I have been waiting to finish my barn building project so I can order my new G0690 table saw…just don’t have the room or the time to deal with a new saw. I was home sick from work today so out of curiosity I called Grizz and asked them when the free shipping gag was ending…and to my horror he said Sept. 19th…this Saturday! Wow I’m still not quite ready to take delivery of the saw yet but thats $144.00 I would save on the shipping. He told me they will delay shipping by up to 2 weeks and if you pay with a credit card they don’t charge the card till they ship the item.
He did say that there is a chance they might extend it…but it’s a crapshoot..he couldn’t say for sure…

Check out my project posting for the finished pictures!

This is actually the first custom cutting board I have been paid to make. In a previous project post I showed a cutting board I made for a friend to give to his wife for mothers day. A neighbor of his saw it and wanted one of his own. My friend showed him pictures I had sent him of the end grain checkerboard cutting boards I made and he wanted one, only full size 12×16, 1 1/2” thick with a half size border around it. And he wanted the checks to be 1 1/2” square. So I needed to be precise about how I glued up the blanks, so I would have enough material to make sure it came out the right size. SU is perfect for this, I did three different models, the first one shows the first glue up with all the material sizes. The length takes into account how many cuts I need at 1 1/2” including saw kerfs.

The next model shows the second glue up. After the 1st glue up is scraped, flattened, and sanded to 1 1/2” thick, (Usually I would plane it flat, but this one wont fit through my planer!) I take 1 5/8” rips and set them on end and offset every other row…

The last model shows the finished board as close to the dimensions that the customer wanted I can get while maintaining the other criteria. Sanded to 1 1/2” and the edge squares trimmed to 3/4”

Of course another great reason to do a SU model would be so I can use cutlist. Even though this isn’t a large complicated piece of furniture with lots of parts it is still a very useful program to figure out exactly how much material I need and what the exact board footage is so i can price it accurately. I used the first glue up blank to run the cutlist, once for the maple and once for the walnut

So it turns out I needed just under 2.5 board feet of each type of wood. Where I buy my hard woods, 8/4 hard maple is $6.35 b/f, and 8/4 walnut is $10.65 b/f. So my material cost is around $42.00. The walnut is pricey…maybe I should stick to all hard maple butcher blocks! So I bought all my lumber today and spent some time planing it down to 1 3/4” thick…but I am thinking…once I do the first glue up, if I have to use a drum sander to flatten and size the blank….. that could take a while to loose 1/4”. Maybe I should take my blank thickness down to 1 5/8, and just be real careful when I glue it up? What do you guys think?

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o190/fella77/leader_board_b.jpg

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o190/fella77/leader_board_a.jpg

I am adding a small cove just to give it a little something. I was thinking of doing some maple keys or stripes but again I want to keep it simple and easy to put together. I just have to rip the pieces down, mill the cove miter and assemble.

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o190/fella77/leader_board_c.jpg

Here is some details on the eraser tray…
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o190/fella77/leader_board_d.jpg

Here is a cross section of the profile..

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o190/fella77/leader_board_e.jpg

I am thinking probubly a wipe on all in one finish…anyone have any suggestiuons for a wipe on for walnut?

Speaking of finish I was going back and forth between shooting these with cans of Deft or having a friend of mine who works at the same cabinet shop I used to, to spray them with professional catalyzed lacquer. I really don’t mind finishing, but this guy has been spraying lacquer for 15 years, they have a professional spray booth and this stuff covers better than 5 coats of Deft ….in two coats. I would have been spraying cans, in my garage, picking dust and bugs out of the finish. So I had my buddy shoot them …and it was the right descesion..they came out awesome! HERE ARE SOME PICTURES..


I borrowed 20 chips from the guy I am making these for so I could test out the fit..

So, all thats left is to install the little rare earth magnets in the holes, maybe throw a couple coats of fine cabinet wax on them and they will be done!

Where I last left you, I had gotten all the strips glued up into blanks. I had to wait about a week or so, to take a day off and pay a visit to my old boss and his wonderful wide belt sander. Sorry but I didn’t take any pictures of the process but it went something like this… The trays were only 10” long, and you cant put anything through the sander thats smaller than 16”, so I butted each tray end to end and sent them through. I fished a piece of long scrap out of the scrap bin that was the same starting thickness as my trays and sent that in after the last piece at the end. I also wasn’t going to be able to feed and catch the pieces as they emerged from the sander, so I set up a piece of MDF on some horses and the pieces dropped nicely on it. I had to remove a considerable amount of material ( I was 1/4” over) so I loaded a 60 grit belt and that made quick work of the uneven edges and excess glue. Then I kept sanding all the way to a final thickness of 1”, changing belts as I went for a final grit of 120. Here are some shots of the sanded pieces…

I love that wide belt sander..the blanks are perfectly flat and sanded nicely to 120..

I don’t’ have a drill pres so I ventured over to my buddies cabinet shop to use his ( it pays to know allot of people who own cabinet shops!). I ended up cutting my blanks to length on his RAS. Honestly, I should have waited till I got home..I ended up with some tearout..the blade isn’t the greatest in that RAS, and at home I have a 12” Makita SCMS with a pretty nice blade in it and a zero clearance insert.

Once the blanks were all cut to length, I then cut the walnut pieces to the same size. I was using a stop, so everything would be the same length. I then clamped the matched blanks together and clamped that to the drill press table and bored my 40 mm holes. I bought a brand new carbide tipped forstner bit and it payed off. I cut through the blanks like butta…no burning at all!

