A special project with my favorite wood...

Last year, my buddy Steve took a trip back to Ohio, and asked if I needed anything from my old favorite lumberyard - Yoder Lumber. They have one of the largest selections of domestic lumber I've ever seen, with boards stacked to the top of their 30 foot ceilings.

Their kilns were constantly drying wood, and the hum

activity is ever present.

Steve brought back some Sassafras for me - it's truly one of the woods I've missed the most from back east. Sassafras trees are an important food for wildlife, and it in commonly used in a variety of our daily products - from root beer flavoring to medicinal products.

If you've never worked with it, I highly recommend tracking down some. The most striking thing about it is its fragrance.

The smell of sarsaparilla floats through the air when you're working with this wood, what a nice change from the acrid smell of Oak, or the sharp smell of Walnut.

I've had another bed design rolling around in my head, and finally sketched it the other day using the simple design program - MacDraft. I've used MacDraft for so long, I can come up with a scaled drawing in just minutes. I think that's the key to finding a design program - find one that you like and stick with it. The more you use it, the easier it will be to use.

Some students of mine recently build some tables, and used tapered legs with their design. When I use tapers, I usually put the thinnest part of the taper on the floor, but for their tables, they reversed it, putting the beefiest part of the leg on the floor, and tapering up to thinner on top. The effect was stunning, and I've been thinking about using that in something ever since.

I usually make the side rails for a bed last, but in this case, I didn't have a lot of wood, so I pulled out the boards that I thought would best work as rails and decided to start there. These were about six inches wide, which is perfect for what I had in mind.

Here they are, planed and ready for trimming to size.

I really like this beefy bed hardware from Rockler. I try to keep a couple of sets of them in stock, you just never know when someone is going to need a set.

Once the rails were machined to size, I started the hardware installation on the ends of the board. I recently did this on another bed, so it was fresh in my mind, and went very quickly. Well, actually, I installed the hardware a different way, using an edge guide and my plunge router - and accomplished it in about half the time.

Pull out the routers,

plunge the bit flush to the base (not with the router on!)

and then use a piece of the hardware to set your depth. The bit will now extend that exact thickness past the baseplate,

thus cutting your mortise the precise depth of the hardware.

Here are the boards, clamped together

and the first mortise is cut.

You'll have to square up the corners of the mortise with a chisel, it's easy in Sassafras.

Screwed in place with some long, beefy screws.

And here they are finished and oiled. I still have to go back and apply a ledger strip that will hold the mattress decking, but I wanted to get some oil on these first.

Stay tuned for part two - I'll be making the posts for the head and footboard, and then tapering them. The shop is going to smell heavenly when I get done with all that milling.

It makes me crave a root bear float right now, just thinking about it!

Time for a quickie....

Well, this is a little embarrassing to admit, but my knife drawer at home is a mess. Or should I say - it was a mess. I finally grew tired of looking at all of them rolling around, and decided this was the day for fix that problem.

Anyone who has been in my office has seen a couple of dozen cutting boards sitting (unfinished) on a shelf. I'm on cutting board overload. I picked out one that I knew would fit into my drawer,

and made one angled cut, and then a series of cuts (kerfs) to remove most of the wood.

I broke out the remaining pieces, and then "shaved" the rest over the blade, to clean up the cuts.

Before I left my house, I made a quick trace of each knife on a piece of cardboard.

Using the tracings, I cut kerfs into the block of wood, making each one a different length, based on the length of the blades.

It only took me about 20 minutes, from start to finish - I know it pisses off certain people when I say things like that. Don't do the eye roll, don't be a hater.

Sometimes - doing a little thing like this for yourself can really brighten up your day. If you're like me, you have a long list of stuff you're trying to accomplish this summer. My best advice - pick the easiest two or three and do them - now!

Cross them off your list. You'll feel better.

I know I do!

Oh no! Black stains on wood!

There has been a little debate lately among my woodworking buddies about scrapers. John E was having some trouble getting a burr on his scraper, and enlisted the help of several people here in town, still without any luck. It started me thinking about my scraper situation. I don't use them all that often, but sometimes, a scraper is the only tool that will do the trick.

I ran into a neighbor on the Fourth of July who asked if I would apply a little TLC to his 50 year old cutting board. His dad had made it, so it had a lot of sentimental value. Working on projects like that make me nervous. What if they blow up in the planer, and then you've destroyed someone's favorite possession?

As it turns out, the board was too wide to fit into the planer anyway. It was badly warped and didn't sit flat on a countertop.

Oh great - more stress!

I cut it apart, and ran the fresh edges over the jointer. The piece went back together flat! I used a few Dominos in it, to align everything while I glued it back together. Sometimes, bar clamps leave an ugly black stain on your wood - it's the reaction of metal on wood from the moisture from the glue. The tannins in the wood react quite fiercely with metal - it is really evident on oak, which has a high concentration of tannic acid in it.

Black stains on oak desks are really common - ever leave a sweaty water glass on your oak top over night? You'll get a hideous black water ring, under the right conditions. This blog post is great for giving you an idea about what they look like, and how to eliminate them. This one is good, too.

I've had good luck using Oxalic acid for getting rid of those nasty black stains. But in this case, I pulled out my trusty Kunz scraper. I like this tool so much better than a simple card scraper, the burr on the edge stays rolled much longer. I've had this tool forever, and pulling it out is like calling an old friend on the phone. (If that makes any sense!)

When you're using a scraper, you should see small shavings of wood like this, not sawdust.

