All that was remaining was plugging all the pinned mortises, attaching the breadboard ends, and plugging those screws as well.

Plugging the legs
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Plugging the pinned mortises was a real pain in the ass. I wish I had a mortiser as they would have all been identical in size. Instead, I had to custom fit every single plug. I used a 1/2” chisel to square the holes, but most weren’t perfectly square or exactly 1/2”.


So to start I cut some left over scrap hard maple a bit larger to 5/8” for plugging the legs.



Then came the fun task of hand fitting all 16 holes. To make it a bit easier I beveled the sides to insert them.






Another issue I had was that all the dowels weren’t the same size going in, so the depths of these plugs varied and I had to shave them to relatively the same height.



Look at all the shavings :)





Attaching the Breadboard ends
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To attach the breadboard ends, I drilled 3 holes through the ends into the table top. I then took off the ends and extended these holes in the tabletop to 2” deep. I couldn’t get that full depth through the breadboard ends.



Since I was using screws to attach the ends, I elongated the holes in the breadboard ends to allow room for them to adjust as the table expands and contracts. Hopefully you can see in this pic the elongated holes. I just used the drill to expand them.



I drilled a larger hole in the ends and chiseled them square(or close to) with a 3/8” mortise chisel.



I applied only a tiny bit of glue in the center to keep it centered and attached



I used 3” screws to attach the ends, but cut the center screw to 2 1/2” on each side because it would have gone through the bowl cutout otherwise.



Now back to the bandsaw to cut out more plugs. These went a little smoother since most were close to 3/8” square. I cut them just slightly larger but most didn’t take much to fit.



Using the same process as the plugs for the legs I inserted these. Then I beveled all the plugs on the legs and ends.
The only issue was since the heights were all different on the legs, I shaved off too much material on most of the plugs. I wish I left more. They are beveled but its hard to see. The breadboard end plug’s however again went smoother and are noticeable,although probably not in this pic. I also beveled the cloud lifts on the table.





This weekend I had time to do the final sanding, softening all the edges on the table, and start the finishing process. I’m using a polyurethane Arm-R-Seal Top Coat Semi Gloss on the top and a satin on the base. The top will have somewhat of a piano finish because my dog is a messy eater/drinker and I want to make sure it is sealed. I don’t have pics of that process though so you’ll have to wait a couple more days for me to post the final project.


Thanks for looking. The final project will be posted by next weekend! :) Then on to more projects….

The dowels I had were standard length dowels, but I didn’t want to use the full length so I taped all of them together(and a few extra just in case), and sent them through the bandsaw.

I then glued them in tapered side down to make it easier to get them in place. I used a mallet and a full dowel as a guide to help hammer them in.

Bowl Holes
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For the bowl holes, I debated using a jigsaw and carefully cutting the circles but decided against it. This would be the perfect use for a router with a circle jig and was super easy to do. First, I took a 1/4” piece of plywood and cut it to size to accept the router and some extra length for different sized circles to allow for future use.

The bowls under the rim measured 6”, so I plunged my bit through the new jig and measured from the edge of there to 3” and drilled a tiny hole for a nail.

All I had to do now was find the centers of the bowls and drill another tiny hole, rest the jig and place a nail through both holes. Then I took two passes on each one with just half depth on the first pass.





Now for all you pros out there, is there a good way to do the final pass? I was just very careful to make sure once the circle was fully cut, the router didn’t shoot out and damage the table top. There has to be a better way. Any suggestions? Tape from underside before its fully cut out?

Table top Tongue End caps
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To hide the open joint of the tongue and groove used in the breadboard ends on table tops, Greene and Greene were genius in using a decoration to hide the expansion and open joint. I always thought these were just for decoration until learning their true purpose when I became interested in G&G style. They just used end caps glued to the table top side so that it could move freely in the breadboard ends. If the wood contracts in the breadboard ends, instead of having a recessed tongue visible, the end caps still covered that recess. Clever guys.


Anyways, I used two straight edges to keep my router flat and routed the tongues 1/4” deep by 1” long to accept the end caps using a router edge guide.








After squaring these off, I cut end caps using maple. The side that glues on to the table top was 3/8” thick, and the cloud lift detail that will rest in the breadboard ends gets to 5/8” thick.

Placing glue ONLY only the table top side, I glued them in place.

One question though I’m hoping someone may have a suggestion for.
Originally, I planned on using buttons to keep the table top flat to the base in grooves on the aprons. I forgot to take those in to account when deciding on the table length and width and the position of the bowl holes. Now that they are cut, there is no where except the center to screw buttons to the aprons. How can I attach the table top now so that it remains flat while still allowing for expansion of it? The last picture hopefully shows what I’m talking about. The bowl holes just take up too much space to allow for buttons anywhere but the center.


Tomorrow I hope to make the elongated screw holes for the breadboard ends, cut the plugs for those and the pinned tenons, and sand everything. Then just apply finish and call it done.

