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.

I really like how the box came out and the person I made it for was pleased with it.

Building Project: Adding work space to the shop

December 18, 2023

My shop where I build things is located in my basement and is connected to my garage which is also under the house. It isn’t very big so I’m always looking for ways to get more room for projects and machines. Recently I was told that my 40+ year old oil powered steam boiler was on it’s way out and that I’d have to replace it. I realized that I could solve this problem and reclaim almost 20 square feet of floor space where my oil tank was located if I converted to gas.

Oil tank on top of platform, under platform is a coal pile from 1929…

So, after a long period of dances with electricians, plumbers, removal people, inspectors etc… I have a new gas powered steam boiler ( No really, I wasn’t going to rip out all of the steam pipes and radiators in my 1929 house, I don’t care… ) and unfortunately under the platform and the coal pile was a granite outcropping like others at the back of my basement. If I wanted a flat floor for a work surface I’d have to reduce the outcropping to at least floor level.

I thought “How hard can it be?” and went out and got a hammer drill, a carbide drill bit, a set of feathers and wedges and set about splitting the outcropping into pieces.

Hammer drill...

Granite removal in progress...

Pile of granite chunks in back yard...

This went well for a while, but it is very hard work. I could only do so much and then I’d have to take a break for a while to keep from hurting myself. Then I ran into a very hard section of the granite that just wouldn’t split. I would tap in the wedges and it wouldn’t crack, the wedges would get stuck and I would end up having to drill the wedges out.

I shifted to “Plan B” which was to score the area at about two inch intervals with a diamond wheel and then use a carbide chisel and sledge hammer to snap off pieces. This made the feather and wedges process seem like the easiest thing in the world. I quickly realized that it would also take forever since I was only getting about a 1/2” thickness of rock removed per round of chipping and I couldn’t even manage to do the whole area at once.

Then I thought perhaps I can just pour concrete in the area that I have cleared and then work on the remaining area in the fullness of time while still getting some floor space. I used multiple online concrete calculators to figure out how much I would need and quickly realized that just mixing that amount of concrete let alone wrangling that number of 50 lb bags would kill me.

“Plan C” rapidly emerged. I called up the masons who had helped me with our new retaining walls and garden landscaping. We came to an agreement on price and in two days they had removed the remaining granite outcropping and poured a new floor section.

Rock removed by professionals and new floor poured…

With the new floor in place I wasted no time in starting to build out the new area. I had thought about the layout many times and I drew up some rough scale drawings to make a material estimate and ordered everything to be delivered from Home Depot. In the meantime I painted the walls with two coats of basement paint.

My plan was to have lower cabinets and work surfaces running into the corner with drawer units and shelf units all painted, with doors, drawer fronts, and cabinet backs to control dust and mildew. There would also be three upper cabinets of similar construction for more shelf storage.

The first step was to screw pressure treated battens to the wall to support the lower and upper cabinets.

Pressure treated battens to support work surfaces screwed to concrete using Tapcon screws…

I then built a 2x4 frame, yes I had considered doing frameless cabinets but I wanted the extra strength to possibly support machines, hammering etc… It also made all of the cabinets modular so if I wanted to move or replace one in the future I could just unscrew it and pop it out of the frame later on.

2x4 frame, yes yes I know it’s unnecessary…

I cut the counter tops out of 23/32” cheap shit sheathing plywood ( which I’m going to top with hardboard later in this story ) and built the boxes, drawers, and shelves out of the same material.

Cabinet boxes 23/32” sides and 1/4” backs… shelf boxes drilled for adjustable shelf pins…

I got a good deal on some cheap drawer slides on Amazon and built and installed all the drawer units with drawer fronts, handles etc… You’ll also note that I’m painting (badly) everything with Zinzer primer to help prevent mildew ( my basement is damp ).

Next was lots of doors, I used simple half-lap joints and some 1” ( really 3/4”) select pine for the frames and 1/4” plywood for the panels. I was able to mass produce the parts since all the uppers were the same doors and the lowers were all the same height.

Doors installed for all of the upper and lower cabinets…

Finally, I built a rolling island with a work surface and storage inside. I found these cool ratcheting leveling casters that have rubber feet that come down and lift up the leg to make the island stationary and it also lets it be leveled pretty accurately.

Rolling leveling work table island with storage…

I’m so excited to have this new workspace finally and I’ve already started building a project with it.

