The Wooden Nickel

Portfolio

2010-11-03T21:01:00.003-06:00

Don't mind me, I'm just posting some pictures for an architect who recently contacted me regarding a potential commission. We'll return to our regularly scheduled program soon...

Rendering

2010-02-19T10:40:00.010-07:00

When I was out at the IP I met a guy named Cory Roberts. I had actually just missed him in Almonte the previous year, where he took a woodworking course immediately before me at the Rosewood Studio. A designer from Ontario, Cory was taking a week long course at the IP school while I was a resident there. Cory works for some big branding firm that designs things like packaging for Liptons and Frito Lays and what not. He's a big wig with a corner office and in his executive bathroom he urinates into a waterfall that cascades down a wall of pure cubic zirconia. He's very rich too, I think he actually owns the color blue.

Anyways, he brought with him a scrapbook with literally hundreds of furniture designs. Some were pencil sketches, some were marker renderings. We all drooled over his ability to illustrate his ideas, which seemed endless. In a daring armed robbery I stole the drawing below. I know he won't mind me posting it here because he's a whore for attention, and deathly afraid of me.

One of the classes I have in my Architecture program is Presentation, where we learn various rendering techniques. Next year the focus is almost entirely digital but in the first year it's all pencil crayons and markers. Coloring class! It's kinda fun. This past week has been reading week and I had the opportunity to take an illustration workshop from the great Mike Lin, a highly sought after illustrator and author. He holds regular workshops at his studio in San Francisco but a few times a year he travels to various schools to hold two day classes. It was a good experience and made me want to pony up the two grand to take his week long workshop in Cali.

One of the first things he does is give everyone a line drawing of a building and gives you five minutes to render it. First in pencil crayon then in marker. Here's mine:

Pretty kindergarten-esque hey? There were actually some in the class that were much worse! There was a bit of panic involved in these 'pre-test' as Mike doesn't tell you he's going to do it, he just says 'you have 5 minutes to render this, GO!'. And then when everyone is mortified at what pathetic artists they are, Mike wanders around and shows the entire class the worst, pointing out how shitty everyone's drawings are. And then the afternoon of the second day you do a 'post-test' where you apply the techniques he taught. I wonder if anyone else is posting their before pictures on their blogs? Or if they're burning them?

After:

I'm looking forward to practicing and applying these techniques to architectural, interior, and furniture design. One day maybe I'll get to piss on fake diamonds too!

Phases. Converted.

2010-01-30T16:19:00.008-07:00

When I bought my milling machine a couple years ago I was suddenly faced with the challenge of how to create three phase power. I ended up buying a 3hp VFD (Variable Frequency Drive) and hard-wiring it directly to my mill, which worked ok. For some reason, even though the mill was 2hp and the VFD 3hp, the VFD would trip when I started the motor. I had to turn the speed control right down, turn on the motor, and once it was running I could ramp it up to full speed. Other than that minor inconvenience, it was fine. When I bought my D&W bandsaw I took the VFD off the mill and tried to use it, with marginal success. My bandsaw has the original cast iron motor, refurbished, and I've read from several sources that old electric motors don't like the power created by a VFD, and may actually burn out prematurely as a result. Obviously I didn't want that.

Last summer I found an ebay store that sold phase converters either as a complete package or as a kit. I decided to buy a kit and assemble it myself. Essentially a kit contains all the parts necessary to assemble a static phase converter. All you need is a box to assemble it in. The other option is to build a rotary converter, but you need to find a 3 phase motor to use as a slave. Having heard all sorts of bad things about static converters, I opted to try and find a used motor and build a rotary converter. Unfortunately my search for a cheap, or preferably free, motor had been fruitless for months until finally I found a motor from an unlikely source. I had been calling around to scrap yards and surplus dealers to no avail, and then one day last week I decided to call an electrical contractor in town to see if he knew where I might find a cheap used motor. Dart Electric is the company that wired my house, and I learned very quickly that they are meticulous when it comes to billing. Every inch of wire in my house, every marrette and screw was charged back to me at full retail prices. Apprentices were billed out at full journeyman rates, and even when they came back to fix their own screwup they tried to bill me their hours.

Anyhow, I called and chatted with them for a couple minutes and was told to stop by and take a look through their storage sheds. A quick search turned up a 10hp, 3ph motor in what appeared to be good condition. 'It's yours, you're doing me a favor by getting rid of it' I was told. Woohoo!

When I picked the motor up I made a quick stop at the shop where I used to work to chop off the shaft. I didn't want to run the risk of something getting wound up in it, and cutting it off was easier than making a guard.

Looks complicated, but it's pretty simple. The silver capacitors are run caps, and the black capacitors are start caps. The two things in the top are contacts, to switch from start to run caps as needed. Unfortunately the diagram I got with the kit was horrible, but the seller was quick (almost instant in fact) to answer my numerous questions throughout the process.

This is my fancy Sawstop test bench. I was a bit sheepish the first time I fired it up, there's alot of capacitors in that box. I once saw a demonstration of the stored electrical potential in the tiny little capacitors from a disposable camera flash. It was nuts, it melted a screwdriver!

All done, it took about 6 hours total. Initially I thought that I would install the converter near the main panel and run a plug in somewhere near the bandsaw, but I decided it would be better to keep it close so I can turn it on and off as needed. My bandsaw is the only machine that needs 3 phase right now so I hardwired it directly to the converter. I've already noticed how much quieter the D&W runs off the converter compared to the VFD, and I'm happy to see that I can run the converter, bandsaw, and jointer all at once without tripping a breaker.

I'm one step closer to running out of excuses for my lack of woodworking productivity!

Dust. Collected.

2010-01-24T14:46:00.008-07:00

While I'm really itching to start a project, (I've got several pending) I have a tick list of workspace things I need to get finished before I get rolling. My bench was an important step, it's nice to finally have a permanent place for all my hand tools - I've never had that before. I built a tool board for chisels & planes, and was starting to build a row of little cubbies for misc. bench crap when I was forced to change directions. I was rough milling some mahogany for said cubbies when my allergies got the better of me. I've always had mild allergies but over the last few years they've gotten considerably worse. Dust, smoke, stuff like that can stuff me up for days. It sucks.

Anyhow, I bought this 2hp cyclone dust collector almost a year and a half ago but never set it up. Right now my machines are set up in my little garage but initially I thought it might be temporary, I hoped to convert one of the numerous outbuildings into a larger, more functional space for a shop. I figured I would just hang on before setting up the dust collector. I didn't want to run all the ducts and whatnot just to pack up and move. It so happens though that my garage has turned into an adequate space for now, and I doubt if I'll move out of it anytime soon. A couple weeks back I finally bit the bullet and started setting up the cyclone.

I hummed and hawed over a location for the dust collector, as it has quite a large footprint. Finally I decided to set it up outside. It's less than ideal, but it's quieter out there and doesn't take up any shop space. And besides, 'less than ideal' is beginning to be my motto!

Obviously I'll have to build an enclosure around the dust collector before it starts raining in the spring. For now I throw a tarp over it when not in use. Duct shopping proved to be a frustrating experience. Initially I looked at normal HVAC ducts and it looked like the duct work was going to cost more than the dust collector! Eventually I found a company in Edmonton that manufactures their own ductwork and fittings, and it ended up being considerably cheaper. I gave up trying to find actual 'dust collection ducts', that shit seems to be a myth! Anyhow, I ran all 26 ga 6" spiral ($1.99/ft) and bought most of the fittings at Rona. I bought blast gates at Busy Bee.

The setup is pretty simple, the main is teed right off the machine. One line runs to the tablesaw and one goes across the roof, tees again, and down to a manifold that branches off to the bandsaw, jointer, planer, and a sweep. I capped the other side of the tee but hope to run it to my chopsaw and router table... eventually. I was dissapointed to see that my 'industrial' tablesaw only has a 4" collection fitting that only goes up to the shroud that covers the arbor, there's no actual dust collection for the cabinet itself. I guess we'll see how it goes.

I built a shroud for the underside of the bandsaw table from a side take-off, but it needs some tweaking. I want to hold it in place with rare earth magnets, so it can just be popped off for blade changes and table tilting, but the magnets I used weren't strong enough to support the weight of the hose. I'll get some bigger ones to try, but if they don't work I might have to think of something else. I guess I could just use some tie-wire, that's pretty farmer-ish though!

Pre-Fab Base

2010-01-01T21:57:00.008-07:00

While searching through a bunch of wood for some material to make a jaw for my front vise, I came across this piece of 12/4 maple. Look whose name was on the bottom.

