…stringing details.

Stringing On Finished Top

This detail adds a great amount of drama to the finished piece, and no it is not painted on. It is thin black veneer inlaid into the top. Normally I would hand cut the veneer with a veneer saw or a sharp knife, but I had heard of people using a pasta maker to cut the thin strips needed for this detail. It certainly was faster, but the end product was greatly inferior. It tended to cut along the grain and splintered in many places. I ended up planing each individual piece of stringing to get an edge that would slide easily into the grooves.

Planing Stringing

It is always easier to plane small pieces like these by placing the plane upside down in my bench vice and carefully sliding the stringing veneer over the plane.

Normally I would use a scratch stock and slowly scratch the groove into the top. But in another effort to speed things along I turned to a small Dremel fitted with a base and router bit from Stewart MacDonald, primarily a guitar maker’s catalog but it has lots of interesting tools for furniture makers too. I clamped a long straight edge to the top and, after carefully marking the start and stop points, routed out the groove. In retrospect I would go slower and make a couple of passes because I broke two of the router bits. (I am glad I ordered extras.)

Dremel and Straight Edge

After routing the groove along the length of the top, I started preparing the inlay strips. I did not have a strips long enough to do the entire length so I had to scarf the pieces together.

Creating Scarf Joint

I took two pieces and laid them on top of each other and used a chisel to make an angled cut in the two pieces at once. Now the two pieces would match up perfectly and the joint would virtually disappear. (In the background of the picture you can see the scratch stock I usually use to make the grooves for stringing wrapped in blue tape. I made these from a dull Dispoz-a-blade from our 24″ Wadkins Planer)

Cutting Scarf

To glue the stringing in, I used a sharp stick to get the glue deep into the routed groove and then pressed in the stringing. After the glue set up for about fifteen minutes, I used a burnishing tool to press the stringing further into the groove.

Gluing in the Stringing

After the glue set up completely, I simply used a chisel to pare off the piece of veneer that is sticking out of the top.

Paring Stringing

When making the cut like this with a chisel, I usually turn the chisel over to keep it from acting like a ramp and diving into the work. I also had to move slowly and pay careful attention to the grain direction to keep the stringing from splitting out of the top.

Corner Detail

The corner detail was a little more difficult, but with careful layout, setup of the straight edge and routing I was able to create the grooves for the corners.

Routing Corner Detail

After cleaning up the corner with a chisel, I was ready to inlay the stringing.

Before Cleaning Up The Corner

Each corner needed to be mitered, so I used a 45˚ chisel block to make the cuts.

Using Chisel Block

Miter Cut

Here is what it looked like after the corners were cut before I pared it down to the surface.

Mitered Corner Before Paring

After all the stringing was pared down I cleaned up the top with some careful scraping to get it ready for finish. Here is the top with the stringing completed.

Finished Product

Top with Single Board Top

From the beginning of this project we knew that we were going to use a single board top. Thankfully we have the capability to handle boards of this width. Our 24-inch Wadkin Planer came in handy in planing the top to its finished thickness of 1 and 1/4 inches. It is impressive seeing a board that size rolling through the planer.

Infeed Side of the Planer

Planer Outfeed

With newly sharpened knives in the cutter-head there was very little tear out. I was able to use the newly acquired 37-inch Performax sander, in the back of this picture, to clean up the top.

After cutting the board to finished length and laying it on top of the carcass (the first photo), the need for a chamfer on the bottom face of the top to help lighten the look of the piece was obvious.

Starting the chamfer along the length was relatively easy on the table saw, but the ends would have to be chamfered by hand. So out came the corrugated Stanley #8 jointer plane for the ends and the Lie Nielson #4 smoother to finish off all the surfaces.

Hand Chamfering the Ends

Hand Chamfering

In this photo you can see the lines that I plan to chamfer to on both edges.

And here is the finished product.

Chamfer Finished

The results are well worth the effort, and it was an effort to remove all that material.

This project is nearing completion, but there are many more challenges ahead. More on the finishing of this piece later.

-CB-

Last time we talked about the shop, I pointed out that the machine room floors needed to be refinished, like the bench room.

