The last day in class was such a good time. Someone asked Frank to talk a bit about his life in Hungary and his ventures to the US. Frank essentially gave us a two hour talk on history and it’s a talk I very much enjoyed. Frank is a genuinely nice man who has a lot to teach besides woodworking. He spoke in great detail about his apprenticeship and how it worked in Hungary, his time in the communist army, his living arrangements when he first got married, his search for work (did you know he was a butler?), his desire to leave Hungary, his time in Austria and his eventual coming to America. I daresay I would not do it justice trying to recap it here. Suffice it to say, the living history lesson was as interesting as the woodworking. This is one class I will not soon forget.

As always the last day of any class is used to tie up loose ends and to touch on some oddball questions that people are just curious about.

As for the box – we spent a bit of time on the tray. It’s difficult to actually do the tray until you get the lining done, and it’s difficult to do the lining until you get the finish done.

Here is what we are looking for in the tray.

Using contrasting wood with a spline material that matches your exterior box looks really cool. The spline cuts are made with a hand saw and the kerfs are made as if you were cutting dovetails.

The neat thing with doing the cuts this way – if you use the same wood for the tray as you do the exterior – make these cuts then fill the cuts with the same material – it looks like you have cut miniature dovetails! It would take another woodworker looking very closely to know that they are not real dovetails.

Well – I’m just about worn out from the drive so I’m going to cut this short. I’ll blog some more as I finish my box.

Finally, and for fear of beating that dead horse to death – if you ever get a chance to take a class with Frank – jump on it! Likewise for taking a class at Kelly Mehler’s school. Kelly runs a first class school.

Happy woodworking. Thanks for reading.

Some of the things we have discussed are sharpening, finishing, sanding, scraping, planing, different types of dovetails, tools, companies, hardware, gluing, customer service, attention to detail, and more. Frank is more than willing to answer any questions everyone has.

One thing that I’ve noticed about Frank is although he is a very well respected woodworker and he knows his stuff and has a strong opinion about his craft – he is very flexible. If you have a better idea or tool – he’s willing to try it. He basically says that this is how he makes his living – if he can cut a miter on a chop saw faster than by hand – then he uses the chop saw. Time is money. The hand tools are very important – but if you can do the job as well or better with one type of tool or another – use that tool. He says if his grandfather had a powered router he would have used it. Gotta feed the family basically.

Before I get into today, thought I’d share a picture of the shims we used to hold the box together while we cut the lid off. Notice the arrows pointing to the chamfered ends and the tiny, tiny saw blade we used to do the cutting.

You’ll notice that the saw blade is protruding through a “zero clearance” insert. For those who are not familiar with these, a zero clearance insert helps avoid tear out when the blade exists the work piece. It also helps to keep small pieces from falling into the saw. The less space between your blade and the work piece the better most of the time.

We spent a lot of time today just getting everyone close to having the boxes done. I think we are pretty much there as when I left everyone was at least gluing on their feet.

Clamping the feet on can be tricky with the sloped lid. But easy enough to solve – we simply clamped the box to a caul and clamped the whole thing in the vise.

Once this part is set up – the feet were easy. Notice the paper towel which is located between the top of my box and the caul and also notice the little scrap piece on the top. Both the towel and the scrap piece are to protect the finished box. No sense working this long on a project and ruin it by not protecting it as you continue to work on it.

Every morning I tell myself I’ll take more pictures and every night I say to myself – “you didn’t take enough pictures!” Sorry folks – you just get caught up in listening and doing that you forget the pictures.

We are getting into the home stretch so naturally you have to think finishing. Before you can finish you have to prepare the surface. Most of the articles say you have to prepare the work by planing, scraping or sanding. Frank say——not so – you can’t do just one – you need to do all three and in that order – plane, scrap and sand. If you sand first then plane or scrap you will just dull your tool because the sanding abrasive is left in the wood – which dulls the edge tools. You can plane then sand – but better to plane, scrap and then sand – lightly – with the grain.

