350 days ago
by Mike Lingenfelter |
12 comments »
Well I started the first step in building the Holtzapffel workbench. I went out last weekend and picked up some Douglas Fir for the bench and started to mill it up. I choose Douglas Fir for a couple reasons. First it was pretty cheap, I only spent about $150 on the lumber. Secondly, its a stable and stiff wood, which is good for a bench. It is also pretty hard for a “softwood”. I also used Douglas Fir on the small bench I built as a sharpening station. I like how it turned ...
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125 days ago
by Allison |
22 comments »
A few months ago I had read an article about ebonizing wood with steel wool and vinegar. Awhile back I tried this and absolutely nothing happened. I never even tried again. Ebonizing is a stain of sorts I guess. I also have heard there are several ways of doing this. The reason the original article caught my eye was because I sure as hell don’t have the money to buy Ebony (wood), and I am forever wanting or needing dark/black wood for my projects and I do not like to use paint, to the ...
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116 days ago
by Thomas Porter |
11 comments »
Alright so it’s been way too long since I’ve followed up this project, and yes, I finally finished it. The pictures you are about to see are where I’m at at this very moment. I just put the last coat of poly on the floor and it’s drying right now.
I ran into some stumbling blocks on the way and I’d like to fill you in. First off, I left the project alone long enough to get disenchanted with it and began to procrastinate with it, but thankfully I have a wife th...
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226 days ago
by Thomas Porter |
6 comments »
I went and picked up a bunch of stuff from Home Depot the other day. I love the fact that I get to buy crappy lumber. Usually I blow lots of money on exotics or quality domestic hardwoods. Picking up a bunch of Douglas Fir beams is cheap. They were $19 a piece for 12’ beams of 4×8 (actual size 3.5”x7.5”).
I also picked up some polyethelene moisture barrier and tongue and groove douglas fir plywood (22/32”). This is what I’ll be using for the subfloor. I i...
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231 days ago
by Thomas Porter |
4 comments »
About 4 years ago I did the entire 1st floor of my condo in redwood endgrain. It was time consuming, difficult, aggravating, and one of the most fun projects I’ve ever done. I have decided to take you guys through a step by step journey as I do a new endgrain floor in my house. I’m going to start with one room at a time and take you through the process of building the floor from scratch. I’ll also throw in some of the information I’ve found about end grain flooring as ...
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238 days ago
by SPalm |
18 comments »
I stated working on my workbench and was able to spend some time on it last week while my wife was in Maine. It is a combination of ideas I gained while studying others, and I am sort of making it up as I go along. I used Douglas Fir as it was easy to find, and I was able to purchase some fairly clean pieces at the Home Depot. It was quite wet when I got it, and it has been drying for several weeks now. I milled it to almost final dimension and now it is drying some more, and what I think...
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330 days ago
by daltxguy |
3 comments »
I promised some more info about my log building course experience. There has been some delay due to some discussions with the course owner about intellectual property. That is another discussion on its own, but for now we have to come to terms about what I may ‘reveal’ or how I may approach this so that his proprietary techniques are not fully revealed. My own view is that personal instruction is still the way to master these techniques and knowing what to do it will not take away...
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374 days ago
by Mike Lingenfelter |
1 comment »
I chose to use Douglas Fir for this bench. I’m considering using Douglas Fir on a larger workbench I’m planning to build, and wanted to see how it was to work with. The jury is still out for me. For the most part it was an easy wood to work with. Although I had a lot of problems cleaning up my mortises. The sides of the mortises running with the grain tore and splinter very easily. The end grain cleaned up very nicely. Maybe this problem was caused by the “quality” of lumber I ended up...
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220 days ago
by gizmodyne |
10 comments »
The TradeOn Wed. Night I did a talk for my neighborhood association’s general meeting on our house restoration and my furniture projects. I talked in length about using recycled wood.
Afterwards a neighbor contacted me and offered some wood that had been stored in his garage for 20 years. At the time that he bought it, it was milled from old growth fir. I took home a small stash of fir, including a few 12” wide boards…
and a 7/8” thick, 14 footer.
Hmmmmm. pos...
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226 days ago
by Thomas Porter |
15 comments »
So now it’s time to do all the cutting and laying and cutting and laying and cutting and…. well you get the idea. This room will use somewhere near 800 tiles to cover the entire floor. That means cutting up about 10-12 beams depending on how far down the beam and how many pieces get damaged. Sometimes there are cracks and the pieces can only be used as half pieces for custom cuts later on. I leave about 20% more than i need just incase. You can never have too much wood right?
I...
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