Addendum: A hero tool

I meant to mention a new tool that I got for this project. I knew that I was going to be cutting up a lot of 23/32” ( close to 3/4” ) plywood and other sheet goods for this project. I’ve always been unhappy with clamping straight edges, boards, etc… and trying to follow along them with the circular saw. I watched with jealousy makers on YouTube using lovely Festool Track Saws and doing effortless long cuts. I couldn’t bring myself to part with the money for a track saw. However I found a compromise that only cost a hundred bucks. The Milescraft Track Saw Guide which is an adapter that converts almost any 7.5” circular saw into a track saw. It comes with tracks, clamps, the adapter sled and alignment accessories. I can only say that it works perfectly. It doesn’t do a couple of things that a real track saw can do like plunge cutting and pre-cutting the kerf in front of the saw. I don’t actually need those things, it does everything else. I cut up many sheets of various thickness material quickly and accurately using my 20 year old Porter Cable circular saw and this adapter. Highly recommended.

Building Project: Outdoor storage, Wood organization

October 12, 2023

Part of my home shop is located in my garage. I still park my car in the garage, so things get set up in there and then put away after a project. There is also a lot of storage for outdoor tools most importantly my long ladder for getting to the second story of my house on the rare occasions I am required to. My stock of wood was also stored there on the top shelf behind the ladder in a very inconvenient pile. Most of the time I have to essentially take all of it out to get to the wood I want and then put it all back. This time I decided to fix this problem. For reference here is a before picture:

In order to fix this problem I needed to find a place to put the ladder. After walking around my house multiple times I realized that there was a huge space under my front porch that would store the ladder just fine. I fortunately had some scraps of the Azec trim from when it was built so I could just cut out a section of lattice and turn that into a door with some 1x4 stock as the frame and a 2x4 backer for the door jamb with some trim. It was a little weird because the bottom of the porch side follows the grade so the door is a parallelogram not a square or rectangle. I managed to get it roughly the right shape and then I trimmed the whole door on the table saw to fit.

Now that I could stash the ladder in there I could cut off the uprights that the ladder had hung off of giving me unobstructed access to the top shelf. On the right side I installed a Rockler 4-tier Wood Rack which was easy to just screw onto the existing 2x4 supports. I put the “nice” wood, the maple, walnut and cedar on that rack. Then on the other side of the window (which you will now be able to see and the shop will get natural light too…) I built a 24” deep, 48” long, 31” high wood sorter with dividers every 6.5”. It is just quickly screwed together out of scrap wood that I had and some 2x4’s. The hardest part was getting it from the floor up to the shelf… it is firmly screwed to the shelf. Then I could sort my smaller wood off-cuts by size and quality and access any of them without moving anything.

I also moved some other things that could live outside to the new storage. Here’s what the new arrangement looks like:

There’s more cleaning up of the other shelves to come but the wood situation is solved.

Building Project: Loom Stand

October 7, 2023

My beautiful and talented wife is a weaver. She recently acquired an Inkle Loom which is used to make decorative belts, borders, ribbons etc… It didn’t come with a stand and she asked if I would make her a stand for it. I have made loom stands before so I was happy to make another one. The loom in this case wasn’t really made to be used on a stand so I decided to make this one more generic with a table top that could be adjusted for angle. I would attach the loom to the table top with knob bolts through the table into threaded inserts in the bottom of the loom.

I was going to make it out of maple like the last one but I didn’t have the right size scraps so I made it out of both maple and walnut. I think the contrasting woods look really nice. The table top is pre-finished furniture grade 3/4” plywood with a quarter inch maple band around it, I sanded the pre-finish off because I was going to put paste wax on the whole thing. I put four 1 1/4” x 2” legs through the top so I could have a place to put the threaded inserts and have the top of the table flush with the top of the support legs.

I used threaded inserts for all of the attachment and pivot points so that there would only be one knob to adjust to loosen or tighten any of the bolts. This worked well once I experimented and found the ideal hole size for the insert. Strangely the inserts were metric inside M8 to be specific but the outside diameter wasn’t an even measurement of any kind it ended up being something like 33/64”.

I made the trestles and the uprights in the same manner as before. I cut the slots for the angle adjustment bars on the router table and I did a better job at centering things this time. The through mortise and tenon joints look nice in contrasting wood.

After a few mock-ups to make sure the hardware was going to work ok, I sanded everything to 320 grit and then glued everything up. I installed the table top to keep the uprights aligned and at the proper separation while the glue set. I did a little sanding of the excess tenons and glue and then I waxed everything with paste wax. This seems to work well for weaving tools, the wax lets the threads slip over the wood without sticking or snagging.