Of course planing and scraping is a major subject that I can’t hope to even come close to adding anything to – but sanding – there are some tidbits I’d like to pass along. First while Frank is not totally against using a wood block to do sanding – he prefers using a cork block – such as this http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/corksandingblock.aspx from Highland. (Sorry I could not get a picture to work – just the link). The cork is softer and is less likely to mar your work piece – the cork is firm enough to do the job without hurting in the long run. Now the cork block is for rough finishing – for the sanding to be done between finish coats – he recommends a felt block. I could not find a picture of a felt block – but suffice it to say that it is a firm felt material that works well. The reason for the felt is that it is soft enough not to sand through the finish but firm enough to get off the knubs.

One of the guys in the class had both a cork and felt block that were different from what Frank was using in that they were tapered on the sides – which makes it very easy to use up against a cabinet side, etc. I’ve not found any while surfing the net – but have not looked to hard. Long and short though cork and felt are the recommended blocks to use.

Another tidbit on the blocks. They come to you rough – They need to be run across a piece of 320 or 400 grit paper to smooth out the surfaces. The cork especially needs this – the cork used is basically the same stuff you use for a bulletin board – pretty rough stuff.

OK so here are the steps to finishing as I understand it from Frank.

First plane, scrap and sand to 220 grit.

Rinse the work with water to raise the grain.

Allow to dry completely – a sunny window sill helps to speed things along.

Sand lightly with 220 grit to knock off the knubs.

Then apply a coat of sanding sealer. We used Zinzer Seal Coat – but you could also use a coat of Water Lox as your first coat. But we used the Zinzer for this project.

Allow this to dry completely and sand lightly with the 320 grit – this is where you start using the felt block.

Apply a coat of Water Lox and allow to dry 24 hours.

Sand lightly with the 320 with the felt block. You want to sand until you get a dull even sheen. Sand lightly to get the sheen – but be careful not to sand so much that you sand through the finish all together.

Apply the Water Lox, dry and sand two or three more times. The number of coats really depends on the look you are going for.

Next is the steel wool step. Frank likes to use Liberon steel wool which is a 0000 steel wool that you can also get from Highlands – http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/liberon40steelwool250g.aspx. The Liberon is so much softer than the general 0000 steel wool you’d get at one of the big box stores – it’s almost silky smooth.

Next is to use a tack cloth to clean off the piece as cleanly as you can get it.

Then apply one last coat of Water Lox – be sure to use a circular motion to apply it and then even it out by using an airplane landing and taking off motion.

Allow the piece to dry completely. Frank said today that you would be wise to let the box sit for several weeks before moving on to the next step. Of course, you could also stop right here. But Frank believes in “finishing the finish.” He does this by waxing and buffing the piece. He uses a good butcher’s wax – amber color and then uses a lot of good elbow grease to shine it up. I’ve seen some of his stuff – and this finish is worth the effort – looks great.

After all this you work on the interior which for this box is the velvet lining and some leather. The leather will go on the bottom of each foot and on the bottom of the tray insert. Adds a lot of class to the project.

The bottom liner is made up of thin poster board, some thin quilt fiber fill and then the velvet.

You can see in this picture (almost anyway) the sandwich used. Notice the corners are cut at an angle to make folding the corners easier. Use 3M 77 spray adhesive to adhere the velvet to the board. The board should be fit so that it sits nicely in the bottom without wrinkling. In other words – it should not have to be pushed into place – it should be placed into place. Most of us are not putting in the velvet until we get home because you want to have the finish done so that you don’t get any finish on the velvet. Also you need to have your mirror installed before you put in the velvet in the top. The bottom is the only piece that gets the fiber fill. All the other pieces are just poster board and velvet. The side pieces are glued into place.