I can almost see the finish line :)

To start, I grabbed the widest board I had to avoid having to edge joint the top. Here it is at 11” wide and in dire need of flattening. The sapwood near the edge will be cut off.

Look at all the beautiful shavings..

I was hoping to have the top an inch thick, but due to some bad warping I had to bring it down from a little over 4/4 to 13/16. I was debating bringing it down to 3/4” to make math easier for tenon and groove spacing, but I wanted it as thick as possible. After thicknessing and planing one side smooth, I cut it to 19×9. the top is 17” with an inch tenon on each side.

Just like the aprons, I ran it through the table saw using a crosscut sled to make the tenons with the blade set 1/4” above the sled.

I still have to make them haunched, but that will have to wait until next week.

I then ripped the breadboard ends to 2 1/2” wide and crosscut them to 9 1/2”.

I was going to use the router table to make the groove, but due to time constraints today I ran it through the table saw a few times since that was already set up. If I did it with the router table, I’d have to do a few adjustments to get the width since the tenon was between 1/4” and 3/8”, but not quite 3/8”. So this was quicker. After looking back, I should have thicknessed the top to make it 3/4”. It would have made this so much easier in the end.

Here is the underside with the breadboard ends on. Or maybe its the top side, I haven’t decided. I sort of like the not, but I think either way its going to be partially cut out when I make the holes for the dog bowls.

Next weekend, I’ll hopefully finish it up. Still remaining…grooves in the aprons to accept buttons for the top, the buttons themselves, end caps and haunching the tenons for the G&G style breadboard ends, and then glue up/pinning the tenons on the legs. The BB ends will have elongated screw holes covered with plugs as will the pins.

Tomorrow, I’m going to route a few grooves on the inside of the aprons to accept buttons that will hold the top and allow for it to expand and contract. I’ll also be making the table top and breadboard ends. If time allows I’ll work on the plugs but I doubt I’ll get there. Stay tuned….

I think it looks okay. This was done quickly this morning and without all the curves or exact spacing in the lengths of each cloud lifts, but gives me a good idea that it will look fine. The legs will each have a bit carved out of the outer corner edge too.

I can’t wait to get back to working on it next wekeend.

The Legs
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I started by finishing up the legs.



There wasn’t too much cleanup needed, just a few passes with my trusy #7…



And then cut them to final length of 14” using a stop block on my crosscut sled.



I also found this on one of the legs. Is this gumming that is common with Cherry or is this spalting? Either way, its pretty.



Aprons
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Now that the legs are done(minus the mortises), I moved on to the aprons.
I started by flattening and cutting to boards to length of 14” for the front and back and 7” for the sides…



I then planed them to 3/4” thick and ripped them to 3.5” width…



Now comes the tenons. Last time I did tenons for the nightstands, I used my bandsaw. This time I decided to try and do them on my crosscut sled with a stop block. I found this to be just as easy, and probably a little more accurate. First, I raised the blade to 1/4” and placed a stop block at 1” from the end.



After the first pass, I just slowly made successive passes to form the tenons. I wish I had a table saw capable of handling dado blades. Oh well.






I then rotated them to the face and cut the bottom of the tenons.

Using the same technique, I cut 1” deep into the tenons for the haunches but 1/4” of the tenon length remained for this area.





Clouds Lifts
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Now for the tricky part, the cloud lifts on the aprons. To start, I marked the center of the front and side aprons and then marked halfway from that to each side for the front. The side was similar but a little bit past half way on each side due to how small it was. I also marked a line across for each cloud lift level. Each one was 3/4” apart.


Since each cloud lift level was 3/4” apart, I set my compass to a 3/8” radius.

To make the curves, I placed the point of the compass at the center of each halfway mark, and made a tick to the left and right across the horizontal lines.



Then, from each of those ticks, I made a quarter of a circle to make the S curves…






Now I have the layout to cut :)






To cut them, I paired of the front and back as well as the sides, taped the tops and tenons together, and ran them through my bandsaw.






Since I had a 1/2” blade, I wasn’t able to make the curve cuts accurately. I did a few slices and then chopped those out, but still needed some filing to get the final shape.



I then used a dowel wrapped with sandpaper to smooth the curves out and get rid of the filing marks.

And that’s it for today. I still need to cut grooves on the inside of the aprons for the buttons that will be holding the top and allow for expansion. Also, I need to cut mortises in the legs, make the top and breadboard ends as well as the plugs which will wait until next weekend.

I’m also not sure about the height of the aprons at 3.5”. The front and back look okay, but on the sides it looks squished. Also for a 14” leg height, 3.5” may seem to bulky. I may rip off the tops of the aprons a bit to 3” but I haven’t decided yet. I may try to cut a piece from scraps to see how it would look at 3” before I cut them if I go that route.

Thanks for looking.

lately has only been drinking water from the bowl in his crate(raised) and never from the water bowl on the kitchen floor. We keep his crate open at all times, he just likes to go in there at night when we’re watching TV since its covered and den like.

