One day builds...

April 2, 2025

I was just thinking about how pleasurable it is to have a shop, tools, materials, and hardware and be able to have an idea for a solution to a problem and be able to implement it in a day or less.

The shoe rack above was inspired by needing to keep our shoes with laces organized in our foyer which has a door that closes on the inside. This is critical because one of our cats, who we’ll call “the nibbler,” has taken to snipping shoe laces by nibbling them when you least expect it. I can’t emphasize how much fun it is to be about to go somewhere, pull on your shoes, and have the laces come away in your hands. I’m sure it amuses the cat.

I built it in an hour or so out of off-cuts from previous projects and using only hardware I had in the shop already.

Sometimes you just see materials around the shop and an idea will enter your mind and you can have a short side quest following that inspiration. This pocket knife was like that. I was cleaning up the shop and I moved a box that had a bunch of small knives with no scales on them that I inherited when we cleaned out my father’s shop years ago. My father was a mechanic who maintained industrial sewing machines at a leather goods factory in what is now called the Seaport District in Boston. He brought these home from work, I guess they were supposed to be covered in leather.

I had some beautiful veneers made out of wenge wood and curly maple left over from my recent clock project and I realized that they would make cool scales for one of these knives.

A little bit of gluing, cutting, sanding, finishing and I had created a pocket knife that I carry now.

It can also be motivated by finally overcoming inertia and fixing a problem that has been lingering for years. Like the sand paper organizer above. I’ve been stuffing sand paper containers into a jumbled drawer and having them pop open and jam the drawer or spill their contents forcing me to re-sort them by grit when they all mix together. This has always irritated me, but I put off doing “the right thing” for a very long time. Recently, I recovered a bunch of 1/2” plywood from a wine storage case that we no longer use ( turns out we are wine drinkers, not collectors ). I saw this blank space on the back of this bench, and had just experienced the frustration again and in a couple of hours I had fabricated this organizer.

Or someone else has an idea and I can help them execute the idea. My neighbor had the piece of wood with a hole cut in it ( was left over from a kitchen remodel ) and wanted to use it as the lid for a cold frame to start plants outside.

We were talking about it and I volunteered to build the cold frame and also use up some scrap wood and other materials that I had around the shop. Even the primer was from a prior project.

It took less than a day if you don’t count paint drying time….

And finally you might be married to a beautiful and talented woman who does spinning and weaving. In this case there are many “tools of the trade” like the “temple” above which is an expandable bar that can be used to keep the width of a weaving project consistent by gripping the edges in this case with spiky teeth and applying outward tension.

It is fun making functional items and seeing them used to make beautiful things. Also many of these tools have a history that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years.

I love having a shop and being able to do these kinds of projects, they may not be elaborate or difficult, but they deliver a solution and a great deal of satisfaction.

Modern Wing-back Chair

March 31, 2025

When I replaced our bed last year, I ended up salvaging the old bed frame which was solid cherry. I cut up the usable parts and a friend from the woodworker’s guild I belong to helped me use his drum sander to remove the finish. I ended up with a respectable amount of usable material. What to make with it?

I’ve always liked wing-back chairs and I’ve always wanted a chair for our bedroom, so this turned out to be a good chance to make a wing-back chair for the bedroom. I didn’t want to make a fully upholstered wing-back chair like so many traditional ones are. I had an inspiration for a modern one that had minimal upholstery and a modern frame that would be exposed to show off the joinery.

I also wanted something with simplified lines that delivered the feel of a wing-back without the extra curves and embellishments of a traditional one. I drew up some sketches, see below:

I stole some critical dimensions from a set of dining room chairs that we own that are very comfortable. So the seat dimensions, leg lengths, back rake angle etc… I’d never built a chair like this before so I realized that I should probably prototype as many of the features as I could using some cheap material before I committed to the cherry.

The first thing I built a prototype of was the joint I intended to use between the legs and wings and the seat. I wanted a single joint that would lock into a mortise in the seat. The back rib of the chair would flow down into the back leg, the front arm support would flow down to the front leg and the wing would also use the same joint just without a leg below it. I planned to cut the mortises in the seat blank and the leg/wing blanks with a set of router templates.

See the prototype below:

It took two router templates per joint but the concept worked fine and was repeatable. Next I got some relatively straight, unblemished, pine boards from the local big box hardware store ( took some digging.) My plan was to build the whole chair at least to the point where I could explore all of the things I had questions about including an unconventional approach to the upholstery.

You can see the progression below:

Because of the relative angle of the back to the wings it wasn’t possible to put in panels to support the upholstery. So I opted to put in hidden framing that was compound mitered and fitted between the uprights at uniform intervals. I just screwed and glued the framing since every mortise and tenon would have been very difficult and time consuming for something that wasn’t going to be visible in the end result.

I would then cover the framing by stapling on burlap and then I would glue the covered cushions to the burlap using a contact adhesive made for doing upholstery.

See detail of the prototype below:

This approach worked great and I learned a couple of things in the process that would let me improve the final chair. In this cushion I glued the fabric to the front of the cushion as well as the back which caused any wrinkles to be glued in place. I realized that I only needed to glue the fabric that wrapped around the back so that the front could move and flatten as needed.

Having a full scale chair to test I also realized that I had made the joints larger than needed and they were impinging on the seat area. Also in general the seat was a little too small given the thickness of the cushions. So I reduced the size of the joints by 1/2” and I widened the seat by 2” and made it deeper by 1”. I was also able to measure the footprint of the chair in both floor space and air space and then make sure it would fit nicely where I intended to put it. I taped out the area on the floor to make sure.

This is where I made a process error. I remade the templates with the changes based on the prototype. I did not test them on another prototype joint. This was a mistake because in remaking them I had introduced an error which would affect the fit of the joints. I was far enough into making the final chair before I found out that I couldn’t really go back. Fortunately I was able to fabricate shims which when glued in filled the error completely and there was no structural compromise.

I also tested things like cutting tapers on the legs, rounding them over etc… The prototype was a good investment in time. I moved on to building the final chair using cherry.

I didn’t have enough material to make the seat blank out of solid cherry at the thickness that I wanted so I made the center out of 7/8” ash which was salvaged from the slats of the bed frame. I created a rabbit on the center section and a mirrored rabbit on the cherry border pieces so they would be nicely aligned. I used lap joints in the corners of the cherry border because I realized that I was going to be cutting into those joints to mount the legs and mortise and tenon joints would mostly disappear in that process.

See this sequence below:

I also rounded the front corners, cut scallops and tapers in the sides of the seat and rounded over the edges. The difference in the thickness of the center and the frame provides a nice recess for the seat cushion (which is mounted on a piece of 3/8” plywood) to drop into.

Because of the rake of the back support and the leg, I could not cut the back legs out of a single piece of material so I had to make an upper and lower section and glue them together with a lap joint to make the leg blank. Making accurate lap joints is more challenging than it seems and I had to fill them a bit to make up for some error. I used the band saw to cut them out of glued up material so that they would be 1 1/2” square. Because some of the salvaged wood was a little bigger than 3/4” thickness I had to cut those pieces to final thickness on the table saw. Fortunately this worked out OK with the blade set to full height.

After dry fitting everything, shimming all the joints, figuring out the stretchers and their mortises and tenons, trimming the legs to length, tapering the lower legs on the back and the inside, rounding over all the edges, and sanding everything to 320 grit… I was ready for assembly.

See sequence below:

I also fitted the arms and mortised them into the wing support and pinned them to the arm support with a 1/2” maple dowel.

Another process error I had was that I had to fill a bunch of the joints and I wasn’t neat enough in applying the filler. This made for a lot of remedial sanding in the end, I will be much more careful and use some masking and smaller spatulas for filling next time.

I used a combination of 60 grit sandpaper, micro-plane rasp, and Japanese saw-rasp to smooth and shape all of the joints so that they flowed with the legs, supports, and the seat. There was a lot of shaping to get nice transitions all around. I finished all the shaping with sanding up to 320 grit.