Difference in the floor between the two rooms

We thought we might be able to live with it, but after many dirty knees while working on machines trying to get them online that did not prove to be the true. The Yates American 36″ bandsaw, the radial arm saw station and the table saw island proved too big to move, so we decided to sand and finish around them. Here you can see the machine room with most of the machinery pushed into the empty space at the East end of the shop.

North wall of the shop before sanding

North West Corner Before Sanding

Table Saw Island

South East Corner

While this set back was frustrating, in the end the results definitely were worth the effort and time. Besides, we have become highly efficient at sanding and finishing floors. The entire process took three days. And here are the finished results.

Planer was pivoted out of our space on a pallet jack

Lathes Back In Place

East Side

West Side

South Side

-CB-

Machine Room Coming Together

Midstream of Machine Room Build-out

Machine room with ductwork plan

After some careful planning on paper, see “Planning the New Studio“, we massed all our machinery at the shop.

We were able to move James’ equipment out of his old shop and up to Lawrence in two trips in a 22 foot Penske truck. It went pretty seamlessly since everything was on wheels or on pallets, and I had recently found a pallet jack on Craigslist.

Don was bringing over his 8-inch jointer from his basement shop and we were able to muscle it out of his basement with four guys and some elbow grease.

I was not as lucky. Most of my machinery is 40 plus years old, cast iron and enormous. Adding that to the fact that my old shop did not have a loading dock, I needed to hire a rigger. As luck would have it, a machine I recently purchased from IRS Auctions was located at a rigger’s shop, so he agreed to bring it over and pick up all the other machines for a reasonable rate.

Enter Mike Kane of Woodworking Machinery Services and his amazing transforming truck. It basically is a 18 wheeler trailer that operates like a flat bed truck. He was easily able to unload his fork lift and move about 10,000 Lbs of machinery in a about a half an hour.

After all the machinery was at the shop, we started to move the machinery into position, bring electricity to them and hook up the dust collection system. Early on we decided to try to use the two dust collectors, a small Penn State and an Onieda, that we had rather than purchase a new/used one.

Onieda Installed With Duct Work

We built a small Stub wall to hold the Penn State dust collector, which will service the Wadkins 24-inch planer and the south wall, which has two lathes, three shapers and drops for a mobile sanding station.

Here is the run from the Onieda along the north wall that services the two jointers, the radial arm saw, and the three band-saws.

Duct Work on the North Wall

The Onieda also services the table saw island and the area that we are calling a tool corral, that houses router tables, William and Hussey molder planer, Dewalt Planer, scroll saw, and our 37-inch Performax drum sander.

Table Saw Island Coming Together

We had to raise the SawStop about 2 inches off the ground so that it would be level with the Oliver 260-D, a dual arbor sliding table saw. Here is the table saw island coming together.

Table Saw Island Nearing Completion

I have some trepidation about these dust collectors keeping up with all the machinery, but we thought we would give it a try first and then upgrade as necessary. Also we plan on eliminating the filter assembly and venting the fine particle out the shop window to improve their efficiency, being 6 floors up has some benefits. Adding blast gates to isolate entire runs, as well as at each machine, would also improve efficiency.

Time will tell if these two smaller dust collectors will be able to keep up with three people in a busy shop.

-CB-

This project has had more than its fair share of challenges. First the dovetails that needed to be cut by hand and then the tails that were cut standing on a stool with the six foot board clamped to the top of pallet rack. Now the through mortises that add strength to the carcass and keep the bottom of the case from sagging also need to be cut by hand because the board is too wide to use our mortiser.

Chopping Moritises

To make the layout and chopping of the mortises easier, I ran a stop dado in the top and the bottom of the case referencing off the fence to ensure that they are in the same orientation on both boards. I laid out the tenons on the two vertical boards, scribing them with a marking gauge slightly more than the thickness of the horizontal boards, so that the tenons stand proud of the top and bottom and can be planed flush. Then I cut them on the table saw standing them vertically and using the miter gauge to run them across a 3/4″ dado blade. I was not too concerned about the size of the tenons because I was going to scribe the mortises directly from the tenons.

After scribing the mortises, I used a forstner bit to start the mortise and finished it with a mortising chisel and mallet.