Anyways, for a while we thought it was the bowl itself, but when we moved the one from the floor to the crate attached one that is attached half way up the crate and he’d drink it. We moved the one from the crate to the floor and he wouldn’t touch it. So we figured it must be uncomfortable for him to lower his head so much. That’s where this idea came from this past week. A raised dog tray for his water and food bowl. So I sketched up this one a few nights ago on a post it and got started on it today with leftover cherry boards I still have remaining from the nightstand last year (I purchased too much). Here are my plans, forgive the crudeness.

I wanted to use traditional joinery, and I’ve been wanting to do a Greene and Greene style for a while. I really like that style. I know these pics don’t do it justice, but its going to have some of the staples of Greene and Greene. These include cloud lifts on the aprons and raised plugs to cover the pinned mortise and tenon joinery. Also, raised end cap covers for the breadboard ends. The only difference is I’m not going to use ebony for the plugs. I’m going to use Cherry for the entire piece, and Hard Maple for the plugs. I’m also still deciding how I want to make the legs. I may shave a curve into one edge, or do the chiseled indent that greene and greene is known for. If I do the latter though, it will be rounded per my wife’s request.

So today I went in to the garage to decide on all the measurements and start work. Small plywood scraps can be very useful when you don’t have paper nearby ;)

The top thickness will be 1”, the aprons will all have a haunched tenons and will all be pinned. The legs will be 2” wide by 1 3/4” thick. Today, all I was able to do though was flatten, rip to 2” wide and glue together cherry to make the 1 3/4” thickness required. The legs are a bit long right now but will be cut to final size of 14” tomorrow.

I’m still unsure if the proportions will look okay since my drawing isn’t to scale. The measurements are correct for the dog bowl spacing, but with a 17” wide by 9” top (not including breadboards), will 2” wide breadboards on each end look too wide?

These were very easy to make and only took a single day this weekend. They also look a lot like Mayan pyramids so already they are prettier than than plastic cones.

Unlike the plastic 7” tall cones, these WILL NOT tip over. The issue with the plastic ones is the base is too narrow and the recessed tops don’t properly support metal bed frames correctly.

I do plan on making a proper bed frame for our master bedroom to match the nightstands I made (http://lumberjocks.com/projects/50290) , but for now these will suffice.

I made two sets, 4 risers for a full size in our guest room and 6 risers for the queen in the master bedroom(2 extra for middle support bar). Here is how to make them, they are very easy and only required a tablesaw with fence, crosscut sled, glue, nailer, and plunge router with a 3/4” bit capable of plunging to 1”.

To start, I decided to make the risers the same height as our current crappy ones, 7”. To do this with 3/4” plywood, we would need 10 layers. I decided to double each layer up to minimize measuring cuts.

So first thing, rip enough wood to make 4 risers for a full size, and 6 risers for a queen and probably king.
The tiers I made were 7”,6”,5”,4”,3”.
Rip each tier to the proper length of material. These measurements INCLUDE space for kerfs and a little give.
7” – 4 bed risers = 8 pieces = ~ 60” – 6 bed risers = 12 pieces = ~ 90”
6” – 4 bed risers = 8 pieces = ~ 54” – 6 bed risers = 12 pieces = ~ 76”
5” – 4 bed risers = 8 pieces = ~ 44” – 6 bed risers = 12 pieces = ~ 64”
4” – 4 bed risers = 8 pieces = ~ 36” – 6 bed risers = 12 pieces = ~ 52”
3” – 4 bed risers = 8 pieces = ~28” – 6 bed risers = 12 pieces = ~ 40”

Once you have all the sizes ripped, use the crosscut sled to cut them square using a stop block doing each tier at the same time. For me, I had 20 cuts per tier(100 cuts total) since I was doing a full and queen size at the same time.

Then, using a roller I layed out all pieces of a single layer of each tier at a time and rolled glue across, attached the other layer of that tier, and put a few 1 1/4” brad nails in the corners.

Repeat this for each tier individually. You can also do one layer at a time with the same nails, but for me I found it to be quicker to do the tiers individually and then switch to a 2” Finish nail to assemble the tiers in the same manner as the individual tiers. Make sure to keep the top tier nails in the corners, this is important so you don’t hit one when making the holes with a plunge router(or drill press if you have one).

For the holes, I managed to quickly make these using a modified router edge guide. I took some scrap ply and put them together with screws in layers to match the top tier, then drilled new holes in the edge guide to screw them to each side of the top tier.

After finding the center of one, I adjusted the edge guide to this position and was able to quickly plunge each one.
I used a 3/4” straight bit capable of plunging, and plunged to a depth of 1”. Notice the scrap at the base clamped to one side and screwed in front of the workbench. This was for safety so it didn’t spin the base in some freak accident.

And that’s it, you now have cheap, hefty, durable bed risers. These things aren’t going anywhere and once you take the wheels off the metal bed frame, they will sit perfectly in them with extremely little extra space.

I spray painted ours a satin black to blend in with our bed skirt.

I’m getting good at doing these repetitive cuts. I think the master bedroom closet dadoes prepared me. 1 day total for all this, with a lunch break and done by 6pm.