A tid bit about the mirror. You should get a mirror that is less than 1/8” thick and you should spend the money on mirror mastic. The mirror mastic will not telegraph through the mirror and show. (That would be quite ugly.) You also only need to use a small spot of mastic in each corner. Don’t use silicone adhesive or heaven forbid—liquid nails.

Well that is all I can think of for today. I’m quite sure I’ve left out so many good things – so I’ll try to catch those up later on.

Thanks for reading and for your comments.

Back to the class – today we finished up gluing the rest of the boxes and putting on the tops and bottoms.

The picture above does not show this very well, if at all, but Frank very strongly encourages you to put glue not only inside the sockets – but on the inside of the piece itself. I’ve not seen anyone else really saying this – but it certainly makes sense and I can’t see any argument against it. It’s gluing end grain onto face grain – but it’s another anchor point. And don’t scrimp on the glue (don’t be messy either) or Frank will let you know it pretty quick that you need more glue!

This is my box so far.

Frank took some time to go through some table saw instructions. It was quite informative for me. No matter the articles I’ve read I never quite got the idea of putting dents into your miter gauge to get it to fit better in the miter slot. Kelly has a new Saw stop so Frank took the opportunity to show how to get a few things set – including the miter gauge. It’s amazing to see with just a few whacks with a punch and all the slop is gone from the miter gauge. Frank teaches a table saw class that takes all weekend. I think it would be well worth the time, but we only had about 15 minutes to go over quite a lot. But just the miter gauge thing made it a very worthwhile 15 minutes for me.

The table saw came up because we are going to use the table saw to cut the tops off. Frank uses a 7.25” (I think that’s the diameter) circular saw blade that is about 1/16” in thickness. Talk about tiny! But the thin kerf takes out so much less material and it’s cuts baby bottom smooth.

I should have taken a picture of this – but I didn’t (my apologies). But it’s really is the simple things that makes you want to do “I could have had a V-8” slap on the head. I’ve probably cut 25+ boxes apart over the years and not once have I done this. Frank cuts the box, just like I do, but his way of keeping the box sides even while you cut the ends is just pure genius. First you cut both long sides – then I usually tape in two shims on each long side so that I can cut the ends without the sides caving in. Frank uses shims also—- but only two. Two long shims that reach from one side to the other. Also each shim has been shaped into a wedge on one end so that it is easily slipped from one side to the other. And to add to that he puts an arrow pointing to the wedge side so that he does not even have to really look to know what side to feed through first. He tapes both wedges down with a few pieces of blue painter’s tape and he’s good to go.

After cutting the tops off – we then flattened them on the pieces of mdf covered with 220 grit paper. The boards we are using are mahagony so the boards sanded very easily. I must mention that the blade Frank used left very little to sand.

Mostly, however, the day was about installing the hinges and the lock mechanism. The hinges we are using are your typical barrel hinges from Rockler.

The hinges are placed about the same distance from the edge as they are long. Our hinges are about 1.5” so that’s about how far they are in from the edges. Mark your hinge position with a pencil and hold onto your hats from here! I consider myself very well read, but in all the articles and books I’ve read and all the classes I’ve taken I’ve never, ever seen this done – but it sure works well.

First no surprise here – but use some spring clamps to hold the top and bottom pieces together and aligned.

Then – this just blows my mind – but get that dovetail saw back out. Frank defined his hinge edges with the saw – not a chisel. You can use a chisel – but apparently he likes using the saw.

You certainly get a good clean line to chop to. One caveat to keep in mind using the saw though. You must be careful not to pull the saw back so far that you accidently cut into the front of the box.

Next step is to make a series of small chipping cuts to bring up the material to but pared out.

After the initial chipping cuts your hinge area will look like this.

Use your chisel bevel side down to clean out the chips.

Your mortise should be deep enough to house the hinge leaf just a smidge below the surface of the wood – but not more than a smidge into the barrel of the hinge. I know, I know, that’s almost impossible to understand – but I’ve never said I could explain everything!

