Islands coffee table

This project is quite a departure for me, as most of you know, I usually make arts and crafts reproductions, this is a very modern design and its made entirely from MDF. Dan brought me the picture to the left and asked if I could make something like it. We went into the shop and started playing around and discovered that I could but not out of solid wood.

What I decided I would have to do is to start with a posterboard pattern with inside curves no tighter than 1/2 inch. This is the limit because I wanted to use a 1/2 inch flush trim bit in my router table.

To start I make a pattern out of 1/2 inch MDF on the band saw, I used the oscillating spindle sander to clean up the sawmarks and to smooth out the curves. Once the final pattern is complete I transfer it to 3/4 inch MDF 20 times, and once more to 1/2 inch MDF, this will give me a total height of 16 inches when complete. I rough cut the outlines on the band saw staying at least 1/8th inch off the line. It seems like a lot of work but cutting each one took less than a minute.
I glued the rough cut to the pattern and held it in place with a few Brad nails.... I know I know... I feel kind of dirty...

Since I have a 2 inch long flush trim bit I was able to glue and nail 2 of the rough pieces to the pattern, this makes the whole process go twice as fast . Here you see the bearing of the flush trim bit running on the pattern while the entire thickness of the rough pieces will contact the router blades.



I repeat the process of glueing and nailing two more rough blanks to the routed piece, the pattern bit bearing now will ride on the bottom of the area that was just routed.

As you can see the stack gets rather high rather quickly, it also gets rather heavy. I considered hollowing out the center pieces to reduce the weight but decided that the weight would add stability to the tall narrow "islands".

Here they are, the two islands ready to send off to Dan. They are pretty smooth after the routing but the bearing on the bit tends to indent the edges of the MDF, he'll need to hand sand the edges, prior to priming and painting them. These were the easy parts, now comes the tabletop with its own "shoreline" that will be made using the same process. I'll be able to make the legs, top and sides partially buy building "boxes" out of MDF", this should save some weight and some time, but it still needs to be strong enough to support the "shoreline", there is still some engineering before I start that build.

"A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money."

John Ruskin

Stickley Coat Rack, Part 3, the end.

Today I completed the Stickley Coat Rack and took it over to my neighbor so that she could take it to her office. It turned out very nice and it was fun to make.

I installed some nice large antiqued bronze coat hooks, three on each side just like the original.

I used my favorite finishing recipe for arts and crafts furniture.

Sand piece to 150 grit and clean with tack rag or vacuum.
Wipe a good coat of dye on, be sure to cover all sides and keep dye from puddling in corners and at base. Leave to dry for at least 24 hours.
Lightly sand to remove raised grain with 220 grit, avoid oversanding especially at corners and edges.
Pad on a 1LB cut of amber shellac or sanding sealer.
Using a 320 grit sanding pad gently rub surface, clean with tack cloth or vacuum.
Apply Brown Mahogany Gel stain being careful to not cover too large of an area because once dry its very hard to wipe off. Once the gel starts to haze rub it off with a clean lint free cloth, I prefer old T-shirts. This gives you a warm rubbed in look. Let dry overnight.
Pad on 2-3 2LB cut coats of amber shellac, I tightly fold a square of T-shirt material, then soak it in the shellac and squeeze out excess, rub it in until it starts to drag then let dry. The coat of shellac should dry in 30 minutes or less. Repeat until you get the build you want.
Again, using 320 grit sanding pad gently rub surface, clean with a tack cloth or vacuum.
Take a few minutes to go over the whole piece with your clean hand, checking the surface for any rough areas or holidays.
Using a clean square of T-shirt rub in a thick coat of Watco Dark Liquid wax. Avoid plain or light colored waxes as these may leave white residue in the pores of the oak. When the wax is dry buff it out with a clean square of T-shirt.

I posted this in February but I wanted to revisit it because its been a while and people in the Woodwhisperer chat room have been asking me about it recently. As a reward for myself I picked up a L-N low angle block plane when I visited Woodcraft today, I've been wanting one for a while now.

Stickley Coat Rack, Part 2

This weekend's post starts with a little therapeutic planing Friday afternoon. I didn't have a lot of time but I really wanted to get in the shop and do something. I don't have any pictures but I planed the tapers on the uprights. The neat thing is that the best plane for this ended up being a wooden plane that I've been working on. My block plane is a little too narrow and my Stanley No. 4 wasn't holding a setting for some reason, so I pulled out my wooden smoothing plane, set the blade with a few taps on the wedge and went too it, next thing I know I'm ankle deep in shavings and the tapers are done. I'm really excited about this as this is the very first plane that I've tried to make. I've been playing with it, trying to decide the best shape for my hands. This was a great test and showed me some places on the plane where I want to adjust the shape.

