 1/4" and is nicely sanded on both sides. Makes great template material. I used to use 1/4" hardboard, but the stuff I bought years ago in Minnesota was smooth on only one side with a rough grid like surface on the other which was a bit of a pain when you need to flip the template over as the doublestick tape pretty much gets ruined when the rough surface is pressed onto the tape. For some reason I haven't been able to find any 1/4" hardboard here in Virginia (nor could I find any in Puyallup, WA). There is lots of 1/8" hardboard available that is smooth on both sides but I prefer 1/4" for templates as it matches the height of the bearing on the router bits. I tried out this 1/4" plywood at Christmas for some of the templates  I made for the couch and I'm very happy with it.

I cut the pattern on the bandsaw using a 1/4" blade. I faired the curves with my 3M Sanding Tool Detail 2.25" x 4.5". The 3M detail sander is shaped like a mini clothes iron and has as soft sponge like sanding pad that cuts very rapidly. It took only about 10 minutes to fair the curves and have all the saw marks removed. I had to be careful to make sure that I didn't round over the edge of the template. I used the template to draw the full sized pattern onto the headboard, flipping the template to get both sides. The drawing looks well. I'll wait to cut the headboard though. I'll finish the posts and cut the mortise into the posts to receive the headboard first. That way if I have to fudge I have about 1/4" to 3/8" of extra height on the headboard blank right now, so I can make the headboard slightly taller if needed.

I finished off the night by making the template for the lamb's tongue that I will need to carve onto the end of each of the 45 degree sides where it meets the square stock in the lower portion of the posts. That's my job for tomorrow.

Gluing Up the Headboard

Tonight I took an hour or so to joint and glue up the two boards that will make up the headboard. I had planned to use a reversible glue joint router bit from Freud. But I'll be honest while I like the results, I've always struggled to setup the bit. Due to time constraints I decided on the simpler approach of just using old faithful dowels. I used my Dowl-it jig to drill the dowel holes and Johannes and I glued it up. We alternated the clamps top and bottom to make sure that the boards didn't bow under the clamping pressure.

Normally I would have alternated the direction of the growth ring arches on the end grain so that on one board they pointed up and the other down but unfortunately, both boards came from a single board and there is only one good face. Thus in this case I had no choice but to have the growth rings going in the same direction. Hopefully I won't regret this decision.

I didn't bother to trim the end of the longer board as I figured I would trim both ends when the glue dries. Normally I would try to wipe off any excess glue with a damp sponge, but I've read a number of times that its actually better to allow the glue to set and then scrap the excess off later. This is supposed to prevent the water from the sponge from diluting the glue and filling the wood pores preventing uptake of stain/finish later. Normally I spend a lot of time sand off any residue so this is a test to see if this will be an easier approach.

Past Projects

Some of my co-workers asked me to post some pictures showing the projects that I've built over the last eighteen months or so. I mentioned many of these projects in my first post, however I didn't have time to include any images. Instead of editing that post and adding images I felt it would be better to create a new post and include the images. There are a few projects missing including the beds/bunk beds I made for my sons and the change table I made 14 yrs ago before my first child was born.

Dresser

The first project is a dresser that I designed it myself because we couldn't find a design that my wife and I were happy with. To get some of the basic dimensions I used American Furniture Design's Mission dresser and from there basically designed as I built it. The drawers are dovetailed with full dovetails on the back and half-blind rabitted dovetails on the front. The only regret was the location of the drawer pulls. When I got around to putting on the drawer pulls, I just mocked it up on one drawer and it looked very nice but once we mounted all the drawer pulls it didn't look quite so good. I'm still quite happy with the overall outcome.

Night Stands

The second project was to build a pair of nightstands. I did a search on the web for night stand plans and again using the basic dimensions I designed the nightstands myself. The dresser dictated the look. I think these came out quite nice and really complement the dresser.

Student Desk

The third project I build in 2009 was a desk for my son Mattheus. Unfortunately at the moment, the boys are asleep so I could only sneak in and get a quick picture so I can't show the complete design. I couldn't find a decent student's desk plan on the web. After much searching I came across a picture that I really liked build by Warren Hile Studio - Bungalow Student Desk. I took the picture and attempted to take the basic dimensions from the site and estimating the rest of the dimensions off of the photograph. I then mocked it up in SketchList 3D trial edition. SketchList is an interesting program, it took me a bit to figure it out but it wasn't too bad. It had a lot of rough spots but the developer seemed interested in making it a better product. I haven't tried it since the trial expired.