Next are the screws – geez where to start. First use an awl to cut the holes. But not just any awl – a round awl will split your wood. You certainly don’t want to do that at this stage. You want a pretty close to square awl – Frank used a mill file to file the edges down to make a good awl to use. Use the point of the awl to find as close to dead center of the screw hole as you can. Once you have that use steady downward pressure while at the same time twisting the awl. – Oh – and keep it straight up and down while doing do.

One of the tricks to get the hinges right, and it makes perfect sense now that he said to do it, is to do the lid hinge holes first. Get the hinges in the lid set just right and tighten them down. Then put one screw in each of the body hinges – open and close your box and see how things fit – use the third and fourth hinges to make any adjustments you need.

In concept this is all so very simple to understand. The carry through though sure can be harder to implement. I started off OK – but then made one hinge mortise to deep and one off a little to the middle of my box. No worries Frank showed me how to fix it. A little sliver of poster board in the hinge mortise fixed the depth issue – and no there is no way you can see that piece of poster board – no way at all. The misalignment was a little harder to fix – but it was doable. The easy part is making the mortise wider with a whack of the chisel. I had to fill the screw hole with a sliver of wood, let it dry and then redrill with the awl. Came out pretty good.

I’m not even going to try to explain how to mortise in the lock mechanism. First off, I don’t like the look of the lock so I’m not going to install it on my box. Secondly, it’s way, way too complicated for my writing skills. I’ll refer you to the internet for this one! Sorry folks.

Well that’s all I can really think of at this point. I hope you are enjoying following my blog. If you have any questions that I might be able to answer, feel free to ask. I’ll do my best to answer.

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

I apologize first that I left my camera and notes at the school. Too tired to go back for them so I’ll try to do the best I can from memory.

I think I left off on having just finished the pins and getting ready to mark and cut the tails.

My first issue with my pins is that they are really steep – way to steep – but workable. The problem with steep pins as that the tails are hard to cut at so steep an angle to match – the saw binds a bit. Also the tails being so steep the edges are easier to break. So take heed my friends – steep is not so good – its workable certainly – but not the best. I’ve been cutting quite a few practice pins/tails today and still have trouble eyeballing the angle so that it is not so steep. Don’t tell Frank – but I’ll probably mark my boards before I cut them in the future.

With all this said – I think it’s quite important when going to a class – to do what the instructor tells you to do. If you are going to go into a class and try to tell the teacher – that’s wrong or I’m going to do it my way——save your money. I take a class to learn something new – even if its a method. Besides – who am I to doubt Frank – he has more woodworking knowledge in his pinky finger than I’ll ever dream of knowing.

OK – you have to mark your tail board by placing the pin board on it’s end on the end of the tail board. Make sure all the edges are flush and even – then use a sharp pencil to mark the tails. Now here is one thing that I did ok – I was able to cut a straight line at an angle without extending my marks to the end of the board. I had to pat myself on the back for that!

When you cut your tails – the saw is drawn straight across the end of the board – but then tilted to match the angle of the pin. You also cut on the waste side of the pencil line and you leave the line. The waste side would be the pin being cut out.

Once cut, you chop out the waste the same as you did the pins.

Now if you did things pretty close to right – the boards should fit together. Hummmm – OK – I failed that part. I had to do quite a bit of “fixing.” But with Frank as the instructor – the fixing was not so hard to do.

Most of the videos and articles say you should not fit your tails together and then take them apart. Seems like they say that the boards go together on the first try. Frank says nope—- if you have to do some adjusting – so what! I like this guy! :-)

Let me back up one step. When you put your first pin board on the first tail board – you should make a small “x” on both boards so that you know those two boards go together. Believe it or not, that’s the only mark you need to know which board goes where. It’s true. If you put those two boards together – there is only one way the other boards will fit together.

Now back to fitting. My tails were too tight. So Frank showed me to simply place my boards together and give them a solid “rap” with the mallet. Then take the boards apart. You will easily see where you need to trim the tails – the areas to be trimmed are crushed. Trim those areas and you should fit. And it did work!