Now I had to put finish on the whole piece, two coats of General Finishes Hard Wax Oil which brought out the color and figure of the cherry very nicely.

After the finish was dry, I made paper templates of all of the sections that would be upholstered. I used the templates to cut the burlap to cover the inside and outside of the support framework. I stapled the burlap in place. The back would be covered with just fabric glued to batting, stapled on the inside and glued to the burlap.

The inside cushions are a layering of 1 1/2” Lux Foam and batting, the fabric is wrapped around the cushion and only glued on the back. The seat cushion is the same cushion glued to the 3/8” plywood blank and then the fabric is fitted and stapled on the back to the plywood. It just drops into the recess in the seat.

The other cushions are glued to the burlap and the support frame.

Here is that sequence:

And that is the final product. I learned a lot doing this project and I’ll improve many of my processes for the next one based on this. My upholstery is getting better. I’m very happy with the first chair that I designed myself. It delivers on all of my goals. It is also very comfortable to sit in…

Retired five years, an update...

March 16, 2025

Yesterday was the five year anniversary of when I gave my final notice and retired. I’ve enjoyed myself for these five years, a lot of sad and disappointing things are going on in the world but none of them would be any easier to deal with if I also had to deal with a full time job. I’m grateful for each day I get to determine my own agenda, work on my own projects, or just watch videos and take a nap.

My relevance to my old career and the people from it continues to diminish, I have less and less contact with folks that I used to work with. I don’t really follow “the industry” anymore. I spend most of my time doing woodworking projects. I’ve improved the shop and done a lot of interesting projects (you can read about them here).

I joined the Eastern Massachusetts Guild of Woodworkers which is a great group of people who all have similar interests to mine. Ironically many of us are retired folks from various technology industries. I enjoy spending time with them every month and having a group of more learned woodworkers to get advice and ideas from.

We’ve been traveling ( you can read about trips here ) and have future plans for travel. I haven’t done any business travel and I’m so happy to not have to anymore. I was thinking about this in the beginning of the year because that used to be the season of “management off-sites.” These were always hard for me being an introvert and being forced to socialize 24/7 for several days at some god-forsaken golf resort in California. They were tiring and ultimately pointless, at least for me.

So, in summary, still not bored, enjoying myself, planning to continue.

Another update in another few years…

The Clock

January 29, 2025

Since I retired nearly five years ago and started doing wood working projects I have been thinking of making a clock. Partly because I think clocks are cool and partly because one of my ancestors was a clock maker. Stephen Hasham ( 1764 - 1861) of Charlestown, NH is my 2nd great-grandfather and he was also a prolific clock maker, he made the movements and the cases. He made church clocks, and clocks for houses, several of his clocks are still in Charlestown, NH and I’ve been there to visit them. My work can’t hold a candle to his, but I am inspired by him and his exceptional craftsmanship.

When I started this project I was thinking about the style that I wanted to do and I was drawn to something that was Art Deco inspired, not a replica but influenced by strong geometric designs. I came up with an initial design and planned to make the case of the clock’s decoration using marquetry so I upgraded my band saw to one that could resaw hardwood stock so I could make the 1/8” stock for the marquetry. I also got a scroll saw so that I could cut out the decoration and the inserts in different woods.

This is the initial design:

The main body color was going to be Curly maple with the darker wood being Sapele and Wenge. The face would be 1/8” aluminum with the dial engraved and faux-engine-turned.

I cut all of the marquetry stock and transferred the design using carbon paper to the front blank and used the scroll saw to cut out the pattern and the matching infill sections.

It was about this point that I started having reservations about this design. It just wasn’t reading the way I wanted, the light wood and thin design elements weren’t doing it for me. I went forward on this front piece through gluing up the marquetry, sanding it and trying a couple of finishes that should have enhanced the curly maple figure. I learned a lot about process, order of operations, and those finishes but I didn’t like the result. I also realized that the scale of the clock was not right either so I scrapped that design and came up with a new version.

Here’s the new version:

I went with a bolder simpler geometric pattern ( click on the images above to expand). The dominant color is the dark Sapele with Curly Maple as the contrast. I also added a dark ring around the clock face made from wenge and instead of trying to inset the face into the marquetry I decided to apply it on top of it. The good thing about this design was that I was able to cut all the veneers on the band saw with a lot of precision and control which made the joints clean and consistent.

I rebuilt the case with new proportions and the new veneers leaving the sides oversize until I had applied the marquetry and then I cut them to size and mitered them.

The top of the clock is cut from a glue up of two pieces of 3/4” Sapele which I cut to a 1/4” overhang of the case body and then I did a double bevel of the top at 22 degrees and 45 degrees. The plinth is made from 3/4” Sapele and has a 45 degree bevel on the top. I also shaped the bottom of the top and the top of the bottom to have a 1/4” rabbet sized so that the resulting rectangle would fit inside the box. This worked to help keep the box square and to allow me to fix the top and the bottom to the body of case.

I had to do two scary operations next. First, I had to use a 4” hole saw to cut out the front of the case to accommodate the clock mechanism. I didn’t want this clock to have a battery powered quartz movement, I wanted a wind up mechanical movement. I got a German made one from a web site called Clockworks. It mounts inside the case behind the face on adjustable brackets that are screwed to the case.

This brings me to the second scary operation which was to cut out a door on the back of the case. I needed the door to be big enough so that I could install the clock mechanism after the case was glued up. I hid the entry hole for the scroll saw blade behind one of the hinges. I used the scroll saw to very carefully and slowly cut out the door.

Fortunately both operations came out great and the hole saw didn’t just tear the marquetry off the plywood backing…

I also realized that mechanical clocks like to be level and there was a good chance that the wooden base would change shape or the place that I was going to display the clock would be out of level. While I was looking around for tiny adjustable feet ( I didn’t find any ) I found these semi-spherical feet for handbags made from brass. The screws had a 3/8” flat head. I realized that if I glued these screws into the bottom of the case I could partially screw the feet on to get about 1/4” of adjustment in each corner. This worked out great using some CA glue to fix the screws into 1/16” recesses cut with a Forstner bit.

To make the face of the clock I bought an .SVG file on Etsy of an “Art Deco” clock face that I liked. I deleted a couple of elements from it and sized it for the 6” diameter dial that I wanted and printed it full size. I used carbon paper to transfer the design to the aluminum. I used my dremel tool with a small ball nose bit to engrave all of the numbers and markings into the aluminum. I did some sanding to remove burrs and then I painted all the engraved areas with black acrylic paint. I then sanded the face up to 7000 grit and polished it with a polishing wheel on the drill press and some polishing rouge. I then sprayed it with clear acrylic applying a couple of coats. I ended up improvising the design in the center because my attempt at doing a faux-engine-turning decoration wasn’t satisfactory. I like the hand made nature of the dial, it certainly reflects my current skill level.

Finally I glued up the case using many many clamps. I then did some touch up sanding and then I applied two coats ( over two days ) of General Finishes Hard Wax Oil.

Once the finish was done I roughed up the back of the clock face and used CA glue to attach it to the clock case. After that was solid I installed the clock mechanism into the clock.

I then had to spend a little time getting the chiming to be correct relative to where the hands are but it is working great now keeping good time.

I’m very very happy with the final result.

Reykjavik Iceland and Helsinki Finland Trip ( December 2024 )

January 28, 2025

In the past we’ve done trips to someplace warm in December like Barbados for example. Which is always lovely, you should go. This year perhaps caused by global warming and a prior year with very little winter we decided to visit winter by going to a couple of Nordic countries and also countries we have always had on our list.

I worked for Nokia ( a company founded in Finland ) for a few years but never got to visit the mother-ship in Espoo, Finland (just outside Helsinki). I’ve worked with a lot of folks from Finland and really enjoyed the experience and I have to say that Nokia was one of the kindest and most thoughtful companies I ever worked for. I think a lot of that comes from the culture of Finland.

Iceland Air has a great deal where you can book a flight via Reykjavik to someplace else like Helsinki, Finland and take a long layover ( up to seven days I think ) in Iceland for no extra charge and then continue on your journey after enjoying Iceland. They also have very good service and very reasonable airfares. So, we booked a three day layover in Reykjavik and then three more days in Helsinki.

