This design and the actual bookshelf I build for my son try to address a number of things I do not like about most bookshelves I see in stores, the web, this site, etc.

1. Non Boxy I do not particularly (or at all) like bookshelves that are boxy. A completely enclosed bookshelf traps the items inside and makes them out of reach. This is the last thing you want to do with books which, in my opinion should be as accessible as possible (otherwise they never get opened).

2. Shallow not deep Most bookshelves are designed for the worst case scenario: holding enormous books that need 12-14” of space. While this great depth makes the bookshelf (arguably) more versatile, it does eat a lot of the air in the room. As a consequence, unless the room is enormous, the room will feel crowded. A lot of clasic furniture styles owe a great deal to the French 16-18 century. That furniture was designed for enormous rooms; if the furniture is not bulky (think Baroque stile), the room looks empty. Well, at least I do not have enormous rooms in my house.

3. Lots of empty spaces There are two main reasons to have a lot of air in a bookshelf. First, it significantly reduces the amount of material required which reduces weight and cost. Second, makes the bookshelf look even less bulky. The combination of shallow depth and empty spaces gives the bookshelf the feeling of light and surreal. This does not reduce the actual carrying capability of the bookshelf if books not large iron pieces are placed on shelves.

4. Less is more I think woodworkers are at least partially obsessed by complexity (me included). We thrive on complexity since it makes the project even harder to build, thus makes us the builders look more skilled. The biggest temptation I have to resist when I design a piece is the complexity temptation. Any object has to look and feel good and overwhelming looks never good. Lot of details or complications look impressive for a first look but add pressure to the room. I like clean smooth lines that make the furniture less intrusive and easier on the eye.

5. Fixed shelves The main advantage of adjustable shelves is the fact that you can adapt the spacing to allow for a variety of situations. While this is great, here are the reasons to use fixed shelves that, if the bookshelf is designed appropriately, will make fixed shelves more appealing than adjustable shelves. a. Fixed shelves deflect 3-5 times less than adjustable length shelves of same length, width and thickness. This means that the width of the shelves can be reduced (they do not have to be full width thus adding more air). It also means that the shelves can span larger distances, thus making the bookshelf look leaner. By selecting a non-uniform spacing, room for a large variety of books can be provided. Interestingly, the placement of shelves will be a lot more precise for fixed positions so interesting effects can be achieved. In particular golden ration or related ratios look interesting if precisely used but weird if off by 1/4-1/2 which you inevitably get for adjustable shelves. This means that the spacing will looks rigid and unnatural most of the time. b. Fixed shelves look part of the furniture, which makes the bookshelf have even less of a mass-produced feel. Virtually all bookshelves sold commercially in large quantities have adjustable bookshelves, which makes a fixed shelf bookshelf automatically interesting.

6. Imperfect wood tolerant design A bookshelf design that looks good even if executed with imperfect wood is a big plus. First, imperfect wood is cheaper. Second, if imperfect wood was used, means that more of the actually raw material is used. A lot of the wood cut and dried into boards is chopped since it is not perfect enough for furniture making. A simple, sleek design will look with imperfect wood as my project demonstrates (wood used is full of wholes and knots).

This is the design which, in my opinion, fits the above requirements.

As I mentioned, the design is inspired (copies) this real bookshelf I build for my son’s room:

The Sketchup design can be found here: http://www.box.net/shared/yckct1ick0

In terms of building the bookshelf, the round part in the middle should be some decoration to make the piece more interesting, all the joints should be mortise and tenon except the way the back and sides are attached, where a miter joint is fine (long to long grain gluing in this case).

The spacing for the bookshelf in the design was selected to allow for a variety of book sizes to be shelved. The ratio between two successive distances is (1.618)^(1/4)=1.128, i.e. the forth square of the golden ratio. This results in spacing that follows a geometric progression, which always looks natural (since it appears in nature quite a lot).