With that said – too tight and too big of a rap could split your board. I had a tiny split – but take heart – just put a little glue in the split and clamp it—- all better.

Now when you have all four corners fit – you glue it all up.

Frank uses white glue exclusively for his interior projects. The same white glue your kids use at school is the stuff Frank uses. He also uses the Tite Bond Extended glue. The yellow glue just does not give you enough time to get all the edges prepped and ready to assemble. Frank simply says – to get rid of the yellow stuff and get the white stuff – it works great and is cheaper to boot.

Frank also tests all the glue when he buys it. Of course he generally buys 4-5 gallons at a time. The reason he tests the glue is that if at any point in transit it gets frozen – its no good. So what he does is takes a little glue from each jug and glues two pieces together – lets it dry and then bangs them – first softly then gradually a little harder. When the board finally gives and breaks – if there are no wood fibers from one piece left on the other – then the glue is no good and it goes back to the store. If there are wood fibers – then the glue is good. Glue that is over a year old should be thrown out.

Frank does not have to clamp his dovetails (OK – occasionally he’ll have one wonky tail that needs a clamp). But with our boxes – we clamped to pull the joints together. I must admit to thinking that just can’t be right—- but all the boxes look great and they are all square. One clamp went on each tail. So for these boxes we used quite a lot of clamps. Each box was left clamped about an hour or so before we moved on to the next step.

Next step was to flatten the box – to know if its flat – just place the box on a flat surface like MDF – if it rocks – it’s not flat. Simply use a piece of sandpaper secured to a piece of mdf and applying strong downward force move the box quickly over the paper – in no time flat – you’ll have a flat box (small pun). Frank gave a couple of the guys a hard time because they were going very slowly on this step——he says go faster, go faster! So we did – doesn’t take long to get them flat.

This particular box is going to have a solid top and bottom – no grooves to worry about. The bottoms and tops were cut very slightly oversized. We glued both the top and bottom onto the body at one time. Frank had precut some MDF the same size as the tops/bottoms to use as cauls. (One for the top, one for the bottom.) I’ve not done this before for a box and as a result, I asked why???? Well why – is because the cauls allow the clamps to send out more pressure across a larger area – thus needing fewer clamps to do the job. I used cauls for edge gluing but never for a box – but it works quite well.

Once the the glue cured then it’s time to plane off the excess edges and clean up the dovetails. Pretty easy if your planes are sharp. Frank took some time to go through some sharpening and grinding. Without my notes I’m not sure I should get too much into this section. What I can say is that a hollow grind sure makes honing your chisels and plane irons easier. I never quite understood this concept from the books and articles – but seeing it makes all the difference. Makes perfect sense now.

Once the sides are pretty clean – next was to fix any goofs that you find. Such goofs as overcuts, chips or gaps. Some of the gaps were fixed with little wedges. Others were fixed using 5-minute epoxy colored with sanding dust. Once the epoxy was dried then it was time to sand the sides smooth.

That’s pretty much as far as we got today with the boxes.

Frank took some time to show us hand cutting a sliding dovetail and demonstrating the technique to use to make his water pond for his water stones. Pretty amazing for sure.

Well that’s all for today. Thanks for reading.

Here’s a bad picture of Frank if you have never seen him.

I have to admit to being in stitches quite a lot today.

So onto to the class.

The first thing Frank tells you is his four main areas of thought. 1) Wood technology; 2) tools (hand and machine); 3) joinery; and 4) finishing. If you don’t understand wood technology – you don’t need tools. If you understand wood technology but don’t have the proper tools, joinery is not possible; If you can’t make a joint – you don’t need to do finishing. It all adds up.

As for wood technology – one of the most important things that Frank kept saying is that “the inside of the tree is the outside of the box.” Another way is the inside of the tree is the top of the table. In other words the rings go up on the table top or out on the sides of the box.