If I remember correctly I stole this from Ian in a daring armed robbery. He deserves to be stolen from though, because he's so rich, handsome, and successful. I'm a modern day Robin Hood.

The best part of my previous bench was the base, which I'm re-using. I built it from a huge beam of recycled fir that I believe was salvaged from a bridge out by the Bugaboos. If Rane is still lurking on these blogs he might know more. I worked with him at the timber-framing shop, and he worked there long before me. That's where I got the beam, I bought it from my boss. Rane helped me pull nails out of it; spikes actually.

Before:

After:

You can tell I was working in a timber-framing shop at the time, the joinery is all post and beam style. I really like the joint that attaches the stretchers to the legs. I don't know what it's called but it's the best knock down wedged tenon I've ever came across. The wedge won't eventually split the tenon like other types, and the weight of the tenoned piece alone is enough to hold the joint together. I drew a quick sketch below.

Metal Wagon

2009-12-31T09:30:00.011-07:00

I really like the wagon vise hardware that Benchcrafted makes, and at $350 it might be worth it, but I decided I would attempt to build my own. I mean, I gotta do something with that milling machine!

I bought a 1-1/4" screw and nut from the local fastener place (uncreatively named 'Nut & Bolt') and a handle from Busy Bee Tools in Edmonton. One of the things that struck me immediately about benchcrafted's wagon vise is the lack of a big ugly wooden handle - cool! One thing that really drove the price up was the fact that the screw and nut have to be left hand thread if you want the vise to work in the traditional 'righty tighty, lefty loosey' fashion. It takes a bit to visualize, but in almost every vise configuration the nut is stationary and the screw moves, whereas in this style of wagon vise the nut is on the carrier and the screw is stationary. Therefore the threads must be reversed to make it work properly. So anyways, a screw and nut alone cost $200, more than half of the benchcrafted vise. Darn...

I turned a shoulder onto the screw to accept a 'garter', and an appropriate sized shaft to mount the wheel. For the carrier I had initially planned on building something similar to the Benchcrafted vise, where the two perpendicular pieces are machined & bolted together, but decided it would be quicker to machine the whole assembly out of a piece of 4" angle iron. It took some torch/press work to get the angle iron square, but once it was close I used my milling machine to true up the 'runners' and drill all the necessary holes. I used hot forged angle iron, because it's all I had kicking around, but for accuracy's sake it would've been better to use cold forged, which is usually much more flat and square, and doesn't have all the ugly heat scale that should be sand blasted off.

Again, my original intention was to machine three 1/4" bolts to hold the nut to the angle iron but decided instead to weld it. It's not as nice looking but it's soooo much faster and stronger. I would've liked to sandblast it once it was done but the only sandblaster I have access to is used to blast entire buildings, so it seemed overkill to fire it up for this!

To hold the screw to the end of the bench a garter is used. It's just two half moon disks that sit inside the shoulder I machined into the end of the screw. I had thought that maybe I would use brass but finally decided that Wenge would look cooler, and I have a bunch of scraps from a previous project.

First I cut a 2-1/2" circle with a holesaw, then used a forstner to drill a 1/2" hole in the center. The screw holes were drilled next. Once all the appropriate holes were drilled I shaved off the garter with the tablesaw, making sure to stick a piece of scrap to the face to keep the offcut from falling into the blade.

And then I split it in half with a zona saw and countersunk the holes. Done, and it only took about 10 minutes.

I decided to use maple for the runners rather than metal, and I attached them with lag screws in oversized holes so I could make a bit of adjustment if necessary.

I drilled the hole through the end cap of the bench a bit oversized to allow some adjustment with the garter placement, and unfortunately getting the vise to operate smoothly through the whole range of movement is a bit tricky. With the vise fully closed the nut is 8" away from the garter, and so the bit of backlash in the system is enough play that everything doesn't need to be perfectly aligned to work smoothly. As the nut approaches the garter however, there gets to be less and less play, and if the garter is not exactly centered it will bind the screw up. It took lots of messing around, but I eventually got it positioned correctly. There has to be a better way to get everything accurately lined up though. Hmmmm...

Benched

2009-12-28T16:05:00.007-07:00

I have 3 weeks off school for xmas, so between all the sitting on the couch and eating 8-10 meals a day I've been rebuilding the top of my workbench. I built my bench while I was working at a timberframing shop in Invermere BC in 2004. It originally had a tailvise that I purchased from Atlas Machine in Toronto (if you have 'The Workbench Book" it's the tailvise that Michael Fortune designed for his bench) but no front vise because I never made my mind up about what to use. Unfortunately the benchtop warped very badly when I brought it back here to Alberta and despite my repeated attempts to flatten it I eventually admitted defeat. The warpage caused the tailvise to become inoperable and I had planed the top down so much I had almost reached the 'shoulder' of the dog holes on one corner.

After doing some research before starting my new benchtop I decided to forgo the tailvise and instead incorporate a wagon vise. The first wagon vise I saw was the one used on the Roubo bench on Khalaf Oud Luthiery's blog: www.oudluthier.blogspot.com (which is where the image below is from).

I have since seen a couple other versions, none as pretty as the one shown above however. The thing I like about the wagon vise is how rigid it is. When I was at the IP it seemed like I was constantly having to tweak my tailvise to get it flat to the benchtop, which isn't a concern with a wagon vise. The obvious disadvantage is the lack of ability to clamp pieces on-edge perpendicular to the front apron.

I've mentioned in recent posts how much maple costs in these parts, so in order to reduce costs I only made the top 1-1/2" thick, which is a bit scant. Realistically though, I don't forsee myself working on huge heavy pieces where a bench's rigidity may be called to question, and if I do see some deflection in the top I can always stiffen it up somehow.

After using a few different benches there were definitely a few things I wanted to incorporate into this bench, like lots of dog holes. It's frustrating when dog holes are spaced 3-4 inches apart because sometimes the piece you're planing ends up being 'between holes' and you have to either open your vise up super far or add a piece of scrap between your work and the dog. I also added a row of round dog holes because there's so many good workholding gizmos out there designed for them. Cutting all the dog holes was by far the single most labor intensive step, but I prefer using square dogs for planing.

Man, you sure need lots of clamps to build a benchtop. Even though I don't really like them I bought 5 pipe clamps just for this glue up. I clamped aluminum extrusions on either end to help keep the whole assembly flat - it worked well.

Next step - build the vise.

Lotsa Wood

2009-11-14T10:12:00.010-07:00

There's a place in Edmonton, WG Chanin Hardwoods, that has a ridiculous assortment of both exotic & domestic wood.

The guy who owns/operates it is Gary Chanin, who is possibly the most knowledgeable person I've ever spoken to about wood. He has endless energy, and will talk your ear off if you let him.

Buying wood from Gary is not without frustration however. As you can see, his inventory is far from organized and if you're looking for something specific the usual response is 'Oh yeah, I've got a couple lifts of it, beautiful stuff! But I don't know when I'll be able to get to it'. I asked about doussie once and he pointed to a couple lifts of it wayyyy in the back. He thought he might get to it in a couple months. I know that he has some air-dried domestic pear though, and he also gets lots of really wide planks of mahogany and bubinga.

The other unfortunate thing is his prices, they are the highest you'll find anywhere. He almost has that 'Robert Prince' attitude, where you get the feeling that he's collecting the wood rather than trying to sell it. I was there last week to buy a couple of planks of maple, I had left PJ White empty-handed - digusted at the crap they were trying to sell. Gary charged me $9.70 a board foot! Nice stuff, but twice the price of PJ's. I also overheard him telling a customer that he had a lift of quarter sawn olive, for $70 a board foot. Yikes.

Anyways, if you're looking for something specific or special I'd give him a call, he's always willing to chat.

28 Days Later

2009-10-30T19:05:00.003-06:00

My hand is coming along, slowly but surely. The stitches have all dissolved and the last of the dead tissue has finally been peeled away. It's going to take a long time for the tissue to grow back on the ring and middle fingers though, and there's a big oozy hole that might actually need plastic surgery to close up because of its location - right on top of the knuckle.

And so I bought a SawStop. There's a woodworking show going on in Edmonton this weekend, and this afternoon I stopped by. There were three retailers selling SawStop machines. I chatted with all three and learned that one of them had a machine in their shop that had been returned recently. A school had bought 2 machines this past summer, but after running them for a month they decided they needed a second bandsaw more than a second tablesaw. I went to their shop and looked at it, and of course you can't tell it isn't brand new. So a 3hp industrial saw with a 52" fence, regular $4300, was $2900. Still more than I can afford being a starving student, thank god for good credit!