Alin

Before I go any further, here is a picture of Vlad at work:

Good work needs good setup

I do have a 10” Jet, my first lathe, that I have not used for 1 year. This is an ideal lathe for a beginner in general and a kid in particular. It runs very smoothly, it is not noisy and can go as low as 500 RPMs (important for a kid). We started woodturning over the weekend and I temporarily installed the lathe on Vlad’s bench. It turns out that the lathe was too high and we had to struggle to do any turning. I had to put him on top of a wood block, which I did not like. I decided it is crucial to build a stand that puts the spindle at the correct height (elbow height) in order for Vlad to enjoy turning and me not to freak out that he gets bad habits or that he is in danger. I promptly bought 2 studs, designed a bench and started building it over the weekend. You can see the result in the next picture:

Needless to day, Vlad is very proud of the setup, especially because it is clearly his (it is way too small for me to work comfortably even on a chair). The 4 hours spend building the stand were well worth it. The stand is very solid and Vlad can work comfortably. He even has room to store his tools. Somehow I have the feeling some of my tools will migrate to his lathe, but we’ll deal with this latter.

Safety

When involving your 6 year old into woodturning, safety is paramount. The last thing I want is for my kid to get hurt. This will immediately result in him giving up woodturning for a long time. Here are some of the things I am doing to make woodturning safe for him:

1. No playing with the tools. Kids like to play and if I still have to do some things to set Vlad up he will start playing, including with the roughing gouge. I had to make it a rule that, when he is not turning, he puts tools down and does not touch them. I am aggressively enforcing this rule

2. No turning when I am not around. I warned Vlad that I will be very upset if he uses the lathe when I am not with him. He is not allowed to turn with any other adult or alone. Most adults have a good idea about keeping their kids safe but not in a shop. The lathe looks benign but can be dangerous if you do not know what you are doing

3. Use only roughing gouge for now. The roughing gouge is the least dangerous of tools. I grind Vlad’s gouge in such a way that the corners are rounded so a catch is not possible. The tool also has a large cutting surface (it is a 1” roughing gouge) so it is easy to use. The skew can be wild so we will not use it for a while.

4. Only spindle turning Vlad’s dream is to make bowls, like his dad, but that is out of the question for now. Spindle turning is a lot easier and safer. I found the perfect target: woodturned pens. For now we are practicing on cherry strips. Once things look good enough, well move to pens. Cherry is a perfect wood to learn how to turn since it turns beautifully.

5. Cover spur center with tape The spur center has claws that can hurt really bad if the hand gets caught in them. Vlad’s fingers are small so they can get broken by the claws. By covering the spur center in tape, he is perfectly safe.

6. Safe Sanding Sanding normally produces a lot of dust. Dust gets into the lungs, which is not good. For this reason, I started some time back to wet sand with paint thiner. For the turnings I’m doing with Vlad, we use oil instead while sanding (linseed oil). The oil goes on easily with a piece of paper. The dust from sanding mixes with the oil and fills in the pores or accumulates as a slur which can be easily wiped off. Vlad likes the oiling and wet sanding a lot:

7. Good habits I insist on good habits all the time. Once you start picking bad habits, it is hard to unlearn them. Here is Vlad using the gouge is a correct way (the gouge is big for him; for a grown up, it can be hold from the underside as well):

That’s it for now. Once Vlad completes a project on his own, we’ll post it for all to see.

Thanks for looking,
Alin and Vlad

1. Stock Selection

The first step in woodturning is, obviously, selecting a piece of wood that you will turn. I prefer to keep the wood in large pieces since in this way only the ends will go bad (crack) but I still have a lot of good wood. Here is my wood pile, to get an idea:

While painting the end grain of logs with some wood sealer helps (I use paraffin wax softened in paint thinner) the logs will crack anyway—it will just take longer,

Since you very much have to adapt to the type of wood when turning end-grain pieces, I usually prepare several raw pieces that I turn within few days (before they go bad). I keep a variety of woods in my pile so that I can pick something I feel like turning (as opposed to whatever I have). This time I selected the lower part of a camphor tree (about 1 foot off the ground). This piece is interesting since it has two main branches of roughly the same size. The idea is to select a 3” piece and try to turn a large (almost 16”) platter and from the rest to make a some small wood bowls.

The ends of the two branches are bad for at least 8” so I have to throw them (i.e. recycle them). Here is a picture taken my by 5 (almost 6) years old photographer (my son).

