Mass Wood working: my

Showing posts with label my. Show all posts

Sunday, February 23, 2014

PICTURE FRAME IN MY FURNITURE seaside lower cabinet

How did this picture frame get used in the seaside cabinet?

Ive shared the graphics used for the seaside cabinet here

Ive shared the demolition and rebuild of the upper hutch here

Now its time to show you the story behind the lower cabinet.

The legs seen in this photo are not original, just a set I was trying out and didnt use.

It started as a TV cabinet,

the kind that we have all had in our homes before for our big fat CRT TVs.

Big shout out to the inventor of the flat screen ...

I can be an independent woman now cause I can move my own TV.

With a little trimming in all the right places it became the perfect platform

for this project and I have extra bits for something else.

This is the photo my daughter originally sent to me asking if I could use it.

My only question was "Is it solid wood?"

She knows my motis operandi but even I get tricked by that sneaky MDF.

It was solid plywood which is not bad to work with.

Next came the legs, these came from an octagonal side table

that had 8 posts between the base and the top.

The table was ugly but the posts were fabulous and just what I needed.

This is another great example of where to find furniture legs.

I took this turquoise frame to the compound mitre saw and cut the

corners on a 45 then joined 2 together to create this fun detail for the front of the leg.

I used glass knobs with vintage hardware plates

and the star on the middle of the apron is also a hardware plate from a kitchen cabinet.

Mother swears she has more of these which I would love to get my mitts on.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Starting to Put It Together In My Mind

It wasnt really all that long ago, in historical terms, that average and mostly anonymous craftsman created many pieces of furniture that are cherished and venerated today. Their work commands a kings ransom at auction houses and is treasured in museums and the homes of collectors. It could be argued this reverence comes from the history and age associated with the pieces, but if thats the case why are the collections Ive been able to visit most housed in art museums? Why do modern artisans and craftsmen struggle to recreate these pieces down to the millimeter of accuracy. Lets not even mention the piles of plans and measured drawings produced by the woodworking media to sell us the latest "newly discovered, never before published" version of a Newport Highboy or Shaker Cabinet.

Ive been thinking a lot about design and furniture styles and nearly everything encompassing those circles lately. The impetus for these rumblings comes from two sources. The first is our new house and the sad fact that we dont have enough good furniture to suit ourselves. I can build furniture and I can fix this problem, but I want to build furniture that will last us the rest of our lives, so building beautiful furniture that is designed right for our tastes and lifestyle is important. I want the pieces I build to work together with each other and with the house itself. Similar in experience to what I was talking about HERE after reading "Poems of Wood and Light."

The second is I have been reading my way through the new book from Lost Art Press by George Walker and Jim Tolpin called "By Hand and Eye." The book speaks to me from my own interest in history. Ive spent good time and energy figuring out how woodworkers of the past created furniture from a technical point of view. Planing boards flat by hand and cutting dovetails with a backsaw. But the technical side is only half the picture. Knowing how to fold a crease into a piece of paper doesnt give you the ability to create origami and knowing how to make a mortise and tenon joint with a chisel and saw doesnt imply the ability to make beautiful furniture.

"The Joiner and Cabinetmaker" is one of the better woodworking tomes put to print in the last decade or more. Ill give the caveat that it is a mostly a reprint of an older book accompanied by research. In general it is very well received and I cant remember ever reading a dissenting or belittling review of it.

Fairly early on in the text of the actual book (Pg 56 - 58) there is a small passage that fascinated me when I read it, yet it seems to have garnered little notice. Reading "By Hand and Eye" brought this passage back to mind and I had to revisit it again. It tells about the care an apprentice must take if he is to go out to a customers home and measure the space to fit a new cabinet. It goes on about how he must carefully check and double check the height, width, depth, and write these numbers legibly on a piece of paper, scratching them onto the back of a snuff box with a point of a nail is unacceptable.

The books point of view puts you in the shoes of the apprentice, but after re-reading the book a couple times I started to think of this passage from the journeymans point of view.

Picture it.