Frank does not alternate rings when making a panel. He says that does not allow for a good looking top. He opines that the skirt/apron and the buttons will keep the table top from warping. He makes good points for not alternating rings up rings down.

With the rings toward the outside of the box or drawer/case the joint is very strong. If there is any warping the corners are pulled together tight – it does not come apart.

As always there is the argument of cutting pins or tails first. Frank cuts pins first and he makes a good argument for it. The most compelling argument is that tracing the pins onto the tail board only means standing it on end on the tail board. Cutting tails first means that you have to place the tail board on the end of the pin board at a 90 degree angle and find a way to balance the board and hold it in place while you trace the tails onto the pin board. Having done it both ways now – it does seem easier to do pins first.

One thing that always escaped me is when you cut the dovetails do you have the inside of the piece facing you or away from you in the vise! Well—- the answer is the inside of your box/drawer/case faces you in the vise.

Frank also makes no bones about it – you don’t need a gazilion marks on your wood. You need one to start. Just a scribble to mark the outside and the top of the each piece. If you keep those scribbles in order you are going to be in good shape.

First off you have to decide if you are going to put your pins on the sides or the front (i.e. will your tails ends show on the front of the box or the sides?). For this box Frank is having us put the pins on the front and back and the tails on the sides. His sample box looks great this way so I have no argument with it.

Next you have to mark your pieces with your marking gauge. He advocates using the gauge at exactly the width of the work piece. He has no quarrel with the barrel type marking gauge, but prefers the old fashioned ones with the bar and nail/knife. Mine needed work – and he went right to it and fixed my gauge so that it actually cut the wood.

Here is the sequence of cutting the pins. Frank does not draw on the board – he just cuts! I’ve watched his video a number of times and still could not get exactly what he was doing – his sequence. Now I can see what he’s doing.

I’ve tried to draw what he does below. Looking at the picture – my handwriting stinks!

The pins are cut with the saw completely 90 degrees to the board but held with the toe/at an angle. So the saw is not titled in any fashion – but is held at an angle. That is soooo hard to describe – but see the picture above to get a better idea.

The first two cuts are the half pins. The way to remember which direction the saw should angle to cut the half pins – just remember that the larger/wider portion of the pin should be nearest to you. Big end towards you little end away from you.

The third cut is to make a full tail next to your first half-pin. Now is where I was getting confused before. The fourth cut is made at the same angle of the third cut. The fourth cut is made in the center of the portion of the board that is left between the cut number 3 and cut number 2. (confused?).

The fifth and sixth cuts go at the same angle as the cut no. 1. The picture is probably better than my explanation.

My trouble is that by not drawing out the cuts I freehand too-steep an angle. I managed to make an ok set of cuts – Frank says his son would give me a hug – apparently he likes a steep angle as well. Nothing wrong with it other than it’s hard to cut the tails when your pins have such a steep angle. But as you can see – I didn’t do to badly.

Once you have your cuts made on your pin board – you hand to chisel them out. This is how Frank sets his boards from chiseling/chopping.

One thing Frank made a point of is that if you going to use a clamp to hold the material down to chop it- you need to use a scrap piece to protect the work piece AND you need to put that scrap pretty close to the chopping area. This adds a lot of hold down power and keeps the boards flat on the bench allowing your blows to do their job without bouncing around.

Next is picking a chisel to fit the part you are chopping. Don’t use a 1/4” chisel to do a job if you can use a 3/4” chisel. Use the chisel that will allow you to make the fewest strokes. Fewer strokes leads to fewer mistakes.

Frank starts by chopping from the inside of the box/sides – chops half way through and then turns over the piece and chops the second half freeing the waste. The chopping sequence is certainly harder to describe than to do. But let me try.

