Sign Making 101

This past weekend my 15yr old son promised a lady that he could make a sign for her parents front yard by this Wednesday (tomorrow). Course it would have been nice if he had checked with me first to see if I had anything planned. He decided it would be out of Eastern Red Cedar - at least the sign would be. When I asked where he would get the wood he casually pointed at my lumber stack and said - there are three cedar boards buried in the back that you were going to use to make my daughter Shae a blanket chest some day (the cedar would be used as a lining to a cherry chest). Somehow it seems I lost the argument even before it began.

So we dug out the first board, cut a couple of pieces off the one end then jointed and planed the boards and edge glued them together. Having never made a sign myself we went over several options - go out and buy a letter template set for the router ~$55, thereby eliminating all profit - okay he'd have twisted that around so I bought the templates and he pockets the cash. Go freehand using the router a v-bit and follow a sheet with the words printed on it and glued to the face of the board. And finally using the small router and a 1/8" bit, trace the outside of the letters and then take out the background about a 1/4" to 3/8" using the router working out from the letters and leaving a border. The last would take the most time but make one awesome sign. He decided to go with #2, printout then follow the letters with the router basically centering the bit on the stroke of the letters.

I set up the router and test cut on a piece of scrap till we were happy with the depth for the smaller letters then he practiced a bit then cut the smallest letters with it and the tails on the apostrophes and quotes. Then we dropped the bit a bit more, tested then he cut the next set of words. And finally one more drop and then he cut the last set. He did all the routing I just showed him how and got him going on a scrap piece. 

Then yesterday (Monday night) we trimmed up the board centering the words left and right and top and bottom. Then came the fun - the sign posts. He wanted to use pressure treated 4x4 but fankly I thought that 4x4 was too heavy for the sign itself - out of proportion and second I hate working with pressure treated lumber especially if I have to resaw it to smaller dimensions. I wanted to use Western Red Cedar instead. Off to Lowes - well our local Lowes doesn't stock much in the way of cedar except a few rough boards in the dimensional lumber section (1x2, 1x4, 1x6, etc). So then I thought maybe in landscaping. Well we struck out there as well - except that they had cedar split rail fencing. We found one rail that was very roughly split as a 3x3. We bought it, cut it in half and knocked off the tenons, jointed 2 sides square to each other then planed it down till we got it looking square ~ 2-1/4" square. We left it as long as possible figuring the people can shorten the posts when they install it if needed - hard to add more once its cut off.

I routed some mortises for the sign to sit in and Johannes drilled three holes per side to pin the sign into the mortise. But only through the back of the posts and the sign and into but not through the front of the posts. Then he spent the rest of today sanding and applying Cabott Spar Varnish - interior/exterior to the sign. He did the first coat unassembled so that all parts could get coated. Then we assembled and glued the pins in place. Some glue squeezed out into the mortise but with a coat of varnish inside the mortise and on the sign itself hopefully it won't create a situation where the sign can't expand. I had Johannes elongate the top and bottom holes in the sign itself while leaving the center hole alone. This was intended to allow the sign board to expand and contract seasonally while remaining centered in the mortise.

  

He just put on another coat of varnish. I told him to lightly sand with synthetic steel wool tomorrow morning and put on a 3rd coat. Hopefully then he can deliver late in the afternoon.

My New Toys

I thought I'd do a quick post showing off some of my new toys that I've acquired thus far this year.

We got rid of a few of the older tools: 1960's Craftsman Wood Lathe, 1960's Craftsman 6" Jointer and my Delta 14" Bandsaw with riser and Carter guides.

We added:

Delta DJ-20 8" Jointer with 76" (I think) bed. I picked this baby up at an auction sale for $400. We discovered that the casting assembly that holds the fence in position had been busted in half and very carefully epoxied back together. The auctioneer had stated that the machine was in full working order and when we showed him the casting he immediately offered to replace it. Completely blew me away that he would do that. We replaced the casting and brought the jointer into service a few months ago.