The good news is - the the cutting board went together quite nicely, the glue and stains were cleaned up quickly, and I applied a few coats of oil to it. It lost a little of its golden patina from being fifty years old, but that's OK.

My neighbor couldn't have been more pleased.

A Followup on that Carved Box

This will be a quick update to my last post about making a box around that carved panel. When I set hinges, I usually cut my mortises by hand, with a chisel. Old school.

But - I had so many to do, that I set up my router to cut away most of the wood.

If you use an edge guide on the router, it's pretty simple. Here it is, roughed out.

I scribed the two outside edges of the hinge with an X-Acto knife, and then cut away the excess right up to the edges. The rest chips away really easily. This mortise was cut and the hinge installed in about two minutes. Sweet.

The only thing left is to install a chain, to keep the lid from tipping the whole box over.

Sure, I can make it!

Someone stopped by the shop a few weeks ago, asking if I could turn one of his carvings into a wine box. My motto is - sure, I can make it! I had no idea what to expect - when some people call themselves carvers, their work turns out to be... well, whittles.

Imagine my surprise when he showed up with this.

It measures about eight by fourteen inches.

He had picked out the box material, as well - in this case, a nice piece of walnut. I like to use a solid board, so that the grain matches and wraps all the way around the box. When I was a rookie woodworker, I would use four pieces of whatever I had laying around. Big mistake. If you're going to go to the trouble of making a box, why would you want to do anything but that?

All I seem to be making these days is boxes. Funny, sometimes months will go by without anyone requesting one. This month? Box-mania.

Rough cut the board to manageable pieces,

and then set the blade to 45 degrees.

When you have an edge straight from the mill, you'll want to rough cut that board a little longer, in case there are some cracks on the end of the board.

You'll want to trim those off. Way off.

Cut a miter on one end of each board,

and then mark your pieces for their second cut, which will determine the length of the box.

Use a stop block clamped to the miter gauge fence, so that you cut your pieces to the proper length. Remember, the two sides are the exact same length, and the front and back are the same length.

All that is left to do is cut the grooves (they're called dados) for the top and bottom panels.

Once everything is cut, do a dry fit to make sure your miters close up.

I've found that being very methodical about gluing helps make the process go smoothly. After doing a test fit, I "explode" the box open, so that the parts are arranged exactly how they should be glued together. I can't tell you how easy it is to screw something up at this point.

This might be my five-thousandth box - I wish I'd kept track of every one that I've made. My family and friends have boxes of mine from various stages of my career, and I cringe when I look at some of them!

And yes, I can make your iPod sing.

(Don't ask how I got an official Apple employee shirt.)

I'll post pictures when the box is hinged - I think it's going to be fabulous!

Happy Fourth of July

The shop is officially on its Fourth of July break, but I thought I'd post a follow-up of that Air Force retirement box that I finished a few weeks ago. The family who commissioned it for their friend sent me these photos, taken at the presentation ceremony.

I love the fact that they have a jet on the stage, as a backdrop for the ceremony!

Meanwhile, it is a sad day in Mayberry. RIP, Sheriff Taylor.

Hope everyone has a safe and relaxing holiday!

Woodshop maintenance, and how to reward yourself afterward

(Some people have been having problems reading this post, I think Blogger is having some issues right now. I'm going to change the font, with hope that this will correct the problem.)

You know there is never any end to the maintenance that goes on at the school, right? Our weekly routine includes sharpening chisels, sweeping floors, emptying dust collectors... the list goes on and on.

Luckily, the more intensive jobs aren't necessary as often - but after someone ran a board with staples in it (from the lumberyard) - the jointer needed some TLC. I've blogged about changing the jointer blades on more than a few occasions, and those posts get the most hits on a weekly basis. (Thanks, Google stats!) I think that means most people are a little hesitant to change their blades without seeing the process first.

So let's do this again....

First, take off the blade cover. Well.... actually, that's second. First - let's unplug the machine. Right?

Taking the blades out isn't usually difficult - you loosen the four gib screws and the pressure on the blade is released. The blades just slide out.

But this one gave us fits! There was one gib that was stripped,

and no matter what we tried, we couldn't loosen it. We pretty much had every tool in the shop pulled out, to no avail.

Well... it HAD to come out, so a little gentle persuasion with a big-ass hammer loosened it up. Unfortunately, it trashed the blade. That blade served me well, it is over 20 years old, so I can't complain.

Time to clean the cutterhead from all the crap that had built up on it. This stuff works really well, but as soon as I sprayed it, we all started coughing and gasping for air. It felt like we'd just inhaled E-Z Off Oven Cleaner. My recommendation? Spray it and run away for a few minutes!

It's also pretty caustic, so wear gloves.

The crap on that cutterhead just melts away.

But the smell was so harsh, everyone took off and left me to clean it by myself. Smart people!

My blade sharpening people will hopefully be able to make a new knife.

If you want to see how the blades get re-installed, this old blog post will help.

Another part of that old post - this is the way NOT to tighten the guard down, once you've set the knives. Don't watch it if you're allergic to bad language.

Everything put back together. Let's check the fence for squareness to the table.

Nice.

Back in business.

We're not only about hard work at the shop - Eric brought in some olive oils and bread for us to try.

They were inconspicuously marked, and we all dipped and tasted.

The oranges cleansed out palates,

as well as the tequila shots we shared.

His test proved we're not only monster woodworkers, but savvy about our oils - we picked out the best oil from the blind test. It was so much fun, we're doing it again next week!

All in a day's work! Thanks to everyone for their help and moral support!