Thanks for looking.

Here are some pics of the edge banding process, painting(yawn), and installation. One thing I should have noted when dealing with the installation. I measured the doorways, and height of the rooms and width of the hallways to make sure I could get this massive shelving beast inside. I did that just fine. What I forgot to measure was the diagonal of the shelving from top front to bottom back to allow to rotate it vertically to pivot in our narrow hallway to get it into the bedroom.

So I had to cut it in half using a circular saw and straight edge right there in my living room. My wife wasn’t too happy about that but after getting it into the house neither of us wanted to have to bring it back out to the garage and then back in. So cut it I did, right there. Glad I brought in my shop fan with filtration and shop vac which significantly helped keep dust levels down inside. The pic with my wife in it you’ll notice a seam going across the middle of the unit, that was the cut which was patched up after during final touch up with hidden support bracket, spackle, and more paint.

Edge banding…
I’ve never used edge banding before. I’m still not a huge fan of it but since I was using plywood and didn’t want to spend much on hardwood edges since it was going to be painted, this was a good, quick, and cheap alternative that Lew had suggested. I could have just painted the plywood but the edge would have shown through so I’m happy I listened to you Lew, thanks. It was very easy to apply and looked great painted, much better than plywood would have looked and cheaper and quicker than hardwoods. I took out my block plane iron and slid it along the wood to easily trim it.

Here is one pic of the priming and painting. This thing was a pain in the butt to paint. I was so happy when I was done with this. It sucked! Although it was probably quicker than applying an actual finish to it. The main shelving unit contained 82 faces that needed to be painted and since they had deep shelves I had to constantly walk around and use a ladder to paint it. I tried it with the shelving laying down but it was wearing out my hands and wrists quicker.

And finally, here is the start of the installation. Here is where all hell broke loose and I had to cut it in half in the living room to get it down the hallway and inside the bedroom and closet. Notice the seem in the center…this goes away in the following pics. Thats my wife, Ren, happy that we finally got the first piece in.

And the other 2 pieces and poles installed.
Here is the right wall…

and the left

and with crown and trim installed. I still need to caulk the trim and crown though as there are gaps along the drywall.

and with clothing :) This closet design was my own and introduced a huge amount of storage square footage to the closet. Before we had one pole along one wall, another along the adjacent wall, and a tiny vertical shelf. Because of the pole design as well, you couldn’t use the last foot where they overlapped either. The total cost of this shelving with paint and trim was $300. EDIT: It was actually around $260 since I still have a full sheet of plywood left over :) Well worth it.

I still have to built the pull out tie and belt racks and valet pole for my wife. The tie and belt racks will be built using recessed full extension drawer slides along the walls. I’ll update when those are finished sometime soon…I need a break from this piece though. I dont think I ever want to build something with so many shelves and dadoes again lol.

I rotated the corner piece up right to see how it looks since I haven’t checked that out yet and let me just say, this thing is much heavier than I thought lol. Hopefully, my wife will be able to help me carry it inside, and yes it will fit through all the doors and hallways.

So here it is vertically

Originally in the design, I was going to have a backing to the corner shelving, but to save on cost and because I thought the vertical supports would be enough, I decided against it. After looking at it standing up and pressing down on the back corners, I saw that it would start to warp after a while of carrying weight, so I decided to add just a small corner backing with dadoes to support.

Then came cutting the remaining top shelving pieces for the sides

This is where it started to get tricky with all the rabbets and dadoes(sorry no pic) and math to account for the depth of grooves and rabbets. I had to redo one piece completely after putting the dado on the wrong side and then when I redid it I messed up the dado again and had to widen it, luckilly it was for a vertical divider so it shouldn’t affect any structure. I’ll have to plug that now with woodfiller I think to hide my mistake…woops.

Here is a pic after fixing my mistakes and assembling the right wall and temporarily attaching it to the corner to visualize it and make sure everything fit together. It still needs a brace near the bottom though.

And here is a backside view of the left side being assembled…the larger hanging area needs a brace as well to the corner shelving.

Then I need to patch some messups and unfortunately….paint it white. Oh well, at least its just plywood but still I’m not a fan of that but it will look okay in the white closet.

So now on to the face frame question…. Some of my cuts on the fronts of the corner shelving aren’t perfect. Since I’m painting it white, would the ply show through the paint(2 coats) and primer? since some shelves aren’t perfect, a face frame may show some gaps between the frame and shelf. I suppose I could use wood filler on these areas and no one would notice?? but is it necessary? Would edge banding be a better choice or would that be a worse idea? Any suggestions would be appreciated on how to do the face frame for it all. Thanks!

Now on to the closet…
I managed to finish the dadoes in the side walls of the shelving that I started yesterday…

Then I got to work on figuring out a good way to make all the dadoes in the actual shelves for the vertical dividers/supports. The thing about these if you saw my first post on the corner shelving plan, is on one shelf they go towards one wall , but on the next shelf they are rotated 90 degrees and go towards the other wall. There had to be an easy way to accurately cut these dadoes without taking all day.