The pencil drawer has a drop front to allow a keyboard to be in the drawer. The breadboard pullout really increases the desk space when needed. I still need to make a minor modification to the pencil drawer - I wasn't happy with the drop front drawer slides from Lee Valley. Compared to the heavy duty drawer slides  used on the rest of the drawers, they felt extremely cheap. I wound up cutting the front catch and hinge off and using heavy duty slides. I want to remove those flimsy swivels and catches and replace with piano hinge and bullet catches.

During the design stages I miss measured the width of the file drawer, instead of designing it to handle hanging file folders that would sit on guides set on the top of the drawer side, I made the drawer about a 1/2" too wide and thus I need to create a little insert to handle hanging folders - but at least it was too wide, not too narrow :-)

I'm really proud of how the project came out and Mattheus is very happy with it.

Morris Chairs, Ottomans and Sofa

I started building out the living room set in early July 2009 and finished the sofa in early Feb 2010. I started with building a pair of bow-armed Morris chairs using the American Furniture Design plan. It took awhile to get the chairs complete and then a little longer to pull the money together to purchase the upholstery material for all the items at once - to have a single dye batch. The wood for the chairs is quarter-sawn white oak bought at a local lumber yard. The wood for the sofa is actually local wood harvested right here at the lake that I bought from a friend up the street. While the sofa wood was not intentionally quarter-sawn, I managed to find enough boards in stack that were cut through the center or near the center of the log and had good ray flake. The boards had a lot of splits, knots and bug damage so it was quite a challenge and effort to really sort through and plan how to get the best pieces out. I had to use a less figured board for the front stretcher of the couch as the more figured piece I had set aside suffered damage when I was cutting the sliding dovetails for the cross braces. The router bit heated up and started to drop down - something that didn't occur during the 2 practice runs I did prior. Unfortunately I've had this happen a couple of times with this router - especially on days where the temperatures are really cold and then making some agressive cuts.

Stacy Barnard Stacey Barnard (Barnard's Upholstery) did an awesome job on the upholstery. The material is recycled leather. I really love the final outcome on these pieces and they really fit well in our living room.

Nativity Crosses

At Christmas I made a pair of "Nativity Cross" for my wife. The pattern is from Sue Mey's story cross designs at Scrollsaw Artist website. The first one is made of curly maple with a walnut background and the other is a walnut foreground and curly maple background.

When I first started out, the plan was to make a curly maple front and walnut back for contrast. I had made the foreground from 1/8" maple that I had resawn from 4/4 curly maple. The walnut was 1/4" resawn from 4/4 walnut. Both piece were bookmatched and edge glued to make 12" wide boards from 6" wide original material.

Once I had edge glued the boards to create the proper width, it became obvious that the excess material cut off above and below the arms of the cross could act as background material for the opposite cross. So we decided to use double stick tape to stick the two boards together and cut them as a single effort. The crosses are about 18" tall and 11.5" wide. It took me about 3 evenings to cut out the pattern with Johannes' scrollsaw. I think they came out really well.

Cutting the tapered octagons on the posts

Tonight I got around to cutting the long tapered octagons on the posts as well as the octagons on the bottom of the posts. My wife was having a bunch of ladies over from church so I got banished to the garage (guess they didn't want me listening in on the gossip :-) - I'm kidding). I had Johannes (my oldest son) give me a hand primarily to help support the jig and posts at various points in the process.

On the right is the jig I used to lower the 4 sided tapered post down onto the router bit as it progressed along the taper. The jig is described in the article on making the bed. I added the toggle clamps to ensure that the post remained tight to the jig during the cut. Reducing the chance of things lifting up. Overall the jig worked well, though I did see some inconsistencies in the octogon along parts of the taper on some posts. So either I let the jig ride up a bit or the original tapers weren't perfect. It looks like I can easily repair it with the hand plane. Setting up the first cut took a little while but the remaining posts were cut with a single pass over the bit. I think that was probably my mistake. I should have passed the taper over the bit a second time just to eliminate any areas where the jig might have crept up slightly on the first pass.