In May we went to Grizzly's Tent Sale in Muncy, PA. We ditched the kids and had the weekend to ourselves. Who ever said I wasn't a romantic - what could be more romantic then celebrating your eighteenth wedding anniversay with the bride of my youth and a tool sale. Anyhow the scratch and dent part wasn't that great though we picked up a 1.5hp electric motor reasonably cheap and an air filtration system to help get the dust out of the air. We got it over 50% off - perhaps a bit small for the size of the garage but we've done other things to reduce the dust in the air.

We also bought a brand new bandsaw, one that should work much better for the resawing that we do and the large blanks that Mattheus cuts for woodturning. We got the Grizzly 19" bandsaw. It can resaw ~ 12" height. The power it has makes the old 14" bandsaw look like a toy. Mattheus found out the hard way that you have to make fewer errors. He tried to cut up a large 10" tall chunk of maple log, and then cut a bowl blank out of one of the pieces. He was using the wrong blade for the job (perhaps partially my fault) and when going got a bit slow, he pushed a little harder. The blade flexed inside the cut but the motor didn't even slow down and kept pulling it through until it got so hot it melted the "tires" on the bandsaw. Only had the saw a few days :-(

Finally I've been working on building a surface sander for the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately I didn't document the build process. Its uses a 30" drum and the 1.5 hp motor we got at Grizzly. Its not completely built yet but what is left is cosmetic and accessories. The core part is built and functionaly. Here are a few pictures:

I still need to a door to the front left side, a drawer in the right open section, end panel and a drawer to catch the sawdust. I also plan to add a longer outfeed table as well that will fold down. I bought the drum and bearings from my father who also gave me the plans.

I have a few other toys that I will share in a future post.

Pine Bedroom Built-in - Part IV

In the beginning there was a pile of rough sawn yellow pine.. and then there was a pile of planed and jointed pine boards and imbetween was a lot of work (and slivers). On Saturday I pulled out the rough sawn pine boards for this project and set them out against the garage wall and gave them a once over and sorted through them and determined roughly where each would be used and to make sure I had enough boards. Then we began to plane them this aft.

After 5 hrs of work and about 7 garbage cans full of wood shavings we have all the boards rough planed and jointed. By rough planing, I mean taking the boards and jointing both edges just to get rid of some of the slivers and hopefully straightening them enough to be able to start ripping pieces from them later. Then planing the boards on both faces in order to reveal the true surface of the board - basically making them smooth on both sides but not bringing them to a final thickness. The boards still vary in thickness between about 7/8" and 1".

Later this week I'll line the boards up against the wall, make final decision on where the boards will be used - the planing revealed a few cracks in what was one of the best boards that had been destined for the dresser top. It may simply require ripping the board on the crack and then gluing back together or it may mean readjusting and using a different board in the top. That's it for this post.

Pine Bedroom Built-in - Part III

I'm struggling a bit tonight with the design of the dresser cabinet - primarily with how to handle seasonal wood movements. The cabinet is about 22" deep with the top and 4 sides and 2 small shelves made from solid southern yellow pine. I don't know the exact seasonal movement amount for southern yellow pine - according to one site (http://woodgears.ca/wood_grain/shrinkage.html) the tangential movement is about 0.84% for pine. This would would equate to about 0.1848" on 22" width or ~3/16". Assuming the sides and shelves expand at the same rate or approximately thereof, the issue that concerns me most is the framing that I need to support the drawers. The plan currently is not to buy drawer slides but rather just make runners and kickers to allow the drawers to run in. The issue comes in that the kickers and runners will have the grain orientated 90 degrees to the sides and wood doesn't expand very much longitudinally, but rather in its width. The top of the dresser will be free floating - held in place with screws. Framing across the width of the unit shouldn't be an issue.

Maybe I'm overcomplicating it, but I hate to see it self destruct. I'm thinking that the smartest route here may be to create a system where I glue and screw the kicker/runner set to the front of the cabinet say first 3 inches, then place a screw at the back with a elongated hole?? Then the sides can expand and contract and the kicker/runner will stay tight at the front but as the sides expand it will move forward and back along the elongated screw hole at the back. Anyone have any thoughts?