We visited modern art museums, the museum of Icelandic Punk Music ( in a former public restroom), the national museum, tried to see the northern lights ( at an abandoned NATO base ), and toured a huge lava tube. Along the way we had a lot of great food and really excellent cocktails ( there are a couple of local Gin producers who are using local botanical elements to make truly excellent gin ). We got a Reykjavik City Pass which got us into most of the museums and free passage on the trains and busses which were excellent.

Since it was the holiday season there were lights everywhere and we got to learn about the Yule Cat which is an enormous supernatural cat that finds people who haven’t gotten new clothes or haven’t finished their weaving and punishes them. I love the whole concept.

It was cold and dark most of the day, the sunrise was at 10:00 AM, sunset was at 3:00 PM… it wasn’t much of a sun either, it just skimmed the tops of the mountains on the horizon before disappearing again. When it was clear the mountains were beautiful and we saw a volcano erupting just outside Reykjavik. There was frequent light snow, they don’t even report it on the weather report because it would be like reporting that there will be air today.

We flew to Helsinki and arrived around mid-day so we had time to get situated in our hotel and to go to the Christmas Market at Senate Square. It was a very traditional European Christmas Market with stalls selling all kinds of holiday items as well as mulled wine, meat pies, etc… It was a Saturday so it was pretty crowded as we made our way around.

The next day we went to see an exhibit about Gothic influences on modern art, it was fantastic. Then we visited the Design Museum which had an excellent exhibit about mending, preservation and reuse as art. As in Iceland the food was excellent and the cocktails were also locally inspired and very good.

On our final day we took a ferry to the Fortress of Suomenlinna which was built to guard the entrance to the harbor. It was an interesting site that was a multi part museum as well as a community where a lot of folks lived year round. Other parts of the fortress had been converted into civic auditoriums and other civic buildings. It was a nice ferry ride and it was fun to walk around the fortress and learn more about Finland’s history.

All in all it was a great winter getaway, our own winter arrived a few weeks later but it was nice to experience it in countries that really know how to celebrate it.

San Francisco trip to Bay Area Maker Faire ( October 2024 )

January 28, 2025

My birthday present to myself in 2024 was a trip out to San Francisco to visit the Bay Area Maker Faire because I’m a huge fan of makers of all kinds and I’d heard of this faire from multiple sources for years. I also wanted to visit the Computer History Museum because even though I practically commuted to Mountain View, CA while I was working I never got time to see it there. When I was very young I went to the Boston, MA incarnation before it moved to the west coast.

I stopped in at the Computer History Museum first, it was a lot of fun seeing so many of the computers that were important in my career, Apple II, TRS-80 Model I, IBM PC, Compaq DeskPro, Cray supercomputers, ( they didn’t seem to have any of the Honeywell DPS-8 family of GCOS machines ), and even an Amiga. It was a lot more extensive than what I remembered from my childhood.

I have to say that Software history wasn’t very well done and was very biased towards gaming and towards Silicon Valley companies ( essentially whoever was paying for it ).

Bay Area Maker Faire is held at an amazing venue across the bay from San Francisco at Mare Island which is a former naval base. There are huge buildings along the water and big cranes and railway tracks. Most of the maker exhibits were in former coal bunkers where they used to store coal for the battleships. Every form of making was represented there, from costumes to programming, from wood working to metal sculpture. It was great to walk around and just see the imagination and self expression and inventiveness of each of the exhibitors. They even had a dark area for stuff that would light up, so cool.

I was there early on both days that I went and that was a good plan because everything got a lot more crowded than I was comfortable with by just after lunch. One issue I had as an older/heavier human was that there wasn’t much seating in the shade, as in none… I ended up finding a shadow of a building and a raised bulkhead door to sit on. I know it is a west coast right to always be warm and in the sun, but honestly I just burn up and get too hot in that situation.

I also got to have my birthday dinner with a couple of lovely friends that I hadn’t seen in a number of years. It was great to catch up with them and have a wonderful meal at my favorite steak house in the country Harris’ Restaurant. I’ve been going to Harris’ for decades and I just love the vintage interior, classic food, classic drinks, great wine list, amazing steaks ( from their own herd, aged by them ). They’re looking a little threadbare at the moment but still excellent. I think the pandemic may have done them some damage.

That’s the trip report finally, I really enjoyed it!

Some small projects...

September 15, 2024

After finishing the bed project I took some time off and caught up on my comic book reading and other non-workshop activities. My beautiful and talented wife in that same time-frame went to weaving school and came back with a lot of new knowledge. One of the tools that she discovered at the school was a warp tensioning device like you see in the image above. When it is in use during the initial setting of the warp on the loom, the warp is passed over and under the rods before it passes over the beam, this helps even out the tension and make it consistent as the warp is wound up. She described it to me and showed me some pictures of them and I figured I could make one pretty easily.

I had some maple that was 1 1/16” x 9 1/2” x 24” which had some bark inclusion and milling chatter marks on one side that was perfect for making the parts for the clamping mechanism. I made a pretty detailed drawing because the clamping mechanism needed to fit the back beam of the loom fairly precisely and I wanted the center of the rods to be in line with the top of the beam.

I had to order 3/4” poplar dowels which took a few days to come, but they were nice and smooth and straight which was excellent.

The front part of clamp opens with a hinge in the front to grasp the four rods and then there is screw knob that screws down into a threaded insert in the body to clamp down on the rods. The kerf from cutting the front so it would hinge provides the difference that allows it to clamp firmly on the rods. I installed the hinge on the end with a chunk of rod clamped in the furthest hole so that the hinge would be installed to close fully without putting stress on it.

I created a bar clamp from two 1 1/16” x 1 1/16” x 5 1/2” pieces of maple with clearance through holes drilled at the ends. I couldn’t find long enough bolts at the hardware store so I got some 1/4 20 stainless all-thread rod and cut my own bolts. I used 1/4 20 wing nuts and some 1/4 20 bolts to secure them and make them hand-tightenable. I screwed the clamps to the outside of the bar holders at the matching angle to the 45 degree shoulder I cut on the bar end of each of them. The angle matches the angle of the back beam on the loom and registers everything firmly and at the right height.

I sanded everything to 320 grit and then I waxed it all with a coat of paste wax.

My beautiful and talented wife was planning to send a gift to one of her friends. It inspired me to offer to make a presentation box for the gift and so I volunteered. I had happened to have purchased some curly maple from WoodCraft when it was on sale for 70% off. I decided to make the front and the back of the box out of that material and the sides out of some Sapele left over from the bed project.

I wanted to make the panels book matched and 1/4” thick. The stock that I bought was 3/4” thick so I had to make a resawing jig for my 10” RIKON band saw. I don’t think most people would try to resaw anything with such a small and underpowered band saw but I figured I’d give it a try. I have a 1/2” 3 tooth per inch blade on my band saw and it is surprisingly rigid and cuts pretty well. I did manage to stall the band saw several times but by patiently finding the slow feed rate required I was able to cut two book matched panels 4 1/2” wide.

I edge glued them together and the resulting panel required some flattening with the sander but in the end it came out very nice. The figure on the front panel has a great “face” image of something like a snake or an alien. I got both the front and the back of the box out of one glue up. I flattened and sanded to 320 grit both sides since I wanted to finish both the outside and the inside of the box.

I have to say I thought the milling on the original blanks was pretty rough when I got them but I later realized with the curly grain going every direction it probably doesn’t plane very well.

I cut the grooves for the front and back of the box and then cut miters for the sides. I also cut a small bevel on the inside and outside of both sides of the box. I put hard wax oil finish on the panels and then installed them in box and glued it up with tape to hold and align the miters. I made sure the box was square and flat by doing the assembly on my cast-iron table saw table.

Once the glue was set I cut the box open on the table saw, sanded the new edges and then put hard wax oil finish on the outside and inside of the box.

I mounted the hardware and after a couple of days I put some paste wax on the box to add some additional sheen.