Youre working hard in the shop on a Wednesday morning, putting the finishing touches on a clients chest of drawers. Suddenly the Master stops at your bench and hands you a piece of paper with measurements the apprentice Thomas was sent to collect yesterday. On the paper is the numbers for height, width, and depth and maybe a few other notes in the Masters hand. The cabinet is to be made of oak and deal and have drawers underneath and doors on top.

Now hop to it!!

I would argue that anyone could slap a box together to fit into those proscribed measurements, but you have to take into account the information and tradition reinforced in the rest of the book. The apprentice tradition described worked very hard to build on a foundation of good, careful, quality work. A tradition of doing things the right way the first time. It was of the utmost importance the client be happy with the finished piece and all the careful dovetailing in the world wont help a malformed, misshapen piece that belongs on the island of misfit toys.

I wonder how I would fare if placed in that situation. Surely I could hit the measurements, but would my work have visual appeal? Would it be utilitarian enough to perform its duties? Would it survive the test of time and someday be placed in a cozy,, climate controlled museum as a prime example of furniture from the period.

I probably could do all these things if given enough time and enough chance at trial and error. Certainly if I sketched out a measured drawing or four then proceeded into several versions of mock-ups and prototypes until I had the details dialed in satisfactorily. But could I do all this and build the final cabinet in around a weeks time?

The end of this passage in the book talks about Bill Sharp. He was a good workman who was just a little sloppy and poor at taking and following measurements. He was dismissed from the shop because his cabinet wouldnt fit in the space measured. The book says it was a good cabinet though and it only took him a week to build it.

Could you design and build a successful cabinet in a work week?

Up until now Im not sure I could either. But the book "By Hand and Eye" is opening my eyes on how an 18th century journeyman may have attacked the problem "at the point of the tool" and it has been quite a journey for me so far. Ive not even finished my first tour through the pages and Im already picking up so much. I should say Im relearning a lot of the things I learned to years ago in Art and Humanities classes and have forgotten or misplaced over time.This is a good thing.

Im learning its OK to trust my eye. Learning to break things down into shapes and proportions. Learning to size things to the body and the space its to fit into. Other design books Ive read have been profiles in particular styles or focused on measurements with some nods to perspective and other larger ideas. They just havent been all that this book has been so far.

Cutting dovetails is easy. Designing the right piece, with the right place, for those dovetails, thats much more challenging. With the furniture I have to build for this house and the work I want to accomplish in my writing pursuits Im glad to have this book in my hands and now that the new shop is finally in order, I can start to put it to practice and build the pieces that fit us, fit our house, and fill our lives.

Ratione et Passionis

Oldwolf

Monday, February 10, 2014

So here is my What is it

So here is my "What is it?", which took about six hours to produce...

I followed the plans up to a point and then I started to wing it. For me, the winging it part makes the exercise much more enjoyable. Using a hunk of applewood I had left over from a saw handle I had made a couple of years ago, I cut it up to match the plans dimensions, leaving a whole lot more at the top end so I would have a bit to clamp the thing to the bench with. I then got out the chisels and gouges and set off making a pile of chips. Half way through I decided to incorporate the extra wood I had at the top for no other reason that it was there.

Two 1/2" earth magnets were let into the back to hold it in place when it is being used.

When I was done, I smoothed things out with 100 grit, then 150 grit, and then gave it a good rub down with 220 grit. So far it has received two coats of Minwax Finishing Wax applied with #000 steel wool. Over the next week or so Ill apply another seven or eight coats or so, going through the grits of steel wool, applying the final couple of coats with #0000.

I learned two things during this exercise. First, applewood is a female dog to work with as there are so many small knots and grain directions, you cant help but get tear-out no matter what you do. The second thing I learned is that I seriously need some carving lessons. Too bad Kari lives so far away.

So what, exactly, does this thing do? Click on the links below and check it out...

