LumberJocks Woodworking Forum banner
35K views 41 replies 15 participants last post by  Caliper 
#1 ·
Beginning of the Course

In November of 2007 the Minnesota Woodworker's Guild held the annual Fall Seminar at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). It was an excellent two and a half day event hosting Marc Adams of the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I highly recommend Marc as a speaker at a guild or club event if your group plays host to speakers.

Part of what made the event such a good time were the facilities available at MCAD. They not only have a commerical class wood shop, metal fabrication, and casting facility, but their staff was very accommodating and knowledgeable. Over the course of the weekend, I learned from on of the committee members that they offer 10-week Continuing Studies courses for a VERY nominal fee - $385 for ten weeks of 3 hours classes on Saturday monrings and then all the shop time you can squeeze into your schedule between 8 am - 1 pm and 6 pm - 9 pm Monday through Friday. The shop is also open 12 - 5 pm on Saturday and Sunday. For a Minnesotan without a heated shop, this was the best deal I'd heard of in a long time! I signed up for the class the first day of open registration.

The class was led by a guy named Willie Willette. Willie operates a one-of-a-kind studio in Minneapolis. He and his team do some fantastic stuff. His website is WillieWilletteWorks.com. He comes a background of museum work and has been running his studio for about 17 years.

The first day of class was insteresting as we talked about design, function, and what makes furniture "successful" vs. simply a studio piece. This lead us into a discussion about one of the basic tenets of the class. Willie challenged us to stretch our boundaries but to design a piece that was contemporary as well as functional. The class ended with an assignment to research at the library, some suggested studios (in addition to his), and any other inspirational source that we could find. I hit the library.

I had no idea what I was going to do for sure. I didn't know the class was going to have as much of a direction toward the Contemporary aesthetic as Willie was giving us. I decided this was a good thing though. I had a few things in mind but was going to keep my mind open and just let something that really caught my eye dictate my direction. I checked out 8 books and brought them home and started pouring over them.

I won't go into all the subject matter i reviewed or the designers. However, something did jump off the page at me. It was in a book titled Tradition in Contemporary Furniture edited by Rick Mastelli and John Kelsey. The title alone was not that inspiring but it did have a great piece of furniture on the front.
 
See less See more
#5 ·
This sounds like a great school. It's cheaper than heating your own garage.

It's amazing how generous they are with the use of their shop.

You should learn a lot.
 
#7 ·
Inspiration

As I mentioned in the last entry, I found a project that jumped off the page and gave me the inspiration I needed to start the design for my project. I picked up the book Tradition in Contemporary Furniture and started thumbing through the pages…

Here is a shot of the cover for anyone interested.


This is the work that gave my creative juices a jump-start:

Copyright 2001 by The Furniture Society. Artist: Gord Peteran, Toronto, Ontario, 1999. Photo by Elaine Brodie.

It reminded me of a marking gauge and the brass wedge is a nice touch too. I like how the height of the 'table' can be adjusted by moving the support down the beam. The round pedestal can also be moved up and down the beam. It appealed to me because of the woodworking tool similarity (how cool is that?) and it was ingenious in its simplicity.

Bolstered by this find, I got busy working on some thumbnail sketches and quickly jumped over to Sketchup. A couple of days of playing around and I came up with this design:


I've always been fascinated by cantilever designs and thought maybe I could apply that to this project…

I liked where the experiment was heading. Three simple elements. A cantilevered top. An obvious tie to my inspiration. However, the three elements seemed like they didn't quite work well enough together. Back to Sketchup.

The beam or stretcher was dropped down in it's elevation. I wanted it to be more subtle so the angle between the beam and the ground needed to be flattened out. Also, the support was a little too simple. I started playing with some different angles on all the sides. I needed to address the weight of the table top since there was probably no way I could pull off this design if I didn't get that down. I decided a torsion box top might be the way to go because it would be stable as well as considerably lighter. Here is the second idea I worked up.



All I had to do now was show up to week two and see what the instructor thought. I had my plan for a full length mirror project in my hip pocket just in case I was shot down. After all, this was an aggressive design and I knew it. Why not try? It's all about the challenges.
 
#19 ·
Design Presentation and Final Modifications

The next week of class was consumed by each student presenting and speaking to their design what their main tenets would be for the project. Part of the previous week's assignment had been to pick your tenet or tenets and be prepared to stick with them. My main tenet was to see the design through and devise a way to pull off the cantilever. I knew it was going to be tough just by all the drawing work I had put into SketchUp. Seriously, there are only 6 90-deg corners (aside from all the joints in the torsion box) in the whole design. I was truly worried I would be told this was too aggressive.

When my turn came to present my concept I prefaced my comments with the fact that I intended to attempt a design with a cantilever in it. I discussed my inspiration piece. Our instructor liked the beam table (see the previous blog entry). This was a good sign… I unveiled my second design concept and Willie (the instructor) instantly commented it was a strong design but in the same breath noted the complexity. I jumped right in and spoke to the ideas I had about how I could strengthen the joint by bolting the top to the main support.


The gap in the torsion was intended as a slot for a flush-front drawer. He ultimately could see that I had put a lot of effort into accessing the problems I would face and supported my decision to build it as long as I 86'ed the drawer. I was ecstatic and surprised at the same time.

After everyone had talked about their proposed projects we each got to spend a little time in one on one !discussions with Willie. He reemphasized the challenge ahead of me but also told me he would like to see me succeed. We set about addressing the top and it's weight. Rather than execute the design as it was, why not just make the whole top a torsion box? It would further cut down on the weight and since it was a torsion box, there would be plenty of strength even with a 5/16 skin of plywood on the top of the box. I agreed I would take the next week to modify the drawings. The only problem was, at the end of design presentations, our new assignment was to bring a model to class the following week…

Here are some views of the final design where the whole top would be a torsion box.

