Tambour Progress

Here's the process I've come up with for making the slats for the chisel cabinet's tambour door.

First I round the edge of some 3/4 stock with a nosing plane. Since there is no stop, I used the pencil hatching trick to make keeping an eye on progress a little easier:

The section of odd texture on the end of this plane is from the overzealous stamping of F.A.H. - obviously that guy didn't cotton to others borrowing his tools.

Once it's rounded, I use the slitter on a Stanley #45 to cut most of the way through...

...and then finish removing the slat with a knife.

The slat is then placed curved face down into a jig so I can clean up the back with a jack plane.

And that's it - one slat finished (well, actually two since it's double length) and many more to go.

And here's a shot of the planes used:

Since each slat doesn't take very long to make, I'm hoping to sneak out to the shop and work through the total a little at a time. We'll see...

Tambour Door Experiment

The last of my tool panel up-grades will be the chisel panel. In an effort to save little fingers, but not take up more space, it will actually be a shallow cabinet with a tambour door. I've never made one of these before, and I thought it might be wise to experiment a bit.

Here's a shot of the bench after messing about for a little while:

One piece of the tambour (do those parts have a name?) is lurking under the left holdfast. The tracks were made with compass, knife, gouge and router plane. The first was sized for 1x8 stock, but I decided that would stick out too far from the wall, so I tried a 1x6 size. Seems like it will work fine, unless I want those chisel handles angled out, in which case it'll have to be deeper. Hmm. Decisions, decisions...

Black Spruce Carving Mallet

One of the projects my students will be working on this year is making a carving mallet. We didn't need these last year when we made wooden spoons, but there will be some projects this year where a mallet to use with the gouges will come in handy.

This weekend I made a prototype from some black spruce harvested from the burn zone of the Miller's Reach fire. That was a huge fire back in 1996 that burned over 37,000 acres and around 400 buildings. The area, like a lot of this part of Alaska, is boggy, and the black spruce are dominant. I don't know if black spruce grows differently elsewhere, but up here they are very "Doctor Seuss" like:


They are extremely slow growing - this is a mature stand that escaped the fire. In the burnt areas they look like bare, black poles.

Here's the section I started with:


It was an off-cut from another project at our school and had been stripped with a power planer. "Oh the humanity!"

Here's what I meant by slow growing:


This one has 60 rings per inch! So at three inches in diameter, it's a 90 year old tree - yikes!

After cutting to length, I worked at the shavehorse to rough out the shape of the handle with a drawknife. Then I switched to the spokeshaves to smooth and refine. I should mention how handy the step cut in the end of the shavehorse was on this project. For creating the curve down from the head, I used the horse normally. For the flair at the bottom of the handle, I couldn't keep shaving in the same direction as it would be working against the grain. I could have reversed the spokeshave and pushed, but instead I removed the mallet from under the horse's head, put the top of the mallet head on my solar plexus and wedged the end of the handle on the step and shave down the curve with the grain - easy and quick!

Here it is with the handle mostly finished:


And here it is after the head was also cleaned up:


And oiled:




I'm not sure if the checking will be a problem or not. Even with the cracks, it feels solid. Time will tell...

And the final mallet with the tools used to make it:


The kit: drawknife, flat and round spokeshaves, and a curved scraper. Missing are the shavehorse, and the saw.

Instant Bench Top Extension

Dan's Shop Rule #7: No matter how large your workbench is, it will always need to be just a little larger.

So the other day I'm working on the Rolltop desk; it was sitting up on the bench, and I needed to take the top off and work on that as well - ah, rule #7. What to do? The desk was heavy, awkward and, especially at that stage of repair, weak. I really couldn't take it down.

As I was turning this problem over in my mind, I started to focus on the plywood bench cover I was using under the desk to protect from glue drips etc. Then I remembered Rule #9.

Dan's Shop Rule #9: All tools have at least three uses.

Well, I'd originally built the plywood and 2x4 cover for protecting the bench from the mess of cleaning rusty tools - sort of a more permanent version of cardboard. It slips over the bench top and into the vise. Hmm. What would happen if I slid it partially off the end and tightened the vise? Whoa! Cool! Instant larger bench! Take that Rule #7!

The pictures below illustrate this simple, yet slow to be discovered, second use:




There is of course a limit to how much weight can be placed on the extension before it starts to sag. With the desk on top, I added a clamp opposite the vise to help hold everything tight.

So, now I've started to wonder about the third use of the plywood cover...

Birthday Box

As hard as it is for me to believe, it's time for another birthday present for my boy. He loves to draw, so I decided on making a box to hold all his pencils, crayons etc.

Now normally my posts start from the beginning and follow the creation process through to the product. This one's going to be different - mostly because as the time crunch came on, the picture taking pretty much stopped.

So here it is, a bit backwards, but hopefully still worthwhile.

The completed box:

And now for what I have in way of "step-by-step" photographs.

The beginning:

The middle:

The end (assuming that you understand that by "end" I mean end of the beginning):

And pictures of two tips or techniques that I've found useful for making this style of box (which is really just a giant version of my pencil box):

The first involves shortening one end section to allow the top to slide in and out of the grooves. I rip down the center of the groove and then plane the remaining waste down to the bottom of the groove (well, "bottom" when the piece is oriented as it is in the finished box). It is easy to go too far, and then the lid does not fit snug; there is a gap between it and the end of the box. My improved technique is to first take a pencil and draw a line down the back corner of the remaining groove. As soon as this planes off, I stop. Pretty simple, but pretty darn effective. Why did it take me so long to think of that?

