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Having saved my cut offs from my lamination the first thing I did was to use a 1/2” plug cuttiing bit to drill out the plug. I then used a 1/2” forstner bit to drill out about a 1/4” deep hole in the lamination. notice I didn’t cut an entire circle I then glued in my plug and let it dry.

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After it dried I trimmed the plug with my flush cut saw.

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And then hit it with some sand paper. Almost as good as new.

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Now back to the rest of the project!

I followed this up with a belt sander. This established one flat side which I was then able to reference for the second side. I flipped the form over and followed the same procedure to bring the second side down to just shy of final thickness.

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I needed to do a little filling on the edges so I made a mixture of some titebond II, a little water, and some sawdust that I collected from sanding.

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Now time to break out the card scraper and do some hand sanding and cut to final length.

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Finally I again used my router this time with 1/8”round over bit to ease the edge. Here they are all cleaned up.

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Now to do some veneering. The lower tray of the tea cart calls for a veneered surface so I layout the veneer and decide to lay it up with a slip match. (I like the way quarter sawn grain looks slip matched).
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I trim up the veneer using a flush trim bit and router placing the veneer between two jointed pieces of plywood. This made it easier to joint the edge at the jointer.

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I edged glued the veneer together both front and back and glue to some 1/2 birch ply. since I don’t yet have a vacuum press I pressed it between some melamine and particle board and clamps.

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The other thing I needed to figure out was how I was going to build a woven wood basket that the client wanted. So after thinking about it I come up with a way to build a basket and I do a partial mock up. It envolves soaking the wood in water to loosen the fibers. When I go to do the real basket I will use only the tight parallel grain. Well off to work thanks for checking this out.

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!http://http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn9/bsfuller/PA040025.jpg!:

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Now It gets interesting.
I decided to take the CAD drawing that I had of the tea cart and print the frame shape out full scale. Doing this on my home printer meant that I needed to print this on 8.5×11 size paper so I created a 6”x6” grid over the shape and printed 24 pages. I then connected my grid together to create my paper template.

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I now turn my sights to building the bending form. This takes almost 2 full 4×8 sheets of MDF. The form requires 5 layers of 3/4 mdf so I have a lot of cutting and routing ahead of me. I used good old graphite on the back of the paper template and traced over my lines to transfer the shape onto my top piece of mdf which would become my permanent template. I cut the mdf out accounting for the thickness of the lamination (I needed 5/8”) and filed and sanded until I was happy with the shape. I then cut the remaining 4 layers one at a time clamping each piece to my new MDF template and then used my router and flush trim bit. Once I had all 5 layers for both male and female forms I glued and nailed them up. That female section of the form is HEAVY.

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Since this was my first time doing bent lamination I decide to do a test run to iron out any glitches that I know I will encounter. I am using QTR SAWN ASH WITH A LIGHT FIGURE and I decided due to the complex curve I needed to do this lamination out of veneer. Here are a few shots of the stock that I purchased from TheVeneerStore.COM.

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Each lamination consists of 25 layers! I used Better Bond CAT PPR veneer glue for this. The results…Still in the rough stage but you get the idea.

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I have a lot of hand work to get these to where I need them to be but that will be for another day.

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This is my latest project which I am about to undertake. It is a Tea Cart that was sketched by my client. She wanted an Alvar Aalto inspired tea cart and she designed this piece and asked me to build it. There will be a lot of challenges here for me. The biggest challenge will be the bent wood lamination. The client has selected quarter sawn white ash with a slight fiddleback figure to it. The top tray will be ash with white glass mosaic tiles while the bottom tray will be all ash. The sides of the trays will be box jointed. The wheels will be painted white and made of either poplar or mdf. The cart will be for indoor use only. Also not shown in the sketch will be a woven wood basket that will sit down in the top tray and be removeable. Needless to say this project will be a huge challenge for me.

This is my entry for the bookcase challenge. I designed my bookcase to be modular and have simple modern lines. I eliminated the “top” and “bottom” to give the piece an open feel and to reinforce the feeling that the shelves are “floating”. The case or “shroud” is 1-1/2” thick and made up of (2) 3/4” qtr sawn ash plywood or veneered mdf. The sides would be clear coated to contrast with the walnut shelves. The back would be ash as well but I would use a bright red Transtint dye stain to “pop” the grain and add a punch of color. The sides would be edged with 1/8” solid ash. Four of the shelves are fully height adjustable and are also 1-1/2” thick with continuous grain running up and over the front of the shelf. The center shelf is fixed and adds rigidity to the case. The center is visually thicker with a drawer below. Again, the drawer front grain would run up and over the front. The shelf and drawerfront would be beveled in order to acheive this. The drawer construction showcases handcut dovetails. The drawer sides would be 1/2” ash with a red dye ash bottom drawer. The idea is that this drawer is a bit of a surprise void of any hardware, but, once opened you again see the red and clear coated ash. The case utilizes biscuit joinery. Pieces should be prefinished prior to assembly. With such simple lines, execution and exactness will be very important. Although this is a stand alone piece, I could also see using a pair of these with a “media bridge” between them to house entertainment equipment and a flat screen. The finishes could be modified to suit other interiors.