I really need to do something with all these machines I'm gathering up! I believe a project is in order...

Blood & Gore

2009-10-05T19:54:00.004-06:00

Sometimes the simplest of things go very very wrong.

I was building a door frame this weekend and while I was cutting the rabbets in the jambs I had a hell of a wreck. I was pushing the wood against the fence with a push block, above and slightly behind the blade, and the jamb must have tipped away from the fence because suddenly it kicked back slightly, sending the push block into the blade. I guess I was caught off balance because I let go of the block as it was thrown back towards me, sending my left hand into the side of the blade.

At that point I decided that the best course of action was to run circles around my yard, top speed, screaming my head off.

After a few minutes I finally gathered my wits, wrapped up my hand, and phoned my folks. Then I commenced the circle running until they showed up and took me to the ER. After almost fainting and damn near puking I was laying in the trauma room, nurses and doctors running around saying incredibly reassuring things like 'yow, what a mess' and 'I don't know if we can even stitch that'. At one point, while the doctor was giving me one of eight 'blocking' needles in my hand (which hurt every bit as as bad as running my hand into the blade) a nurse ACTUALLY asked me 'on a scale of one to ten, how bad is the pain?'. And then I called her bad things...

Anyways, after the smoke had cleared it wasn't really that bad - considering how bad it COULD have been. It took 65 stitches to close it all up, and I lost a tiny piece off the top of my pinkie and at least two of my nails are long gone, but I didn't sever any tendons and I didn't lose any digits. Phew!

After I got back home I went into the shop, turned off my still-running saw, and surveyed the aftermath. The thing that I was left with was this: I wasn't doing anything precarious or unusual, I wasn't using the machine in a way it wasn't intended for, and I thought I was taking the necessary safety precautions. It all happened instantly, there was no time to counteract the inevitable. The last couple weeks have been rough, I've had a couple crappy things happen and have had a lot on my mind. I was working on the door frame at a dogged pace and my heart wasn't in it - I should've just walked away. Inattentiveness caused the accident. It would have been just as easy to lose a finger, or a whole hand, I got away lucky with 65 stitches.

The pictures below are pretty gruesome, pan down at your own risk.

Higher Learnin'

2009-09-03T09:36:00.004-06:00

About a year ago I thought 'I hate what I'm doing'. I was working as a project manager for the family-owned drilling company, and while I realized that me taking over the business wasn't in the cards, I continued working there because the money was good. I've always enjoyed building things but I also really enjoy drafting and designing. Years ago I played around with taking architecture but was talked out of it. 'The oil industry is where the money is' I was told. Well, that's true, but it's a shitty soulless environment that in 12 years I've never learned to enjoy.

So here I am, three weeks into the 'Architecture Technology' program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. I chose the two year diploma program over the six year professional Architect program because I've always felt that a professional program has a way to pigeon hole people when they graduate, and I know that I'm only ever happy when I'm allowed to do a variety of different things.

It's weird being back in school, but exciting to be doing something new. I'm by far the oldest person in the program and I find myself constantly shaking my head in disbelief at the mentality of the 17-22 yr olds I'm surrounded by. It's fun though, and projects like the model building exercise in the picture above make me look forward to getting to school every morning.

So anyways, I still have some unfinished business with my house that I'm going to keep picking away at, I actually just began building a large vacuum press to help with the construction of an entry door. I'll keep updating the blog as I pick away at wood-worky type things, but the posts may be spaced a long ways apart.

Pete's Page

2009-08-13T08:24:00.003-06:00

Just a quick note. My friend Pete, who's shop in Brooklyn I posted pics of a few months back, finally has a website. His Wife Maura is actually doing it for him, and she says there's more editing to do, but the initial effort is looking great. Check it out:

www.heilmandesign.com

New Old Saw

2009-07-09T20:39:00.007-06:00

A couple months back I was working in my garage building cabinets when my mom showed up with a friend of hers, Eileen. My mom gave Eileen a tour of my house renovation and afterwards they wandered over to the garage and the three of us chatted for a few minutes. Eileen looked around at my mess of tools & machines and said 'Bill (her husband) bought this old table saw years ago and he's never done anything with it, it just sits there. You should come get it". I didn't think much of it at the time because, A: I didn't think that Bill would share her enthusiasm at giving his tools away for free, and B: I just figured the table saw would be some old piece of shit. So last weekend my dad happened to be out at Bill and Eileen's place (they live a couple hours away) and he came home with the tablesaw in his trailer. I was delighted to see that it was a 12" Poitras with a sliding table! It is certainly suffering from years of neglect but it's definitely worth the time to rebuild.

I had to borrow my dad's skid steer to move the saw into a storage shed at my place.

Unfortunately the saw has sat out in the weather for a few years so the trunnion is seized up and the table is getting fairly pitted with rust. The sliding table still works well though. It slides smoothly and doesn't have any play in it. I don't think I'll keep the original fence though. I'm pretty sure it outweighs me.

The first order of business is to get the table off and the trunnion out. I'm going to get the motor tested, I'll soak the trunnion in diesel fuel overnight to free it up, and I'll take the table and cabinet to work one day and sand blast it all. I'll probably take the table to a guy I know in Edmonton who has a 48"x64" surface grinder. The table appears to be nice and flat, but sandblasting is fairly abrasive and won't leave a very smooth finish. The motor is 5hp, 3ph, and has a square housing. I hope it's in good enough condition to rebuild, because it appears to be an un-standard frame. Something I find interesting is that it's direct drive, no belt, I'm not sure how I feel about that. Direct drive is nice because there's no belts to slip, and tends to allow more torque, but it's more difficult to deal with runout or vibration. It's much simpler to true and balance an arbor than it is a motor armature. Again, I hope the motor is in decent shape, getting threads cut and a blade flange pressed on an armature will cost some dough!

Another thing I'm not crazy about is that it's right tilting. I've never actually used a right tilt tablesaw, and from what I can tell they're not very common anymore, but they seem wicked dangerous. I guess we'll see!

This is the extension table for the right side. At first I was a bit dissapointed to see it wasn't a solid table, and then I picked it up - and almost pooped my panties. It's plenty heavy and rigid - I'm sure it'll work fine.

It looks like it was purchased at some point from House of Tools, which is a big tool resaler here in Alberta that just recently went into receivership. I called Bill to ask where he bought the saw from and he said, and I quote, 'a retard shop. Y'know, like one of those shops where retard kids build... I dunno, birdhouses or something'. Old Bill, he's not the politically correct type.

Mo' Drawers

2009-07-02T19:11:00.009-06:00

I finally got a coat of finish on my drawers yesterday and this morning I installed them. Here's the boring details.

These are the clips that hold the front of the undermount slides. Actually, the technical name for them is 'nipples' (teehee) - crazy europeans. At first glance they look pretty chintzy but they actually do their function very well.

The back of the slide has a little tab (that, incidentally, seems much more nipple-like) that needs a corresponding hole in the back of the drawer to engage. Originally I made a much fancier jig to locate and drill the hole accurately but it didn't work as well as this simpler version. Sometimes you just have to nail some scraps together.

Tab A into hole B.

One of the nice things about under-mount slides is their adjustability. This little blue wheel moves that wedge-thingy in and out, which moves the drawer up and down on the slide. So if the drawer front is a bit out of alignment you have about 1/16" of up & down adjustment on each side - allowing some fine tuning of the final fit.

...And it snaps in. Easy-peazy.

It's kinda nice to not have to see the slides.

Dust

2009-06-27T23:11:00.006-06:00

I really have to get my dust collector set up. Unfortunately I don't have any room for it yet, so until I do I have to put up with crap like this:

This is the carnage left on my table saw after milling up a bunch of window sill material for my house.

I milled the wood for my cabinet doors last weekend. I had already bought some wide planks of birch and was hoping that I could resaw them to get rift to quarter sawn material. Turns out though that I couldn't get what I wanted out of it so I spent a great deal of time hunting around for some 12/4 birch. I'm not sure why, but 12/4 birch or quarter-rift sawn birch is really hard to find. I ended up finding what I was looking for in Sherwood Park, a 'suburb' of Edmonton. There's a guy there who builds baseball bats and all his material is 3x3 blanks of air dried ash, maple, and birch. I was a bit dissappointed to find out that it was milled green, and with drying had shrunk almost a quarter inch. Fortunately though, being air-dried, it didn't move a hair when I resawed it all into rail & stile stock. I squeezed three strips out of each blank, and they ended up at a skinny 7/8" thick. I'm really hoping I can get 3/4" out of them. The nice thing about building all your own doors though is that if I have to make them 11/16" it isn't a big deal.

