I guess that means that I should have entitled this Lessons Remembered instead.

First, no matter how much you’d like to believe otherwise, a 9″ bandsaw is pretty much worthless. I am working on a cribbage board design of alder and aspen and figured that I could glue up some thicker stock and then slice my tops from it. Here’s an image of my first attempt at this:

Cribbage Board Top

That “divot” you see in the middle is a result of my equipment (and, for that matter, my inexperience) failure. When I tried to cut the other side is was much worse. (For completeness sake, the runs will be drilled into the alder and there will be an additional 1/4″ aspen border around the entire thing. The top will be held to the bottom via magnets and storage for cards and pegs will be inside.)

The second lesson remembered is that no matter how many times you measure before you cut (or how many times you sneak up on a cut to get it perfect), if you don’t think first it’s all wasted effort.

I have (had) some poplar processed down to 3/8″ to make boxes for my other puzzles, and I was very careful to measure how wide the puzzle was. After cutting a sample I checked to make sure the puzzle would fit in to it with a little bit of room. The I proceeded to cut a stack of bottoms. Then I carefully measured the height of the puzzle and cut a few sides to go with it.

That’s when I realized I have a problem. I failed to allow for the beveling of the box sides/bottom.

Normally I create boxes by mitering the ends so there’s no end grain showing, only the side grain at the top (these are uncovered boxes.) The way I cut these I have two choices: throw it all away and start over or cut the ends wider to they overlap the sides.

And, OK, so the “throw away” bit is not really what will happen. They’ll go into the cutoff bin as I’m sure I can use them later. For something.

If I butt-glue the pieces I’ll most likely hit them with the sander to round everything off and make it less glaringly apparent that I’m an idiot.

OK, I’m going back outside to pull nails and screws from the reclaimed decking material so I can make progress on my mobile benches.

Unless I managed to pinch or puncture myself not too much can go wrong there.

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?

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.

As a point of reference, I almost always pay the most attention to woodworker’s and photographer’s booths when I go to these things as that’s where my interest (and what little talent I have) exists, so it’s interesting to see what others are doing in these areas.

No need to talk about the photography here. I think there was really only two booths that were what I would call photography – the others were Digital Art (and some were actually labeled as such.) On the woodworker side there was about 4 or 5 booths. I talked to one of them for about 15 minutes. That’s as much on me as on them as I’m not a people person. I have to just jump in and start talking to someone that seems approachable. Most of the guys (in this case all the woodworkers were male) sat in the back of the booth, or even behind it.

The guy I talked to actually was the assistant to the woodworker as the woodworker wasn’t there at the time. I asked if it was worth it to do these sorts of shows. He told me that they tend to sell smaller things at these sorts of events (he had some small tables, about 12″ square, 30″ tall – estimates, I didn’t actually measure or ask dimensions, some leaf shaped cutting boards, stem contrasting wood to the rest of the leaf, a rocking chair, a storage “thing”, and had 18×20 or so images of other projects hanging on the walls) but what they really get from it is commissions following the event.

Another booth was a gentleman that made Arts and Crafts inspired clocks. For the most part these were 12″ to 14″ tall, made from dark woods and had either stone or patinaed copper inserts. I really liked the stone inserts – they were figured sandstone, rough surfaced, and to my mind they are what really made the pieces. One clock even had a bookmatch set of stone inserts.

There was the booth where the gentleman made Shaker boxes. One stack of nesting boxes, I think 8 or 9 of them was taller than me, the entire stack was priced at a little over $1,000.

The other woodworker booth I looked at did “dressers”, cutting boards, and wall vases. He had a definite style, almost everything he had was birds eye maple and walnut. The walnut was in the form of a wandering line through the top surface with varying sized round walnut inlays. The “dressers” were stacks of drawers, usually 6, alternating light/dark wood fronts, constructed as individual rectangles and slightly offset from each other (1″ to 1 1/2″ side to side, aligned up the front) and a piece of veneer on the side so the grain matched top to bottom.

The other two were turners. Not something I spent a lot of time with as it’s something I don’t do. One did bowls, usable things (sign said all bows were food safe.) There were 4 of them, ranging from about 26″ down to 18″ that clearly all came from the same tree. He said it was the largest Monkeypod tree in Oregon and he was lucky to get it. Very nice work and he must have a monster lathe The second turner did decorate vases. the necks were clearly natural wood, but the bodies were constructed of things like copper wire around wood and some sort of black filler.

