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20K views 40 replies 16 participants last post by  PurpLev 
#1 ·
Milling S3S ...yes, triangles.

Disclaimer: This blog follows my Magen David Board that is already finished and posted here

In Highschool I always doodled (I still am). and one of my favorite things was to use the squares on the math papers to form different geometries - mostly with triangles. as I was playing along, I discovered that I could form a star of david (Magen David) and that formation has stuck with me ever since.

When I was introduced to the idea of making cutting boards out of wood, I always wanted to incorporate my sketches and designs into that.

I finally got a chance to put my ideas into motion, and came up with the following design in SketchUp:


SketchUp TIP: Using components you can quickly see how many of a certain component you have in the model by selecting the component. In the Entity Info, it'll clearly show you that the selected item is a component, and will also show you how many of that such components are in the model.

Using the above model, and the above Tip, I was quickly able to tell that I needed 80 mitered cubes, and 60 regular cubes to make the board. Now it was just a matter of getting it milled.

I figured since the board is mirrored left<->right, I could make strips for half a board twice as thick, and prior to final glue up rip them in half to quicken things up and make alignment easier.

This is where the trouble started :).

All the lumber that I have consists of cutoffs and shorts that were left over from a shop that closed, and since I wanted to get the largest possible geometry, my options were rather limited. I did not have full width boards that I could easily bevel rip to size, but had narrow boards that I could only bevel rip in the middle - with the hopes of using both parts - I was that limited with lumber….yeah.

My next mistake was approaching this project with automation, and mass production in mind. instead of making many small and clean triangles and glueing them one at a time, I figured I could created long beveled glue ups and quicken the creation of the triangles geometries. looking back - considering my source of lumber, I should have cut a massive amount of perfectly shaped triangles and with patience glue them one at a time.

So, after jointing and planing all the lumber I had could yield squares larger than 1" I bevel ripped them to get the triangles. I left a bit extra width on both sides (as much as I could) as I knew those rips would not be clean and will be in need of a cleanup:



Next was the attempt for cleanup. I made the following sled for the planer which would hold the parts at 45 to plane the top flat while still keeping the essential 45 angle:





As you can see, I was focusing on making things fast, dirty, but efficient. unfortunately this was more dirty and fast than efficient as the lack of full support for the parts made the planer lift the parts as they passed the 2nd roller. so my cleaned and flat planed parts - were not so clean, not so flat, and well … not so so.

All aside, and for lack of any additional lumber suitable for this, I decided to move forward and attend any parts that require it as they call for it. I glued up the beveled strips and got this material that I will work with:



Lessons learned:
  • Do not Mass Produce a One-Of design - not until you are actually mass producing them :)
  • Planer sled should have full base support - I will update my sled to accommodate for that.
  • Glueing up beveled strips requires a lot of patience, self control - OR - a set of precut cauls that would hold the parts at the set angle - I didn't have such, and had to rely on patience and self control - good thing I have those at hand, but for future use - I'll make myself some guides.

Next up, Super Cuts!
 
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#4 ·
Hi Sharon,

Nice work! If I needed to glue up these triangles, I would approach it the same way we make mitered posts. Lay the pieces to be glued together, edge to edge, on blue painters tape. Brush on the glue, and pull the pieces together with the blue tape.

I did a blog on this method a couple years ago. I hope this helps you out.

http://lumberjocks.com/LeeJ/blog/4775

Very cool sketch up work.

Lee
 
#5 ·
Thanks Lee… now I DID glue up mitered posts before with blue tape… not sure why I didn't use it this time around - would make the alignment nightmare go away :)... next time I'll have to remember
 
#7 ·
sweet Lisa- thats exactly what I was thinking about - didn't know it's commecrially available (although - why wouldn't it). I was thinking about making wooden version of the clamp faces that will fit on a regular clamp.

those miters on your post look so good.
 
#10 ·
True that Jack - what I like about woodworking - is that even when (and you do) screw up, you can move on, and that imperfection becomes a perfect one of a kinda product.

for what it's worth - I like to aim for perfection, but I am well aware it is nothing but the light the guides us through - the end result, is somewhat different at times.

Lisa- you are welcome. I'll probably try to come up with something at some point and post my doings.
 