The final project was a new version of a weaving tool that I’d made before. My beautiful and talented wife has been using the tapestry/rug loom that I made for her to weave rag rugs. These are rugs that are made with strips or tubes of scrap fabric from old clothes, sheets, drapes, etc…

In order to keep the warp the same width while you’re weaving using such a heavy material for the weft, one uses a device called a temple. The temple is a stretcher placed across the warp that pulls on the edges setting the warp to a specified width. Previously I had built a temple that used spring clips to grab the warp, see below:

The device has adjustable length by sliding the center bar out and the pins secure it at a specific setting. This one worked ok but the clips were hard to secure onto bulky fabric while holding everything in place. So I agreed to make a different style that uses pointed metal teeth on the underside to grab the fabric and stretch it to the right distance.

I made it out of the same western red cedar that I made the one above and instead of using metal pins I used some 3/8” oak dowel rod to make the pins for this one, the knob head for the pins is just 1” maple rod segment drilled for 3/8” fit and then glued on and rounded.

I made the teeth out of some heavy gauge stainless steel finish nails I sharpened by spinning in the drill against the sanding disk. I cut the teeth to length using my reciprocating saw and a metal cutting blade. I glued them in using CA glue.

I sanded everything to 320 grit and then put a coat of paste wax on everything.

That’s it for now, I’m working on designing a new project and I’ll share my progress soon.

Re-purposing Skills

August 13, 2024

I’m retired but I still do a lot of projects. Most of them are solitary projects with perhaps one collaborator. They are by and large not software projects, they are wood working, music, art, writing and publishing projects. I don’t work for the client of these projects and in many cases I am one of the clients of them. My role is diverse: designer, manager/planner, engineer, fabricator, and delivery guy. Schedules and priorities are mostly mine or very much in my control. I have a great deal of latitude to decide what is “good enough” and what is “done.”

I find that my life before I retired provided me with a lot of the skills that make this new life satisfying. I have a lot of experience looking at a large task and breaking it down and prioritizing it into a series of smaller tasks that are reasonable in scope. I readily recognize what is going to be difficult and that allows me to focus on those tasks and spend time figuring them out. The main psychological benefit of this is that I’m not afraid of big projects because to me they’re just a string of little projects.

Over the years I’ve gained the knowledge about myself of what I’m good at and what I’m not good at. This has allowed me to plan things that challenge me but also play to my strengths. For example, I am not good at very fine details that need to be perfectly executed, and though I admire the skill of people who can do this my personal taste leans more towards restrained details. I generally plan my designs with this in mind.

In my career I learned to believe in myself to be able to learn on job what I need to know in order to succeed at a task. In fact it is really the learning style that is most effective for me, classes and school were never very engaging for me. This also reduces my fear at perhaps getting into a project and then not being able to finish it.

I also learned to “grind,” which is where you have to do something day in and day out for a long time in order to finish a project. In the old life it was testing, bug reporting, triage, bug fixing, building, repeat… in the new life it is building a sub component, test fitting everything, taking it apart, adjusting or building the next thing, repeat… until you’re done.

Probably the most powerful thing is patience. Once you accept that something is going to be challenging and is going to take a long time you can settle in to a process and drive it to completion. I wasn’t patient at the beginning of my career but by the end of my work career people would often comment on how patient I was. I am happy to say that I’m patient with myself as much as I was ever patient with my co-workers.

Finally, having a personal process and incrementally improving that process was something I learned in my career. It allows me to plan projects that are going to teach me something new and keep the rest of the process constant while I do that. If something doesn’t work, I just don’t do that again. I look back over the last four years or so of projects and I can identify the process and infrastructure improvements that have been added to my process and it is very satisfying.

In any case these were just some thoughts that were going through my mind for a while recently so I figured I’d share them.

Screech Owl House

August 12, 2024

A while ago we saw a family of about five screech owls on the telephone pole and lines near our house. I looked online and found that in our area they need houses because people are removing a lot of trees with rotten hollow trunks on them which is where they would normally nest. I found some plans online and built a quick house for them out of Western Red Cedar.

It is 10” x 10” x 20” all of the joints are glued and nailed with finish nails. There are drain holes in the bottom to make sure it doesn’t collect water.

Building it was less than a day and very simple. Then I needed to get it more than twenty feet up a tree in the yard. I was not going to be able to do that myself. I contacted our arborist John Collins at North Shore Arborists ( https://northshorearborists.com/ ) and asked him if he could install the house for me and he said he’d be happy to.

John came with his climbing gear and expertly scaled the tree, pulled the tools and box up with a rope and quickly attached it to the tree in the perfect spot. If you'‘re on the North Shore and you need tree work done, John and his team are the best.

Now the box is available for residents, hopefully a family of owls will move in.

Bed Frame: Headboard and Nightstand completion

August 5, 2024

As I mentioned at the end of my last post even with the bed frame complete I had a headboard to build and upholster and a nightstand to build for my wife. Below is my design for the headboard:

The frame is made from 5 1/2” x 1 1/16” Sapele joined with mortise and tenon joints. I then added a 1/2” bevel detail on both the outside and the inside of the frame. Overall it is 77 3/4” x 35”. Inside the frame is a piece of 1/2” natural birch plywood with a 1/8” gap around the perimeter. The panel is attached to the frame with eight flat brackets on the back side. The back of the panel’s edges have been rounded with a 1/4” round over router bit to allow the upholstery to easily wrap without snagging or ripping. Five holes are drilled along the center line of the panel to allow buttons to be attached, pulled tight, and secured through the upholstery.

I finished the frame with the same Hard Wax Oil as the rest of the furniture.

I ordered high quality 1” foam from https://www.foambymail.com/ ( I’ve dealt with them a couple of times now and they do great work ) along with some 1” synthetic batting. I cut the foam and the batting to fit the panel and using a contact adhesive I glued first the foam and then the batting on top. Then we wrapped the panel in some beautiful fabric which we repurposed from some drapes that we don’t use anymore, stapling it on the back of the panel. Then we made buttons covered in the same fabric and after acquiring a 10” upholstery needle we passed thread through the holes in the panel, through the button and back to the back and then secured the tensioned threads with staples on the back.

I adapted the two reading lights we already had on the wall to be instead mounted on the headboard with their cords running through a hole in the frame and hidden behind the frame. The headboard is mounted on the wall using a metal french-cleat like system called Z-clip by Monarch Metals. Two 66 1/2” long metal brackets are mounted to the wall 29” apart and on the back of the frame 18 clips 9 on the top rail and 9 on the bottom rail interlock with the wall brackets to give an almost flush and very secure but removable mounting for the headboard.

While I was waiting for foam to arrive I also built a nightstand out of scrap material from the bed frame project. The other nightstand no longer fit next to the door so we needed one. Also, it needed to be step shaped to provide easy access to the bed for our geriatric cats. The design is below:

I had some 11 1/4” x 3/4” Sapele so I glued an additional 1 1/2” edge to fill out the final depth of 12 3/4”. I made a raised panel for the door to the storage at the top to echo the panels on the bed frame. The sides are connected to the top with a tongue and groove joint. There is a small shelf inside the storage area and birch plywood back. I mitered a 3/4” x 1/8” border around the two top surfaces to frame some felt to add padding for phones and cats, and an attractive blue color as well. I’m not happy with the cheap hinges that I have on there right now I may go back and redo them since they don’t close very straight or flush. I added a magnetic catch to secure the door. I had a bag of ( I think cherry or walnut) shaker nobs and I realized that they would make nice feet for the nightstand so I used four of them for that purpose and I cut down a fifth one to use as a center handle for the door.

I applied the same Hard Wax Oil finish as the rest of the furniture and then glued on the felt with contact adhesive.

We’re really happy with how everything came out and I’m looking forward to a short vacation from shop work!

Bed Frame: Completion

July 25, 2024

This bed replacement was a big project and technically this is just the first phase completed. At the end of last post I had just completed one quarter of this king size bed frame with storage. I went on to finish all the steps on the matching corner of the frame and to make sure they fit up with each other.