I knew that cabinets would take me a long time to build, but I didn't realize it would go into the 6 month mark! I've had a pile of other things going on with my house renovation that diverted my attention, but the trim carpenter starts this week and the last few things I have to do should get ticked off this weekend. All there's left on my list before I move in is cabinet doors and countertops, and I'm getting help with the concrete countertops. So anyways, it's getting close! Housewarming invitations are in the mail!

NY Chairs

2009-06-09T08:58:00.005-06:00

I forgot I had taken these pictures.

While I was in NY I snapped a few shots of some chairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum. There was tons of furniture there but most was crazy ornately carved/upholstered/gilded european stuff. There was a few interesting plywood chairs though.

The plaque on this chair just said 'Ray Komai. Side Chair 1949' but I looked it up on the museum's website:

www.brooklynmuseum.org/research/luce/object.php?id=155417

At the MET there was a display that shows how their artifacts are stored and cataloged, and in that display there were a bunch of interesting chairs with no details whatsoever. Unfortunately the chairs I was trying to take pictures of were up on the top shelf, so I had to hold the camera up over my head, and flash photography is strictly prohibited. Anyway, here's the couple of pictures that sort of turned out... sort of.

Drawer Making

2009-06-07T20:54:00.006-06:00

I started working on drawers a few weeks back and have been picking away at them since. I keep getting side-tracked by other things but I'm pretty much done now - I just have to put a quick coat of finish on them.

I don't like lower cabinets, because I hate bending over or getting on my knees trying to rescue something from the depths of the cabinet. Instead I built lower drawers, 24 of them, including a large drawer that a trash can will fit inside. I used baltic birch plywood for all the drawers, 1/2" for the smaller drawers and 5/8" for the larger ones, although I think now that 5/8" was a bit of overkill. I built the drawers in three batches. The first was the upper drawers, then the larger second and third row, and finally the remaining 5 in the island. The picture above is the last batch, all cut to size and ready for joinery.

I looked around for quick & strong drawer joinery and finally settled on a 'groove & rabbett' joint because it was simple, quick, and if oriented properly and tightly fit I'm sure it'll be very strong. Especially with a high-quality material like baltic birch ply. I don't think it would be very strong with solid wood because of the short grain the joint would cause. Also, I'm not sure it would work great with domestic plywood because the plys are so thick. The bit of holding wood left after the groove is cut might want to tear off if the joint is too tight.

First I cut the groove. On the first run of drawers I used my router table but I had inconsistent results with each test joint I cut (for some reason) so I switched to the dado blade. It worked more consistently but I had to scribe each cut to prevent tear out.

For Euro-style bottom mount slides the drawer bottom must be captured which adds another step into the drawer construction. I made sure to reference the fence to the top side of the drawer so that the top was all flush during glue-up. It means that I had to re-setup for every different drawer height but it made for less clean up after glue up.

I cut the rabbett last, using a sacrifical fence.

The final joint, ready for glue-up. When I had the joints together and the drawer box square I shot 3 or 4 crown molding staples through the joint for some added security. Like I said, I'm just a CNC router and a drinking porblem away from being a production cabinetmaker!

The Splinter

2009-05-28T07:59:00.012-06:00

There's this graduate design student down in North Carolina who's building a car entirely out of wood for a graduate project. Not just 'a car' though, a mid-engine supercar. His name is Joe Harmon and I have found myself obsessing over his project. At my work there's a handful of websites that I frequently use as time wasters, and joeharmondesign.com is near the top of the list. The fact that he's building the entire car out of wood aside, his website, blog, and flicker pages are incredible, and definitely worth a browse. Check it out.

Just a few details that I find fascinating:

The body panels are made from woven strips of cherry. They built an old school loom to weave the strips of 1/8th inch cherry veneer that they cut with a homemade veneer slicer.
The leaf springs are made from laminated osage orange.
The engine is a twin-supercharged Cadillac Northstar, and to reduce heat in the engine compartment they flipped the heads over so the intakes are on the sides of the engine and the exhaust is routed out the top.

I'm not certain what the state of the car is right now, except that they don't seem to be working on it at the moment. I have seen pictures of it at shows and what not, so I know that it is at least assembled, but I don't think they actually have it running.

Will This Work?

2009-05-26T18:57:00.005-06:00

Calling all people smarter than me...

This weekend I should be able to start working on the doors and drawer panels for my cabinets. I'm building bridal jointed frames with a flat panel. I want to use plywood for the panel, because I can match the grain of all the panels and don't have to resaw a ton of wood. Rather than cutting a groove and capturing the panel however, I'm wondering if I can rabbett the panel into the frame. See crappy sketch below.

I actually only want to do this on the drawer fronts, the doors will have a glass panel. The reason I want to do this is two-fold. First, it's quick. The frames can be rabbetted after they're glued up which also simplifies the glue up. Two, it makes the back of the assembled frame and panel flush, which makes it easier to screw it to the drawer box. It won't look as nice from behind as a frame and captured panel for sure, but once the frames are screwed to the drawer boxes the back side of the panel won't even be seen.

Here's what I don't know though: can I glue a plywood panel into the solid frame, or will it eventually bust out from wood movement? Essentially this is the exact same process that we've all done to assemble a back panel into a solid cabinet, so I think it would work, but I don't think I've ever seen it done this way.

What's everyone think??

Pete's Digs

2009-05-17T11:20:00.011-06:00

I just got back last night from a week in New York. The guy who was the other resident at the Inside Passage while I was there, Pete Heilman, owns a large co-op shop in Brooklyn and last September I had a chance to check it out while I was out for Pete & Maura's wedding. Unfortunately though I was only out there for a few days, so when a seat sale came up last January I snapped up some cheap tickets and spent this past week hanging out, sight seeing, eating, etc.

Pete is in the very enviable position of living in a city where there is a built-in clientele for custom woodworking. New York City, particularly Manhattan, seems somewhat insulated from the economic trouble of the rest of the United States. Pete owns a 5000 square foot shop in an 'up and coming' area of Brooklyn, where he rents out space to other woodworkers as well cranks out various custom commissions with his own business, Heilman Design.

The morning I was there the guys were just loading a completed project in a van. Everyone was busy working on something so I just wandered around snapping pics.

Pete has been working for months on a cabinet to house medical journals. He's been picking away at it between other work. It looks to be near completion.

Pete recently moved his personal area upstairs - to be closer to the ping pong table maybe? While the bulk of the machine work goes on in the machine room downstairs, he moved a mini-max five-in-one upstairs as well. It's a nice little machine, and eliminates the need for him to run up and down the stairs for incidental machine work.

The machine room downstairs has all the usual stuff plus a 12" jointer, 10" cabinet saw, and two big sliding tablesaws.

The big daddy Northfield jointer got a complete re-haul when it showed up at the shop, and purrs like a kitten now. Pete said that blade changes are a real source of frustration though. I like the ship-wheel depth adjustment.

The front of the building is currently getting a sharp new facade made of Sapele and glass.

Good Slides = $$$$$$

2009-04-24T08:04:00.005-06:00

I'm finally back to work on my base cabinets after a few weeks of flooring work. It's going well, and I should be able to start installation this weekend. This past week I had to sort out some drawer slide issues.

On the advice of Paul Gort I got an account with the Montreal hardware dealer Richelieu and ordered all my hinges through them. I bought Blum hinges with the optional 'Blumotion' clips, which adds a soft-close feature. It was worth the trouble of setting up an account and ordering online because the hinges were about half the price than I could find locally (about a third of Lee Valley!!). Drawer slides caused some grief though. I wanted the same soft-close feature but Blum Tandem slides with the optional Blumotion clips were $35 a pair. Including my pantry I have 30 drawers. That's $1050 in slides alone, more than the entire materials bill!

After some hunting around I found some ball bearing slides with a soft close feature at Lee Valley. At $13 a pair they seemed like a more economical choice.

Lee Valley didn't have a set of these on display unfortunately so I couldn't see how they worked. After purchasing them I saw that they didn't work worth a shit. The mechanism that creates the soft close is basically a spring that engages the slide once it gets close, and a small oil shock stops the spring from slamming the slide home. Unfortunately the spring didn't engage the slide everytime, sometimes it just bounced off the little clip. And when it did engage properly the spring didn't always pull the slide all the way home, leaving the drawer sticking out about 1/4". I mocked up a quick drawer and drawer pocket just to confirm my suspicions. Yup, turns out they suck.

