So I came up with this idea to make a simple frame out of 2×4’s and use wire rope for the shelves. I thought I had everything measured out perfectly and the build went exactly as planned. I’m working in an apartment right now so I’m mostly limited to hand tools. And my trusty Kreg jig of course.

I was lucky to have wonderful weather where I could work on out the patio. You can see my fancy portable workbench out there. I was pretty impressed with it’s holding ability though.

I used the string to line up the shelves. I wanted to make them on an angle so I wouldn’t need to use bookends. The thinking is that gravity would hold the books upright.

These are the support pieces for the wire rope.

This is one end of the wire rope. The wire rope is looped through and eye bolt which allows me to tighten the wires. The other end is just through a hole in the 2×4 with a wire clamp on the end. I tuned them to about a ‘G’. That seemed to be the right tension. :)

This is some books on the bottom shelf. You will notice they are facing a different way than books normally do on a bookshelf. That is because this bookshelf is actually terrible at holding books. Oops.

Also the spacing on the wires allows some of the books to slip through even though I thought I measured for that.

The wires still have some sag in them even if I tighten them more because tightening one wire will make the other more loose by drawing the sides in. I was kind of surprised by that since we are talking about 2×4’s on edge being pulled in.

So I’m looking for suggestions on how to salvage this. My thought was to add plexi-glass shelves over the wire so it would still maintain the look of kind of invisible shelves but the books would have something more solid to sit on.

What do you guys think?

We did forget to take pictures except for the first day so if you want to see pictures of the booth set-up or the show you will have to look here.

We had a good turnout of LumberJocks there including: Myself, Keith Shipp, blackcherry, Tim Pursell, RobertHorton, russv, Jim Ceriale, Patrick, and skidiot. I know there were a few more also and I apologize I can’t remember their names.

We also met many prospective LumberJocks. We gave away 100 buttons, 150 business cards, and got 32 email addresses of people who said they would like more information about the site.

Overall it was a highly successful event and the Woodworking Show people told me they really liked working with LumberJocks and hoped to do it more in the future.

That is our booth setup. Keith Shipp (no relation but it sure is a small world) was able to bring a big TV and laptop from work so we could show people LumberJocks. We had a Powerpoint presentation we could run all the time to try to draw people in. We also figured out the Internet thing… Anyway, we were able to get on the site live and show people around also.

We had a lot people stop by and pick up buttons. Some people that stopped by said they had been to LumberJocks before but hadn’t joined so we encouraged them to join.

This is RobertHorton, BlackCherry, and me (kshipp).

This is myself, Keith Shipp, and Robert Horton.

A good time was had by all and we hope to see a lot more LumberJocks out the rest of the days.

Check here for all the information about the show.

UPDATE 12/1/2009

I got the tickets in the mail today so I will try to start getting them out to you. I have tickets as follows:

9 – Friday
9 – Saturday
9 – Sunday

If you are able to make it to the show and can hang out at the LumberJocks booth for at least an hour send me a private message with your address and what days you will be working. I’ll send the tickets out on a first come, first served basis and keep this thread updated as the tickets disappear.

If you can tell me a general idea of the times you would be available to work the booth that would be helpful also. I’ll also keep this thread posted with the times we could use more help in the booth.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

Things are really coming together for the Chicago LumberJocks Meetup/Woodworking Show. The free tickets are on their way. Martin is going to be sending me some buttons to pass out to people interested in LumberJocks and we will also be the first event to use the new LumberJocks travelling banner.

If you are coming to the show, or future LumberJock events, you can look for this banner to find the LumberJocks.

We are going to be giving short classes throughout the weekend on:

• Photography for online posting of woodworking
• SketchUp Basics
• Woodshop Safety
• Benefits of an online woodworking club

We will also have laptops set up so people can browse the LumberJocks site at our booth.

The only thing we are really missing now is LumberJocks! I know that RobertHorton and PatrickJaromin will be there for sure and I’ll try to work out a schedule with them. SteveMI is also trying to get a group together to come. That still leaves a lot of free tickets left and a lot of LumberJocks out there.