Click Here For Image 1 Click Here For Image 2

Peace,

Mitchell

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Update On My Portable Vise Design

A few weeks ago I posted an article about a portable vise I had designed. Before it was posted I had already placed an order with a local wood supplier for enough Beech to build it, but hit a snag a few days afterwards. The yard had problems coming up with Beech in the thickness I wanted, which was 1½". I called around to a few other local suppliers and heard the same story; nothing thicker than 1". I found that I could get the stock I needed from a supplier in the States, but was shocked at the cost to ship it up to me. When I stated such, the supplier said something that made me rethink my choice of Beech for this project, which was; "Beech isnt exactly the lightest species of wood." Given this is supposed to be a "portable" vise, naturally this comment caught my attention. I aint gettin any younger here, so not wanting to have to slug around something that weighed a ton, I thought I should do some more research.

Almost everything about workbenches that I came across stated that Beech was the material of choice, mainly due to its "density". Why everything to do with woodworking has to be so bloody technical, Ill never know, but I decided to see if there were other species of wood that came close to Beechs "density", but weighed less. I had seen Density Values listed on many different wood suppliers websites but I really didnt have a clue what it really meant, so I decided the first up on my agenda should be figuring out exactly what the hell "density" meant.

Huge mistake.

I really have to be honest here; I am so far removed from an analytical thought process, I dont even fully understand what that term really means, so trying to decipher pretty much all of the definitions for "Density" that I found was as impossible for me as making cream from sand. Why do those that post definitions on the web think everyone is as like-minded as they are? Hell, if I could think like them I wouldnt be reading their damned definitions in the first place, but instead, I would be posting my own, which, I must admit, is exactly what I am going to try to do here, but one I came up with that, hopefully, rewrites the gobbledygook in laymens terms.

den·si·ty (dĕnsĭ-tē)

Basically, the amount of wood in a piece of wood.
The more "fibers" (read that as "wood") a wood has per square-whatever, the stronger it is.
Density of wood is defined by a decimal value.
The more dense the wood, the higher the decimal value.
The higher the density value, the stronger the wood is, which means the less effect wailing on it has.
There are as many different ways to calculate a woods density as there are species of the damned stuff, which causes me to believe that anyone in their right mind should stay the hell away from the subject whenever possible. (which, in turn, explains why I didnt)
The standard way to measure the density of wood, or at least the way I gleaned it to be from reading about 100 different articles on the subject, is by taking the weight of a specific volume of wood which has been properly dried and dividing it by the weight of the same measurement of the same species of wood which hasnt, or is still "green".
Once you understand the principles of calculating Density Values, you realize that to calculate it, you first have to find the weight of the particular species of wood you want to know about in both its green and dry configurations, and if you can do that, you can also find a Density Value list somewhere, so for Gods sake, use it, and forget about going through all this other shit!

So putting all rational thought aside, I took my new-found knowledge for a test drive and learned...

A cubic foot of dried Beech has a weight of 45-pounds and by dividing that value by the weight of a cubic foot of green Beech, which is 54-pounds, the density factor of dried Beech is 0.8333, or at least that is the value I am going to apply to it, despite any critics.
Comparing that value with one for Poplar, for which a cubic foot of dried has a weight of 28-pounds and a cubic foot of green is stated to be 39-pounds, means that Poplar has a density value of 0.737, much less than Beech.
With those two values as a base for "good" and "bad" densities for workbench production, I checked out Black Maple, which is one of the harder species and one that weighs in at 40-pounds dried and 54-pounds green; giving it has a density value of 0.740, meaning it isnt much better as a material to build a workbench from than Poplar, which was a bit of a surprise.
Checking out the Mahogany that I have had hanging around in my stash for over 10-years now and the material was thinking of using for this portable vise, I found it has a density value of 0.735, which tells me, as a workbench, it would really suck.
So I did the same for the Red Oak that I also have in my stash, and found that its density value of 0.688, which means it will suck even more than the mahogany.

One of the main things I learned through this exercise was that I wasnt as smart an ass as I thought I was, so Im going to have to head back to the drawing board and come up with a better design for this portable bench that is lighter, but just as strong. I also learned that it will have to be made from...go figure...Beech, and more specifically, Beech in 1" thicknesses.

Peace,

Mitchell