I was at PJ White last week and saw that they had Hettich soft close slides on sale. I played around with the little mock up drawer they had on display and they worked beautifully, opening easily and closing perfectly every time.

Like the Blum slides, Hettich has a unique way of attaching the slide to the actual drawer. The slides themselves don't come apart, instead a hole in the back of the drawer engages a small pin in the back of the slide and the front clips to the bottom of the drawer with a set of plastic clips. The entire slides are hidden under the drawer which means the weight of the drawer rests entirely on the slide, rather than on a couple screws like side mount slides.

At $26 a pair they were twice the price of the shitty Lee Valley slides but $10 cheaper than the Blum slides. I think I'll still build a drawer mockup, just to make sure I don't mess up the actual drawers.

Gimmee Gimmee Gimmee...

2009-03-10T15:32:00.003-06:00

The economy in the US is in such shambles there's a ton of deals on woodworking/metalworking equipment as more and more factories and shops close their doors. If shipping didn't cost so damned much I'd be buying machines left and right. Check out this bad-ass boring machine for $1000. Put an XY table on it and you'd have the mother of all mortising machines.

Quickie

2009-03-08T17:37:00.005-06:00

Not much progress to report on for this weekend's work. I actually had to plow snow in my yard most of the day today, the weather here has been crazy. I finally had to do something when a drift ate my truck this morning.

I love these little right angle clamp fixtures. They're far cheaper than a dedicated edge clamp and they work great in places where either a bar clamp can't reach or there isn't a parallel side to clamp to, like this 45 degree edge on my microwave shelf. Which, speak of the devil, is done.

As previously mentioned, now that my wall cabinets are complete I'm switching gears for couple weeks before I dive into the base cabinets.

Till then...

Well Hung

2009-03-01T18:15:00.010-07:00

I finally got my wall cabinets hung this weekend, minus the microwave cabinet - which I haven't built yet. Hanging the cabinets wasn't as simple as I thought it would be. My house is 120 years old and isn't very square, plumb, or level. Therefore each cabinet had to be scribed and fit to the wall. The first cabinet I hung took me a loooong time and didn't end up fitting very well (although I'm sure I'll be the only one who ever notices) but as I worked away it got quicker and I became very ninja like.

This cabinet is the one above the fridge, and has a finished side that fits tight to the wall and flush to the door on the front. It gives the door a bit more room to swing open before hitting the wall. I measured the inside corner of my walls with a bevel gauge and transferred that angle to the cabinet. You can see how out of square the walls were. I intended to use my belt sander to remove the material but once I had it scribed and saw how much sanding there would be, I took the piece off and used my bandsaw. Resawing 12" of plywood on the bandsaw was no fun and completely did in a new blade. Sorry, I didn't take an 'after' shot.

Here's my sweet set up for holding the cabinets in place while scribing - a shitty wood box on a ladder. Textbook! This is my 'blind corner' which hides the transformer for the undercabinet lights. The wall that this cabinet is mounted to is a tad out of plumb so after getting it mounted I had to scribe and sand the corner piece so it would fit tight against the other cabinet.

Over the 36" height of the cabinet this totalled about 3/16" of difference top to bottom.

After scribing the plumb line I removed the bulk of the waste with a belt sander. I 'heart' my belt sander.

Once I had it close to the line I switched to a jointer plane to ensure it was straight. It always seems kinda blasphemous to handplane plywood, like farting in church. Well, I've never actually been to church... or farted.

It's nice to have these on the wall and out of the way. Space is at a bit of a premium it seems. I'll try to get the microwave cabinet (which is going to the left of the window) put together this week and then I'm going to take a break from cabinets to get some other stuff done in the house.

A Stinky Tale

2009-02-18T21:42:00.004-07:00

This has nothing to do with woodworking. I have this big roll-off dumpster in my yard, and tonight I walked by and my two cats were staring wide-eyed into it. So I hang out for a bit to see what's going on and realize that something's moving around inside. A few minutes later a skunk pops out. Rewind a couple weeks - one morning I threw open the door of the barn and there's a skunk, right there. So I have enough time to think 'ohh fu..' and the skunk spins around and fires off a round into my leg. Fack! So anyways, I'm about 15' away from this little bastard who's sitting in the dumpster, calmly chewing on a Dairy Queen burger wrapper, giving me a look like 'go ahead fucker, we both know how it turned out last time'. And then skunk #2 pops out! It's an infestation!

Dairy queen wrappers aren't very healthy. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they were to meet an untimely demise due to their unhealthy diet.

Oil and lasers!

2009-02-17T22:50:00.005-07:00

I buggered around tonight getting things ready for installation. I established a level line on my wall that represents the bottom of my wall cabinets. Unfortunately my house is sitting on an unlevel foundation, so the whole house slopes a couple inches in 30 feet. I can't really build the cabinets out of level though, cause I don't want the eggs rolling off the counter.

The whole un-level thing has been an issue during this entire project, so when I was building the stairs in the house I bought a self-leveling laser to establish a reference line. The thing is worth its weight in gold! I started at the high point in the floor, made a tick at the appropriate height, then set the laser level at the same height. To avoid a bunch of pencil ticks on the fresh paint I used blue tape to draw the line on the wall.

My lovely assistant Mandy gave me a hand with finishing, although I had to bribe her with beer. She was good help, and made the process go much quicker, although she giggled madly whenever I said 'tung oil'.

Carrying on then.

2009-02-16T22:06:00.009-07:00

It seems that my initial burst of energy in regards to cabinetmaking has died off, and my attention has wandered to other, smaller projects in my house. Like hanging light fixtures. I got back on the wagon this weekend however, and pretty much have my wall cabinets completed. One of the reasons I haven't been full of piss and vinegar to keep building cabinets is the weather. Here in frosty Alberta we've been enjoying some unseasonably warm weather the last few weeks which has made working in my garage more bearable. The past week has been back into the -25 range though, so the warmth of the house looks mighty inviting.

So anyways, I'm just going to post a few pics of the various steps to complete a wall cabinet. I'll forgo the biscuit cutting, it's pretty simple.

Once each cabinet came out of the clamps the first thing I did was cut the rabbet for the back panel. In all the case work I've done I've always been tempted to cut the rabbet post glue-up, but never had the nerve to do it. It's infinitely simpler than cutting the rabbet before glueing, but it adds the risk of having to scrap an entire cabinet rather than a single piece if something goes wrong. I did a few tests before hand, to make sure that my rabbet bit would hack it, and all seemed well. To reduce the chance of tearing out a chunk of the topsheet I scribed a line first. Incidentally, I'm amazed at veneer cutting technololgies. The topsheet on this plywood is almost undetectable when you look at a cross section. It can't be more the one 128th of an inch. Unreal. Anyways, rabbet cutting went smoothly.

Once the rabbet was cut I glued on the hangers. These are just 4" strips of 3/4" plywood that lie flat on the back of the cabinet, top and bottom. It's something beefy to sink the screw through whilst hanging the cabinets. Simple.

...then I used an air stapler to attach the back panel. I heart my air stapler. It kicks ass for building jigs and fixtures.

Rather than square off the rabbet I just used my sander to round the corners of the back panel.

I was hoping I wouldn't have to do any sanding, but it didn't work out that way. After wiggling things around during the glue ups, the sides weren't exactly flush with the top and bottom. I decided early on that I would have to sand the finish off the top and bottom, flush everything up, and refinish it. It was really difficult to not sand through the ultra-thin top veneer, and if you were to look really close you might find the odd spot where I went through. Oops. The epoxy finish on the plywood was ultra-hard, and took some serious time to clean off. I ended up having to go to 60 grit, then 80, and finally 120.

I started out softening all the edges with a file but eventually I traded it for 150 grit paper on a sanding block. I don't like sanding, but I've always kinda enjoyed doing edge treatments. It makes a piece go from sharp and rough to finished, just like that. It's very satisfying.

I've got the wall cabinets completed, except for finishing. Hopefully I can get some finish on them and hang them this week.

Slowly...

2009-02-01T20:39:00.011-07:00

I really have to get some more friggin' clamps...

