Exercise your Mind

Sometimes for the second time. If not the third.

I guess that means that I should have entitled this Lessons Remembered instead. [Read more →]

I’m thinking about (actually, planning on) completing a project for the 5-board bench contest that Charles Neil is having on his site.

I have what I think is a very nice design for a 5 board bench (and my daughter agrees – she wants it : ) but doing this will require me to go outside my comfort zone. And most likely my skill zone as well.

So the question of the moment is this: how do you tell when you’re trying to make a jump over a chasm and not just stepping over a small stream?

This project will have me making dovetails on a slant (and I’ve not done dovetails), gluing up a panel of contrasting woods (if I can find enough clamps : ), and then, in general, just assembling a piece of furniture. All new things to me.

Thoughts?

@ndillon, @SMeekWoodworks, @JGrecoTweets had a bit of a discussion over on twitter about selling Artisan projects at a craft fair, and whether or not is was a reasonable thing to do.

With that in mind I went to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival this afternoon. I had planned on going already, but this discussion gave me a little bit more focus to the afternoon.
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So, for cutting cubes I have a couple of new jigs – partially because it’s not only cubes I’ll be cutting.

One of the jigs is causing me a problem that I’d like to get some advice on.

First off, here’s the basic jig for cutting sticks.

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I finally “hit it big” on craigslist and picked up the remains of someones deck. I finally got a call in to someone before it was all picked up and now I have a pile of 2x material that needs to be cleaned up.

I’ll end up with a pile of scrap wood as well, but I should have enough here to build at least two of the workbenches I need.
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Well, if you share my gender the answer is “yes, of course.”

We picked up a new computer desk at a friend’s yard sale. $1800 desk for $200 (before the company got tired of my presence, of course.) It’s been sitting in her garage and we finally made arrangements to pick it up.

This means that I have to do something with the current desks. The one my wife was using will go out – the shed or garage, depends on where I can find room for it. That was easy.

We live in a split level and there’s this 9×9 (or so) area at the bottom of the steps that’s been set up as our computer area. Her desk was in the back corner (it’s just a straight desk with a hutch on it) and mine (a corner unit) was on the opposite corner and it made the “wall” that separated the computer area from the remainder of the family room.
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After my time in the shop last Sunday I’ve been thinking about the work benches I want to build.

I’ll start off by making a shallow platform for the table saw to set on. It seems to be one of the things I move around more, mainly due to the length of the wood I need to process. Once I have that, it’s my reference height for the remainder of the workbenches.
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I spent a lot of the day yesterday out in the garage/shop. Didn’t get all done that I wanted to, but made some progress.

I got the wood for the new boxes worked down to the right thickness. It’s not quite as smooth as I’d like, but that’s because I took too much off with the planer and only got to run a couple of light passes with the sander. We’ll do a little bit of finish sanding once the boxes are assembled.
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I was in Woodcraft the other day and picked up a couple of their pieces of cutoffs for use in my puzzles. We can usually use wood that others cannot due to the fact that our basic building block is a 3/4″ cube.

After I got home I got to thinking and measured the piece of walnut I picked up (5 X 11 X 3 1/4) and then computed the price per board foot that I had just paid. Turns out to be about $9.20. That seemed high to me, somehow didn’t seem like quite the bargain that I thought it was.

Now, mind you, I’ve not actually looked up the price of walnut, and didn’t really have a way to do that in the store, but it did spark a couple of thoughts.

* Would I have thought this was the same bargain if it had looked like a “normal” piece of wood? You know, a plank instead of a chunk. Does the chunk just look more impressive so it seems like there’s more wood there?

* If I were a developer for the iPhone (which will never happen, but that’s a different topic for a different aspect of my life) I might see the opportunity for an app. Enter measurements, compute board feet, do a local search for wood of the same size/type, see if it really is a bargain.

I’m not sure how many woodworkers have smart phones or would be interested in an app like that, but it does seem like it could be useful.

In my current puzzles the orientation of the grain really doesn’t matter. Well, in one puzzle it does play a role in the assembly, but you haven’t seen that one yet.

However, I have a couple of other items in mind that the grain does matter. Well, at least the difference between end and face grain. This is important because it matters on how I can most efficiently cut these out.

Here are a couple of examples of what I mean:

Cook's Pushstick

Stars Puzzle

In both of these items, the side that is facing up should be the face grain. However, I really don’t want to cut out a lot of individual pieces if I can help it.

For the Cook’s Pushstick (used to push a hot oven rack back into the oven using the end slot or pulling it out using the side hook) I can see drilling a hole in the end and then cutting a slot using the bandsaw or a dado set. Then setting the resulting stack on it’s side and slicing them off to the right thickness.

The same sort of issue with the puzzle pieces. You want face grain showing, not end grain. However, how thick can you usually get “exotic” woods? Especially without going over budget buying that sort of wood.

Thoughts from the more experienced among you will be greatly appreciated.