Where & When

Woodworking Show in the Chicago area December 11-13
Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center
Exploration & Discovery Halls
1551 North Thoreau Drive
Schaumburg, IL 60173
Show on map

Show hours are:

• Friday 12-6
• Saturday 10-6
• Sunday 10-4

Registration: Online at TheWoodworkingShows.com

Find the link on the home page!

Drop-Off Procedure:

When – Friday between 10:00 and 11:30 am

Where – See the sign at the entrance to the show

Upon drop-off, you will be provided with a tag to identify your project. Your entry MUST be labeled with your contact information and the last six digits of your driver’s license number. You will be required to show your driver’s license to retrieve your entry. The tag also includes space for a title and description of your project.

Display:

Entries will be displayed in a designated Show Off booth for all three days of the show.

Security:

Entries will be roped off within The ShowOff display area blocking the general public from direct access. The Woodworking Shows provides general security during the show and overnight and will not be responsible for lost or damaged property.

Judging:

Who – The Woodworking Show Educators

When – Sunday afternoon

Prizes:

Prizes will be awarded each week at that specific venue.

The ShowOFF Grand Prize of a Delta Unisaw grand prize will be awarded at the end of the season to the entry with top, overall score.

Pick-Up Procedure:

Projects will be available for pick-up after judging is complete and prizes awarded. Projects MUST be retrieved on SUNDAY AFTERNOON. The Woodworking Shows is not responsible for projects left after the close of show on Sunday.

You can check out the pictures here and here.

You can look at the previous post in this blog for more information on the Chicago event. We need some people to at least say they are going to be attending the show. Ideally we would have some people who would be willing to sit at a LumberJocks booth for an hour or even give a short (15 minute) class. I need to get back to the people at the Woodworking Show in the next few days as to whether the LumberJocks will participate in this event or not.

Don’t forget. If you hang out with some LumberJocks for just an hour you could have free admission to the Woodworking Show.

Let make this happen LumberJocks.

Some of you may have read about the Northern California LumberJocks meetup that just happened. If not you can check out the blog entries here and here.

There is an upcoming Woodworking Show in the Chicago area December 11-13 and the Woodworking Show people have again agreed to provide the LumberJocks with a booth for free.

The show is at:

Rennaissance Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center

Exploration & Discovery Halls

1551 North Thoreau Drive

Schaumburg, IL 60173

Show hours are:

Friday 12-6

Saturday 10-6

Sunday 10-4

I am looking to see how many people are interested in going to the show and who might be able to staff the booth for a while and/or give a demonstration or class. There will be free tickets for anyone who is will to sit at the booth for at least an hour so clear off your calenders and come out for a fun time with other LumberJocks.

I will post more information in this blog series as we get closer and it becomes available. Martin said he will also add this to the events page for people that want to check it out there.

Rustics blog

JockMike2s blog

BillyJs blog

SteveMI brought some of the projects he had been doing on his CNC router. It was really interesting to me that he used tinted stains instead of paint.

He also made each one of us a commemorative plaque for the event on his CNC router.

He even brought some tumbling block designs he was working on and showed us all the jig he made to create them.

JockMike2 brought some turnings he had done and Rustic also brought some plans to share and some of his projects.

JockMike2 also brought a big tub of scraps for everyone to pick through. We were originally sort of glancing through it but eventually BillyJ and Tearen stopped pretending and just dumped the bucket out. That made it much easier to get at the goodies.

Tearen brought a bunch of wood and veneers for us to share and it was much appreciated.

After eating the good food we headed over to Raven Farm to check out the operation there.

Kelvin was a great host and tour guide and even risked the anger of his wife by taking us in the house to show us all the wood in there.

He had a 20”, 10 HP jointer with a spiral cutter head that he picked up on EBay for about $2,500. Pretty sweet deal.

He also had a few little logs lying around that I’m sure he will make into firewood or something eventually.

That 465 painted on the log is the approximate number of board feet in that log.

I picked up a few small pieces of lumber from him and he has really good prices. I got some curly Ash which I challenge you to find at the big orange store.

It was a really great time and I’m looking forward to the next one.

They are the Lee Valley / Veritas Low Angle Jack Plane and the Lie-Nielsen Low Angle Block Plane in Bronze.