Things this weekend progressed very... very... slowly. I started gluing the edges on saturday morning and spent most of the day sitting around waiting. Unfortunately I only have a handful of bar clamps so I could only glue up a few panels at a time, meaning one cabinet worth of parts would take about 3 hours before I could get the edges flushed up and trim everything to size. Frustrating!! This is exactly the reason I wanted to use a nailer to fasten the edges on.

In the meantime though I developed a way to mount the little xenon lights under the cabinets. I had to drill a 2-1/8" hole and was thinking that a router would do the best job. I was using a hole saw to cut a template in a piece of scrap and was amazed to find that it actually cuts a really clean hole, so I just used it on the finished panel. The lights only fit into a max 1/4" lip though so I had to make a larger router template to house the back side of the panel.

I routed a small chamfer on the hole so it would be easier to push the light in, which is mounted with a friction fit.

The back side, housed.

These little xenon pucks are nice because they take up almost no room and don't heat up like halogens do. The downside is they're low voltage so you have to find a place to hide a transformer. My cupboards have a blind corner rather than a corner cabinet though, so it'll fit inside there.

So while I cut all my cabinet parts at once, I've put aside the parts for the base cabinets so I can get the wall cabinets finished and out of the way. There's not nearly enough room in my little garage to try and wrestle all the parts around at once. I'm going to buy a half dozen more clamps this week and try to sneak away from work at least one day to try and catch up. As of this evening I only have one of six wall cabinets complete, and edges glued to three cabinets worth of panels. I'm way behind!

This is my first glue-up, which almost turned into a fiasco. Sweet cauls hey? I just grab whatever's lying around. My original intention was to move the cabinets into the house to glue-up but it doesn't really work out. After it's out of the clamps I still have some sanding to do, the back rabbett to cut, the back panel to mount, so I took this one back out to the garage after I was done gluing it. I suspect I'll just leave them out in the garage until they're ready to hang.

Edgy! And biscuity...

2009-01-30T21:44:00.008-07:00

I've spent most of my evenings this week trying to decide how I was going to make the applied edges on my cabinets. While I don't have any illusions that these cabinets are going to be high-end, top quality cabinets, I couldn't bring myself to even consider those cheesy self-adhesive edges. When I was picking up my plywood I looked at these pre-made wooden edges that were actually really nice. They were solid wood, 1/8" thick, and all quarter-sawn. No birch though - so much for that. Because there is more than 250' of edges total I tried to come up with something that would speed up the application. I don't have hundreds of clamps, so my initial idea was to apply a heavy edge, 1/2", and use my 18ga nailer and glue to fasten them to the plywood. An 18ga nail leaves a super small hole and the tiny amount of filler needed would probably go un-noticed. I thought that a thicker edge would also have the added advantage of rigidity, meaning there would be less clamping pressure necessary to close up the joint. I made a couple samples however and it turns out I was wrong. The difference in color in the pre-finished ply and the solid edges didn't look good either. It became immediately apparent that I'd have to think of something else.

After some searching on the internet I read about the 'Burgess Edge System', a router bit set that cuts a cove in the plywood edge and a bullnose on the solid edge. The two profiles match exactly and it leaves a a tiny little lip on each edge, ideally leaving just the top sheet of the ply untouched.

I bought the set from lee valley and after some buggering around with the supplied shim kit I was glueing up my first couple test pieces. The edge is applied thick and once glued up it is flushed to the faces and trimmed on the tablesaw to whatever thickness is desired. I think I'll leave the edges at about 1/16" - I like the look. Another nice feature is that it leaves such a small shoulder, requiring a very small amount of pressure to close up the joint.

Another concern that I've been testing is removing the finish from the plywood in the joint locations. Obviously glue doesn't stick well to hardened epoxy, and I didn't really trust the biscuits alone to hold things together. After a failed attempt to scrape the finish off I decided to stick to a laminate trimmer. It's difficult to maintain the necessary 0.002 cut, but it turns out that even if the cut ends up heavier it doesn't seem to really effect the fit of the joint.

I've also been playing around with my biscuit joiner, which is brand-spanking new. It's pretty straightforward. I think that while operating it is pretty much dummy-proof, the margin of error lies in the proper layout. Making sure that the correct reference face is used while cutting the biscuits locations seems like it could screw a fella up quick!

All pieces (and fingers) accounted for!

2009-01-25T17:48:00.011-07:00

This weekend I managed to get all the pieces for my cabinet cut out. Well, kinda. I made a spreadsheet of all the pieces I needed, and I made one column for finished dimensions, one column for dimensions prior to the addition of any applied edges, and one column for 'rough dimensions' which was 1/2" oversize. In hind sight I suppose I could've cut everything out so it was ready for applied edges but I decided to play it safe. I was concerned about my ability to cut all the panels straight and square while pushing a full sheet across the tablesaw. It turns out though that it wasn't too difficult, and it all went fairly quickly. I built a big monster crosscut sled on saturday, and while it was a pain in the butt to take on and off the saw, it turned out to be very helpful.

I always wanted to incorporate an adjustable stop and a built in measuring tape on a crosscut sled. It works great.

As I pulled each sheet out of the pile I noticed a few things. I decided to go with veneer ply rather than MDF or particleboard core due to its strength. I want to build concrete countertops and I didn't want the base cabinets buckling under the load. I think though, again in hind sight, I might go with a different core if I were to do this again. There were several imperfections in the surface of the material, caused by voids in the core plys. I made a point of helping the guy at PJ White load the plywood on my trailer so I could cull any flawed sheets, which there were lots of! Of the 16 sheets I bought I think we put 8-10 aside because of glaring flaws. It was a brand new lift too, not one that had been picked through, we took the bands off and started pulling sheets. Anyhow, some minor flaws were obviously missed because a few sheets are a bit rough. It was simple to cut around the obvious screw ups, but nonetheless - you pay the same for a flawed sheet as a good one!

Working with this pre-finished stuff is a bit tricky. Even though it's baked-on epoxy it is still susceptible to scratches so you have to watch what you're doing. I believe this is C-Grade, so while both sides are finished, there's a good side and a bad side. I actually like the color of the bad side better, but there is lots of knots and filler, so I'll keep it to the inside of the cabinets.

This is the entire off-cut pile after cutting 11 sheets, 115 pieces total.

The next step is to apply edges and cut to final dimensions, which has it's own list of 'how the hell am I going to ...?' things. For instance, I'm currently testing methods of finishing an applied edge that is glued and flushed to a pre-finished panel without having an obvious masking tape line. I think 0000 steel wool and wax will be used liberally.

Tablesaw Thoughts

2009-01-21T09:34:00.003-07:00

I like machines. I like big old industrial machines, they fascinate me. I love wandering around factories, machine shops, anywhere that machines are clanking away, sawdust and metal chips flying.

That being said, I don't like tablesaws. I appreciate the importance of a tablesaw, for sheet stock they're necessary, but I prefer crosscutting on a miter saw whenever possible, and don't even consider ripping lumber on anything but a bandsaw. I had a mishap with the cabinet saw when I was out at the Rosewood Studio. I was cutting a piece of particleboard and it got pinched between the fence and blade, firing it into my (ahem) midsection. When I was in high school I watched a kid run his hand through the tablesaw too, losing three fingers.

As I've been buying machinery I look through catalogues, old woodworking forums, etc etc, and drool over 16" jointers, 36" bandsaws, 60" three grit drum sanders, but I don't give a damn about a bigger tablesaw. I'll keep rocking my little 1-3/4 hp Dewalt hybrid, and save my money for a bigger jointer. I like the fact that it stalls when a sheet of plywood gets bound up, rather than throwing the sheet back at me.

Now I need a robo-laser plywood cutter-outer.

2009-01-19T17:59:00.006-07:00

While I was at the office 'working' today I finally got my cut list finalized for my cabinets. I found a program online called 'Cut Optimizer' that allows you to enter your inventory of material and your list of required pieces, and it designs a cut pattern that minimizes waste. When I bought my material I made a tally of all my pieces and thought that I could squeeze it out of 13 sheets - but it would be tight because I didn't factor in the shelves in the wall cabinets. The software today spit out a cut pattern that got all my pieces, everything, out of 9 sheets.

Lets see your silly wooden handplane do that!!

Makeshift Cabinet Shop

2009-01-18T17:05:00.011-07:00

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm going to complete all the casework for my kitchen cabinets in my garage. It's far from luxurious, but it's sufficient.

Just a CNC router and a drinking problem away from a production cabinet shop! I've been busy the last few days getting all my machines set up, wiring some extra plug-ins, building fixtures, etc etc. Due to the confined space and temporary nature of this location, I tried to set things up as simply as possible. No dust collection yet, it's still in the crate!

