Just a couple of progress pictures including one with the location of my new lathe home which I’ll describe further when the picture comes up.

Primin’ with a goofy grin.

Full set of cabinets ready to install. My brother is coming over tomorrow to help me install them. He’s put in dozens of kitchen cabinets and I’ve put in none so I figure I’ll get his help to make sure I don’t foul anything up.

In this picture you can see the Jet 1220 lathe stand in the new home. I envision that the wall to the left will have a cabinet that will hold all the turning tools at my left hand in easy reach. The 8” grinder for sharpening lathe chisels will be on the counter I am installing such that all it will take to sharpen a chisel is to turn around and give it a touch up. It will be my most efficient tool setup. (The rat’s nest of cables won’t be there in the end…)

to this sketch-up vision: (Observing the back wall for cabinets etc)

As a result of the economy, I was given a boatload of unpaid vacation days for the company to cut costs and so I have had from last Friday until Monday to start to tackle the shop upgrade. I had an ulterior motive for this – I got a Jet 1220 lathe for Christmas (early) and needed a place to put it and the shop renovation makes that possible.

So in the following few photos you’ll see the cabinet carcases (birch ply dado-joined), shelf destruction (some to be recycled into shed shelves), bare wall with retained top shelf and the cabinet trial emplaced. My wife refuses to let me work in the shop today, but tomorrow I’ll primer and paint that wall with a left over near-gallon of “china cup” (off white) interior latex. Saturday my brother will come by and help me shim and install the cabinets. The countertop will be five soft maple 8/4 boards edge joined and planed somewhat smooth.

Red Oak face frame – first time using Kreg pocket screw jigs. Wow! – three cabinets of face frames assembled in less than two hours!

Raw Walnut Boards

I set up saw horses and rollers to support the boards to cut to length. The wider board will supply a bookmatched top and side rails, the other board will supply legs and aprons.

Balmy 68 degree outdoor work in January!

Top & Aprons

I used a 1/4 inch strip of leftover plywood to screw to the board as a straightedge to run through the bandsaw. Then I trimmed the other edge from the first (since everything is cut oversized.) There’s also a pile of small pieces suitable for small turning projects. If my job withstands this year I’ll get a lathe for Christmas. (The Jet 1220 sounds like a good beginner lathe.)

Stickered Walnut set to season for a few days.

I scoped out the boards again last night and see on the wider board where there is a clean, unchecked place I will cut out an > 8” x 42” nicely figured piece to resaw for the 15×40 top and the other board has plenty of material for the legs, aprons and drawer fronts. I will be flattening one face of the 8” top with hand planes since it’ll be too big for my jointer then with that face flat I’ll run it through the planer and resaw it. I have planned for a thin 1/2” top for something different than the usual 3/” tops I’ve done. That may change depending on how the shaping and resawing go.

Woo Hoo! a new artsy-fartsy project! (Self designed!)

I am still getting used to sketchup so these aren’t refined (and may never be…)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3497/3201640840a62399b414o.jpg

I’ll take a picture of the raw walnut tomorrow to show what will be the source of the table to be.

I planed the sides smooth using the new benchtop small parts jig I built yesterday. Then I carefully traced the odd-shaped skinny tang on the inside face. I began to sweat bullets as I sat there and quailed at the thought of chopping that odd shape out of the handle while getting a perfectly smooth face. I decided to take another look at the rotten handle and saw that the groove ran straight through the handle and thereupon I had an epiphany! It was routed! So I whipped up a flat bottom routing bit and a couple of scrap passes later I had a perfect setup for the handle.

Router table set-up for blade handle groovin’.

Another examination of the old handle showed that the blade shoulder was embedded in the handle most of the way. So I chiseled a slot for the shoulder to fit.

Shoulder fitting

And after admiring the fit a bit (and showing it off to my wife who responded with a bored, “uh huh”), I cut a piece of paper bag and glued the halves together sandwiched around the paper. First time to try this but I’ve seen Norm do it so hopefully I won’t have any problems splitting the halves later.

paper sandwich glue-up

After a bit of drying I’ll trace the original handle shape over the new blank and bandsaw it to shape and rasp/sand it to rough shape.

So far so good!

One surprise (see picture) was that the knife tang was a lot smaller that I anticipated. The blade top aligns with the handle all the way to the end of the handle

Plan of action:
1) I plan to resaw the blank down the middle.
2) Plane the two faces super square and flat
3) I’ll carefully mortise out the tang shape in each half.
4) Then I’ll glue the halves back together with the watered-down glue and paper method.
5) I’ll rough-shape the handle, split apart and epoxy the blade into the handle
6) Give the handle a final shaping and finishing.

If anyone out there has dealt with knives, let me know if I’m off track here.

Making knife material

While searching for articles on how to replace knife handles, I found an article on making marking knives. It seemed pretty easy so I salvaged a reciprocating saw blade from my brother and decided to make my own marking knife. The article used a hacksaw blade but I thought the old hacksaw blade I had was rather thin and when I stumbled upon the reciprocating saw blade I knew it was perfect for what I wanted to do. I’ll make a left and right knife and use the piece of mesquite pictured for the handle.

I stumbled upon LumberJocks a week ago while looking for woodworking tips. Looks like a cool place to hang out. However, I was so busy finishing my Christmas gifts that I didn’t have a chance to introduce myself. I found myself amazed at how many folks submitted nice comments on my arrival to LJ.

I started woodworking in 1998, but it took six years to finish the first project I started. I did finish a couple of others between though. For the last six years I’ve been cranking out one project after another. You can see a few samples here on my flicker woodworking collection:

Woodworking pics

There’s more but I get so busy building that I forget to take pictures. My latest project was to build my first miter boxes. I planned to build three to start with, one each for my two daughters, and one for my mother. When I found out it wasn’t too hard with the miter sled I built from an FWW article, I decided to build one for my wife too. Then my daughter’s mother-in-law called and said she’d be coming to visit in a week I decided to build a 5th box. So between the first week in December and Christmas Eve I was in the shop virtually daily to build these: (only 4 here as ma-in-law got hers already…)

Boxes of Canarywood, Birdseye Maple, Mesquite, and Cherry
(I’ll leave it to you to identify what’s what)

Anyway – I love woodworking and someday I hope to supplement my retirement income by selling my woodworking wares.

I look forward to learning from this community!

My wife and I have organized and re-organized that shelf so many times but it always becomes a collecting place for junk. So, I am going to replace that wall with the locker and cabinets on the left side of this sketchup drawing:

To get from the wall of horror to the neat cabinet wall first requires that I rip out the existing shelving and that will happen when we get the backyard storage shed in the next coupla months. In the meantime, I made a significant improvement on the right hand side of the shop in the lumber storage area. Several years ago I came across a plan to build a diagonal plywood storage box that I attached in the back with hinges and the front bottom has a swivel caster wheel. However, when I installed it I didn’t put it back far enough to store a full 4’ x 8’ sheet. Yesterday, after years of grumbling I moved it back 16” and now can store four full sheets behind the box and the box itself stores the cutoffs. Made a huge difference in organization and space!

So as time goes on. I’ll write about my shop improvements.