I actually got the Lie-Nielsen plane at Woodcraft a few weeks before the conference but I haven’t talked about it yet on LumberJocks so I thought I would add it to the post. The leather holster was purchased at the show though.

I was trying to decide which planes to purchase from Lee Valley and I was going to get a Joiner Plane and a Smoothing Plane. In talking to the representative from Lee Valley he told me this Jack Plane would do both quite well and then I would only need to get one plane now. Some sales man he is huh? I really appreciated his expertise though and also picked up the magnetic jointer fence.

I will try to post a review of the planes once I get to use them a little more.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Lee Valley was offering a 15% discount and free shipping for orders placed at the show. So I couldn’t resist a few more items.

Holster for small block plane
Sock and fence for jack plane
Aerosol oil for tool storage
A few different types of card scrapers with a canvas holder
and some Palette knives for applying glue, etc.

Just like the infomercials: “And that’s not all”

Reprint of Catalog of Misison Furniture
Reprint of 1800 Mechanical Movements
Working with Handplanes
Technical Bulletins

The Pleasant Hill Shaker Furniture book was from Popular Woodworking and not Lee Valley but I belive it was only $7 so I couldn’t pass it up. Nice hardcover book with lots of pictures.

I won the Complete Shaker Collection DVD in a raffle at the Hand Tool Olympics.

I also ordered the new dovetail and crosscut saws from Lee Valley but they haven’t been released yet so I will get them when they are.

If you can believe it, the tools I got were not even the best part of the conference. There were also many surprised people when my wife was right next to me while I ordered the tools. I was fortunate to have her accompany me to the conference so she could learn more for her Interior Designs (and approve my tools purchases.)

As you could expect: Woodworking Magazine and Popular Woodworking Magazine has covered some of the conference on their blog. I put links here for you to look over until I get my impressions up here.

WIA: Touchdown

WIA: New Tools

WIA: The Hand and the Machine

WIA: New Smoother from Kunz

WIA: Don Williams

WIA: Disassemble This!

WIA: Hand Tool Olympics

WIA: Trading Lingerie for Tools

WIA: $50 Workbench

I just wanted to let everyone know that they have a nice exhibition hall with many vendors. Lie-Nielsen is there along with Lee Valley and many others. Lee Valley is giving 15% off and free shipping for any orders placed during the show. I’ll let you know what I ordered once I figure it out tomorrow. If any of you are close to St. Charles you should stop by and check it out. Admission to the exhibition hall is free.

Any other LumberJocks that are at the conference also, we could try to meet up somehow.

As with any project you don’t really know if the customer is going to like it until you deliver it.

I think she likes it.

She has learned to get onto it like you would get on a Sea Doo.

And get off of it by herself too.

She still needs a little leg length to be able to push herself around on it.

But I think she likes it.

The dry fit passed inspection from my quality inspector so it was time to move on to finishing.

I disassembled it to three major components and put on Minwax Dark Walnut Stain. Of course I did this on my finishing/pool table.

You can see the unstained head sitting on the table also. I installed the handle in the head with glue and two finish nails through the edge to hold it steady.

I am using Waterlox Original Medium as a sealer and it’s my first time using it although I have heard a lot about it. I was talking to the woman at the Woodcraft store and she said she had often heard about it also but never used it until recently and she was really impressed. She showed me some coasters she finished with it and I really liked the look. I put one coat of Waterlox on the body of the horse and the rocking base and put the stain on the head and the “neck.”

Once I got to that point I installed the head with the pins and epoxy. Then I clamped the “neck” pieces on to cover the pin holes and add support to the sides of the head.

At this point I had to leave again so I took lots of pictures and my dad promised to finish the rest of the coats of Waterlox. This pictures is with one coat of Waterlox on the main part and only stain on the head.

Project is posted here.

I used the Kreg screw system for most of the joinery on this project. This is my second major project (first one here) using this system and I have found them to be very strong. It’s also very quick to join pieces with this system which helped me do this project in only 4 days exclusive of some of the finishing. This was also my first time using the Kreg plugs which I’ve started a forum topic on here.

