A couple of weeks ago, our  photographer friend, Greg Hren, came up to the shop to shoot a proof of concept for a local company, Work’NGear. They are interviewing customers who use their products for their “Driven” campaign.

I had no idea what to expect, but was told to muster out in my Sunday best Carharts, boots and workshirt for a little video shoot.

Greg and his assistant Richard, aka Rabbit, showed up around three, and we shot for four hours around the shop, including the interview.

Working with Greg and Richard is always good fun.

I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it.

CB

I continue to struggle with keeping up the blog. I could write something trite about my New Year’s resolution to be a better blogger, but there are more pressing things to make resolutions about this year and that excuse would be three months too late.

That being said, here is the latest installment of the long (and slow) running blog about the “Low Sideboard for Modern Living.”

Low Sideboard

One thing that is often overlooked on furniture projects is the back. For this project I decided to use a traditional design strategy but stood it on its ear. A shiplap back is traditional, but given the length of this piece it would not be practical. And since I am not overly concerned with water leaking into the back of this cabinet, function would come second to form in this instance. Besides,personally, vertical shiplap looks more elegant.

Shiplap Back

One hurdle to overcome is finding twenty-four linear feet of quarter-sawn cherry that matches in color and grain. Not impossible, but more easily accomplished by purchasing 16/4 (“sixteen quarter” or 4-inches thick, every profession needs to have their own language to keep the general public guessing.) flat-sawn or plain-sawn cherry and resawing it into quarter-sawn myself.

Re-sawn 16/4 Cherry Board

Whenever resawing material you can expect some wood movement and should plan accordingly. Under normal circumstances I would only need to rough mill the material 1/4 of an inch over in thickness, but since I am resawing I cut the boards at 4/4, a full 1/2-inch oversized. But knowing that all the boards will match in grain and color makes this process and waste worth while. I frequently use this technique to match the grain and color for kitchen cabinet face frames, rails and stiles.

The resawing process is simple. You can use a bandsaw or table saw, but which ever you chose make sure you have a thin-kerf blade to reduce waste. I prefer using the band saw and generally use a 1 1/2-inch wide blade that has 2 teeth per inch. It makes for a rough cut, but I am going to have to finish mill the pieces afterwards anyway.

Yates 36-Inch Band Saw Set Up For Resawing

1 1/2-inch blade with 2 teeth/inch

I use an auxiliary fence to help keep the board a uniform 1-inch away from the blade and if I am resawing a wide piece I would clamp another board to the fence to help keep the cut parallel to the face.

Bandsaw Fence and Resaw Mid Cut

When resawing you also need to make sure you give the wood a chance to move before finish milling. I usually give the boards a couple of days before I start milling and while they are still rough sawn I start off clamping them to the bench in the same order they came out of the board to try and limit the rapid loss of moisture and wood movement. (If you are interested in learning more about wood and wood movement, I highly recommend Bruce Hoadley’s Understanding Wood.) After I start to mill the boards down I make sure to keep them stickered.

Stickered Shiplap

I needed to drill holes for the pan head screws (I choose these to keep the head from splitting the end of the board.) and to counter sink the heads, so I set up a simple guide to make the process of creating multiples go faster. Many people tend to over think these jigs with stop blocks and hold downs, but when drilling on a drill press these steps are a waste of time. I used a stop to keep the holes the same distance from the edge and then simple pencil marks to align the edges to put the holes in the same place in relation to the edges of the board. Also keeping your work area neat and organized helps when creating multiples.

Drill Press Set Up

Simple Jig to Aid In The Creation of Multiples

In the vein of simple jigs, I frequently use what is at hand to aid in construction and for repeatable results. Here I used my 12-inch Starrett (my most frequently used tool in the shop) to space the shiplap exactly an 1/8 of an inch apart.

Shiplap Spacing

Here is the finished product before finish, note the consistency in color and grain.

Shiplap Completed

Shiplap

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-