Get a load of the toilet seat clock on the far wall. Classy! Getting things ready to start making sawdust wasn't without mishap however. I built a sheet goods cart to help move all the veneer ply around but once I got about 12 sheets on it I noticed a pretty considerable sag in the base. I just started off-loading all the sheets when it collapsed, sending the stack up against the bandsaw, damaging the top sheet. Fack! Oh well,there's lots of places that will only be seen from one side where I can hide a scrape. At least it didn't tip over the bandsaw. That thought raced through my mind when I saw it start to go...

I built the cart so one side could hold full sheets and the other side has bunks for off-cuts. See how the base of the cart is actually two halves? I did that so the side that stands upright, that supports the sheets leaning up against it, would be captured at the bottom. I was worried that if I made a solid base and then screwed some type of box on top the weight of the sheets would just push it over. Unfortunately though that seam buckled and pulled apart. I'll fix it up and put another set of casters underneath it.

The previous owner left a whole stack of these stickers. They're so obnoxious and ... Albertan! I stuck them all over everything.

I don't know how functional this setup will be. It's hard to free up any more room AND swing full sheets around. Both the jointer and planer are on wheels though, so I can get them out of the way if I have to.

Drill press and nudie calendar. I love nudie calenders, they're so old school cheeseball. It reminds me of my grandpa's garage. The girls are all old and heavy, with botched boob jobs and c-section scars. Hilarious.

Ta-Da!! Here she is, in all her cast iron glory. I had a be-atch of a time getting this thing through the door by myself. It's a couple inches taller than the lip on the end of the overhead door so I had to tip it forward and drag it into place. I'm not sure what it weighs, but the bill of lading when it was delivered said 800lbs, enough to squash me like a bug. I haven't actually run it up yet though, it's 3 phase so I'll have to rob the VFD off my milling machine. Baby steps...

You wanna eat?

2009-01-13T07:59:00.006-07:00

...then you need a kitchen.

I've been blog lazy the last few weeks, but there hasn't been much to talk about. I've been working on my house, and have finally got to a point where I can start building the kitchen cabinets. Here's a drawing I've been working on to make sure everything would fit together properly. Unfortunately my house has oddball dimensions after furring the interior walls 2" for insulation. Rather than the nice 16" devisible window spacing, my cabinets will end up being... unique! I also used this drawing to show people to get their input regarding functionality. There were a few revisions, and I think I have it now to a point where I can start snapping measurements off this drawing on to a set of 2D construction drawings. It's nice to have the 3D representation first though, to make sure everything jives. It's like having a mockup, sorta.

Obviously I'm not going to paint the frames purple and the panels grey. I didn't bother rendering 'real wood' into the drawing because it takes forever and eats up memory like crazy. The doors and drawer fronts are all simple frame and panel, birch. I'm going to use pre-finished birch veneer ply for the casework. Expensive, but it'll save hours of finishing time as well as eliminate all the space I would need to lay all the cabinet components out for finishing. Another added benefit is the final finished surface, which is a baked on epoxy. Supposedly it's near indestructible, yet has a nice matte finish. Not the ugly glossy varathane look I expected.

For the casework I'm going to stick to my makeshift garage shop. It's comfortable enough to get everything cut out in there, but then I'm going to move the pieces into the kitchen itself for assembly and glue up. The extra room and regulated temperature in the house will be much needed! Also, it will allow me to hang cabinets as I finish them rather than have them sitting around.

Stupid Job!

2008-12-01T10:44:00.004-07:00

Sometimes my job is so silly. I work as a project manager for a horizontal drilling contractor. Our work is mostly seasonal and it's not unusual during the slow times for the phone to only ring once every three or four days. I, having a salary position, am required to show up whether there's something to do or not. Today there's nothing to do, so I'm just sitting here drinking coffee.

This weekend I bought a larger router to use almost solely in my router table. I unpackaged it this morning and I'm fiddling with it on my desk. Here's another crappy cell phone pic:

I've read several good reviews about these Triton routers. My first impression was how thoroughly they designed the dust collection. While the shielding would obscure the view of the bit if you were running it manually, for a router table application it looks like it'll kick ass. No above-table height adjustment though, which is unfortunate.

New Old Shop

2008-11-21T18:56:00.005-07:00

Ain't she a beaut? I'm not sure what the original purpose of this building was, but on the back side there's a lean-to that was obviously a pig pen. It doesn't smell like there's been a pig in there for years though, and it seems like the building was used solely for junk collection. See the big grey thingy leaned up against the wall to the left? It's a slate slab from a pool table, 1" thick, 600 lbs, and dead flat. I'm going to build an assembly table from it. I want to find a hydraulic scissor lift table to use as the base to make the height adjustable. Add it to the list of projects...

Bench room...

...and machine room.

The building is in good shape, and has a cement floor. It'll take some fixing up but I think it'll work fine. I hauled away most of the scrap metal this afternoon after work, which included and old oil stove, three lawnmower engines, an old car door, two gas tanks, two water pressure tanks, 6 car rims, and what looks to be the complete exhaust system of a pickup truck.

One of three loads hauled away.

No New News

2008-11-20T08:49:00.002-07:00

It's still sitting there, my bandsaw. The temperature here has dropped considerably in the last week or so. I've been so wrapped up in trying to get my house to the point where I can get the drywallers started that everything else has fallen by the wayside, including sobriety and hygiene. I think that I've figured out my shop issue though, I'll post some pics of the outbuilding that will serve my purpose this evening.

Davis & Wells Bandsaw

2008-11-12T13:09:00.001-07:00

My saw finally arrived. Here's a crappy cell phone pic of it sitting in its crate. When I get some spare time I'll haul it home and unpack it. More pics to follow.

Linear Thinking

2008-11-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd get back to the topic of my mortiser. Or, more accurately, the design of the XY table on my mortiser. Below is my initial design that I drew up almost a year ago. My intention was to use 1/2" linear rails and build bronze bushings that pressed into a solid aluminum block. I went as far as to machine the bottom half; the seats and rails (photo #'s 2 and 3).

I got to this point a few months back but got hung up on the prototype for my bushing block. It turns out that while it isn't difficult to get the two rails to be exactly parallel, it's very difficult to bore two 3" deep holes exactly parallel. Even after getting my milling machine trammed in to within 0.0005 in all directions I couldn't drill and ream the two parallel bushings to within the couple thousands that I needed. Time for plan B.

There are several linear bearing designs, depending on the desired application. Very high end linear rails and bearings like the set shown below can withstand huge side loads and still run smooth due to the inherent stiffness of their design.

These are made by TSK and come in various widths and lengths. They are quite expensive new but I got these from ebay for next to nothing. I'm actually saving them for something else though so for my XY table I bought these:

They are actually considered a 'ball bushing' and can't handle the side load that the THK bearings can. They're also not quite as accurate as the bearings and have a tiny bit of slop in them, but it's negligible. In a cnc application, or in a production machine that runs non-stop, these wouldn't cut it. In my application though I think they'll work just fine. I bought these on ebay too, but I bought a second set from a local bearing dealer who had ordered them in for someone who never picked them up. He gave them to me for cost, which was cheaper than the ebay set.

Perhaps one day soon I'll actually put all these pieces together into something usable!

New Arrivals!!

2008-11-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

I just returned this morning from a 4 day trip out to the coast and down to Seattle. As mentioned in my last post, one of the purposes of this trip was to stop in Bellingham and pick up a cyclone dust collector from Grizzly. I also bought a drill press, which was half pre-meditated and half impulse. I had thought that perhaps I would buy a drill press but ended up getting a larger machine than I had intended. Damn the up-sell!

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the incredible work of one particular branch of government employees. This crack squad of elite super agents are working hard every day to keep our great country free of the horrible threat that foreign woodworking machinery poses. Yup, the border guards. I'll spare the long winded story of this particular US/Canada border crossing, but let us just ponder: where the hell do they find these people?

Because I'm not certain where I'm going to set up the dust collector, I didn't do anything other than unload it from my truck. I did however take a half hour after work to assemble the drill press. For $500 it's a nice machine. There's all the standard Taiwanese-made trademarks: rough edges and some sticky moving components, but I'm sure an hour of alignment and adjustment and she'll be running like a top. It's a big chunk of fudge too! It weighs 330 lbs and it took every ounce of might I had to lift the head onto the pillar. I managed to get it all buttoned up without wrecking anything or dropping it though and she's ready to hawg some holes!

