Hayrake table, progress

The hammer and the finger a few days later. It doesn't look
10% as grotesque as I felt when it happened... 

After a week off playing full time furniture maker, I did make a lot of progress toward the Hayrake table. Sadly, wednesday was partially wasted by an accident where I hit my nail as hard as I could with a mortising hammer. The nail tore in the middle and most of the blood drained through. If you never have done this, it hurts a lot. I duly walked to the bathroom where I passed out for about a minute. Strangely, there is very few evidence left of this embarrassing episode as of Saturday night...

The stretcher was a very challenging piece of joinery. It contains two round end-caps, each with three joints at 45 degrees relative to each other. The end-caps connect to two stretchers at 45 degrees with the central stretcher. Pfew, it took me three days to cut all the joints. In the end, they came together without a real fight and I'm now a lot more precise and fast at it. Yet, I added a mortising machine to my dream list of tools. 

With the legs pretending to be assembled.

Some 37 hours later, I have most of the joinery done for the table, and look forward to add the apron, finish the structure with a cherry stain (to match the chairs and China cabinet), and finally tackle the monster job of jointing the tabletop with my small equipment (I've got a McGiver-style plan for that!). My 50 hours estimate for the overall project will be an underestimate, but not by a lot.

Signing off!

Week of woodworking

The stretcher system taking form.

This week is off and the main objective is to get the dining room table done. I don't know whether this is going to happen, but I'll try as hard as I can. This being said, I spent the day with the girls hiking and eating in a fine Japanese restaurant. I rest my case.

The Hayrake table is a nice learning project, rated as intermediate in terms of skills. There is a lot of angled joinery such as these shown on the picture to the right. Tomorrow, I'm getting started on the rounded end-cap, with the most challenging joinery details.

Here is a sample of the stretcher with a somewhat similar end-cap.

A sample of a hayrake table.

Stanley No 78

A picture of a No. 78, but in better condition than mine.

My father in law gave me a Stanley No 78 to play with. It came from the same heirloom toolbox as the Record No. 5 plane, and is pretty much in the same condition as the No.5 as well. I can feel a little restoration project coming to me!

I wonder whether I can bring this "old rusty" back into a functional rabbet plane.  This made my day, on top of being probably one of the day that I spent the most time working in the shop ever... I've got cuts on my hands to prove it. These cuts are not even caused by my tools, but by the wicked hard edges that Hard Maple can keep on these through mortises cut across 3" of wild grained stock!

A knitter's end Table - design

Following up on yesterday’s post. Since every single tools are packed away in the garage, the only way to DO woodworking is with a pencil and a mouse. Well, a pencil for today. I bounced some ideas to my knitting wife. After a bit of discussion, I brooded all day on this until tonight. Here is how I imagine the end table to look like:

Orthographic drawing of the end table

I’m not sure about the sides, but I will use light colored slats in the back (similar to the TV stand) with the rest in dark Cabernet stain.

The sketch cleared with the ultimate user. I guess that the next step is to figure out the joinery and make a scale model with Sketchup.

I created a glue-up monster

... and the villagers are heading down to the manor with torches and pitchforks.

With the current house buying/selling upheaval, I developed a habit to wake up at 4:40AM. This isn't good for my health, but there is nothing that I can do about it, apparently. So, instead of lying in bed trying to sleep, I decided to head down the olde neglected shoppe and do something fun. I'm still working on the TV stand, while designing the mega diner table for my ever expanding immediate family.

Today, I needed to do a bit of dry fitting to identify the places where I need to plane, sand and compensate for the difference in moisture between now and when I cut the joinery. The middle part of the TV stand is this fairly complex piece, with a number of shelves, some curved, mounted on a .... goodness, here is a picture.


I designed it so almost all of the grain is in the same axis and thus will move together. This is a lesson learned from project #1 and project #0 (sigh). The whole thing will be very solid once glued... the issue is to get the workflow right. This is 18 dowels and 8 mortices/tenons in one monolithic step. No new ground will be broken for an experienced woodworker, but there will be some breaking for me.

With this problem in mind, enhanced by sleep deprivation and spring allergies, I started rehearsing. I'm hesitating to try too often as I don't want to loosen the fit with repetitive ins and outs in the joinery. I think that I will go about by gluing the three shelves to one side first and let this cure while clamped. I'll then recruit my surgeon-handed bookbinding wife and miniature painting first-born to help apply the glue and clamp the whole thing down. I'll use Titebond III as it seems to cure more slowly than my usual LePage yellow glue.

I may be overthinking this too much, but I can't emotionally afford to screw up at this stage after countless hours of hand cutting joinery.

On a side note, I now have precise measurements for the front doors and drawer front which I will be veneering. That pimento burl is going to be a fun thing to veneer: I made my softener last week, got a veneering hammer and some hide glue, renamed an old pancake hotplate as ShopMaster Hot plate 2000 (tm). Nothing can stop me now...

...other than to have to move my entire household from point A to point B in 4 weeks.

TV stand, slow and steady wins the race.

The DVD boxes are there to condition the lumber to its future purpose. Now, on to fitting these guys together.

Although I haven't been posting much in the last few weeks, the TV stand is coming along. I'm now at the fitting phase of the two set of shelves on the sides.

Making dados with a regular tablesaw blade was a bit time-consuming, but compared to the heddle from the previous project, it was a snap! The good thing about making this heddle is that nothing will ever feel tedious unless I get into clock making.

There is one thing that I miss about working with Sapele: the smell. I was naïvely hoping that maple would smell like the faint smell that you have in a sugar shack.

I've purchased all that I need for veneering and for steam bending. The next few posts should be on my first dabble into steam bending, using aptly a turkey roaster and the kitchen's oven as steam box.  This will be great fun ahead.

Now, let's look at the original design:



To maximize the storage, I decided to turn the lower shelf in the center to a drawer where two rows of DVD cases will coexist side by side. The whole thing is complicated by the fact that the Blum Hinges have to have some clearance to function. As a result, I will probably need to widen the centre part by 1-2 inches to make it all happen. The slight change in width may have large impact on my cut list... Mmm, I guess that I need to get back to sketchup to figure things out soon! With the drawer, the piece should be able to store at least 126 DVD cases (which sadly is less than the number of DVDs that we own...).

Building a workbench II

Let's turn the plan into something to work with (previous post).

Acquiring the lumber

Enough for both the table and the workbench

The good news with this project is that working with framing lumber is inexpensive. In fact, more than half the net cost of the project went into the pipe clamps and steel pipes. It is important to spend time at the lumber yard and turn over a LOT of pieces before settling on the right one. Large pieces tend to be the nicest, but I found enough good 2X4" so that there is no need to mill smaller stock from larger 2X8 and larger. Just budget a good hour to pick the 6-7 item carefully.