Today I started with shaping the ends of the tenons, I mark a line around the tenon where it pokes out of the through mortise. I hold the pencil up a little about 1/16th of an inch and mark the line all the way around. After disassembly I mark a line down the center of the end of the tenon and a line on each end 1/2 the width of the tenon.

I use these lines as guides as I block plane the pyramid shape on the end of the tenon. I cut the ends first to avoid blowout. I then ran the block plane set a very thin shaving over the sides several times until I reached both lines. I turned the piece around in the vise and repeated the procedure. Repeating this for both sides of both cross pieces.

The next step is the joinery to attach the feet to the uprights of the coatrack. This operation is done on the routertable, I used a 1/2 inch mortising bit to remove the bulk of the material, testing the setting of the fence and checking using a scrap piece. The router bit is trapped inside the stock so stock control is very important. I used a stop block screwed to the fence of the router table to stop at proper spot and a feather board to hold the stock against the fence.
I then switched to a 14 degree 3/4 inch wide dovetail bit. After setting the depth and the fence and reinstalling the featherboard I ran the uprights past the bit easily. Here you have to remember that you can't lift the stock off the bit, you have to pull the stock back along the route it traveled.

Leaving the bit in place and at the same depth I pull the fence back and attack a sacrificial piece of 1/2 inch MDF to be used as a zero clearance fence. I then sneak up on the correct setting buy eye, run a scrap piece through cutting both sides and checking it, making the adjustment I need, again by eye, and re-running the scrap. Using this method I can usually get dead on in two or three adjustments, and its much easier then trying to measure and subtrack then adjusting the fence while measuring off the bit.

After the sliding dovetails are cut on the stock I cut the pattern that I had marked on the feet last weekend on the bandsaw. I then cut the excess dovetail from the top of the foot with a handsaw then shape the end to match the round end of the socket.

First I round the end with a sharp chisel, usually I just have to pare the endgrain off and remove the waste.

Next I undercut the end to match the angle of the dovetail while keeping the round shape of the socket






When you are done you should be able to slide the tenon into the socket and run it home with a few blows of a deadblow hammer. If you can't get the sliding dovetail at least half way in by hand its too tight and you need to trim the tenon some. If you slide it all the way in by hand its too loose and you can either start over, or you can fix it by gluing a strip of veneer to each side. I check and double check the tenon fit before I cut the final stock so I won't run into these problems at this step.
What you should end up with is a tight joint and a snug fit with no slop or play in the joint. Once you coat the sliding dovetail in glue it will slide in much easier.

After a final dryfit everyting was pulled apart and sanded at 100-120-150 grit. The feet were cleaned up on the oscillating spindle sander to remove the saw marks from the bandsaw and sanded with the rest of the parts. After a much needed break, its hot in Charleston in July, I glued the cross pieces to the uprights, then the feet to the uprights. The only clamps that were needed were to hold the uprights tight to the cross members.

The final assembly, sanded and glued. Tommorow I'll handsand the whole piece and start the finishing process. Or maybe I'll go to the beach, who knows.

"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." -Steven Wright

Stickley Coat Rack, Part 1

This weekend began the Stickley Coat Rack from the previous post. I spent a lot of time milling the lumber, the 8/4 Quartersawn White Oak that I had on hand was a little twisted and cupped so it began with a lot of work on the Joiner and with a Jack plane. Once it was close I ripped the stock down to just over 2 inches wide then let it sit flat on my workbench over night. The next day started with more passes on the joiner and to my surprise I ended up with two true square boards 1 3/4 x 1 3/4 x 72 inches.

I also milled some stock 1 1/2 inches thick for the feet and two pieces of 5/4 for the stretchers.

I made templates for the feet and the taper at the top of the posts out of some 1/2 MDF. I transferred the shapes onto the stock so that after the joinery I can cut out the shapes on the bandsaw.

The stretchers are through tenons so after cutting mortises through the uprights I cut long tenons on the crosspieces.

Here you can see how I cut the the shoulders off the tenons using the bandsaw.

After a little clean up using a shoulder plane for the tenons and a wide chisel for the mortises I did a dry fit of the stretchers.