I came up with the idea of taking my router edge guide I used to make the dadoes on the shelving side walls…

,and took one rail off and cut the jig so that the shelves themselves could be ganged up top and bottom of each row of shelving, and all you had to do was press them together, slide them under the jig and up against the routing guide. I nailed this new jig to a piece of plywood…

If you’re wondering why the left piece has a chunk missing in the lower right side of it, its the bottom shelf that has a rabbet and I started routing the rabbet on the wrong side before I realized it and flipped it over, causing that entire area to be cut away. But it doesn’t matter as it will be against the carpet and no one will see. Also, there wont be any back wall support in that area so it shouldn’t have gotten a rabbet to begin with. ;)

Now I numbered the shelves from 1-7(bottom to top) and ganged them up so that one was right side up and the next shelf was flipped over,

routed a groove,

got rid of the first shelf, and rotated the next 180 degrees and added another shelf.

This was repeated until I got to the top shelf. So top side of shelf 1 was ganged to bottom side of shelf 2 and routed 1/4”x3/4” deep dado. Then shelf 1 went away, I pulled shelf 2 out from the jig, flipped it and rotated it 180 degrees,

and added shelf 3, routed, then shelf 2 went away and shelf 3 flipped and rotated 180 degrees and shelf 4 was added…etc. until all were done. I was surprised how fast I did this. I think I managed to route all these vertical support dadoes in about 30 minutes. You may notice a few mess ups but overall they turned out excellent.

Now came the actual shelving assembly, this was going to be a real pain in the butt. I also knew that some of these may not be cut perfectly since I did it with a jigsaw, but hopefully the minor differences wouldn’t be too noticeable once finished. For the most part this was true, but I’m my own worst critic so I see all the issues and a few shelves aren’t 90 degrees to the wall, oh well, its not that noticeable.

But first, I was very happy and surprised to see this from Home Depot, I thought all their plywood was imported….

Anyways, here is the glueup assembly. I used a brad nailer to help support the shelving in addition to glue.

Originally I thought I might be able to avoid a back wall support, but after lifting one side, I’m thinking I may need to add at least a small vertical support on one side. To support the back edges of the shelving as they are heavy and large. I was hoping the vertical supports would be enough, but I’m not so sure so I’ll be cutting sometime soon(probably next weekend) a 93”x6” wide back wall support piece for this shelving.

Then come the side wall clothing rails and face frame for all of it. The walls are done already, I just need to cut the horizontal pieces for those in the sketchup drawing. All in all though its coming along rather smoothly I must say.

Thanks for looking and I hope you all had a Happy New years.

Here are the 5 14”x93” walls that make up the closet and the edge guide I made to mark a 14” line on all of them. I actually cut them 2 deep to make it quicker and used a home made edge guide for a circular saw.

Next up came cutting the vertical supports for the corner shelving. They vary in height(21 1/4, 19, 12,12,13,12 1/4) with an additional 1/4” on the top and bottom to sit in 1/4” dadoes on each shelf.

Then came cutting 7 L shaped shelves. This is where I contemplated the best approach to make these, and decided to go with jigsawing them to get the most efficient use of the wood and could free hand all the cuts with very good results thanks to my new Bosch J365, http://lumberjocks.com/reviews/2553

Then I routed a 3/8” rabbet on the top and bottom shelf for support.

Here is the matching 3/8” dadoes on the top and bottom of the side walls, using an edge guide.

I’ve started to route the full 3/4”x3/8” dadoes for each shelf (5 not including the top and bottom), but haven’t finished. Its new years eve so I wanted to stop early. I made a quick routing jig guide using a brad nailer and some scrap maple which I plan on reclaiming after this project.

I used scrap plywood in the dadoes to keep the two walls aligned as I routed them together going up.

And thats where I stopped for the day.

Depending on how I feel tomorrow ;) I will hopefully be able to finish the middle closet and start the glue up.

Thanks for looking.

Have a Happy New Years!

Next summer will be the master bathroom remodel.

Anyways, the next project is to rearrange the master bedroom. But first, we want to see if we can get rid of one of our dressers to make the room more open, moving the other dresser to what will be the kids room. So on to remodelling the master closet first. The closet is nothing more than a small walk-in, 57.5×60” room with a rod across one wall for me and two rods across another wall for my wife’s clothing. There is also a tiny bit of shelving but nothing great. So my project for this weekend is to start the redo of this.

I looked at the box stores and online for custom shelving, which is all crappy quality particle board and costs about 5 times as much as I wanted to spend. So I decided I can easily tackle this on my own with everything I’ve learned.

After cleaning out our closet and donating stuff we don’t wear anymore, here is the sketchup model I came up with…. The left side is for my wife Ren, right side is mine….

The walls are all 93” high with rods at 39” and 79 (we measured our stuff)
It consists of two rods for each of us and a much longer rod for my wife’s dresses. There will also be tall shoe rack on the right wall that isn’t in the drawing yet but will be added later. In addition to the two rods each, we each get shelving, with each other row alternating in length between 14” wide and the full 28” wide”. It looks tricky to build but it really won’t be.