While cutting the log I try to think what I will make out of it. Since I will mount the wood on the lathe using a faceplate (more about this latter), I have to leave about 1”-1 1/2” extra wood at the base. To true up the top, I leave at least an extra 1/2”. That means I cut the piece about 2” taller than the intended dimension of the turning. When you cut the wood with the chainsaw (the best method but a decent hand saw would do as well) I try to select the interesting part for the rim. I decide which part is the top and which part is the bottom as well.

For natural edge end grain turning, the wood preparation consist only in cutting the log across. The only concern is to keep the angle close to 90% and the two sides reasonably parallel (helps latter).

2. Mounting the raw wood on the lathe

Once I cut the log in sections, I select one that I turn and get ready to mount it on the lathe for initial turning. I first put the wood on the workbench and try to select a reasonable center for the piece. I like to do the initial turning between centers. My main motivation is the fact that my lathe cannot go below 600rpm in speed and, as I explain below, I can make even large pieces behave at 600rpm when I turn between the centers but I would get disastrous results If I mount the piece initially using a faceplate.

Why do initial turning between centers?

When I started woodturning, I was installing a faceplate on the blank as the first step in turning a log. While you can reasonably center the faceplate on the blank to get decent bowls as a result, I had two main problems with this method:

1. The cross cut had to be truly orthogonal on the piece otherwise piece would rotate around a slanted axis (violent shaking of the lathe immediately results if the wood is spinning at 600rpm)

2. No matte how careful I was with getting the crosscut and center the faceplate on the log, unless the wood was almost round, I still got enough vibration to scare me (had the piece fly from the lathe a couple of times). The process of getting a good position of the faceplate and cutting the log took a good 1/2 of an hour or more (takes the fun out of woodturning).

At some point it just struck me: I should mount the piece between centers initially instead of faceplate. Now, this might be even a bigger disaster than faceplate mounting since the spur is less likely to keep a piece of wood from flying than 4-8 screws you can put in a face plate. For this to work, something else is crucial: spend a couple of minutes to center the piece between centers so there is almost no vibration. It is not the geometrical center that matters but having the rotation axis go through (or close by) the gravity center of the piece. To do this, I apply the following procedure:

1. I guess an initial center of the piece and make a small puncture on the top of the piece.

2. I put the tip of the spur in the marked point and guesstimate where the tailstock has to go. I do not tighten the tailstock all the way and have the piece suspended between the two tips but without the teeth of the spur bitting into the wood. In this way, the piece is free to rotate without much resistance (the motor has enough friction so the piece would nor rotate if the spur goes all the way in).

3. I rotate the piece around and let it free. If the piece takes less than 3 seconds to go from the highest spot to the lowest spot, I move either the spur or the tailstock. One of these points has to move lower when the wood is in the lowest energy spot. I decide which one to move in order to make the face towards the spur be as orthogonal on the rotation axis as possible.

4. If the piece is centered. I tighten the tailstock and let the lathe run for 1-2 seconds. If it looks like the rotation is almost vibration free, I move to start turning.

Here is a picture with the piece balanced between centers:

Now the piece is ready to do the initial turning. What I do during rough turning is to give the piece a rough form and to prepare it for the mounting on the lathe that will allow me to turn the outside and the inside.

3. Faceplate Turning

In order to finish the turning of the piece, the wood needs to be attached to the head of the lathe securely. While initially the tailstock acan be used, eventually the tailstock needs to be removed.

There are two methods to mount the piece on the headstock alone: faceplates and chucks. Chucks are all the rage for the last 10 years. They are very versatile, come with all kinds of accessories, etc. I prefer to use a faceplate for the following reasons:

1. A good faceplate is 30$ while a decent chuck is 200$ (without accessories)

2. The faceplate grabs the wood with 4-8 screws while the chuck mechanically holds the wood. I feel a lot more secure with a faceplate, especially for larger pieces. I explain below how to install well a faceplate, as easily as a chuck.

The main disadvantage of a faceplate is the fact that 1” of the wood is wasted. Since the wood I use is free, this is a non-issue.

Mounting the rough turned piece on the faceplate

In order to mount the faceplate on the piece, i true up the bottom of the piece (I make a small concavity on the bottom so the faceplate touches on a ring). I leave a spigot that fits snugly inside the whole in the faceplate. To get the size right, I keep a wrench of the exact size next to the lathe and measure while I turn. To install a chuck you have to do something similar. If the spigot is too tall, i cut it with a coping saw.