#15 ·
Shave and a Cut - Cross Cut that is

Disclaimer: This blog follows my Magen David Board that is already finished and posted here

At this point (see previous post for the methodology I chose to take for this project) , I realized that my plan for mass production, and gluing the long strips to one another to make the geometry would cause more trouble, and decided to cross cut them all to their final thickness instead, and in a way changed my work order to a 'one of' setup, albeit it would have been better if I did that to begin with as it would yield far better material to work with at this point - but, this is woodworking, and no perfect picture is needed (at least to me).

So we have the beveled strips, and some 1 maple and 1 cherry squared strip. I was hoping to make a thick a$& board, but looking at the available material at hand - a compromise is in order. so I made some calculations to see how thick I could make the blocks to yield me with 80 beveled squares, and 60 regulars - the results were in and the thickness was 1-3/8"

Tool Gloat Moment: I was planning on making a cross cut sled for a very long time. my plan was to get the aluminum extrusion that is used for the Incra Miter Express which houses your miter gauge and build a sled around that. this is great since you use your miter gauge for all the angles and don't need much more to it. As it turned out, I Just scored an Incra Express on craigslist for less than I would have paid for just the extrusion part itself. and for the time being I don't even have to build the larger sled as I'll just use the thing as is till I need something bigger.

So. I set my cross cut sled on, and clamp a block of wood on the opposite side of the blade with a hand screw clamp to make the offcuts 1-3/8".

The block of wood (stop) is a 2×4 and is located ahead of the blade. When I slide the sled backwards, I can quickly reposition the strip of wood to be cut by butting it against the stop, and pushing the sled through to make the cut - rinse and repeat:



this was a long process to make all 140 cubes, and gets boring after the first….mmm… 3 cuts :) however since this was the first time I was using a sled, and the cuts were being made so rapidly, this was kinda fun and meditating.

the results? 140 cubes, 80 beveled, 60 regular:



You can see the fuzz on the blocks - I wasn't using a backer board on the miter fence, and this is the result. my bad. I was so excited to get shop time and I just wanted to build something. oh well :) good thing it was fun.

My original design had beveled cubes, and all maple regular cubes:



For lack of material, I didn't have enough regular maple cubes, and had to supplement the board with cherry cubes. this called in some design changes on the fly, and while at it, as I was moving cubes around, I found that not only can I get the star of david - but by flipping over some beveled cubes I could also get the 2 lines that together with the star of david make up the Israeli Flag :)



So here lies the somewhat roughly cut material I will be working with to make the board:



Next? GlueUps!
 
#16 ·
Eureka! I finally see it. Sharon, until just now I was not seeing the star of David in the finished product. Remember those illusion paintings/drawings that were popular years ago? You had to stare at it blankly for awhile before the 3D image would appear to your eyes? (Think Elaine and Mr. Pitt of Seinfeld.) That's what this was like for me but now I see it. Well done!
 
#21 ·
So many cubes - GULP! ....I mean GLUP..... um - GLUE UP

Disclaimer: This blog follows my Magen David Board that is already finished and posted here

This phase of the project took on a different pace. it was all hand tools oriented, and I was able to work on it at nights and at quick sessions as there was little setup involved, and not a whole lot of noise.

To start. I took my old drill press table that was just hanging around the shop useless after I upgraded it and screwed a straight piece of cherry left over from my milling process to act as a flat reference face to glue everything to. I waxed the table and reference board as well as my cauls, and then positioned all the cubes in their final position, and started gluing one line/column at a time, clamping each to the flat reference strip, and adding a caul (arced bottom) on top to keep everything flat on the bottom. before applying glue I actually scraped each cube on both its sides to clean up any imperfections from the milling process:



Next, after I had a bunch of strips with uneven edges, it was time to joint them to be put together. the bunch of strips on the left are pre jointed and you can see the extra gap between them caused by variations in the first glueup process and parts not being milled precisely the same dimensions to begin with (see my original post and my poor decision on trying to mass produce this - it still is causing trouble). The bunch of strips on the right are after jointing them with my #6 (largest I have), and smoothed them with the #4. After the first couple of strips, I also beveled the ends so that it won't chip off as I'm planing past it:



Planing cross grain is actually not too bad. just as easy as across the grain if the tool is tuned well with the exception that the shavings are short and well - cross grainy :) (for lack of better words)

PLANING TIP: Planing Uphill, Downhill, or just plain flat I find it that the tendency of jointing is to follow a line parallel with the workbench/earth/ground. If I clamp my part tilting up away from me - I'll be planing it thinner at it's end, if I clamp the part tilting downwards from me - I'll be planing it thinner on my end. If I clamp it somewhat parallel with the bench, I have the best chance of jointing it even across it's length.

