Someone's got the woodworking bug...

My buddy, Ned, who was enrolled in the Bookcase class, brought in an article that he'd read in the Wall Street Journal. It was about a beetle infestation in trees in Colorado, which had turned the wood an interesting shade of blue. 

A resourceful woodworker decided to us the tinting in a line of furniture - and started The Azure Furniture Company.

Here's an interesting video of what he's doing.

 Speaking of Ned, last night he completed a piece in the Bookcase class. He has turned into quite a talented technician in wood; his attention to detail is amazing. Here is a  piece he completed. 

Another view.

He likes to stretch himself, and learn new things, and adding some inlaid tile details really make the top interesting. 

This piece was based on a table that I took a picture of at the Grove Park Inn, in Asheville, North Carolina. I'd shot a picture of it a year ago, and when we were discussing what he wanted to build I pulled this picture up on my iPhone. 

What a terrific piece of furniture he built, not just aesthetically speaking. He really raised his game, as far as technique and grain matching go. He could have been content to make a top using the wood as he purchased it, but instead, chose to laminate a butcherblock top - with side grain, resulting in a thicker, more substantial table top. A really nice touch to this piece. 

Ned even made some of those wooden snowflakes that I blogged about last week. How cool, he just whipped these up one night in his shop. 

Nice work, Ned! 

Happy Birthdays!

Happy Birthday to my good friend, Stacey!

And Kris! 

Girls at work

After last's night's bookcase class ended, I got into a discussion with a couple of people about woodworking with children. The ironic thing is that I'd just received a phone call, asking if an 11-year-old could enroll in one of my classes.  I'm still considering it - I like kids, and honestly, working with wood as a child is what sent me on my current path. 

Here's a great video about that exact subject - thanks to Eric for sending it my way!

Need a laugh?

This might be the funniest thing I've heard in ages. (Yes, I know it's been floating around the internet for a while.) 

It's hard to blog with tears in your eyes...

It's snowing...

Taking the plunge....

My Festool Domino and I have a love/hate relationship with each other. 

Lately, I've been trying to find a way to use it more. So when the current Bookcase class started, I decided to attempt a bookcase using nothing but Festool joinery - and I have to say.... (swoon) ... I was reminded of how this tool can really simplify things. 

I'm building a very narrow bookcase in the class, along with everyone else, and I decided to use Dominos for the corner joinery. Maybe it's not even a bookcase - it's only two feet wide, and I plan on putting a stack of drawers in the bottom of it. It may not even hold any books.  OK, the more I think of it - this piece is going to be more like a narrow dresser than a bookcase. 

Here's the sketch that led to this piece.

My sketches are pretty simple, just some dimensions and an overall shape. As I'm building the piece, I work out the details in my head - for example - this piece is going to have some color added to it, with Milkpaint. And possibly some carved drawer fronts. I totally got the carving bug after Dennis taught his carving class last summer.   

So this post isn't about the Domino, but rather making some plunge cuts using the tablesaw. Once all of the joinery was cut on these components, I needed to cut a 1/4" slot to hold the back. 

I'm not one of those furniture makers that likes to slap a back on the back of a piece, with its edges exposes. Rather, I house the back in a groove so the edges are hidden. I think it's a superior method, neater and streamlined.

The two pencil lines below mark where my bottom rail will be located. The plan is to cut s dado that stops in the middle of that rail. 

The blade is lowered to half the height of the wood, 

and the fence is set a half-inch away from the blade. 

With a shoulder square, 

I transfer the location of that rail to the top of my bookcase side.  

Before I begin cutting, I need to know exactly where that blade will cut into the wood. Here's how I determine that. 

With the fence marked, I can start cutting.

The blade leaves a rounded edge in the dado, 

but nothing a little chisel work can't fix. 

After cleaning up the corners, I assemble the corner to see how it looks. 

Here's that scrap of plywood in place. Sweet. 

Time to measure the back.

Doesn't everyone jot their measurements down on the closest thing - a scrap of wood?

The center shelf needs to be trimmed, it's going to sit just in front of the plywood back.  

I make a small test cut, to ensure it's the right size. 

Yup. It. Is. Perfect.  

I had every intention of showing you this piece clamped together, but I'm having some issues with the MilkPaint. For the past few days, I've been trying to mix a chocolate-y brown to use on the back of this cabinet - and every time I mix something, the color comes out wrong. I've wasted a sheet of 1/4" plywood, and three days on finding the right color - being a perfectionist isn't fun. I'll give it one more shot before I go to Plan B.

Stay tuned....

Oh look - they named these 2x3s after my buddy Dan.

Someone's in trouble....

Who plays Scrabble?

Damn, I wish I had a rec room in my house where I could put a few of these Scrabble sofas. Someone really came up with a fun idea with these. 

Of course, these pieces wouldn't be the same without the pillows - so I'm wondering how difficult it would be to find someone to make pillows like these.

Love Letter to Plywood

My buddy John sent a link to this video - damn! 

I loveLoveLOVE this video.