I drilled the holes in the top for holding the loom and drilled matching blind holes in the bottom of the loom for the threaded inserts. I had to create a couple of spacers for the bottom because my knob bolts were a little too long.

The nice thing about this design is if my wife acquires another weaving loom or tool that requires a stand we can just drill some different hold down holes and adapt it to this stand.

I think the threaded inserts worked very nicely and I may go back and adapt the other loom stand to use them as well.

Update on October 17, 2023: I just wanted to put up a scan of my crude drawing that I used to build this one.

Building Project: Outdoor Chairs

September 19, 2023

Please see the prior project for a description of the Fire Table, this project is a complement to that one. I wanted to build some chairs to go with the Fire Table and the new circular patio. We already had a set of chairs we bought ten plus years ago that we really liked so I decided to copy/re-interpret those.

The original chairs were made from teak and teak is WAY too expensive. I made this version from western red cedar. There were a couple of details that required special tooling and fixtures. First one was the rake of the chair back, seat, and back leg. The original manufacturer used a custom finger joint cutter to cut ten degree angle finger joints to join two straight pieces into the angled profile required. I experimented with a standard finger joint router bit in the router table. Let me tell you there is no more terrifying router bit than a finger joint bit. Try as I might I just couldn’t get it to work repeatably, it’d probably work fine to connect two pieces of stock end to end, but not at a ten degree angle.

I decided to use my stacked dado cutter in the table saw and make a custom ten degree box joint sled fixture. This worked great and I was able to make some prototypes of the joint that worked great. It’s also a ninety degree box joint cutter which I’m going to use on my next drawer project.

The back legs glued up great, the angled box joint is very strong. The angle of the back also introduced an issue with the side rails of the chair. In the original the manufacturer had just used screws and wood plugs to connect the rails to the legs. I didn’t want to do that so I decided to do through tenons. The issue was that the mortises in rear leg have to be parallel to the ground so I had to create some ten degree angled block fixtures so I could clamp the legs in the right orientation to drill and chisel the mortises. I also had to create a table saw sled for cutting the ten degree angled shoulders for the tenons.

This all worked very nicely, I found that using a coping saw to square up the through mortises worked better than chisels in the soft cedar. Also, I discovered a minor issue with my otherwise wonderful Dewalt table saw. While it has a big enough arbor for an eight inch dado stack and a nice dado throat plate from the manufacturer, the height setting on the blade doesn’t lock so spinning the mass of a three quarter inch wide dado stack causes the blade to drift downward as you cut. I found that inserting an f-clamp through the front of the saw body and clamping the adjustment wheel tightly stopped this.

I built one chair completely as a proof of concept before I went into production mode to crank out all the parts for the other three.

I also had to get into metal fabrication on this project, the seats on these chairs are fabric sling seats and they are held by aluminum clamping bars bolted through the side rails. I couldn’t find any off-the-shelf hardware like this so I ordered some one inch by half-inch aluminum flat bar. I cut the bars to length, copied the hole pattern from the original chair, drilled them, deburred the holes, rounded the ends on the bench sander, sanded them like wood up to 220 grit which gave them a very smooth brushed look and then I applied two coats of clear spray lacquer. The original clamps were tubes with plugs in the ends, but these look very similar and work great.

Finally I needed to sew the slings for the seats and the backs of the chairs. I found the fabric that was used for the original chairs from a company called Sunbrella. It is a really nice outdoor fabric which doesn’t break down with exposure to the elements and is very comfortable. In order to not have the edges unravel you need to cut it with a hot knife which melts the edges as you cut. You use a sheet of glass for the cutting surface so you don’t set your table on fire and you have something for the cutter to just glide across.

I got a refresher course on using the sewing machine from my beautiful and talented wife. I found the right needle to use ( a ball point to avoid splitting the fibers of the fabric ) and the right thread, a heavy gauge nylon thread that is UV resistant. I watched some videos on cutting and sewing this kind of fabric on the Sailrite sewing machine YouTube channel. I learned about double sided seam tape and how to reduce the thickness in the corners of a panel. Then there was lots of measuring, cutting, folding, taping and finally sewing to make all the panels. I used the hot knife to punch the holes for bolts to pass through and mounted the seats and backs.