Here are some pictures with the spigot formed:

and here one with the faceplate install on top of the spigot:

To mount the faceplate, I use 1” sheet metal screws (they grab the wood really well and they do not need predrilled wholes—they will not split the wood). To install the screws, I use a corded drill. Putting in the screws goes as fast as installing a chuck. With a little care, when installed on the lathe, the rough turned piece will be almost true:

When turning, you have to remember that the screws go into the wood for about 3/4”. Once turned, the remaining wood on the faceplate can be used a a friction chuck so the bottom of the piece can be turned as well:

To recenter the piece when reversing it, I use a piece of metal that I keep fixed and gauge the difference between the closest and furthest away points (without the lathe turning, of course). Once I get within 1/32” I start turning the piece.

In the next blog entry in the series, I’ll talk about actual turning by describing tools and how to use them (with pictures, of course).

You can see some of the things described in this blog entry in the video in my other blog entry:
http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/alindobra/blog/2719

Thanks for looking,
Alin

Throughout this blog series, I will provide my experience turning green wood. While I might make references to various sources (books, web resources, etc.), most of the thinks I will talk about are my experience. Since I have been turning for less than 2 years and seriously for only 1 year, you have to understand that the opinions I express are not definitive. I am still refining my methods and there are a lot of things I do not yet know or I know only partially. You should use this blog series as an invitation to experiment yourself and, through comments, to share your experience. If you find the series interesting, please drop an occasional comment—it will keep me motivated. Questions also help a lot (thanks TechGuy for your batch of comments) it figuring out what to talk about.

Motivation for turning green wood

1. The biggest nuisance I have to deal with in my shop (I’m sure most of you will agree) is dust. While most machinery come with decent dust collection nowadays, lathes are an exception. Most dust collection setups for a lathe are improvisations that will help a little but not reduce the dust to an acceptable level. While fancy face masks that filter the air are available on the market, I have no desire to work with an “astronaut helmet” on my head for several hours. This is motivation enough for me to turn green wood.

2. Green wood is free. Yes, free. In my town, they cut so many trees every day that they have trouble getting rid of them fast enough. Even more, you have to pay to dispose of the wood; when asked if I can take a piece of the tree they are cutting, I am offered the whole tree delivered to my house if I want. It never happened to me to be refused as much wood as I want when I asked. Usually, most people would pay a reasonable fee to get the “good stuff”. When turning, at least for the first 3-6 months, you want the wood to be absolutely free since you will be reticent to use it as practice if you payed significant money on it. Since in this case only lots of practice makes perfect you do not want to be distracted by the fact that you payed for the wood so you’d better get something out of it.

3. The resulting turnings look more natural. I usually like to keep the bark on my pieces, and definitely to keep the sapwood. That is jut not possible with dried wood (the bark never stays on on thick pieces of wood, even with care). In this day an age when we have CNC lathes, it is hard to make something that a machine cannot. Making thin bowls from green wood is still outside the realm of production woodturning. Not being told by friends and family that they saw a turning like yours at Walmart is priceless.

4. While turning green wood, the tool stays cooler. That means less trips to the grinder and less opportunities for burned fingers.

5. Turning green wood is spectacular. Larger shavings can be taken and they literally fly off the lathe. Most of my friends are utterly impressed at the site (and I get a wholly mess in my shop).

Grain orientation in green wood turning

When turning wood in general, the rotation axis is either perpendicular on the direction of the grain, called side grain turning, or along the grain, called end grain turning. A lot of things are different in these two types of turning, things that become serious considerations when a piece is designed:

1. Behavior of the cutting tool. On side grain turnings, in a single rotation the tool moves from a cut along the grain to a cross cut and back. This introduces a small non-uniformity in the behavior of the tool. For end grain turnings, the cut is more uniform but not necessarily better. Depending how the tool is presented to the wood, a cut against end grain might be attempted, cut that can result in a lot of frustration since the effort of holding the tool is significantly greater than a cut that does not go against end grain.