Ignore the plywood thickness lines though on the linen shelving, they were just to help me quickly build the drawing. In reality, the side walls go from floor to ceiling with each row of shelving having 3/8” rabbets to attach to 3/8 dados in the side walls. Also, the top row of shelving will in fact be in line with all the other top shelving, I raised it up one inch to match the shelving above the rods. I’ll post updates of that tomorrow hopefully.

And here are the 5 sheets of 3/4” Birch plywood I’ve purchased today. I really hate having to rent a truck to pick these up, our cars can’t handle 4×8’s and my friends nearby don’t own a truck. I’ll also need to purchase some cheap hardwood to finish the front edges or pine if we decide to paint it white :(, a few drawer slides to make a sliding tie rack and belt rack and a vanity pole for my wife. I’m hoping I have some plywood leftover though for jigs.

I’m still unsure how it will be finished. We’re debating painting it white :( or staining it :) Any suggestions? We want the closet to feel larger and I think a wood finish will do the opposite with the white walls…its not that big to begin with. We are also debating redoing the floor from carpet to bamboo as we slowly redo all the flooring in the house…too many projects :(

I find it clever that he first spins a wheel to the rough shape of an animal and then cuts a whole bunch of the same shape from that. Look how long those shavings are! So maybe 1000 to 2000 a day is doable for a pro, but I’d probably take too long making that initial wheel shape I’d think.

Centuries-old Christmas craftsmanship thrives in seiffen, Germany

In the center I marked x’s at 45 degree angles using my compound ruler. I was looking for scrap that would look nice and fit the kerfs that either my band saw or table saw would produce. I found the perfect scrap of cherry that fit my table saw kerf for the most part. It was a just a bit thin but using Titebond III and clamps I was able to fill the gap and pretty much match the dark color.

Anyways, in order to create a celtic knot, you just need to have an X in two planes criss crossing. Since my miter sled is only set up to do one side of the sled, I decided to do the same angle cut on all 4 sides instead of two x’s on just 2 sides. This produces the same affect. I raised the blade up to about 1/4” inch below the height of the block to keep it together making glue up easier. One note, its best to do only one cut at a time and wait for the glue to dry before doing the next. I was impatient with them and only waited about 10 minutes between each side glue up causing some issues with support but nothing serious. So cut, insert piece, wait for it to dry, rotated and repeat for all 4 sides or if you can do 45 degree angle both ways then just do an x on two sides. Since I did all 4 sides same direction you end up with this….

Then drilled the hole for the threaded insert on the lathe using a 15/32 drill bit, and screwed in the threaded insert using the included allen wrench and a little CA glue to make sure it stayed in.

Finally, I mounted the side without the insert on my chuck, and using a live center with a cylindar adapter that fit in the insert without damaging it on the other end.

I then realized it was difficult to do the entire handle this way so I found a bolt that fit in the insert, cut off the head, and placed it in the jacobs chuck and just screwed the handle to it to finish the turning, sanding, and finish.

Tada!

I didn’t align all 4 side cuts apparently so one of the loops on the knot is slightly larger than the others, but still all in all I’m happy with the result and will be doing more of them on various projects.

I finished it the same way I have a few of my pens as I’m most comfortable with this method, sanded all the way up to 12000 grit. Then 3 coats of BLO/CA combination, a coat of EEE-shine wax and then renaissance wax.

Don’t get me wrong, the worksharp 3000 did a great job at flat chisels and the likes, but for gouges it wasn’t the easiest to keep a consistent grinding angle, nor was it the fastest for sharpening them. I also always wanted fingernail grinds on my gouges but that is way too much material to take off with that. So I decided at $90 I couldn’t pass up this grinder. I’d make the jigs myself to save money over the wolverine ones thanks to some help in the forums, http://lumberjocks.com/topics/28920, and fine woodworking… http://www.finewoodworking.com/pdf/ShopBuiltJig.pdf
The cost of my “wolverine” jig and fingernail profile jig was around $10 thanks to scraps. The cost was mainly for the thumb screws and tnuts.

The clamp on the end is because I just glued this piece on, it was removed shortly after these pics.

I still have the fingernail profile jig to make, but haven’t gotten around to it, although I do have all the t-nuts and screws and dowels required. It sits in the dimple of this jig. The dimple sits 4 inches up from bottom of wheel and will be 7 inches out for that grind. For normal grinds though you just place it in the v groove of this piece and rotate. I was amazed at how incredibly easy it was to grind with it.

And here is the beautiful grind on it. I remembered to keep some water nearby and frequently dip in it even though it was high speed steel(from HF) it did turn blue on the tip pretty quick so I had to remove that bit but used water from that point on and it was perfect.