I’m really pleased with how they came out and I learned a lot doing this project. I got comfortable with the stacked dado head cutter, and building custom sleds for the table saw, and my sewing improved a lot. I decided not to put finish on any of this outdoor furniture as there was considerable difference of opinion about finishes for cedar for outdoors. It will just weather to grey like the rest of our outdoor furniture. I can always put some mineral oil on it later like I’ve done with the teak if it turns out it needs it. On to the next project!

Update 10/24/2023: Just a couple of updates after deployment. First, one of the chair backs had a joint fail. Incredibly it seemed like the glue never cured and the joint just finally slipped. After some research I found out that western red cedar has an oil that interacts with Tightbond III which is the glue that I used. Apparently you need to sand or machine the surfaces right before applying the glue or it will interact with the oil that comes to the surface. This explains why all of the other joints are just fine and only this one failed. I built this joint and did dry fits with it but I didn’t glue it for several days because it was the first one I did. The rest of the joints I glued up very shortly after machining them. I was able to repair the joint with a brace glued and screwed to the back and I also injected some CA glue into the joint. It is just fine now. Here’s what a good joint and the failed joint look like:

Also I wanted to just share my drawing for the chairs such as it is…

Building Project: Outdoor Fire Table

August 14, 2023

We’ve been doing a lot of changes to the landscaping around our house. Part of the project was adding a new circular patio in the middle of the yard with a new garden path. Now that all the construction and planting is done I’m building some furniture for the new patio. I wanted to build a fire table and four additional chairs based on the ones from our other deck which we really like.

I found a fire table kit that includes all the plumbing and burner components from a company called GRISUN. The glass fire pan wind shield and the fire glass also came from them. I also found a compact Propane tank that is made to be operated while on it’s side, it’s only 19.9 lbs of Propane but it fits inside the base of the table.

I designed the table to have plenty of room around the perimeter for drinks and snacks and to be a comfortable height to set things on while seated near the fire. I also made sure that the table would fit the patio nicely with plenty of room for the chairs I was building around it.

I chose to make it out of Western Red Cedar, the most economical outdoor water resistant wood I could obtain. I looked briefly at Teak but the price/lf made my eyes bleed, not to mention that the high silica content wears down your cutting tools. As it turns out the Cedar was really nice to work with, very light weight, strong, straight, stable and very pretty with long straight grain lines. I didn’t have any problems with splitting or tearing out. Also, the shop smells great after cutting a lot of it.

I glued up the top out of wide 9 1/4” x 3/4” ( nominal ) boards after ripping the rounded edges off since I think this lumber is intended for construction projects like siding, trim etc… and so it comes in nominal sizes and has rounded corners. I really love my Rockler Panel Clamps, all the panels for this project came out super flat so that I didn’t have to plane anything, just a bit of sanding.

I built a frame to sit under the top with a 3 1/2” perimeter with mitered corners and 2” lap jointed bracing around the 18” x 18” opening for the fire pan.

I used expansion clips to attach the top to the top frame. I drilled a pilot hole from the back and then used the flush cutting bit on the router to cut out the opening for the fire pan. A little cleaning up of the corners and rasping the opening and the pan fits securely but not too tightly in the opening. The off cut was nice and clean too and so I use it later on.

I glued up blanks for the legs ending up with legs 1 3/8” square. I cut a center groove 1/4” wide by 3/8” deep in two sides of each leg. I cut the stretchers out of 2” wide material with 3/8” x 1/4” tenons on each end and a 1/4” wide by 3/8” deep groove on one side. Finally I glued up panels for all of the sides out of 3 1/2” x 3/4” (nominal) material again ripping off the rounded corners. I cut the panels to final size allowing for a 1/4” x 3/8” tongue around the entire perimeter to fit into the groove in the legs and the stretchers.

In one side I cut out and framed a door to allow access to the interior as well as a cutout for the control panel with the burner nob and igniter button. I added diagonal corner braces top and bottom. I installed the bottom of the case made from 3/4” pressure treated plywood attached to the bottom diagonal braces with screws. The bottom has two 4”x4” vents with expanded steel mesh covers to allow any propane that were to enter the base to exit from the bottom since it is heavier than air.

After sanding everything to 220 grit, I glued up the case and the top. I have decided to just leave the wood untreated so it can weather naturally. I installed the plumbing inside and then completed attaching the top to the case with angle brackets out in the yard. I got the tank filled and tested all the gas connections with soapy water under pressure to make sure there were no leaks. I added the fire glass and glass wind shield and fired it up.