And always check that you are not jointing at a bevel every few passes - if you are , move you plane to the opposite side to compensate and bring it back to square.



For poorly milled material to begin with - I ended up having to plane some of the strips quite a bit making them narrower than others - which in effect breaks the continuity of the lines in the geometry on the top of the board. not TOO too bad, but could have been avoided if properly milled to begin with. it does give this piece a handmade one-of look though so I'm ok with it.

At the end of this, I was left with the strips almost ready to be put together for the final glue up stage, although as you can see - I had to cut out 2 squares that somehow were glued in the wrong orientation:



At first I thought of just living it as is, but then I figured since I'm at the stage of no return - I might as well fix it now and not have to see it ever again. and so I did.

After glueing new (I had 4 extras) beveled cubes in place of those I had to cut out and cleaning those parts, it was time to glue up the strips together to what will become the final slab:



Next: The Time of the Machines!
 
#27 ·
The Age of the Machines - Final milling and profiling

Disclaimer: This blog follows my Magen David Board that is already finished and posted here

Once everything was glued up into a single slab, it was time to plane it flat and parallel. one of the strips I jointed happen (don't ask me how…lol) to be jointed off square, throwing the last 4-5 strips in the glueup off flat (mostly flat). I was tired at this point, and just figured I'm not going to rejoint it, but will pay the price and plane it all down at the cost of having a thinner board - it didn't seem like it was going to take off too much material, but more than what I had hoped for.

I took the board to the garage, and went at it with hand planes. Unlike planing cross grain, planing end grain is a serious task, the bites are hard, the setting needs to be such that the plane will take ultra thin shavings in order for it to be able to handle the shearing force, and the lumber is not very friendly to the blades - I think now that I'm done I'll have to resharpen all plane blades just because of this one job.

I was able to decently plane most of the board down flat , but those last 4-5 strips were too low that I wanted to keep at it with this method.

The next day, I reconfigured my old drill press table that served me as a glueup guide, and was not setup as a planing base along with 2 jointed flat support boards that are slightly taller than my cutting board.

I shimmed the cutting board between the 2 'rails' so that it won't be moving about, and using my old workbench-planing-sled and a 1-1/4" mortising bit, I went at it taking ~1/32 passes until I was able to level out the board on one side, flipped it (and put a 1/8" masonite sheet under to lift it up a tad bit) and did the same thing to the other side to get a flat and parallel board - rough looking:



After that, I went back to hand planing it flush and smooth. still not an easy task, but at least the bulk of it was done. remember - bevel the edges slightly so that you don't chip it as your planing through it.

Now that I had a flat board to work with, I trimmed it on the TS tot make it square on all the edges so that I can edge treat it with the router table.

I then (finally since setting it halfway up) was able to utilize my router table and the LS positioner to get:
  1. A nice consistent bevel around the edges (top and bottom)
  2. fingers handles on both sides - this was real nice since I setup stops on left and right of the fence, and was basically following along, while taking 1/8" passes to get the total of ~2.5" deep pockets in a matter of seconds - no guessing, no remeasuring - once the stops were set, they kept their location throughout the entire process. I'm really liking this fence.
  3. V shaped juice grooves. again - setting up the stops on both ends, and sneaking up on the final stops was easy with the precision of the Incra positioning method.

what I eventually got. was this:



A bit thinner than I had planned for, the geometry is a bit off from the original lines I had designed for it, but I think it came out great! I'm really liking this one, and the thickness actually looks more elegant than the original thicker design.

With a bit of mineral oil. this project was done and done, and can be seen here:



After applying the oil, the board twisted corner to corner. at first I freaked out, but then it hit me that this might be the effect of the oil and once it is fully absorbed evently, the board will naturally balance itself out - which it has, and is back to flat.

So, the project is done, Lessons learnt, Experience gained, and I'm pretty happy with it all. All in all, even though there was a lot of fixing and dealing with the improperly milled lumber - it was a fun project to work on, and I already have a couple more in mind.

Thanks for reading,
Peace.
 
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