Plan View


Front Elevation


Right Elevation


Left Elevation


Isometric views




Now, all I had to do was build a model. Here is a sneak peak of the 1/6th scale model. In the next entry, I'll discuss what the model helped reveal about the design.

 
#26 ·
Hey John. I don't know how I haven't made the connection in 217 days… I wondered if there was anyone else in the guild that frequented this site. I've shown it to Charlie but I don't know if he is lurking or not. We'll have to see what kind of questions I get the next time I go to a meeting wearing the LJ shirt I received as random selection in the bookshelf challenge (thanks again, Martin).

To your questions -
1) At one time there was a consideration to go through the top and use wedged tenons but as this is going to be our desk in the office/spare room, I didn't want to kludge up the surface of the top. So, it will go all the way through the torsion and stop at the underside of the skin.

2) Plan view - Did you mean lower left rather than lower right? If so, good eye and good question. It was a concern I had too but I decided to leave it to the model as an experiment. And, the model did tip but I had no way know how much pressure in the real world it would take to tip it. I'm happy to say that the Mahogany is plenty hefty and keeps it well grounded. I think the top would actually be damaged first before any tipping but that remains to be seen.

As for stability, there is a solution that I will elaborate on in a future entry.

Thanks for the compliment and your interest.
 
#28 ·
Building a Scale Model

As mentioned in the previous entry, at the suggestion of my instructor, I modified the design such that the whole top would be a torsion grid. This approach did present its own problem though. Since the design called for the 'leg' to act as a massive tenon seated in the underside of the top, I would need a lot of bulk around the leg. I considered laminating solid wood pieces to build it up. I decided against that; I can't recall why.

Instead, I opted to take what I call the weight machine approach. I would laminate several pieces of dense materials together like the stacks of weights on a machine at a gym. The thought was I could get 1) a solid area to bore out a mortise and 2) more weight by putting together several pieces of MDF together (nasty, toxic material, I know). I knew I would be making some jigs for this so I went with it and Willie confirmed it would be an okay approach.

I modified the SketchUp file so I could refer to it later for actual measurements on the cut list as well as knowing what the dimensions would be so I could scale it accurately. I was off an running.

Willie, our instructor, wasn't particular about the materials to use for the model or how 'tight' the model should be. I told him I wanted to build the model pretty accurately because I thought it would give some good insight to the actual process. He suggested Basswood since it's tight grained even though it is soft. Actually, he thought I should build the torsion out of Basswood too since it was so light and would not be seen. I was surprised but did a little research and discovered it weighs 26 lbs per cubic foot making it one of the lightest domestic woods readily available. It's also pretty cheap. I went to Rockler and got a small stick.

As it turned out, building a detail model was a great idea. The first realization I made was the number of cuts that would be necessary. Lots. Also, the realization that there were going to be a lot of setups. Not only were there few right angles but there were few parts with the same dimensions. The cutting of the parts for the model was tedious but necessary to see if this concept had a chance of succeeding. I really didn't want to invest the funds in expensive wood and cut it all up only to become firewood.

Why so tedious you ask? Well, this was in February and being in Minnesota, my shop doesn't get used between September or October through April because its in a detached, unheated garage. So, the bulk of all this fun and games was being done with exacto knives, exacto saws, a small bench hook and a block plane… I could have gone to the shop at school and used the bandsaw but by the time I got out of work, drove to Minneapolis from St. Paul in rush hour traffic I had about an hour and a half of shop time. Between gas prices, lack of familiarity with their machines, and competing with full-time students for 'open shop' time, it was problematic.

The situation was what it was. Here is the result of a weeks worth of evening work on the kitchen counter:





When I was working on the leg/main support, I second guessed myself on the thought of a simple friction fit between the top and the leg. I for some reason thought cutting an actual tenon at the top of the leg would be a good idea. I think I reasoned it would make fitting it in the stacks of MDF easier.





In my previous post there is a detail shot of the tenon inserted in between the stacks. All in all, despite my experiment with the tenon, the model was solid! I got brave and tried squeezing the top/torsion frame from both the sides and the end. I even tried twisting it. It was stable. The one part I couldn't test was the beam/stretcher strength. I didn't actually cut a through mortise for that on the leg. I just glued it so technically it wasn't completely accurate for judging the physical strength of the design. I felt relatively confident with it though…



My iPod weighs 14 oz. I didn't do any math to determine it's real world weight. Frankly, I don't know the necessary formulas to accurately calculate what the real-world weight of an object that size would be. I do know that the deflection of the top from level was minor and I attributed a lot of that to the fact that the fit between the tenon and the stacks was not as snug as it would be when actually built. Also, I did put my 17oz #90 shoulder plane on the model but didn't have the camera close by at the time. (I know. No pic, didn't happen…) The model supported the plane but I was nervous about the glue holding the beam to the leg so I didn't push my luck more than 10 seconds or so.

In summary, I truly believe building a model is a valuable undertaking when the design before you is involved or unproven. Were I to do it again, I would perhaps make it at 1/3 scale so the process was less finicky. At that size, a person could also use something like corrugated cardboard or foamcore but that might not provide accurate feedback as to the physical abilities of the design but would likely be adequate for seeing the piece in 3D so you could do as many walk-arounds as it took to be sure you were satisfied.

As always, thanks for following along and your critique is truly invited.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top