After the mortises were chopped, I fit the tenons taking care that the mortises bottomed out the same time that the front shoulders closed up.

Everything went together without a hitch, but if I were to build a case piece with similiar construction I would shoulder tenons so that I would be less concerned with gaps opening up. Also, I would have used Tage Frid’s technique of cutting the tenon diagonally and wedging it to add strength and close up any gaps.

Still learning…

-CB-

While we were moving, the locating arms of the Leigh jig were damaged. (Why do manufacturers insist on cutting corners on the most integral and delicate parts? They are needed to remain square to the jig yet they stick out 6″ from the main body of the jig, and it is made out of pot metal.) With deadlines looming and all the North Bennet Street School moxie I could muster, I decide for a mix of hand and machine work on the dovetails that hold the case of the low Shaker side board that will ultimately be used as a TV stand.

First I cut the pins of the half-blind dovetails by hand.

Hand-cut pins

In this picture you an also see how I laminated up the sides of the case. The outside is a resawn panel from the flitch that I bought from Berkshire Products for this client that is book-matched and the inside is shop-made quarter-sawn cherry. (More on that at a later date.)

And then switched to the router to hog out most of the material.

Router Set-Up

I clamped the two sides together with a board on top so that board and other side would act like a stop while routing so I would not rout too deep into the pin board. This made the process go quickly. All I had to adjust between passes was the depth of cut of the router bit.

Router Bit

Because the router bit does not cut a flat face, I decided to do multiple passes to make the clean-up of the bottom of the tail socket dovetail joint easier. This is avoided when using the jig because the tails are sloped to match the bottom of the pin board, but when hand cutting and chopping the pins you need a flat bottom of the tail socket. Also, by cutting in lighter passes, it was easier to come close to my initial saw cuts without the fear of the router bit pulling into the keeper side of the pin.

Stepped Bottom of the Tail Socket from Router Bit

Below is the sequence of cuts that I made.

First Pass with the Router

Second Pass with the Router

Last Pass with the Router

I left about 1/32″ to pair along the face and checks of the pin board. It was quick work to clean up these cuts with a chisel.

Paring the Cheek of the Pins.

Pins Are Paired

Whenever dovetails are visible I take the time to cut them by hand, as there is a certain quality to dovetails that are cut well by hand. Since these dovetails are not visible once the top is on or unless someone is on the ground looking up at the piece, this was an expedient way to cut these dovetails.

A secondary challenge in the cutting of this joint was cutting and paring the tail boards that are about 6′ long. I ended up clamping them to the pallet racks that we use for storing our sheet goods and standing on a step stool.

One of the things I love about furniture making is while there are some standard practices, there is not “one way” to build a piece. Each piece has unique challenges and solutions, and each time you build a piece of furniture you are learning new techniques and strategies for common problems and adding to your knowledge base.

“When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.” Lillian Smith

Still learning something new everyday,

-CB-

The latest project in the shop is a low sideboard that is going to be used as a TV stand for the client’s new flat screen.

Progress as of today (4/8/09)

It is the first piece that I am building for a client that has redesigned their downstairs and wants to update their furniture to suit their new look with this piece, a new dining room set, a sideboard, and a side table.

After some initial conversations with the clients, the general style, something that I would call “modern shaker” popularized by other furniture makers like Thomas Moser and Christian Becksvoort, and the material, cherry, were decided. So, I set off for one of my favorite vendors to find a flitch of cherry so that the set of new furniture would match in grain and color.

Besides being a gorgeous drive out to western Mass near Stockbridge, I love to go out to Berkshire Products for their amazing selection of lumber.

Enormous Lumber Packs

Huge Bubinga Slab

I call it a woodworker’s Shangri-la. They specialize in wide slabs, bookmatched sets, flitches, and exotic species. When I am out there I find myself wandering around each of their 4 barns staring up at all the enormous lumber with my mouth agape. (If anyone wants I live-edge dining room table out of bookmatched English Elm give me a call. I have been dying to make something out of this wood since I set eyes on it a few years ago.)

Bookmatched Elm Slab

After a few hours combing through the barns I settled on a cherry flitch with some nice color and interesting figure.