The second is a simple way to test the fit of the rabbeted bottom (or top) into the grooves in the box sides. I just grab an offcut of the grooved stock and use that as a handy gauge to test the rabbets. Again, simple but effective, and embarrassingly slow to come to me.

I guess I better start planning next year's birthday present, as it will be here before I know it!

More on Staining Wood with Tea

Okay, here's an update on the staining wood with tea experiment; I added two different oil finishes to the test.

First, let's revisit the test board with only the tea stain:


Applications of the tea stain from left to right: five, three, one, and none.

Now the oil from top to bottom: four applications of dark tung oil, four applications of Tried and True Danish Oil, and none.


And the same, but rotated 90 degrees:


I think it is interesting how the angle makes such a difference. The wood is planed, so the chatoyancy might be a factor - I don't remember seeing such a difference when the wood was sanded. But then again, it's been quite a while since I've done much sanding or staining, so maybe I'm just wrong about that.

Oh, and I'm still working on on the coffee stain - more on that later.

Staining with Tea

I've been experimenting with making my own stain; I want something completely non-toxic. I've used tea in the past, but it really didn't seem to do much to the wood, but then I got to thinking about making it stronger somehow. Here's what I came up with.

I started with about two quarts of water. After the water got to a rolling boil, I added six teabags and just let it keep boiling. After about twenty minutes or so, I removed the bags and kept boiling the water down until I had about one cup left.

As you can see, it became quite strong tea:


To test it out, I divided a board into four sections:


Then I left one section unfinished and stained the other three:


After several applications, here were the results:


The first section was left unstained, the second section had one application of stain, the third section had three and the fourth section had five applications.

Conclusions/Thoughts:

• Well first, it obviously works. Cool.
• Second - since it's water based, I realized that you have to wait for the previous application to be completely dry before adding another. If you don't, the wood doesn't absorb the stain and not much happens. I think I could have achieved similar results with fewer coats if I had figured this out sooner.
• Third, the blotchy spots are due to my sloppy application and could easily be avoided.
• I'm curious about what might happen if I strained the tea through a coffee filter. Would it act more as a dye rather than a stain?

Next steps:

I'll oil part of the test board and see how that looks.

Also, now I'm curious about coffee...

Bench Leveler Feet - Mark II

I mentioned some time ago that I would post the shop-made leveler feet that I used on the benches at school. These are an improvement on the ones I posted about a few years ago. The main difference is that the whole jam nut adjustment system is gone. I went back to the original design (see link in first post) of embedding a nut in the leg. I also switched the hex bolts to carriage bolts, but I kept the shallow hole in the puck, just making it round instead of hexagonal. These are very simple to make and use.

This is all you need for each leveler foot:


Hockey puck, all thread connector nut, carriage bolt.

Here's the process:

Mark the center of the leg bottom:


Bore a slightly undersized hole:


I usually bore the hole to match the length of the connector nut, but I didn't have my Stanley 47 with me, so I used the much less accurate "tape system".

Then I used my favorite technique for removing chips from the bottom of the hole - just pass the straw between the fingers of your cupped hand and blow hard - no dust in face, eyes or hair:


Tap the connector nut into the hole with a hammer:


After starting it with the hammer, I switch to a heavy rubber mallet and a piece of scrap wood to drive it home:


If you drive the nut completely with the hammer, the threads can become distorted from the pounding and the bolt won't adjust smoothly. DAMHIKT.

And here's the bolt:


The hockey puck foot ready for boring:


Don't squeeze it too tight, or your hole becomes extremely oval when the puck is released from the vise.

Here's the finished foot:

This one is actually wrong - I forgot we reset the adjustable auger bit for a student's project, so the hole is too big. One important note: the hole needs to be deep enough to fully seat the carriage bolt head, but not so deep that the square shank is recessed as well.

And the finished bench leveler foot:


The foot is very simple to adjust - just slip an open-ended wrench over the square shank and turn. These new feet have made workbench leveling at our school shop about as easy as it can get. I think I might have to retro fit my own bench at home...

It Is Better To Light One Candle...

...than to sit and curse the darkness.

Well that's so true, but up here in Alaska on the shortest day of the year, with only 5 1/2 hours of sunlight, we like to light more than one.

Here's an easy project that is instantly practical. I made the first three-light holder at my son's request. The four-light was made specifically for Advent. The wood is a 100+ year Doug Fir 2x4 (and a real 2" by 4" too) salvaged from my friend Dave's attic remodel in Cincinnati. It was heavy, and hard as a rock! It was also just right for this project - thanks Dave!

First I transferred the angle for the ends from the original, did the lay-out, and cut the ends:




Then I bored the holes:


I scribed a line in from both sides to create the side bevel:


I wasn't trying to match the angle from the ends, as I think it looks just fine when they are not the same.

I chalked the side for easier visibility and stared hogging off wood with the scrub plane:


I'm not sure why, but the surface looks flat in the photo, but trust me, the scrub was set pretty coarse and the grooves were deep.

Once I got close to my line, I switched to a cambered #6:


The final smoothing was done with a #5 1/4 "junior jack" plane.

Complete:


With oil and wax and next to the original:


And with flaming wax:


This is a fun project for that special piece of wood you've been hoarding (come on, admit it, we all do it...) that also works fine with a nice chunk of 2x4. It's also a good project for kids.

Have fun and light a candle - or two, or three...