Hopefully I’ll have time to use my newly sharpened gouges this weekend to turn the pizza cutter from Rockler I purchased this past weekend, as well as two bottle stoppers and a bottle opener. I also need to finish up that bowl now that I have a working chuck :)

I learned a lot from those mistakes though. 1) Make sure if you resaw your own veneer, that its all a consistent thickness before trying to press it. 2) make sure you press the veneer correctly. These tops were the first time I did veneers and I did them with some cheap clamps and cauls. Well they weren’t glued down in some places so when I went to level the veneers and flatten them using a hand plane(they were around 1/8” thick veneer), it would grab a piece and just tear it out since it wasn’t glued down.

So I redid my veneer press to use cauls that I tapered at the ends with a hand plane so that there would be pressure all the way across when clamped. I also bit the bullet this time and bought professional cut veneer from veneersupplies.com (excellent) so that I had consistent thickness which would help with distributing the clamping pressure evenly across. I also used 1/2” mdf on the top and bottom to also help distribute pressure under the clamps. Last time I used 1/4” hardboard. Finally, I bought some deep throat F clamps so I could clamp further towards the center instead of just around the edges.

These tops came out perfect this time :) There isn’t a single air bubble or part that isn’t glued down. No tearout, nothing. The only issue was I didn’t notice how I laid out the veneer in relation to the substrates, so the center of the 4 point match isn’t perfectly center in the top.

So here are the new tops all sanded and the completed stands(without finish). I got a lot of practice joining veneers and doing a 4 corner match since I had to redo them a couple times :)

I routed a 45 degree bevel on the underside of the top frames as well, not sure how well you can see it from these pics.

Tabletop #1

Tabletop #2

The drawer handles will be screwed on after the finish but they are these style stainless steel pulls… http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=23330&filter=drawer%20pull

So, after almost 1 1/2 years, I will finally be able to finish these stands :) and move on to the bed(I dont plan on that one taking as long)!! Super excited about completing these.

Tomorrow I will start the finishing process. This is the first time finishing a nightstand or anything with drawers. Charles Neil has helped me with some questions I had regarding the overall finish, but I forgot to ask a few so hopefully someone here can help. I plan on using General Finishes Arm-R-Seal Urethane Topcoat for the finish.

1) Do I finish the inside walls of the stand that will be blocked by the drawers?
2) Do I finish the drawer sides and interior of the drawer? I know I shouldn’t finish the bottom edges of the drawer or rails where they slide on though. I believe I’m to wax these instead?

Questions, comments, constructive criticism welcome.

On to the inlay. The inlay wasn’t originally in the nightstand build but due to me screwing up the veneers I created for the top as you can see in Part 5 of the build(http://lumberjocks.com/Eric_S/blog/19337) I had to figure out a way to hide it without having to redo the tops completely. Thank you to everyone for the inlay suggestions, and newplane for the cherry blossom idea.

To start off, this is my first time doing inlay. I watched a few videos from the Wood Whisperer and fine woodworking and decided I could do it too. I decided to keep with the asian theme for the stands and use cherry blossoms for the inlay.

First was finding some blossoms to use. I found a few good quality pics, printed them out, traced over the outline and xeroxed them onto a few sheets since I didn’t know how many i was going to use.



As you can see, i will need a way to inlay the flower’s anthers and Stamens. I originally wanted to do inlay of these using cherry, but since I dont have a scroll saw or feel comfortable with how tiny that inlay is, I thought about filling it with CA and cherry sawdust. So I sliced up some scrap pieces and bagged the dust. I also did this at an earlier time with my maple just in case I needed saw dust at some point I had it on hand. You can see the blossoms already cut out in this pic, sorry its out of order.

I did a test with the sawdust and CA on a scrap piece of the maple veneer by drilling a few holes and filling them. I didn’t like how it turned out so I’d decided I’d go the Epoxy/dye route I’ve seen the Wood Whisperer do to plug a knot. I haven’t gotten to this point yet but I did pick up the epoxy and dye. Thats for Part 2 of 2 coming next week hopefully.

Next I needed some veneers to use, so I sliced a block of hard maple I had laying around.

I cut them on the bandsaw but I didn’t feel like taking out my 1/2” woodslicer for my 1/8” blade so I just took it slowly and made lots of relief cuts

I thought it would be easier to drill the holes for the anthers now and then fill them later. This was a bad idea. A few of the pedals split along the grain lines when I did this, even when using a tiny drill bit. So I stopped but had to fix those as you can see with the blue tape in the 2nd picture below. Plus, after gluing them down, all the holes i had drilled were just filled back up with glue and will require redrilling anyways. So I’ll just wait.

Next I layed them out how I thought I’d like them, and using a normal glue stick, attached them to the veneer.



The blue tape in this pic is to fix the splits caused by the drilling of the anthers

Next up was the uber tedious process of tracing and scoring them with an exacto knife. I’ve only managed to glue in one so far as it took much longer than I expected last week to carefully trace them all(not surprised).