3-year old inserted for scale

Through some careful planning, resawing and design I should be able to get the majority of the primary wood for this client’s projects from these four boards, ensuring that the furniture will match in grain and color, as well as, in its design.

More about the design at a later date…

-CB-

Another recent job had us travelling to Fairfield, CT to transform an older built-in desk and bookcase to meet the clients’ 21st century needs.

The client had oak bookcases that ran 2/3rds of the desk, which were adequate but fairly simply constructed, and they wanted to spruce up this work station, provide for more storage, and lighten the room by painting the upper and lower cases. The client also wanted to keep their existing oak lower cabinets but they were going to paint them. I also created a solid counter top out of 5/4 cherry to replace the particle board counter that was there previously.

The bookcases are built using our usual methods; 3/4″ plywood for the sides, tops, and shelves and 1/2″ plywood for the backs to give the cases strength, rigidity and to ensure that they remain square, and maple for the face frames because it looks better painted. Some idiosyncrasies of this particular job are that I made beaded face frames and double beaded maple edging for the shelves.

We also arched the top of the bookcases and arched the top panel on the end. In order to maintain the 2″ reveal between the stepped out center bookcase and the two sides, I dado-ed the center cabinet sides 1/2″ deep, made the inner stiles of the two side cases’ face frames 1/2″ wider than they needed to be, and glued the cases together on site to lock the three separate cases together.

Here are some shots after the lower cabinets have been painted and the recessed lighting has been moved.

Careful planning and preparation made for an easy install and finished product that the client loved and will enjoy for generations.

-CB-

One of the jobs that has gone through the shop over the last few months was a bookcase job for a client in Weymouth, MA. While the construction of the bookcases was straightforward, the site provided some challenges for the install.

The install ran the entire length of a staircase that leads to an office upstairs in the client’s barn. Unfortunately I left my go-go gadget arms at the shop, but luckily I had my trusty Little Giant ladder to help access the different levels that the bookcases were located on. Also dealing with the different pitches of the roof and the fact that it was horribly out of square in places, as this was a typical New England barn that has gone through many transformations, helped add to the install excitement.

I used 3/4″ plywood for the bookcase sides, tops and bottoms and 1/2″ for the backs. This gives the cases extra strength and ensures they remain square, even if the barn doesn’t. The client was not sure if he wanted to paint the bookcases or finish them natural so I used a simple face frame construction out of maple, which costs a little more than poplar but looks much nicer painted, if the client decided to go that route in the end.

Overall, the install job went quickly over the course of two days, and, most importantly, the customer was extremely pleased with the transformation of his space.

-CB-

While the wall was going up, it quickly became apparent that we needed to do something about the floors.

Anything that touched the floors came up stained a dark brown; 2×4’s, knees, tools, my oldest daughter, anything. Not so great if you are building fine furniture, although we could instantly create a 150 year old patina on a project, just by kicking it around the shop for a few minutes. A quick trip to the Home Depot rental center and we were off to the races.

I think we developed a pretty good system; a belt sander hooked up to a Oneida Dust Deputy, hooked up to a shop vac, all on a hand truck. But after looking at Oneida’s website we are not the first to come up with this system.

Here you can really see the extent of the problem. I know many of you will notice that we are sanding across the grain, but the floors have enough dips and valleys that sanding with the grain we ended up with mixed results at best.

Here are the finished results after a sealer coat, 2 coats of high gloss polyurethane (for durability), and one coat satin polyurethane (to cut down on the glare).

In this picture you will notice the darker streaks on the floor. We are not sure what caused this, but we have some theories. We think that at one time there were rows of pallet racks on the floor, and this is either where the racks were or the space between them. Either way it is really strange.

The floors are 1″ thick rock maple laid on top of 4″ thick sleepers set perpendicular to each other on top of poured concrete. One of my shop-mates, James, espoused an interesting theory that you can tell an old floor by the length of the floor boards. In a really old floor the lengths are shorter because the methods for moving the logs out of the forest were more labor intensive and therefore early lumberjacks sawed raw logs shorter to make them easier to move.

One obvious problem though is that we are going to have to refinish the machine room floor. Too bad most of the machinery is already in place.-

-CB-