Here are the through tenons in place, I marked each one so that I can trim the ends once I take it aparts and sand down the cross pieces.

Here is the dry fit of the of the uprights all done and waiting for me to come back next weekend. I need to decide how I'm going to join the feet to the uprights, shape and sand the feet and the cross stretchers.

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see"

Henry David Thoreau

New Project!!!!!

Slow to get back into the shop after my vacation I was looking around for something that I really wanted to build, my neighbor Michelle is an Audiologist and came to me asking if I could make her a coat rack for her office. She said that she didn't have much wall space and wanted something that would hold a few coats.
I did some looking through my Stickley catalogs and found this. Its called a costumer and may have been originally intended to go in a bed room instead of the hall way but I think it will work great and looks really cool. I like the double tree design and it fits her requirement or not being too wide at 14 inches. The base is 22 inches across so it will only sit out 10 inches from the wall.

I only had to small pictures from my books and no plans so I searched around on the internet and found these pictures and more that show details such as the through tenons for the stretchers. I've also found some hardware that was close to these. What I have to figure out is how the base and the uprights are attached, I could either cut a deep bridle joint on the uprights or use a mortise and tenon joint on each foot. The rest is pretty straight forward. Any thoughts on the joinery for the bottom would be greatly appreciated.

"Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed - there's so little competition."

Elbert Hubbard

Vacation in Moab, or Why you haven't seen any woodworking posts

In case you're wondering why I haven't been in the shop lately I'm on vacation in Moab, Utah with Pam and my brother and his family.

One of the beauties of Moab is Arches National Park, Delicate Arch that you see here is on the Utah lisence plates.

Sunday we hiked (climbed) up to Delicate Arch, its listed as a strenuous hike, no kidding. It was 100 degrees here in the valley but up on the LaSal Mountains you can still see the snow covered peaks.

My family early on in the hike when we still weren't beaten down by the sun, the nice part for us coming from the coastal south is that there is only 7% humidity here, at home its more like 100 degrees and 90% humidity.

Monday was the great Moab Jeep Adventure for my brother, his daughter and me. We rented a modified Jeep and took it through Kane Creek Canyon, a trip of 13 miles and 5 hours. You can see why here. Our journey started on a dirt road and digressed from there. We went down into the canyon and followed Kane Creek crossing it 67 times according to the guide book, I didn't count, but I'd say they were close.

This was our view from the start of the trail, we went all the way through that canyon. Following a very narrow trail that was at times well marked and at times confusing. It was sand trails, creek beds, and crossings punctuated by rocky trails strewn with boulders.

This is the view up on of the "trails" we had to climb, it was like this all the way out of the canyon.

My brother and I both used to have Jeeps and have experience off road driving, but this part of the trail tested up both. I don't think my neice was too excited about the ride after the first couple of hours but she was a good sport about it.





The guy that rented up the Jeep told us that the company sells them after a few seasons, ours was a 2006 with only 20,000 miles, thats 20,000 HARD miles. I don't think I'd buy one after the rattling they go through.

After making it out of the canyon and back to Moab for a little rest and to spray the mud off the Jeep we went to the other side of town and tried out some slickrock jeeping on sandstone fins. Here we are on a trail called "Fins and Things", this is the easiest of three descents we had to choose from on this fin. Stay tuned for another update later in the week.

Arts and Crafts Details: Corbels

This is the first in a series of posts on details of Arts and Crafts Furniture. Today I'm going to focus on the Corbel, its a curved wooden support that goes between the leg and the arm of a chair of sofa.

According to Wikipedia the word "corbel" comes from Old French and derives from the Latin corbellus, a diminutive of corvus (a raven) which refers to the beak-like appearance. Corbel is defined as a piece of stone jutting out of a wall to carry any superincumbent weight. For us, its a decorative addition that ties the arm to the leg.

Gustav Stickley used a small corbel on his morris chairs while his brother's designs used a more elongated corbel as seen here in my reproduction of their Prairie Style Sofa and also below in my L&JG Stickley Paddle arm Morris chair.

There are several ways that you could attach the corbels to your chair/sofa. You could drill through the corbel and screw it into the leg and plug the holes. You could use dowels to attach it. You could glue it directly to the leg/arm like I did on the Morris chair, since its a long grain to long grain match, careful aligning and clamping works well. My favorite method, which I used on the sofa, is to cut a dado down the leg with a router and a guide, and cut a long tongue on the back of the corbel. This method aligns the corbel correctly every time and provides for plenty of glue surfaces.