I also built the footboard with it’s nineteen spindles, thirty-eight mortise and tenon joints and very fiddly assembly including making sure it would fit the already cut dry mortises in the uprights. This was an entertaining glue-up which I made sure to let dry completely while held in the position it would live on the bed later on.

The cap that tops the footboard was screwed on also in place to make sure it would clear the tops of the uprights, some tweaking was required including cutting it to precise length with matching overhangs.

Then it was on to sand and finish the last two panels, glue them up and put them onto their respective sub frames.

Finally I masked off the hardware and drawer fronts on the drawer bodies and sprayed them with a clear enamel to just give them some surface protection.

After some drying and curing time, it was time to move everything to the bedroom on the second floor of our house. My beautiful, talented, strong and patient wife helped me to move each of the sub frames, drawers, slats, and footboard out the garage door, up the front steps, up the inside stairs, and into the bed room.

After regaining my composure I aligned and bolted up the frame components.

We installed the slats, screwing in the first slat and the last slat after adjusting the spacing.

Then we installed the drawers and put the mattress on to the frame and we were done ( see picture at the start of the post ). You may notice some blue tape on the wall, these tapes mark the stud locations in the wall. The next project will be an upholstered headboard which will be attached to the wall with a Z-clip system. So before putting the bed where it’s going I had to determine the stud locations by finding the stud that one of the electrical outlets was attached to and spacing across.

The cat approves of the new bed and I can say after sleeping on it that it achieves all of the goals that we had. It is very stable and silent even with a large creature like myself moving around on it. It fits the king mattress perfectly with a little allowance for the mattress to change shape as it is used. It provides easy to access storage under the bed.

Of course this project has spawned some follow on projects, the headboard is the first one, and also there will be a matching bed-side cabinet/table to replace the one that now no longer fits on my wife’s side of the bed. Stay tuned for those projects!

Bed Frame: Progress

July 16, 2024

Just over a month ago I started on building a version of the design I described in my last post. The design has changed in small ways, mostly simplifications and optimizations and in some cases addition of critical details. As usual it involved a trip to Boulter Plywood Corp. in Medford, MA where I bought all the material for the inside frame of the bed, all Poplar and a little bit of plywood and for the outside panels which is all Sapele. It was my largest lumber order to date and I selected each board and they kindly delivered it since it wouldn’t fit in the Audi. I have to say the quality of the S4S lumber from Boulter is wonderful, very straight, very cleanly milled, very few defects.

In addition to ordering fasteners, drawer slides, handles, leveling feet, webbing, bolts, a drilling guide block, hard wax oil finish, more clamps. I acquired a new machine, a Grizzly Industrial bench top mortising machine. This has improved the quality of my mortise and tenon joints by leaps and bounds, not to mention the speed.

I also built a panel raising jig for my table saw, it consists of a tall add on fence to support the panels and a raised feather board to help keep the panels flush to the fence when cutting the the bevels on the panels. I iterated a little bit on this but all in all it did a great job cutting all the panels.

As usual I started building from the inside out, the bed frame that supports the mattress is built in four sub-modules. I chose to frame it out of 1 3/4” x 3 1/2” poplar, each sub module has one doubled post and then three other posts that are going to bolt to their neighboring module to form a doubled post at every intersection. There are eight mortise and tenon joints per module, each module is essentially identical except that the foot modules have their top rails on one side cut down to 3” to give more room for the drawers that will be installed in the foot of the bed.

I installed leveling feet in all the corners of the sub modules. I carefully drilled bolt holes between all of the modules after clamping them together square to each other. I used 3/8” x 4” bolts with washers and lock washers to bolt them together. Then I cut the slats ( 3/4” x 3 1/2” Poplar) to length and spaced them two inches apart and then connected them with upholstery webbing. The frame is very solid.

Next I worked on fabricating the panels that are going to wrap the frame. For each panel created the perimeter frame out of 3/4” x 3 1/2” Sapele joining them with mortise and tenon joints. Each frame part gets a 1/4” x 1/4” groove on it’s inside edge to accept the floating panel. After dry fitting each frame I measured for the floating panel and cut it from 3/4” x 9 1/4” Sapele boards allowing 3/8” extra to fit into the groove. I used the panel raising jig to cut a 2” wide bevel on the front of each panel and then I put a 1/4” x 1/4” rabbet on the back side so there is a 1/4” edge tongue around the edge of the panel that centers it in the frame.

Adjacent panels have a dry tongue and groove joint that connects the sub modules. I dry fitted adjacent panels to make sure the fit between modules was correct. The foot board was complicated, I joined the uprights of the foot board to the intersecting panels with grooves and splines. The nineteen spindles between the two rails required a LOT of tweaking to get right. Because the modules have to come apart, the rails will be inserted into dry mortise and tenon joints in the uprights and held in place by pressure from the sub module bases.

Next I built the two huge drawer bodies 8” x 40” x 31 3/4” out of Poplar for the sides and 1/4” plywood for the bottom.

I fitted them in their corresponding sub frames and added internal structure to support the heavy duty drawer slides.

And finally I started installing the panels onto the modules with the foot right module. I sanded all the frame parts 80 ( for the ones that I milled ), 120, 220, and 320 grit. I applied General Finishes Hard Wax Oil to the raised panel first so that if it shifted around in the frame there wouldn’t be any unfinished edges showing. I then glued up each panel and applied finish to the frame after the glue had cured.

I then assembled the panels onto the sub frame and attached them with cabinet screws from the back side. I carefully spaced the drawer front inside it’s frame and attached the drawer hardware and screwed the drawer face on from inside the drawer.

Here is the first completed sub-module, I’m really happy with the progress so far, there are a few tweaks and probably a second coat of finish but mostly it’s just repeat this process four more times…

Bed Frame: Designing a new project

May 6, 2024

I don’t usually discuss projects when they’re in the concept or design stage of the process. All of my projects go through those stages to some degree unless it’s a repair or something very ad-hoc. I guess I don’t write about the design because I still might not actually go forward to construction. I figured I would change things up this time and see what happens.

My beautiful and talented wife and I have been discussing the shortcomings of our current bed and bed frame. The bed on my side is a bit too soft for me, which is just right for my wife. The frame creaks a lot. The mattress plus box spring plus frame height is a little high for us. It would be nice to have a little more space, it is currently a Queen size. We have a bunch of low plastic boxes that store winter/summer clothing under the bed, drawers would be better.

I measured the space available in our bedroom and a King size bed 80” x 77” would fit without significantly impacting movement around the room. I also learned about Twin XL mattresses which are 80” x 38” and two of them put together are referred to as a “split king.” This would allow us to have two different firmness mattresses on one king frame. I decided to make a platform bed frame so we could get rid of the box spring and have a solid structure supporting the mattresses.

Another practical requirement is that I need to build this bed frame in my shop in the basement and get it to the bedroom on the second floor with only my wife’s assistance. I decided to make the frame modular and construct four frames for each quarter of the bed and they would be bolted together on the inside upon final installation. I also intend to put leveling feet on each sub-frame so I can get the whole surface level.

I decided to hide the frame that actually supports the mattresses behind decorative panels. After some discussion we decided on raised panels which are in keeping with our colonial style house. ( see the first image in this post ) Since you won’t see the frame I decided to make it out of Poplar to control costs and manage the overall weight of the bed. Slats will sit on top of the frame hidden on the sides by the decorative panels.

Each frame module will be a mirrored version of the one in the image above ( several views). The panel face frame will probably be glued to the face or faces of the module as needed. The headboard will be a separate construction which will frame a decorative padded fabric element and will be attached to the wall not the bed frame. The foot-board will be attached with screws ( perhaps concealed by decorative covers or plugs) to the end modules at assembly time. The end modules will contain two large drawers taking up nearly their entire internal space that pull out on heavy duty long drawer slides.

The drawer faces will echo the panels on the sides of the bed.