2. Rules and knowhow. There are a lot of good rules for side grain turning and a lot of good rules for spindle turning. The most important rule of all is to cut with the bevel when using a gouge. While technically the wood turns in the same way for spindle turning and end grain turning, spindle turning consists mostly in decorative elements rather then large concavities. While cutting with the bevel always works for side grain and spindle turning, it might be awful, at least on some woods, for end grain turning. The problem is that going with the bevel might mean going directly into the end grain and producing mostly dust. The ability to use various techniques depends on the wood characteristics; you effectively have to learn how to turn each type of wood (i.e. to experiment a little before starting on your best piece). What all this means is that end grain turning is a lot more experimental then side grain and spindle turning.

3. Wood movement After turning the wood green, you have to let it dry. In the drying process, the wood moves, which produces deformations of the turning. Side grain and end grain turnings deform fundamentally differently. All side grain pieces will shrink a lot across the grain at not at all along it . Since the rim of the turning contains both side and end grain, the piece will take an oval shape. For this reason, the side grain pieces are first rough turned, dried (2 weeks to 6 months depending on method) and then finish turned to get the round shape. End grain turnings have only end grain, so the turning will tend to deform to accommodate the larger shrinking tangentially with respect to radial shrinking. This shrinking process, especially if a full section of the tree has been used, can produce spectacular bending of the wood. Take a look at this project: http://lumberjocks.com/projects/3799 to see an example of interesting bending due to wood shrinkage. While the oval shape for side grain is undesirable, the bending of end grain is, in my opinion, desirable. This means that an end grain piece can be turned in one sitting. If the wall thickness is 1/8” or less, the bowl will dry in 1-2 days and can be readily finished. This means 2 days from start to finish rather than almost 6 months for side grain.

4. Containment of the pith. The second rule of woodturning, after cutting with the bevel, is not to include the pith. The reason for this is the fact that the piece will almost certainly develop at least a small crack at the pith. This is happening since the wood around the pith shrinks differently than the rest of the wood (shrinks more). In side grain turning it is customary to avoid the pith. This means that the diameter of the wood being turned has to be more than twice the depth of the bowl. To get most of the grain pattern and interesting bending of end grain turning, the pith needs to be included (and prominently displayed). This inevitably leads to complications with the drying. What I noticed is that, if the wall thickness is below 1/4” everywhere, the effect of the crack originating at the pith is minimized to the point that it is not worth even filling. If the pith is included in the end grain piece, the wall thickness better be less than 1/4” anyway otherwise the drying stress is not dissipated by deforming the piece but by large cracks. Turning the bowl thick, then drying it is not a viable option for end grain unless the whole piece is cut from a piece far away from the pith (i.e. from a very large diameter tree). Moreover, the wall thickness better be uniform otherwise cracks will develop as well. Getting uniform thickness for a piece requires a lot of practice but the result is a better quality piece.

The four points above essentially suggest that end grain green wood turning is a nuisance. The main advantages though are very little wood preparation, ability to finish the piece in a couple o days and interesting looking pieces (end grain turning is relatively rare). Since was always drawn to hard things in my life, end grain turning is by far my favorite. This blog series will mostly be about end grain turning but some of the observations and techniques should hold for side grain turning as well.

Since this blog entry is getting rather large, I will continue in a separate entry with stock preparation, mounting the piece on the lathe and tool sharpening in the next episode.

The best resource on this subject is the book of Michael O’Donnell “Turning Green Wood”. I strongly recommend you acquire this book if you want to turn green wood.

Thanks for looking,
Alin

In this blog I spend almost 40 minutes in four videos explaining how I cut dovetails. Since I give most of the explanations in the video, I will not repeat them in writing.

There are multiple ways you can use these videos:
1. See how somebody else is cutting dovetails and maybe get some idea how to improve your technique
2. Learn how to cut dovetails from scratch
3. Confirm some of the frustrations/solutions you have

Use the comments to give extra hints or talk about what works/does not work when you cut dovetails.

I will post a project with pictures of the final product (i.e.the hand-cut dovetails on the box).
(here it is: http://lumberjocks.com/projects/3897 )

I hope you enjoy watching the videos,

Alin

P.S. In case you are wondering, yes, it is still summer in Florida.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Sorry for he slightly rough editing and not so perfect camera work (my father is still learning the craft).

Alin

Part 1

Part 2