Oh first – let me say – that I was concerned that my chisels would not be sharp enough. I really was not sure I had managed to get them to even close to what they needed to be. But alas – they passed Franks inspection and I was told “beautiful!. Made me feel better! :-)

OK so Frank starts with the chisel straight up and down right on the marking gauge line. Light taps to define the line – then slight back cut to pop out a sliver of wood – then another soft chop straight down. Then flip the board – put the chisel about 1/16th in front of the gauge line and make a chop – then back cut to pop out the sliver of wood. Then some more straight down chopping until the waste pops out.

Once you get the waste chopped out – you need to place the pins on the tail board. I will have to carry that on tomorrow’s blog though. I’m about wiped out and need to hit the rack. I hope this blog has been helpful to some of you.

Please feel free to ask questions or add comments.

Thanks for reading.

My brother tells me that I’m not really on a vacation unless it involves a little hiking or a museum trip. So when on my way outside of Nashville and just past the state line I saw a sign for a Shaker Village museum I decided to take a side trip. Round trip it was 100 miles out of my way – but it was so very worth it. For one, I had forgotten how nice it is to drive a car with your windows open for fresh air—- you can’t do that in Fort Worth and still breath well.

This is not something you see much where I live either. We have green – but not this green. The color is so vivid and it goes on for as far as the eye can see.

Also – I’ve not seen one of these since I was a kid.

Regardless of your feelings about tobacco—- it’s nice to see that small farmers are still able to produce and I’m hoping sale their goods.

So I made it to the Shaker Village.

Some of you can see this coming – but I didn’t. It was closed——- imagine that. I did get some shots of the buildings. I’m thinking I may try to go by on my way back home – it’s a pretty large village so I’m thinking there is plenty to see inside.

I finished the trip to Berea and decided I better make a dry run out to the school. This is a shot of the historic Boone Tavern. I’ll have to do a little research to refresh my memory about why it’s historic—- will save that tidbit for later though.

Berea is home to Berea College which I believe is the only tuition free university in the nation. It’s a beautiful campus. As a woodworker though there was one thing I could not pass up taking photos off. This is an old tree stump on the edge of campus. The first snap shows the side that I think looks like a ladies hairstyle

The second snap shows the side that apparently had been used to house a sign of some sort at one time or another.

So now I’m going to do a little resting so I can be ready to go to class in the morning.

Stay tuned for my blog about this class.

In anticipation of the class I thought I’d open up this blog to possible questions you might have that I may be able to squeeze into the conversation with Frank.

I’m sure I’ll be blogging about the class – and will try to include any answers I may get.

Recently, I’ve been reading lots and lots of “feel good” books and books on how to lift your own spirits and those warm fuzzy books and articles to help a person get a grip on things. After my accident, I allowed everything to turn very negative and blah in life. So I decided to turn that around and just inundate myself with positive, uplifting and bright things. Whether you believe in that sort of thing helping or not, is not important. All I can tell you it has helped me 100% turn myself around and get back on the path of feeling good, being good and being fully alive. It’s gotten me back to exercising, losing the excess tonnage I put on, I’m not on any medications, my diet is healthy again, I smile more, I’m more helpful to others around me, my job is going so much better, I’m having the time of my life with friends and family, etc. etc. – you get the picture.

One little thing in all that has really given me a different look on my woodworking was a question on how you look at things – that question was – “what do you really see?” When I look at a set of plans I see the lines, the measurements, etc. I don’t see the little things among all those lines, etc. I’ve found that if I study the plans in depth step by step its a whole lot easier than just looking and seeing it. Now let me explain the “in depth” part.

Sitting there at your computer – pick up any object on your table, anything at all. Now put your computer aside and pull out a piece of paper and a pencil/pen. Study that object and start writing down everything you notice/see about that object.