It works great, the igniter doesn’t work for some reason, but a fireplace lighter works to get it started just fine. Also you need to adjust the regulator on the connection to the tank to make sure you don’t get a fireball on start up. One ten pound bag of fire glass wasn’t enough to properly cover the burner so I got a second one and that was just right.

The last step was building a fire pan lid to keep leaves and excess rain and snow out of the fire pan. I made it from the piece I cut out of the top so it has nice wide boards to match the top of the table and a border to hold it onto the top of the glass wind shield.

I’m very happy with how it came out, I have a couple of minor things to fix down the road. The door is too close to the control panel and one of the hoses from the valve blocks getting the tank in through the door. At some point I’ll move the door to the left and flip the hinges to solve that problem. Until then the fire pan can be lifted out and the tank extracted through the top as needed.

Next up is the chair building project which will be exciting since these will be my first chairs. You can see the chairs that I’m copying in the images above.

Building Project: Custom carved frames

April 15, 2023

My lovely and talented wife gave me some cards and stickers by illustrator Tommy Siegel from his “Extremely Realistic Fine Art Bird Prints” collection. Tommy created the collection in response to bird purists telling him that his cartoons of birds weren’t “anatomically correct” so he added human butts to the birds and then published them under this title. I appreciate the “fuck yourself” attitude and the satire and my wife knows me and my sense of humor. I wanted to display them in a way that would continue the satire so I envisioned putting them in hand carved rustic woodland themed frames with a nice matte. I am hoping that someday an ornithological expert will visit my office be drawn to the pictures to identify the birds and that I get to watch/experience the reaction.

I’ve gotten pretty good at making custom frames so I quickly made some frames out of maple that was left over from another project that was 1 1/4” by 3/4” . Using the frame clamping jig that I got from Woodcraft it wasn’t any big deal to whip them up. I have found that just marking the miters on the wood and directly lining up each cut works better on the power miter box than trying to use a stop. The angled ends of the miters make the stop less accurate than for straight cuts.

I wanted to try carving a “ye olde rustic forest” kind of pattern around the frame and I wanted to use my Dremel to do it. After googling this I found some howto videos on YouTube that were very useful. I found a public domain frame pattern of oak leaves, acorns, and bark pattern online as an SVG file and I was able to resize it to the size frame that I wanted to do. I got some carbon paper and styluses for rubbing and impression using it. After printing the pattern out at full size, I spray mounted the carbon paper ( carbon side out ) to the back of the pattern. Then I lined up the pattern on the frame and taped it on carbon side down to the frame.

Using the rubbing styluses I traced over all of the black areas of pattern transferring it to the maple frame. I had to pace myself doing this because I had a tendency to hold the stylus too tight and probably to be pressing too hard, hurting my hand. But, taking multiple breaks I got it done. I got a flexible extension drive attachment for my Dremel which has a light comfortable pen-like grip at the end and a collet to drive a 1/8” Dremel tool. This is great because controlling the Dremel while you hold the whole weight of it in your hand is very difficult for any long period of time. I hung the Dremel from my work light arm to keep the shaft from kinking. I used the smaller of my Dremel ball head cutters to carve a round profile groove where ever there was black on the pattern. Like the pattern transfer process I took multiple breaks to both keep my hands from cramping and also to keep the flexible drive cool.

You can check out pictures of the process below:

I wasn’t sure of the finish, I wanted something quite dark that looked “olde timey” and I wanted the carved parts to be even darker. I decided to try out the first frame to completion before I went on to the second one. I sanded it from 120 to 320 grit, after adding a 3/8” round over with an edge detail with the router and rounding the inside edge as well. I decided to try the Medium Walnut Danish Oil and unfortunately it didn’t do either thing that I wanted from it. The general color was too light and the carving didn’t seem to get any more pigment than the surrounding.

So, I let that finish dry and then using my sanding station I sanded it and the carving completely off the piece and then I tried a dark walnut stain that I had a small can of from a very early project. This gave me the color I wanted and I was convinced that it would also darken the carving. I sprayed a couple of coats of clear acrylic lacquer on it and that gave me the fancy frame sheen I was looking for. Now I had a plain extra frame to use for another picture.

I made another frame quickly and proceeded with transferring the pattern and carving it on both frames, adding the edge details, and sanding them. Then I stained both frames and sprayed them with acrylic lacquer. You can see the progress below:

Some nice rich colored mattes and backing with foam core and faced with 1/16” clear acrylic and they were done. I’ve hung them in my office and they make me smile every time I see them.

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