I'm looking at the picture of the drill press above and thinking about shop space. Hmmm... I've just recently bought a 20 acre acreage and have been up to my butt in renovations on the 110 year old house. All the while I've been planning on converting the little 16'x16' garage into a shop. It's insulated and has a little woodstove so it seemed like the natural choice to move my equipment and bench into. I'm not so sure now though. While shopping around for kitchen cabinets I decided that rather than pay the approximately $10,000 for modular cabinets of questionable quality I would invest half that into my woodworking shop and build them myself. The obvious downfall is it's one more thing to add to the ever-expanding list of crap I have to get done before I move in, but I get some machinery and nicer cabinets in the long run. My first purchase was a rebuilt 20" Davis and Wells bandsaw. After a couple weeks of delays I've just received word that it was loaded on the truck this afternoon and I should see it this upcoming weekend. The dust collector and drill press were my next purchases and the only other equipment on the list is a larger router to put in my router table. As I've been adding machines into the garage however, it's starting to look smaller and more cramped. And there's a bandsaw yet to come! One of the numerous outbuildings at my place is a huge old barn which has a 55'x15' lean-to on each side with a hay loft above. One lean-to is completely full of junk but the other looks like it housed a pig trough at one point and is essentially empty. Maybe that should be my shop?? The lack of a cement pad, while initially a turn-off, would allow me to run pressure treated floor joists and OSB flooring. It would be easier on the back and legs and would give space to run all the dust collection and wiring below, reducing clutter. It's also large enough that I could have a woodworking room and a separate metalworking room for my lathe and milling machine and still have room to have the dust collector and compressor in a third room. Mo' money though. I don't know how long I'll be at this place and maybe setting something up that's more temporary is a better idea? I dunno...

Dust Collection

2008-10-27T12:57:00.000-06:00

No progress on the mortising machine this weekend unfortunately, I was busy being a plumber. I'm currently renovating an old farmhouse and it has completely consumed my life. This upcoming weekend though I'm travelling down to Washington to pick up a dust collector from Grizzly. I have a grizzly jointer and think it's great quality for the price. From what I've seen, Grizzly's machines are as good as you're going to find for Taiwanese made equipment and they're crazy cheap. The dust collector I'm buying is $750. A comparable machine up here, with similar features, is well into the $2000 price range. Even with the dollar going into the crapper, it's still cheaper to drive down and pick one up. Unfortunately due to some non-compete clause with a Canadian company Grizzly won't ship to Canada, and won't even hold something for pickup if the final destination is Canada. Their showroom in Washington is only a couple hours from Vancouver though, so it's relatively close.

Balls On Strings

2008-10-24T14:49:00.001-06:00

Nothing to do with woodworking, but pretty amazing nonetheless. This thing is in the BMW museum. Stick with it, it takes a minute to really see what's going on.

Past, Present, and Future.

2008-10-23T11:40:00.000-06:00

I like machines, they fascinate me. I love huge, old, art deco-esque machinery - it's beautiful! I'm also fascinated by cnc machines though, the more complicated the better.

Check out this old air compressor I saw on the internet:

And this badass 5-axis CNC:

Things have come a long ways.

Making Metal Things

2008-10-22T20:39:00.000-06:00

I've been lucky in that both of the woodworking schools I've attended have had horizontal mortising machines with XY tables. Once you've used one of these it's impossible to go back to either a chisel mortiser or cutting mortises by hand. About a year ago I was looking into buying a horizontal mortiser and thought 'maybe I'll just make one'. I had made a crude horizontal mortiser out of wood a few years back while I was working at a timber framing shop, and while it worked well enough it was far from a precision machine. Let the scheming begin! One of the things that I found frustrating about the couple horizontal mortisers I've used is that cutting angled mortises means you have to shim your work up to the appropriate angle. And if you have several identical pieces you have to be able to duplicate that setup exactly each time. Why not make the table tip? I also preferred the motor to move in relation to the workpiece, it seems like it would be easier if you had large pieces, like a door, to hold it steady while the bit moved around. Without much inital planning or drawings, I went to work.

The first thing I made was a base. Cast iron makes for superior machines, period. The grain structure and density of cast iron compared to that of cold or hot forged steel makes for superior dampening properties. Unfortunately the advancements made in production sheet metal stamps and welding have made most modern machinery pale in comparison to the heavy cast iron giants of the past. Someday I'd like to do some experimenting with investment casting, and I'd love to get to the point where I can make my own castings for machines, but for now I'm like Taiwan - stuck to hot forged steel and an arc welder.

I tend to be a bit nomadic, and never stick to one location for very long. Therefore all of my machines except for the very largest have grown wheels to ease the constant moving they have to endure. The base for my mortiser was no exception - consisting of a 2" flat bar box with a sheet of 3/16" plate welded to the top. I found a piece of 6" heavy wall square tubing at work to use as a column as well. To accomodate the tilting top I built a pair of supports that can rotate almost 90 degrees and be clamped tight to the column. The table will be bolted to that.

In order to increase the weight and density of the machine, and to reduce any resonant vibrations, I've considered filling the entire column with concrete. I waste a great deal of time at work reading the forums at www.practicalmachinist.com and have read good things about a mix of epoxy and lead shot. I might give it a try, we'll see.

So, just to recap, I'm making my mortising machine so that the workpiece sits stationary on a 16"x24" table (that can tip front to back) and the motor will move back and forth on an XY table. This means the XY table will have to be exceptionally rigid to stand up to the torque generated by a 3hp motor. At least, that's what I assume.

I got to the point where I had the base and column figured out but was unsure how I was going to raise and lower the motor. I didn't want to have to manually lift the motor because it's heavy as hell but I needed something that could lift the motor smoothly, be rigid enough to hold the motor securely, but also had to have tight enough tolerances that moving it up or down wouldn't effect the geometry of the motor in relation to the table. I found the answer in 1922.

My dad used to work as a millwright and he has an old friend from out in BC who still deals in the sawmill business. His name is Snuffy Stapleton and his place in Cranbrook is like the place where old machinery goes to die. The last time I was there I almost came home with a 24" jointer, but decided it was way more work than it was worth. A few years back Snuffy showed up in town with an old drill press, from 1922. I'm not sure where he got it but it's massive, seized up solid and pretty much useless. The arbor assembly on it though is in fairly good shape and has a very ingenious 2-speed feed control. Out came the cutting torch and I 'salvaged' it for my project.

I needed a table. Those shiny surfaces of a new wood or metalworking machine are ground, not machined. Surface grinding leaves an incredibly flat, accurate surface. Tolerances of modern grinding machines are measured within .00001". The only other way to ensure those kinds of accuracy is hand scraping, and there's no way I was attempting that. I cut the material for the table from a sheet of 1" plate and sent it off to Sharp-Rite Technologies in Edmonton. Unfortunately plate steel is far from straight and the acetylene torch I used to cut it out only added to the warpage. By the time I got the table back it looked great but cost almost as much as a new mortiser. Damn.

So there she sits, and has for several months. I started on the XY table last spring, but didn't really like my design for the linear bearing seats and journals. I've recently aquired some better bearings, bearing blocks, and rails and am hoping to get some work done on it this weekend maybe. I have a great deal of money invested in this project and don't like seeing it sit in the corner of my dad's shop collecting dust. Perhaps writing about it in this blog will brew up the motivation to finish it up. Here's hoping.

Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail.

2008-10-22T19:56:00.000-06:00

I have big plans. Executing those plans however, is another story. I'm the world's best project starter but I'm not what you would consider a good 'closer'. Actually, as I write this I'm sitting across from my 'Tabletop Tansu' cabinet that I began building while taking part in a year long residency program at the Inside Passage School of Fine Woodworking. It doesn't have any doors and a lack of drawer pulls means that if you want to look inside the drawers (which haven't really been fitted) you have to tip the cabinet forward and shake the drawers out. That imbuya cabinet in the photograph at the bottom of the page? The drawers don't open, I've never taken the time to fit them properly. I'm currently renovating an old farmhouse and I'm pretty certain that my friends and family all secretly think that while I'm busting my tail working on it now, I'll quit working on it once it's 'habitable'. It pisses me off when they say as much but they're probably right.

This is my clever way of leading into the story of my homemade mortising machine.

My neighbor's dog told me to start a woodworking blog...

2008-10-21T20:23:00.000-06:00

Stupid hot shot friends and their fancy woodworking blogs!

This is now the third blog I've started, the other two started out enthusiastically, but eventually failed to maintain my interest. In my defense though, I'm very lazy...