For example—- I just picked up my TV remote and this is what I see:

1) it’s rectangular
2) it’s gray on the front
3) it’s black on the back
4) it’s skinny – 1.5”
5) it has 4 colors of buttons
6) it has round buttons
7) it has square buttons
8) it has rectangular buttons
9) it has numbers on the buttons
10) it has lettering on the buttons
11) it has lettering on the body
12) it has little arrows on the body
13) it has little rectangles on the body
14) its has words on the body
15) It has a Westinghouse symbol on the body
16) the Westinghouse symbol is round with a “W” in the circle
17) it has 54 letters on the body
18) it has 10 numbers on the body
19) it has a battery compartment
20) it has two double A batteries inside
21) It has two little stub feet on the back

on and on, I could probably come up with 10+ other things to list. Do you see where I’m going? If you are starting out on a new project, one you’ve never done before, and if you can tear each step, and each diagram apart piece by piece and really see it for it’s essential simplicity – you can make anything you want! Everything that looks complicated really isn’t if you can break it down into very small parts.

Now understanding your project plans in this depth——is one thing—carrying them out is another. But there should be no reason that you can’t carry out anything that you’ve studied this in depth. You just have to break down each step of the physical doing in the same way you broke down the studying. I think it will really slow down the process – but I also think that you’ll learn more, enjoy the process more and most assuredly enjoy the finished project more.

I’ve been doing this on a couple of projects that I’m working on now – one in the shop and one out—- and it’s helping me to really see and understand what I’m doing.

Just my rambling – but I hope this gives you something to ponder.

As always, thoughts and comments welcome.

I thought I’d just pop on and show you the progress on my rocker. Obviously from the pictures the main assembly is done. I have to do the plugs and final sanding. For those who have done this chair – you’ll notice I used 11 seat slats instead of 10. I did not like the spacing for 10 slats so I changed the spacing and added one slat. I think it looks better.

This is my first rocker – but I’m pretty sure it won’t be my last. I learned a lot doing this – mostly that I really don’t know how to do much other than the square stuff. Need to work on that for sure. I’ve got some gaps and some “goofs” that need to be fixed somehow or another. (The most obvious goof in one to many holes in the leg—- got a little drill press happy – but I figure I’ll plug that hole and top it off with a 2009 nickle – that way it will look like I meant to do that. You’ll keep my secret – right?)

I honestly don’t like the way the chair sits – it’s way too straight for me. The seat itself is very comfortable – but the back is not. I think my next rocker will definitely have a curved back.

I actually kind of surprised myself that I got the rockers to rock just right. I have some major gaps in the areas where the legs and rockers come together.

Overall I think I did OK on this chair. I can probably pick it apart to the point of making myself want to throw it on the log pile, but I’m not going to. I really am proud of myself for getting it made and it rocks—- and that’s what its supposed to do!

With no more delay—- here’s my chair

Now my questions——my seat slats came off a little oddly. They are the same size, same thickness, etc. When I laid them out on my bench – they sit just fine – there is no hills and valleys that make the seat uneven. But when I put them on the seat rails – I have those hills and valleys and the slats are uneven. Can’t figure out for the life of me why that happened. The rails are even, square, etc. Any ideas why that would happen?

Being as this chair is solid cherry – I’d like for it to get a dark patina to it. I’m thinking of putting it out in the sunshine to start that process. Have any of you done this – if so, how long would you leave it outside?

Thanks for looking all. As always, any and all comments welcomed and encouraged.

(Yes – I just noticed that demented looking animal in my picture. Gives me the chills!)

I’m pretty happy with the way the mortises/tenons fit together.

I also got the templates made for my legs.

The back piece fits into the leg template pretty well.

Now the question – Since the back slats are captured in the back rails and the back assembly is going to be captured between the side pieces, do I really need to glue the slats into the rails? I’ve got enough depth in the mortises for gluing, but I think if I glue, I’ll need to pare the tenons down a bit.

So far I’m finding if I take my time, this process is not as complicated as I thought it would be. I’ve not done a rocker before, but I’m pretty happy with the progress.

I’m going to post this in the forums section as well to see if I can solicit more opinions on the slats.

Thanks for looking.