While I was there he sold his smallest piece on display, a vase about 4″ in diameter at the largest and about 6″, maybe 7″ tall. He explained how he did that one, by stacking small pieces of wood, copper, brass, aluminum, glued up with epoxy and clamped down. Once it was cured he sliced it up and applied it to the vase, then finished turning it.

OK, OK – next time I’ll grab some pictures.

These were definitely not your inexpensive craft things. That small vase was $250. The 6 stacks of dressers were $2900. The clocks ranged from $400 to $800. The vases were up in the 4 figures.

And, to be honest, maybe I’ve been hanging around people like Charles Neil, Adam King, Scott Meek, John Greco, etc too much, but I just wasn’t that impressed by the level of craftsmanship in these. The turners were actually the best, I think.

The first guy I talked to had that dresser on display. Curved front, 3 drawers on top, 4 doors across underneath, maybe 60″ wide. The drawer fronts were nice, clearly one piece of wood. The dovetails were handcut but showed gaps. The drawers wouldn’t open without extreme pressure (kind of odd as it’s not all that humid here in Colorado, but we have been having rain and with it sitting “outside” (but under cover) that could certainly have an effect. The doors were wrapped in veneer – you could see it wrapped around the 4 sides and the top of the door was a different wood. It looked nice from across the booth.

The stacked drawer dressers. The rectangles the drawers fit in to were butt jointed together and wrapped in veneer. The drawer fronts were screwed on. Tops looked good with the birds eye and walnut, but it’s nothing I would have valued at $2900 either.

The Shaker boxes looked good. Used copper nails to hold it together, in most cases they were domestic boxes with exotic lids. Not sure I’d pay the price, but these folks obviously paid attention to their craft.

The clocks looked good from a distance. I’m not sure what kind of wood he used, but I’m pretty sure it was stained as you could see small white areas in the bottom of the depressions in the grain. Joint edges weren’t necessarily seamless.

It is entirely possible that I’m being too critical here and I welcome your comments on that, or any other aspect of this post.

I’m not sure that I’ve addressed the main point of the discussion that was held on twitter earlier today at all. I can say with assurance that there wasn’t anyone there selling $15 birdhouses nailed together, so maybe the only contribution I can make to the discussion is that it pays to know what level the event is aimed at. I’d guess it’s unlikely that you’ll be selling expensive pieces in a place that also allows those birdhouses. It’s a different sort of clientèle that is browsing from booth to booth.

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.

(click on any image for a larger view)
One clamp is missing because it was incomplete when it was shipped to me and I’m waiting for the replacement.

Before I get to using this jig I rough cut the sticks to about 7/8 inch.

Closeup of one of the clamps

End view, showing runner and channel

The channel is 3/4″ plus a spacer wide (you’ll see the spacer later on.) The jig is used by putting the rough cut blank in the groove, clamping down and running the jig along side the blade for a skim cut. Then rotate once and repeat.

Spacer in place

Now put the spacer in, rotate the block one more time, clamp it down, skim cut. Repeat one last time with the spacer in place.

In theory this gives us a fast, repeatable way of skim cutting sticks without endangering our fingers.

There is one small problem. For the first cut the clamps are [i][b]extremely[/b][/i] tight. Tight enough, in fact, that when I was testing this on pine I was leaving indentations in the wood. By the time i get to the last cut though, the clamps aren’t even touching the wood.

Thoughts on modifications?

So, if we presume the first jig does the right thing, here’s the second jig for cutting blocks and/or shorter sticks.

Block Jig

The permanent block is set for length 4 (4 times as long as it is square) and then the other spacers are so I can make cubes, 2x, and 3x blocks. I need one more clamp (like is on the first jig) to hold down the spacer block. The thin strip across the top is to prevent cut blocks from coming up after they’re cut.

Examples of cut blocks.

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.

An aside: I’m not sure why people take out their decks by hitting it with a circular saw, then advertise a pile of 2x material that’s all about 15″ long and think that it’s useful. I hope the people that pick it up aren’t burning it as most decks in this area are from pressure treated wood.

Speaking of pressure treated – yes, I do take precautions and wear both eye and breathing protection when cutting this stuff. I’m well aware of the dangers of breathing the chemicals. I have a nice hood that combines hearing, eye, and breathing (positive pressure) protection.