The drill press I was using was a little old..I think it had a bit of a run-out problem cause the holes weren’t perfectly straight..but nothing I couldn’t’ clean up with some sanding. I then set up the walnut pieces for boring. Marc’s method was to tape the two pieces together….I forgot that, so i just did it like this..

I apologize for the crappy picture…that was with my cell phone. Here is a couple shots of the raw pieces, not yet sanded…

Now it was time to really put the oscillating spindle sander I got for Xmas to work..

I was using the standard 80 grit sleeve that came with the sander, but I went to Home Depot and despite what I had read in the blogs, they offer a replacement pack of 80 grit sleeves in all the sizes, but heres the good part..it also has a full set of 120 grit sleeves as well!

After thoroughly sanding the holes to 120, it was time to glue on the outside strips. After marking all the pieces so they would line up properly I started glueing..

Heres some trays out of the clamps and waiting for the next operation..

Heres a close up. Still got allot of sanding to do..

OK, so next operation will be rounding over the outside edges, and then routing a shallow groove over each chip slot, top and bottom so they can be stacked when the covers are off. So hopefully in the next episode that will be where were at!

The Forrest produced perfect edges for gluing and the jig worked great to make the pieces consistent. So once I got all my pieces cut I started doing glue ups. Here is a shot of the first “half” in the clamps.
I used a glue roller to apply the glue quickly and evenly. I also sandwiched the glue up between two pieces of scrap maple to help distribute the clamp pressure. I put aside the outside walnut strips..they don’t go on till after all the holes get bored. Here is three “half’s” drying in the clamps

Unlike Marc who owns more clamps than anyone I know, I can only do three glue ups at once. I am actually going to use only the Bessy’s from now on. They have such nice even clamping pressure and the jaws stay parallel to each other. They are just so much easier to use than the pipe clamps. Sure they are more expensive…but you get what you pay for. Here is a shot at all the other “half’s” waiting their turn in the clamps.

So, once I get the glue ups done I will be paying a visit to my old employer, to “borrow” his wide belt sander. The half’s are all around 1 1/4” thick now. I will wide belt them down to 1” and they will be nice and flat and consistant in thickness.

I am putting a link below each pic to the full size image…. 640×480 just dosn’t do these justice!

Here is a basic look at the tray. I kept all of Marc’s dimensions and proportions. I threw in this view and the exploded view with dimensions in case anyone out there doesn’t have the magazine and wants to build one of these. I am using hard maple and walnut.

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o190/fella77/e5950b2a.jpg

Heres an exploded view of all the individual segments and their sizes. I had the guy at the hardwood dealer plane everything oversize so I don’t have to sweat the glue ups as much..I will just plane or sand them to finished width of 1”

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o190/fella77/04f8f4b6.jpg

All these images were drawn in Sketchup and then rendered in Podium. Podium doesn’t recognize line work or text so to get the line work and text into the image, I had to use a 2D export of the hidden view and combined it with my rendered image in photoshop. I was trying to get a mix between photo real render, and industrial illustration..

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o190/fella77/335cec85.jpg

A trip to the local hardwood dealer a mile from my house that has a wall of cutoffs and deals yielded all the wood I will need to make the 5 chip trays that my friend needs ( he has slightly under 500 chips). The walnut I got from the scrap bin (“scrap sounds so harsh..I like “undersized stock” better) is allot darker than the brown in these renders..it’s almost black..

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o190/fella77/30ed76f9.jpg
Basically the procedure is rip all my pieces to exact widths, glue up my blanks for the tops and bottoms without the 2 end pieces of walnut. After the glueup, I size the blanks to finished dimensions. Then I clamp together a “top” and “bottom” lay out the hole pattern then bore the 40mm holes. Then I mate up two pieces of walnut for the end pieces and bore a 1” hole in those. Then I glue the end pieces onto my tops/bottoms and round over the edges. I am thinking a few sprayed coats of catalyzed lacquer for these…no stain. I just realized I didn’t include the shallow grooves routed over each row so they can be stacked securely with the tops off…DOAH!

This is the quick and dirty method
First make an outline of the inside dimensions of the room

Then select all the lines by clicking on them with the shift key held down

Then use the offset tool and click on one of the selected lines, and offset it 4 or 6” whatever you want..

Then you should have a separate area where the walls are

Then grab the push pull tool and start extruding your walls..

I just type in 8’ in the VCB (the box in the lower right corner) then hit enter, and voilà! 8’ high walls…

Then if you want to start getting fancy you can add some interior walls..
Just draw a rectangle the same width as your other walls where you want the partition to be, grab the push/pull tool and extrude away!

Thats kind of the quick and dirty way to do it. It works well if its a small space and not allot of walls. If you wanted to do a more detailed or complex floor plan with allot of walls I would take the time to draw it out in 2D with your wall thickness and then use the push/pull tool to extrude the whole thing.

Allot of times I have the luxury of having an Auto CAD 2D drawing of a floor plan. I import it into Sketchup and if the drafter did a good job I could just clean it up a little and then extrude the walls. Most of the time I end up drawing from scratch. I hope this helps you and anyone else out there to understand and use Sketchup! Feel free to post any questions….i will do my best to answer them!

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http://members.cox.net/fella/Chess2.jpg

http://members.cox.net/fella/20080112142156_14m13s.jpg

I was just playing around. The equipment is from the woodworking tools collection I made available in an earlier blog. The models are kinda low poly, but it still kinda cool! Modeled in Sketchup, rendered in Podium.