The rest of the furniture in the room is made from cherry and is in the Mission style. We didn’t want more cherry and after looking at a number of possible other woods we chose Sapele for it’s color and nice grain patterns. As for finish I’m testing a few different ones on a 4’ piece of Sapele that I sanded to 320. The current contenders are Natural Danish Oil, Wipe on Polyurethane, and Hard Wax Oil.

Natural Danish Oil, Wipe on Poly over Danish Oil, Wipe on Poly by itself, One coat of Hard Wax Oil, Two coats of Hard Wax Oil

This design has been through a few iterations. Each iteration I look to see if I can simplify something or understand any important details like exactly how the panels will fit together or respond to feedback from my wife. I try not to be too attached to any given element of the design and step back and try to evaluate it as a whole. The good part about iterating on drawings is you can just make a new drawing and it is cheap and relatively easy.

The next step for me is coming up with a cut list based on the “final” design and figuring out the materials cost estimate. That process might generate some design changes as well.

Scrap Wood Art

April 21, 2024

I took a couple of weeks off after my last project to catch up on my comic book reading. I can report that I got through my entire TBR pile, quite satisfying. I also started working on designs for a couple of future projects, went for some walks, did some cooking and took some naps. At the end of my “vacation” I needed something small to do in the shop that would be fun and not require new materials or a lot of time commitment.

I pulled out my Build Dice from Simone Yetch’s online store, the idea is you roll the three dice and they suggest a thing to build. So, I rolled the following:

This was pretty good for a first roll, usually I have to roll a few times to get something that is interesting to me. I have been wanting to do something with 1/8” veneers, triangles, and scrap wood so this was the perfect excuse.

I had a nice glue-up that I didn’t use from another project that was 2” thick and was a sandwich of 1/4” walnut on both sides and 1 1/2” maple in the middle. That set the size of the slices I was going to use to 2” and therefore the size of the triangles.

I had some walnut off cuts and also western red cedar off cuts which I cut to 2” and I cut 1/8” thick slices out of all of them. They weren’t super even but I was figuring I’d have to flatten everything later.

I built a small cross cut sled for my table saw and put a stop on it at the right angle to cut my triangles.

I cut a whole bunch of triangles from the 1/8” x 2” strips, it went very quickly using the sled. I deliberately didn’t make a plan for how many of each or a particular pattern I wanted to do. I just got a 12” x 15” piece of 1/2” plywood that was pretty flat and marked a center line on it and started putting triangles on it until I saw the pattern that I wanted.

It was a pure accident that I was able to make a border around the central pattern using the glue up triangles. I didn’t worry about perfect placement or alignment of the pieces, and I glued them down to the plywood. After the glue had cured I went back and filled all of the cracks with fine wood filler so that the surface would be consistent when I leveled it.

When the filler had hardened I got out my trusty Makita Belt Sander with a 60 grit belt and leveled the whole surface. I followed that up by sanding 80, 120, 220, and finally 320 grit to get a nice smooth surface.

In the spirit of using up things that were “trash” I had a can of Cherry Danish Oil which after testing I found to be way too red for the project I bought it for and in general probably too red for me. I thought red would be a cool color for this mixture of woods to bring out different tones and features and add a bit of surprise to the look. So I applied the danish oil and I also wet sanded the first coat to see if I could get some grain filling with different colors from all the wood.

I really liked the results, the “dirty” look to the maple is a really cool effect. Finally I had some 1”x1” maple offcut that I made a frame from to set off the panel. I just sanded the frame nicely and put paste wax on it. It was a two day project, but I like how it came up and now I have some art for the shop wall.

Building Project: Pull out shelves for shop storage

April 5, 2024

When you have a shop in a relatively small basement storage space is at a premium. I’m constantly looking for ways to add more storage or in this case make the storage I have more usable. The top shelf in the storage behind the basement stairs has been an evolution from open shelves to a set of flat deep drawers and now to make the top shelf more effective pull out shelf organizers. The problem was that if anything went to the back of this 24 inch deep shelf it would be very hard to access. I saw a great deal on Amazon for Blum TANDEM under-mount slides and I’d been watching someone on YouTube making pull out shelves for a kitchen pantry and this gave me the idea to make a bunch of pull out shelves for the shop.

Three of the units are six inches wide and two are nine inches wide. The front three are 18 inches tall and the back two are 15 inches and 14 inches tall respectively. They are all 21 inches deep. The end panels are 3/4 inch natural birch plywood and the top, bottom and shelves are 1/2 inch natural birch plywood. The rails to keep stuff from coming off the shelves are 1/4” natural birch plywood.

The construction is just rabbets top and bottom and dados to support the shelves. I used glue and 15 gauge finish nails ( I love my Milwaukee cordless 15 gauge finish nailer, it is fantastic ). The back of each cabinet is nailed and glued on.

The TANDEM under-mount slides are pretty easy to work with except for one tiny oversight on my part, there is a minimum drawer width because the levers and mechanism to connect the cabinet to the rails have a fixed width and I was just under it with the six inch wide cabinets. I was able to work around it by modifying the bottom of the six inch cabinets so it all worked out.

I also had to reduce the height of the furthest back cabinet because the spacing between units wasn’t as tight as I’d estimated. I was able to just slice the top off of the unit and make it into an open topped roll-out, just like I had designed it that way to clear the pipe going over it.

All in all they work great, pull out smoothly, soft close, clear everything around them and have made that space very usable. I even have some “baby fat” as Adam Savage calls it, extra storage that is empty. That won’t last long.

Building Project: Weaving Bench

April 1, 2024

My beautiful and talented wife is a weaver and she has recently acquired a thirty six inch eight shaft floor loom. I volunteered to make a weaving bench based on a traditional design to go with it. The bench is adjustable in height both for ergonomics and for adjustments for different setup tasks on the loom as well as the weaving process. It has a removable seat top that allows for a storage area inside the seat.

The traditional design that I had seen had very simple butt joints secured with screws. I decided to do mine in maple 1 1/16” x 11 1/4” for the uprights and the stretcher and 3/4” x 7 1/4” for the seat box and top. The stretcher has penetrating tenons connecting to the uprights with a slight bevel on the exposed tenon ends. The seat box has 3/8” box joints and 1/4” plywood bottom and a 3/4” maple removable top with battens on the bottom to align it in the opening of the box so it doesn’t slide around.

I built a new box joint jig for my table saw which worked very well for cutting the joints. The groove for the bottom panel went through one of the box joint fingers on each corner. At assembly time I plugged those holes with a contrasting walnut plug to give a little decorative detail on both sides of the box.

I was able to screw the two end pieces together after marking up all the features and do all the holes, mortises, and curved band saw cuts with them aligned and secure. I rounded over all the edges on both sides of each upright and the stretchers.

After sanding everything to 320 grit I assembled and glued up all the joints. After some post glue up sanding I put on three coats of wipe on polyurethane finish. I am very happy with the finish and my wife is enjoying the bench.

Building Project: Tapestry Loom

March 16, 2024

[NOTE: Here is a weaving glossary to help decode the terminology below.]

My beautiful and talented wife is a weaver and has been weaving for several years now. She asked me if I would make her a Tapestry Loom for some rug weaving projects she wanted to do. My research into plans for such a loom led me to the wonderful book “Loom Construction” by Jeri Hjert and Paul Von Rosenstiel which is out of print but available from used book dealers. The book has basic plans for most types of looms as well as for many of the ancillary weaving tools.

As usual, I didn’t follow the design exactly since the customer wanted a larger loom and one with more than one heddle rod. I didn’t like the warp tensioning system from the design in the book either since it relied on nuts, washers, and a threaded rod and I wanted something less cumbersome. I designed a system that is similar to some production looms from Schacht but instead of just using a captive nut I used a threaded insert that essentially put metal threads inside the tensioning beam of the loom.

I decided to make the loom out of maple and walnut so that there would be interesting contrast between the parts. The main frame members and the dowels would be maple and the stand, heddle support, and the guides for the tensioning screws would be walnut. The guides for the tensioning screws were made with 1/2” penetrating dowel tenons and add two nice dots of walnut to the outside. I attached the heddle support with a half lap joint so that it appears to wrap around the frame.