On another note I modified the upper shelving unit just a bit tonight moving the bottom 3 shelves closer together to 11" vertical spacing from 12" vertical spacing and then instead of a constant 8" for the final 2 I sort of split the difference a bit and stepped down to 10" and then 7-1/2" (viewed under the face frame - 8 -1/4" if you remove the face frame). I may need to bring that top shelf down just a tad more but it looks more pleasing to the eye now.

Pine Bedroom Built-in - Part II

I've sketched up the remaining parts of this project in 3D to get a visual of how it will look. The doors and drawers are inset 3/8" and overlap on the face frame 3/8". Where possible, the face frame is 1-1/2" in width. The box in front of the window seat is the baseboard heater and must be in that location. The rectangular box in the middle of the dresser section represents the 2 outlets that we needed to work around in the design.

I'm at a loss as what to do with the face frame on the shelves above the dresser. Specifically the left one, it needs an extra half inch for wall factor. The face frame below it on the dresser must be extra wide to accomodate a window sill sticking into the room from the left edge by 2-5/8".

Having talked with my friend and reviewed the images on the blog, I'm going to attempt to rearrange the spacing on the shelves on the upper left - hopefully giving it a better transition from wide spacing to narrow. The abrupt spacing change that currently exists really detracts from the piece (in my opinion).

I also need to add two vertical dividers in the window bench seat. Basically going with a 2 - 1 - 2 so the dividers will be to the left and right of the center door. Then I need to work out the framing for the dresser. I held off framing it properly in the 3D rendering until I could present it and get feedback on whether the 2 shelves in the middle of the dresser were going to stay - since the shelves dicate needing solid dividers as well.

I'm starting to get much more comfortable with Google Sketch-Up. The last time around the bulk of the time was figuring out how to use the program - living room units, this time the bulk of the time spent is in figuring out the framing and how the parts will go together.

Pine Bedroom Built-in - Part I

I'm starting a new project for a friend - building a built-in dresser - book shelf and window seat unit out of southern yellow pine. I've been procrastinating a bit on starting this project but yesterday I started to dig into it more seriously. I went out and remeasured a few things in the room to make sure I had clear in my head the gotchas before I started modelling it.

There are a few pain points - the corner this will be sitting in is not square - at 22" depth it is already a 1/2" out of square > 90 degrees. On the same side, there is a window that will be just in front of the unit - sitting maybe 3" in front of the unit and the sill protrudes 2-5/8" into the room from the wall. I almost missed that little point. I had the unit all drawn up with a 1-1/2" face frame and then I remembered the sill. A quick call confirmed my worst fears. I had to change the left most stile of the face frame would have to increase from 1-1/2" to 3-1/8" (2-5/8" + 3/8" (draw front overlap) + 1/8" clearance).

I finished modeling the bottom - dresser unit. The two missing drawers is a design decision by my friend. There is an electrical outlet and a phone jack behind the center spot. She didn't want to block access to either of these. So instead of drawers there are two fixed shelves.

Here is the initial rendering showing the bottom dresser unit. The white block on top is a set of shelves that extend up to the ceiling. The block size is  a bit too wide at the moment. The block to the right is where the window seat will be. There is another window that will butt up tight to the right side of the dresser unit. So we are working around two windows, the one on the right along the back wall and one on the left wall just in front of the dresser unit.

I will see about modelling the other two units tomorrow. The shelf unit above should be easy, the window seat has the potential to be a bit more problematic. There is a base board heater that will sit directly in front of the window seat part. I can't build directly above it because of heat. But I'm concerned that someone sitting or laying on the window seat will constantly bash their heals against it. I'm thinking that I might try modelling it with the actual seat part at the very top extenting out about 3 inches so that it forces the knee and legs ought from the heater. But I don't know if I can get that to work or look decent.