It is the kind of video I aspire to make someday - a geeky love-fest about something related to woodworking. This ten minute piece-of-genius will probably bore the heck out of you, if you're not into woodworking.

(That's a warning to my mom.) 

Otherwise - click on the title's white lettering to watch it on You-Yube. I recommend watching it full-screen, to really enjoy it!

(Thanks, John - this is way cool!)

Let's get organized...

There's not too much going on in the shop right now. I'm working on a few small commissions (two Air Force projects) and a couple of furniture repairs. As much as I don't enjoy repairing broken pieces, I do have to say I've gotten pretty damn good at it. 

My buddy Richard sent a picture of a cabinet he added to his shop - jeez, how do people stay so organized?  Look at his clamps!

Richard signed up for a cabinet class I offered last April, we all made small cabinets, mostly to learn the techniques for corner joints, and making drawers and doors. He added some wheels to his and turned it into a combination clamp cart and planing station. 

 I asked him if the planer make the whole thing a bit top heavy, but he said the clamps added quite a bit of ballast to the bottom, so it seems to work fine. By the way, the interior holds 6", 8", 12" and 18" clamps - with up to 13 on each row. The rack on the outside holds 15 - 24" clamps.

It's always nice when you can make your workshop more efficient - there are tons of plans and ideas out there for helping with that. But - the hard part is to adapt those plans to what fits in your workshop. I think Richard did a great job of turning this cabinet project into something both useful and attractive. I've never been to his shop, but I suspect it's pretty orderly and clean... like mine!  (Not!)

Who loves outtakes?

Eye protection tip for today

Remember - observe all chainsaw safety rules, including use of protective eyewear. 

Imagine having to answer the question “Hey, what happened to your eye?”

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Tool repairs? No problem!

Whenever someone offers to give me a tool, I usually take it. Even if I can't use it, someone I know probably can. 

So - when a buddy offered this compressor to me, I jumped at it, 

even though it a had an obvious problem. Parts of the manifold were missing. Ruh-roh.

That's what the internet and a credit card are for, right?  In no time, I'd ordered the manifold, and hoped that was all that was wrong with the compressor. 

Fast forward a few days - the part came in the mail, and it was time to put the tool on the bench and figure out how to take it apart. 

Luckily,  there were only two screws that were holding things up. This one, 

and this one. Once they were removed, you can swing the motor out of the way and remove the old manifold by unscrewing it. 

The new one even came with a replacement nipple. And you know how we feel about that!

Screwing the new one on took about thirty seconds.

All that was left was to reconnect the pressure hose - pretty simple, once I found a small hose clamp. (The new manifold came with a clamp, but it was the kind that needed a special crimping tool, so I chose not to use it.)

Most repairs aren't this simple - I was lucky this time. I don't think it took more than ten minutes to do this repair. I found the perfect cart for this compressor at the local swap meet; it makes it really easy to roll around the shop. 

 No compressor is complete without a hose, and I've been spoiled by a hose that my buddy Dan gave me last year. So I hunted down another. 

Once you use one of these, you'll never want to use any other kind. They don't kink, they coil smoothly, and they're lightweight. Seriously it's a hybrid polymer hose with zero memory, so it lies perfectly flat, wherever you're using it. 

Spoil yourself. 

Guacamole, anyone?

Leave it to my friend Eric to send me one of the coolest videos I've ever seen! 

Enjoy!

Turn, Turn, Turn

When the cooler weather hits, I tend to lose all motivation. So when I had a free afternoon today, I had to bribe myself to get back into the shop.

I wanted to finish those three small rolling pins that I started a few weeks ago, but it was chilly in the shop. 

Coffee and sweets help.

Remember I had roughed these out, and coated them with polyurethane, so that the moisture wouldn't leave the wood too quickly. 

I put one back in the lathe, and turned the cylinder down to the right diameter;

 it's easy to check the size with my caliper. 

The end was just a simple curved dome. 

One of the best things about working on the lathe is that you can sand and finish the piece, all while it's still mounted in the lathe. 

Sanding makes a ton of dust, 

I put a piece of cardboard under the wood, so I wouldn't splatter oil all over the lathe. 

These rolling pins probably aren't going to be used - so I applied a coat of wax to each one, too. The heat that is generated while the piece is spinning melts the wax and makes the piece of wood feel amazing. 

All that is left is to deal with the ends - 

I like to make a thin score with a dovetail saw while the piece is spinning slowly in the lathe. I just want to get the cut started; I am careful to not go all the way through. 

With this end scored,

 the band saw finishes the removal of the scrap. Now some people would just slice the end off without scoring it, but I've never had good luck doing that. I like to rotate the piece while cutting it, to get a nice, clean slice. 

 Once the scrap ends are removed, 



I polished the rolling pin end with a pad sander, and then oiled it.  The grain was amazing. 

And here they are - three rolling pins, finished in about two hours. 

These might seem a little inefficient  - rolling pins that are only a foot long. But - it's more about remembering the tree that this wood came from. 

That mighty oak that was probably a few hundred years old; I love the idea that the tree will be remembered with these.