Once you decide on the size and shape of your corbel make a pattern out of plywood or MDF, trace the shape out on some nicely figured quartersawn white oak, cut on the band saw proud of the line. Attach the pattern to the stock using double sided tape and using a pattern routing bit run them on your router table. A little finish sanding and carefully glue the corbel in place. Nicely shaped and proportioned corbels will add a nice detail to your project.

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." - Henry David Thoreau

Workshop clean up and stuff

Friday I took the Stickley #913 dresser to the shipper to be crated and shipped up to Charlottesville so I spent some time this weekend cleaning up the shop. Its amazing how things get cluttered and the shavings pile up on the floor while working on a project.

I don't have a new arts and crafts project waiting right away so I'm going to spend some time making some shop aids that I've wanted. I want to make a shop stool, resurface my assembly table and try my hand at making some wooden hand planes.

I have been talking to a friend that wants me to help him make a coffee table with an interesting modern design, its going to be made out of MDF and I'll probably break out my Brad nailer for it too, so I don't want to get any grief from you Woodwhisperer regulars. It does feel a little "HGTV" but its going to look cool when its done.

Stickley #913 Harvey Ellis Dresser, Part Last

Well today was the day, this project if finally done. I have to say that this has been the most complex build I've even done. It was my first dresser and I learned some important lessons about making drawers. I had done my research on drawers and dressers and most of the experts said to cut the drawer faces to fit the carcass, then cut the dovetails, and plane them to fit. I think next time I am going to cut them to the size I want which would be the opening minus 1/16th of an inch all the way around for clearance. I ended up having to plane the sides of each drawer, spending about 6 hours fitting the drawers. They do fit nicely now, but while cutting them smaller to start won't give you that "piston fit" described in the literature it would save quite a bit of time and inches of plane shavings from the shop floor.

I ended up not needing center drawer guides with the snug fit of the drawers but I did install stops on the rear drawer rails to keep the drawers closing flush to the frame.

One more coat of Danish oil tomorrow and let it dry for a few days, finish with a coat of clear wax and its ready to be crated and shipped off.

The contrast between the dark, rich cherry and the light highly figured curly maple make this a very pretty piece. The cherry knobs bring it all together, tying the drawers to the carcass nicely. The knobs on the bottom drawers will darken to match the top ones that have been getting sunlight for a few weeks while the bottom knobs sat on my countertop in the back of the shop.

This piece was originally designed by Harvey Ellis in his short but fruitful tenure with Gustav Stickley and has been produced by the Stickley company in its various itterations since then. The original was made in Quartersawn White Oak with a back splash on the top. This version is closer to the modern product produced by the Stickley Company.

I hope it finds many years of use in its new home, it was fun to make and quite the learning experience. Now for something less complex and a little easier......

"Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product." Eleanor Roosevelt

A Quick Little Push Block

What do you do with a nice piece of hard maple that's only 12 inches long but its 8 inches wide and a full inch thick? Not enough to make a cabinet, certainly not enough to build a bridge out of.

I need another push block, maybe I could make one out of this. I like the feel of an enclosed handle that pushes down on the stock so instead of reinventing the wheel I used this push block as a guide.

After tracing the hand hole in its proper position I freehanded the shape I had in mind and added some ears to make the handle more like a saw handle.

A trip to the bandsaw cut out the shape. I cleaned up the saw blade marks with the disc sander for the convex part and the oscillating spindle sander for the concave parts. I used a 1 1/4 inch forstner bit to bore out the hand hole.

Some clean up with a chisel and a trip over to the oscillating spindle sander leaves a nice smooth finger hole, just the right size for a safe grip.

Using a 1/2 inch roundover bit I eased the inside of the handle and the palm side, I was careful not to go past the ears with the bit.

Who says that even totally utilitarian things you use in your shop shouldn't be beautiful, and I had a cabinet full of router bits, so I put a decorative beading on the edge of the push block. You'll also notice the foot I cut into the push block, at first I was going to glue on a block like I did on my other pushblock. But once the beaded detail was in place I decided to keep it simple and cut the foot on the band saw. If the foot becomes chewed up cutting thin strips I'll just slice it off and cut another one the same way, there is enough material on this push block to do that a few times before I have to replace it.

A few coats of Danish oil and its done, all in all I spent 45 minutes on this pushblock. It will keep my fingers away from the tablesaw blade and look good while its doing it.

"The smell of wood in my shop is more pleasing than a desk in an office." Sam Maloof