We also cut the octagons on the lower end of the posts. This was much simpler, the hardest part was keeping the post flat on the table but with Johannes holding the end of the post it went pretty smoothly. Probably too smoothly as I got a bit careless on the last cut of the last post and overshot the stopping point by about a 1/4". Hopefully it won't be too obvious and if its on the inside of a post where it won't show no one will be none the wiser.

The finished posts look really nice and even without having cut the lamb's tongue profile where the ocatagonal taper meets the squared block they already look quite nice. It will probably take me a while to hand carve all the lamb's tongues but perhaps I can cut a few here and there after work - sort of a brain break before I hit the computer after supper for a few more hours of overtime.

Tomorrow is the Woodworking Show in Fredericksburg VA. Looks like it will be just Johannes and myself. Mattheus is sick and Chandra gets bored too easily at the show. Course that means there is no one to stop me from spending more money on new toys :-). I'll have to be good though, especially if I want to get the new tablesaw in another month or so.

Collecting Maple Blocks

A month or so ago, at least two major snow storms moved through Central Virginia leaving a log of damage in their wakes. In our area, the biggest losses where a lot of evergreens succumbing to the weight of wet snow and sleet. However a few deciduous trees also suffered from the same weight. One of these trees happened to be a large maple in the front yard of one of my co-workers. Just one limb fell off but that limb was close to 24" in diameter. Unfortunately I wasn't aware of this and he had gave away the bulk of the wood. He mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he still had a few big blocks that I was welcome to have if I was interested. Figuring that I might be able to make some turning blanks out of them and gather some firewood for next winter while I was at it.

I took my two older sons with me and went out to his place on Saturday aft to pickup what was there. One of the first things we noticed was that one of the larger blocks where the limb was ripped off the main trunk. showed a rippling effect. At first I dismissed that as being grain distortion at the crotch. However I wandered over to the tree and looked at the huge gash left by the limb falling off and the rippling was as far down the tree as the bark had been ripped off. Even a chunk of the limb a great distance away from the main stem showed similar rippling figure (see the image of the split limb section).

Since we saw a fair amount of similar figure in the much larger chunks I made the decision that I would try to rescue as much as possible from the remaining chunks. Most were between 14" and 20" long and up to 24" or slightly more in diameter. I square off the logs using the chainsaw and on the smaller diameter ones simply split them down the center. The larger ones I split into 3 billets after squaring. Some of the pieces closest to the crotch were fairly ragged chunks so it was a bit more chunky in terms of what I got out of them. There were a couple of crotches as well. I wasn't sure of the best way of handling these, I simply took the outside edges off on the y face of the crotches.

At the end of the day I did my best to paint the ends of billets to prevent further checking as some of the billets already had some checking to begin with. We took one of the billets and used a jack plane on it to try and smooth down one side and see if we could still see the figure. The wood was pretty wet but I still managed to get most of one side smooth and while the wetness caused some discoloration from the plane bottom I could still see the tiger stripping across most of the face of the billet (there was still chainsaw marks so it wasn't perfectly clear). If the stripped figure shows itself across the bulk of the billets then I should have some pretty nice wod for turning or resawing later into board thicknesses. I figure I'll wait a few months before I try to clean any up. 

I got over 20 billets - most are 5"+ thick, others are 3-4". I have at least three that are 3+ inches thick, 14" wide and 18-20" long. One large crotch and another smaller crotch or two.  While I had the chainsaw out I cut a couple of beech logs I had in the firewood pile to create some billets that I can slice up later. I wanted to have some 2" thick beech for making some tools like carving mallets or the like. A neighbour cut down 3 beech trees back at Christmas so I managed to scam all the wood from them - most as firewood but I also have a two 4' lengths of beech about 10-12" in diameter that eventually try and cut up on my bandsaw.

It looks like I may need to splurge and buy the riser kit for my bandsaw to get a taller cut so I can slice up some of these billets into nicer boards that are good and wide.

Its too bad that I didn't realize that this limb had come down much sooner. There might have been an opportunity to get some really nice lumber out of it. Not sure how I would have gotten it home but I certainly would have tried. I hope the maple survives, it was a majestic tree.