There were a couple of tricky work holding issues in the construction process. In the case of the moving tensioning beam I had to drill through holes for the threaded inserts exactly at the same offset and in the same plane through a 1” maple dowel ( By the way https://wood-dowel.com/ makes the most beautiful, exactly on size, true, round, taper free, defect free dowels I have ever seen. I didn’t sand them at all because they came with such a smooth finished surface) and then I had to mill two flats on each end of the same dowel also in the same plane leaving a 1/2” tab to slide in the slot in the loom. I made four 2” square collar blocks out of 3/4” material with a 1” hole precisely in the middle. I was then able to use one block as a spacer to position the hole and another one to then drill the hole through. After drilling the first hole I could use a bolt in the first hole through the block and the dowel to keep the dowel in the same orientation while drilling the second hole on the other end. The four blocks on the same dowel with bolts maintaining the position of the dowel allowed me to use the table saw to cut the flats accurately on both ends like cutting a tenon on a rectangular piece of wood.

The second problem was the warping bar which is a 1/2” dowel that is used to connect the two ends of the warp into a loop around the loom. It needed a hole drilled in each end to receive pins through the sides of the loom to anchor it in place during initial warping of the loom. My drill press is a bench top model and the dowel was 24” long so it wouldn’t fit. I was able to overcome this by unfastening the head of my drill press and rotating it 90 degrees so that the quill was now over the edge of the bench. I then turned the drill press table as well so I could clamp the dowel to the side of the table and position the dowel for drilling.

I also improvised the loom stand based on similar stands I’d seen on production looms. I made it out of walnut which I resawed to approximately 3/8” x 1 1/2” and then drilled fixed positioning holes for the different loom angles. I used some knob bolts that I have used on a lot of other projects which are M6 metric bolts and I got some M6 metric wing nuts to have a lower profile, no tools, tightening solution.

I sanded all the loom parts except the dowels to 320 grit, glued everything up, and then I applied paste wax to everything. I have found that this finish is excellent for loom tools and it gives a renewable slightly slippery finish to them.

I was concerned that my changes to the design of the loom would introduce functional problems because I’m not an experienced loom designer and I don’t have deep knowledge of what dimensions are important on looms. However, either through luck or intuition the finished loom works great and everything operates exactly as it should. My wife is very happy with it and is currently learning how best to use it.

P.S. A couple of days later I made a Tapestry Comb which is used by the weaver to press down the weft tightly each time they cycle back and forth. I glued up some maple scraps to make the 4” x 6 1/2” x 1” blank.

Building Project: Wand Cabinet

February 26, 2024

This project was my first one for someone outside my immediate household. My wife’s cousin Erik (in picture above) operates an attraction in Salem, MA called “Professor Spindlewink’s World of Wizardry” , it is a Fantasy Magic Experience… On Christmas Eve he approached me and asked me if I would build a wand cabinet for his gift shop. He sells seven or so types of wands and he wanted something that would display them better and that fit in with the castle theme of his venue.

I thought this sounded like an interesting project so I agreed to build the cabinet if he would pay for the materials. After visiting the gift shop and measuring the space and getting some general ideas for what the look and features of the cabinet would be I drew up some scale concept drawings for Erik’s approval.

After he approved the design I worked out a materials list and an initial cut list. At first I was thinking of making it out of premium MDF but after consulting some folks at the Eastern Massachusetts Guild of Woodworkers (which I recently joined) I realized that it would be very heavy if I used MDF and the fabrication would have to accommodate specific issues with MDF ( special screws etc… ). They suggested using Poplar because it paints nicely, is easy to work with, is light weight, and is inexpensive. So I chose to use Poplar and I was very happy with that decision.

All of the material was 3/4” x 7 1/4” x 8’ boards which I selected for straightness and clearness at Boulter Plywood. I decided that I would make the cabinet in two pieces an upper cabinet and a lower cabinet. I started by gluing up the major panels for the lower cabinet.

All the extra new space in the shop really helped with this process and clamping up panels on the new island was a pleasure. Being able to walk around all sides of it and having it at that height was a game changer.

The panels came out very flat due to a combination of the boards having been milled nicely in the first place, my improving skills at gluing up panels, and an investment in new parallel clamps. I had very little flattening to do and only planed one of the panels.

I built the lower cabinet from the inside out constructing the inner frame of the cabinet and the three vertical dividers and the horizontal drawer opening out of panels 18 1/2” wide and 3/4” thick, rabbeting and dadoing the junctions and then securing them with glue. Since they were going to be largely hidden by outer side decorative panels I was able to reinforce some of the joints with screws.

I drilled the inside of the divided area for adjustable shelf pins and cut six adjustable shelves to fit in those openings. This was easier than trying to make fixed shelves and also more flexible for my client.

I then built four 3”x3” hollow legs with pyramidal feet ( I used a sled on the table saw to cut the beveled sides) I glued and screwed a cap on the end of the legs and then glued and screwed the feet onto them.

Next I glued and screwed (from the inside) the top of the lower cabinet on. Since all the grain was going in the same direction I was able to just directly attach the top.

With the top in place for reference and after milling some grooves in the sides of the legs to receive decorative panels and rails, I glued the legs on to the sides of the cabinet and also screwed them from inside using a 1/4” counter-sink and then plugging the holes to conceal them.

I made a decorative skirt detail for the lower rails in the front and on the sides. I also installed 1/4” plywood panels on each side and a decorative top rail to make the cabinet seem bigger and in proportion to the legs. Next I built the drawer body and the drawer front and installed them in the cabinet. Then I applied the plywood back.

The final detail was to add a 3/8” quarter round with an 1/16” shadow line detail to the edge of the top of the cabinet with the router. I had a serious mess up with this when the bearing on my old round over bit came off in the middle of the front edge of the top. It caused the router to plunge into the front edge a good 3/4” of an inch and for more than two inches forward before I could stop it.

I routed out the damaged area with a 1/2” inch straight cutting router bit and squared up an area for a patch which I cut to size and glued in. Once it was set I was able to sand it flush, finish routing the edge with a new router bit and then I concealed the edges of the patch with fine wood filler.

I built the upper cabinet in a similar manner echoing the leg design with a pillar on either side of the cabinet opening. The panels for the upper cabinet were 10” wide with the top 10 1/2”. I extended the sides of the cabinet up and down an extra 2 1/4” to give the central area of the cabinet a 3” border, and I added filler panels to close in those areas. I didn’t want to put four pillars on the top of the cabinet since it would make the side panel too small and it would make it look cluttered. Instead I added a “wing” off the back edge of the cabinet that receives the decorative side panel and the rails.

I then figured out the angle that I wanted for the wand display shelf which would be through the center of the cabinet. I put it on cleats so that it could be removable and replaceable in the future. I covered the shelf in red felt to provide a nice display surface for the wands.

The top of the upper cabinet was also removable and was attached with four screws and no glue. I installed small LED spotlights to light the wands inside the case and hid the wiring in the upper border of the cabinet with the cord exiting the back.

I positioned the upper cabinet on top of the lower cabinet and drilled mounting holes with countersinks through the bottom of the top cabinet into the top of the lower cabinet. I then enlarged the holes in the bottom cabinet and installed threaded inserts for M8 furniture connector bolts. These secure the two parts of the case. I added a sheet of red felt for the bottom of the case to cover the bolt heads.

I created full overlay doors with clear acrylic panels in them and repeated the 3/8” quarter round detail around the border of the doors.

Finally I created a decorative pediment to go on top of the upper cabinet. I created a template for the curved profile and then used the band saw and sander to cut the mitered sides of the box into the final shape. I added a matching 3/8” quarter round detail to the bottom of the upper cabinet top and to the edge of the pediment.

Next I applied premium wood filler to all of the seams and gaps and re-sanded the affected areas. Then I applied decorative wood appliques to give the front legs and the upper pillars some additional embellishment.