Once I’m done with painting the house (a least favorite job) then I’ll be back to wood cutting.

Now if I could find free wheels on craigslist . . .

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.

Our plan was to take her desk out, move my current one to the back corner, put the new one (also a corner unit) in the opposite corner to recreate the “wall” and all would be fine.

I, being a guy, really didn’t want to have to take apart the current desk to move it. I did take the heavy stuff off of it (well, most of it anyhow) before moving it around.

Now is where the fun part comes in. In the corners opposite the desks are a 6 ft oak book shelf (front) and an antique 4 drawer filing cabinet. As I start to rotate the desk around it becomes apparent just how much “stuff” has accumulated behind it. Stuff I now need to move out of the way because I need the space for moving the desk.

One pile moved, no problem.

Now we get to the next issue: there isn’t room for the desk to fit between the book shelf and the filing cabinet. So, remembering to take my wife’s porcelain angel off the top of the bookshelf, I move it by rotating 90 degrees (the back was against the wall) and moving it in front of the door to the back half of the basement.

The desk does make the corner (eventually) and I get it shoved back as far as it will go.

Now we have problems 2 and 3. The bookshelf no longer fits where it did before – at least in the same orientation. The bookshelf now has its back to the desk and faces the family room. I’ll just need to clean/sand off some grease pencil and add a bit of finish and the back will look just fine.

The filing cabinet won’t open more than about 1 1/2 inches. It might need to be turned – or it might need to be moved out entirely to a different place. We’ll have to see how much room the new desk leaves in that corner

The dogs are getting old and starting to have problems going up stairs, so I think I’m going to end up moving their kennel upstairs and the file cabinet over where the kennel is now.

I still need to finish cleaning up all the stuff that was behind the desk before I moved it as it was just moved most expeditiously out of the way and I can’t go upstairs right now.

Talk to you later.

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.

The plan is that the benches will all be the same height so I can use them for infeed or outfeed tables, etc. After doing what I needed to, I came to a conclusion: the workbench for the drum sander is going to be dedicated for just that purpose. It’s a heavy and unwieldy piece of equipment. The planer might be a little heavier but it has a handle.

I was thinking that I should build the top of the sander workbench thicker than the others. The top would be at the same height, but I’d build in a center well that the sander would fit in. This would leave the rest of the surface at the same level as the sander belt, meaning that the other benches and table saw could be used as infeed/outfeed tables.

Does this make sense?

In addition, I plan on drilling holes for bench dogs/hold downs and some of the smaller tools will be mounted on a platform that will fit into those holes so they don’t slide around while in use.

Any thoughts from the more experienced will be greatly appreciated.

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.

I didn’t get to try the rail and style set at all. That’s because I spent too much time trying to work out how to do the oven rack handles. It turns out that that’s sort of dependent on the wood. My plan was to make a template, do the rough cut on the band saw, then use a 3/8 pattern bit to smooth out the cuts.

To that end I made a template out of oak (because I have hardwood floor scraps around) and that worked fine. Then I tried to trim up the blanks I had already made. This is where the “dependent on the wood” part comes in. I made a mistake when I was last at Woodcraft and I misread the abbreviation on one of the scraps and ended up with Basswood (B) instead of Butternut (BN). Turns out that basswood has an issue on the router and wants to split out really easily. I’ll end up a) not buying basswood again and b) using the router to trim everything but those two corners and hit up the sander for that.

Of course, it is never as straightforward as you think it is going to be. I’ll be glad when I finally make connections with one of these people that are ripping out their decks and have enough 2by material to build the rolling workbenches I have in mind. I will then at least have a fighting chance to be able to find things that I’m looking for. I spent probably 30 minutes or so looking for the double stick tape I had picked up only to remember that it was back in the house. Then I had to run to Lowes to pick up some screws. Somehow when I took the router base off of the table I misplaced the screws that held it in. Since they’re #6 x 1/2″ brass, they’re not anything I have laying around. Of course, I looked for them first, taking up more time.

I had to do a minor repair on the Dust Deputy – well, properly speaking, it was on the motivation system. I ended up wrapping some electrical tape around the hose for the small vacuum in order to plug up some holes. I also wrapped some around the end where it plugs in to the DD in order to form a tighter fit. Not as good as a fitting, but it did help.

All in all, I didn’t get everything done that I wanted, but I did make progress. And it felt good.

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.

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.