Then I pulled the pieces out…

I wasn’t expecting it to be perfect and thought I’d have to sand the inlay to get it to fit. I was surprised that this wasn’t the case, it was close to perfect and only required a little bit of sawdust while gluing to fill a few tiny gaps.
Here is what it looks like with one piece glued in place using titebond 2 to blend with the maple. Although you couldn’t tell it’s inlayed because of how thick I sliced these pieces :(

So I realize i made these inlays way too thick. They will require a LOT of sanding to bring them down. Glad I purchased a ROB a few months back. Stay tuned for part 2 where I will finish them all, fill in the flower anthers and stamen with epoxy/dye, and sand them down. In regards to this, I’ve heard that it helps to spray a coat of laquer to seal the grain followed by wax on the surrounding wood to prevent bleeding of the dye/epoxy. Does anyone know if this will work for me or have other suggestions to prevent bleading of a cherry dye into the maple surrounding? I plan on applying the epoxy directly into the holes using a tiny syringe if that makes any difference.

Thanks for looking.

All of my other tools have dust collection except for my uber cheap Ryobi BTS10S. I’ve made a few improvements for it with jigs I made a project about a while ago, but the one thing it was still lacking was dust collection. My wife, Ren, sewed a canvas dust bag for it that did a decent job for the first year while I was still learning about setting up a shop. After using it for that long though I thought DC on the TS could be greatly improved. Too much super fine dust was making its way out of all the gaps around the TS.

First task was to seal these gaps that were surrounding the top with about a 1 1/2” clearance in an cheap fashion to complement the cheap table saw. The top was a cutout design so I had to plug them.

Then, I cut a hole out of a piece of 3/4” particle board and mounted an angled box inside of that with a 4” opening on the back. Notice the extra table space I gained with this. It isn’t much since I didn’t want to add more supports, but at least my push stick and fence now have a better place.

The angled box is 1/2 walls with a 3/4” back where the port is. Everything was cut with a jigsaw and glued and screwed and then sealed with caulk all edges.

Here it is after attaching the TS to it. I used 3/8” thick closed cell foam insulation table between it and the wood to hopefully help with vibrations and seal it even better to get that vacuum working.

It sucks really well. Much better than a passive DC bag I had before that only got the heavy stuff.

So here is what I did this past week using mainly scraps…..

1. Built drawers for my lathe table to help with storage of lathe accessories, although I still need to get full extension drawer slides for it and attach the drawer fronts. Yes, these drawers are 3/4” thick all the way around. Its what I had on hand and didn’t want to plane anything.

2. Built a lathe chisel holder for my lathe table as well. I didn’t want to have to reach down everytime I changed chisels. This accessory was part of the lathe stand plan from plansnow.com

Whats nice about this design is it sits flush against the table when not in use and swings out and locks in place(with an extra hex bolt acting as a pin).

3. Decided to redo my router table. It was basically a masonite shelf on flimsy plastic saw horses. You couldn’t move it easily and it sprayed dust everywhere when using. The router table top was also a mess since I screwed up a few of the grooves so it wasn’t completely flat. Here is the old table….



And here is the new table and top :) The sides are 3/4” baltic birch and the top is 3/4” MDF glued to 3/4” particleboard. I still need to add trim to the top as well. I also purchased a switch to use from the outside. I then realized I could have saved myself $30 by buying a light switch and wiring it myself….oh well, next time…





I also decided I didn’t like taking up an entire shelf on my workbench cabinet with router bits thrown everywhere, so I made bit holders too.



I then moved my laminate router, finish and ROS sanders, and plunge attachment into the bottom. This cleared out a very large shelf right over my workbench :)






4. Finally, as the first step in clearing out all the clutter, I had to build some scrap wood storage. For pieces longer than 16” I can put them on my wall rack, but for all the cutoff scrap it was just laying on the ground all over the place:



So I made this wall storage. I still need to add shelves to it. And I am not at all proud of the workmanship in it though. You know the saying “measure twice, cut once”, well I didn’t make a single measurement or cut lol. I just took scraps of shop plywood that were close in size I had laying around and was trying to find uses for and screwed the whole thing together.


It’s something you would see Homer building on The Simpsons. I didn’t care though, its sole purpose was to hold scraps, but I can’t help but laugh everytime I see it. The sides are 1/2” difference in depth, the top and bottom are not as deep as the middle shelf, the middle shelf actually goes out 1/4” past the top and bottom on the backside and isn’t square on the front, so when I attached the back to it, it didn’t sit flush. I screwed the hell out of it to hold it in place, but the top and bottom screws have a nice gap between the back. It really is shameful, but i was trying to get a lot done. You can’t see all the ugliness probably in this pic. I also still need to add two more shelves to it.



I was very happy I got all these projects finished this week, that was 90% of the goal. The other 10% was to clean up and reorganize most of my workshop/garage to make it easier to use and walk around in. Here is the mess I am dealing with….. I’ll post pics next week and update my workshop photos after the cleanup to compare:
A new garage vertical shelving unit i purchased will replace these two wide crappy short ones





And all this mess will be cleared and a new shop will exist next week :) allowing me to get back to fine woodworking projects and more pens and lathe work.

Happy new years!