The finish for this project was paint and I had selected a dark brown/red semi-gloss latex. I set up the garage for spraying and I sprayed everything initially with Zinnser 1-2-3 gray primer using spray cans. That went very well and covered and laid down nicely. I had acquired an inexpensive cordless airless sprayer with the intent to spray the latex top coat as well. After multiple test spray-outs however I just didn’t like the way it was going on and I didn’t want to risk it on such a large cabinet. I switched to plan B and I applied the latex with a roller and with brushes. This worked great and after two coats the finish looked really nice.

I reassembled all of the parts, installed the acrylic in the doors ( I had painted some wood appliques for the upper corners of the windows to look like fretwork and just super-glued them to the acrylic), installed the door knobs, drawer pulls, and hasp for the door.

Erik and I installed the cabinet into his gift shop and it looks great with the wands in it and fits right in with the rest of the environment. I’m very happy with my first commission, it was a great experience and I got to do a lot of new things on this project.

Building Project: Counter Organizer

January 29, 2024

For decades we’ve had a counter in the kitchen which due to it’s location near all the entrances to the kitchen collects a pile of papers, mail, receipts, keys, pens, letter openers, bills, etc… I’ve always found it somewhat upsetting to deal with but it hasn’t reached the top of the “do something about this” list… until now.

I wanted to make another small project and I was interested in using up some maple scraps and some “drops” of aluminum bar from the fire table project. Also I was curious about the Rockler bluetooth speaker/radio kit. So I decided to design an organizer for this corner. I was going for a sort of modernist abstract cityscape design ( that’s what I’m telling people ). I wanted dividers to organize the papers and envelopes and some cups to organize the small objects and pens, scissors, and mail openers. That counter was always dark because it didn’t have any undercabinet lighting so I made a tall tower to house the bluetooth speaker, a light, and on the back two AC outlets and two USB outlets.

I started the project with some problems and at some point I may end up remaking either parts of this project or the whole thing due to not really solving those problems. The first problem was that I didn’t have any 1/2” scrap stock and I wanted to make most of the features out of 1/2” material. I don’t have a jointer, or a thickness planer, or a bandsaw capable of accurately resawing anything. But I figured what the heck I’ll see how far I can get.

The stock that I did have was 1 1/16” thick so I cut it into two inch strips and attempted to slice them into 1/2” strips. This process was somewhat inaccurate ending up with some strips over 1/2” inch slightly and some under 1/2” slightly. Also I realized at this point that my table saw blade was dirty and dull from having cut a lot of crappy plywood for the shop cabinets recently.

Also, the one limitation of the Rockler Panel Clamps is that they don’t do anything less that 3/4” material. I thought I could just stack two panels together with some plastic film between them and clamp them up that way. Lets just say the glue ups were not great and not very flat. At this point I just decided that this was a prototype and I was going to use it to see if the thing worked for us and I just plowed ahead. Through some hand planing, sanding, and scraping I got the panels “flat adjacent” but they were of varying thickness so milling things like rabbets on the edges was also inaccurate. So, what were supposed to be 4” x 4” box tubes were off in one or more dimensions by as much as 1/16”. Some of these issues I reduced using the 50 grit belt on my sanding station to square up the sides but of course they were now not 4” x 4” boxes they were rectangular.

The base of counter organizer was made of a glue up of the full thickness 1 1/16” maple boards. I thought these were quite flat when I glued them up, but unfortunately after a couple of days in the heated and very dry part of my shop they had developed a pronounced cup. Worse than that is that this happened after I had routed the recesses to custom fit each of the towers and the dividers into the base.

So another round of hand planing, sanding, and scraping ensued to get at least one side of it flat so it could sit on the counter. I couldn’t do much for the top without also removing the features I’d already routed there so I had to just accept it for what it was and tweak the orientation of the dividers and the towers when I glued them up.

I fabricated the aluminum hardware out of the 1” x 1/2” aluminum flat bar “drops” that I had. I used the aluminum cutting table saw blade that I had acquired for the fire table project. I made some custom clamping fixtures out of plywood to hold onto the small pieces of aluminum so they wouldn’t become projectiles. This worked very well and the plywood fixtures were useful for multiple operations since they were sacrificial and I could cut a feature through the plywood and the aluminum with no problems. The key hooks were the most interesting to make but the techniques were very much the same as cutting dados or tenons out of wood on a table saw, just using aluminum. The aluminum chips were no joke though and I ended up wearing nitrile gloves because they were stinging my hands a bit.

I cleaned up the aluminum with files and deburring tools and sanded it to 320 grit and then sprayed them with a clear acrylic lacquer to prevent oxidation. The finish has a nice smooth sparkly appearance.

Another problem was the light fixture which seems simple in theory but is in practice quite challenging, especially when you’re using uneven stock and using the wrong tools to shape it. In the end I was able to create a cube with the top and the bottom mitered together with a 1/4” rabbet around the inside. The sides were four corner pieces with the same profile. All of the acrylic had to be inside the cube for the glue up which was awkward and I tried using silicone adhesive to hold the acrylic in the frames, don’t do that, it doesn’t adhere to acrylic well at all.

But in the end I came up with a cube light that is slightly wonky but functional.

I cut all the holes in the tower for the bluetooth audio and speakers and the outlet on the back and a switch for the light and the exit for the plug wire. After determining that everything was actually going to fit I had to glue up everything and put finish on it before I could install the electrical elements.

The glue up went fine. I had to shim the divider panels and in some cases bend them slightly to fit the dado’s in the base but they all got glued in. Before I glued them into the base I drilled holes down the center of the dados so I could add screws from the underside for additional strength. I squared everything up as I went and even though they were not 90 degrees to the surface of the base which was somewhat arched they appeared relatively perpendicular from a distance and if you don’t look too hard. As Jimmy Diresta says “If it looks straight, it is straight.”

The finish was a little bit of a nightmare, I used a golden danish oil, which I’d used before, which was the problem, the can apparently had been quietly evaporating the mineral spirits and I didn’t realize that it was not the right solution until I had a applied a lot of it. So there was a lot of diluting with mineral spirits, wiping sticky spots etc… I eventually got it to a decent place.

Finally I finished up and installed the wiring and the hardware and it has been deployed. It seems to be functioning well, the counter is a lot more organized now and I will never do many of the things I did on this project again. I may revisit this project sometime in the future and do everything better, but I’ve got another project that actually has a deadline so I’m on to that.

Building Project: A small gift box...

January 3, 2024

My beautiful and talented wife had a great idea this year to exchange “Maker gifts” with some of our friends that we usually do holiday gifts with. They are creative, crafty people as are we. I decided to make a small wooden box with an interesting grain pattern for one of the gifts.

My idea was to use three woods and have the grain of all three woods wrap over the top of the box. I used maple, western red cedar, and walnut. The western red cedar is quite a bit softer than the other two woods which was tricky but it worked out fine in the end.

I cut the wood into strips and then resawed them to 1/2” thickness. This accidentally had the effect of book matching the two stripes of maple on the outside of the blank. I glued up two blanks with extra length and width in the pattern that I wanted.

I’m still figuring out how to use the Rockler Panel Clamps with material thinner than 3/4” it’s a little challenging to pad out the space and get even pressure. I had a decent result with this setup.

I flattened the panel that I decided to use ( you may see the other one in a future project ) with the sanding station and palm sander. I squared it up and cut it to width centering the pattern in the process. I then cut a rabbet on all sides of the panel to receive the sides of the box and the bottom. I then cut the top of the box using a 45 degree miter on the table saw. I had to tweak it a little on the sander and shaving a tiny amount off on the table saw. I then trimmed the front and back of the box to the correct length.

I sanded all the components to final 320 grit inside and out because I wanted to finish the inside to show the grain pattern running through there as well. I then glued the box up.

Once it had dried I tidied it up with the sanding station and I re-sanded areas as needed. I then set the table saw to 1 1/2” and cut around all four sides to create the top lid of the box. I sanded the cut edges then I applied natural Danish Oil in the usual manner.

When the finish had dried I glued in a piece of blue felt to line the bottom of the box and put hinges and a front hasp on the box. I also applied a thin coat of paste wax to the outside of the box.