I always get to the end of the build and wish I had taken more pictures during it but what can you do. The picture below shows most of the horse assembled. I got the wheels from Grainger. They have a huge selection of what they call caster wheels and I think they were a few bucks each. The axle is a 1/2” steel shaft with stop nuts on the end. I used a 1/2” core box bit to make a slot for the axle and sandwiched it between two pieces of wood.

The next challenging part of the assembly was the rocker base. I had it drawn in SketcUp but I wasn’t exactly sure of the placement of the pieces and figured I would “wing it.” I also had to cut precise slots in the rockers to accept the stop nuts so I didn’t want to machine those until I had most of the horse assembled. As you can see in the picture below, my dad and I sort of assembled it on its side and placed the pieces by sight. This is also when we decided to add some foot boards that are not shown in the SketchUp model.

The head is connected to the front leg with a 1/2” steel shaft that goes through the lazy susan bearing. My other challenge was drilling the holes for that shaft straight and true. I do have a drill press (reviewed here) which helped me out a ton but it was still difficult to get everything aligned correctly. With lots of clamps, some “adjustment taps,” and some reaming I got the holes straight and true.

This next picture is the dry fit of the head. I had already secured the shaft into the front leg.

I cross-drilled through the shaft in two places and put a 8d nail through. As you can imagine there isn’t a lot of material left when you put a 1/2” hole in a 3/4” board so the side supports on the front feet line up with the shaft. They also cover up the pin holes. For extra security I also put two part epoxy in the shaft hole and holding the pins in. I attached the head using the same method but I didn’t attach it just yet so it would be easier to finish.

Next blog is finishing and attaching the head.

I started this project out with the SketchUp design so I printed full-size templates to make my pieces. My original idea was to use 1/4” hard board as a pattern for a pattern trimming bit. I cut out the hardboard on the scroll saw and then cleaned them up with my spindle sander.

I tried to use the pattern bit on a practice dog dish stand with some leftover wood and didn’t have good results. I think my pattern bit is probably not the highest quality and I was having trouble with the hardboard as a template. I don’t think it’s stiff enough despite its name and it causes some gouges in the dog dish stand.

My friend suggested I use 1/2” MDF and offered the use of some scrap MDF he had along with his router table and pattern bit. I remade the patterns out of the MDF and things went really well. I found out that the 1/2” MDF was even easier to work and shape than the 1/4” hardboard.

I did have a small problem on the last piece I was trimming down. I think there was some strange grain or something because I was trimming along just like every other board and a whole piece went flying off. I figured that was a good stopping point for the day so I glued it back together and left it overnight. I finished cleaning up that piece with the spindle sander.

I finished up on my router table with a half inch round-over bit. I was only planning on doing that for the seat and neck pieces but once I did those I really liked it. I rounded over most of the pieces with either a 1/2” or 3/8” round-over.

At this point I had all the pieces shaped and sanded initially. You can see them displayed on my assembly/finishing table.

And as you can see, I had lots of assistance from my shop helper.

Assembly pictures coming soon.

After my initial blog post I got some good suggestions and questions in the comments so I thought I would address those in a blog here.

LesB said he thought the rear leg would need more bracing. My dad and I were discussing what we thought the weak point would be and we both also thought it would be the rear leg. I’m using the Kreg Pocket Screw system to assemble this piece and I have four screws from the leg to the seat and two screws from the cross-brace to the leg. I’m confident this will hold for any children. I just have to figure out how to keep the adults off it.

JS333 said I should add a tail for aesthetic reasons and that got me thinking. If I added a tail it could also help support the rear leg. I realize the tail in the picture below is a little misshapen but I was just trying to show the idea.

LesB also wondered about how the horse is secured to the rocker portion. This is something I was wondering about also and decided to wait until it was built and see what I thought. I wondered about some sort of locking pegs but once I got it assembled I realized I don’t need them. The wheels sit deep into the base and I also have routed slots which secure the wheel further and are not shown on the drawing.

LesB’s other question was how the rotation was accomplished and if there were some type of stop. The rotation is accomplished with a lazy susan bearing and a steel rod connecting the head to the front leg.

In my original design I had planned for a rotation stop as shown in the pictures below. I got sort of lazy in the build and didn’t include it. It is still quite stable however.

JS333 asked about rounding of the seat specifically. I did end up rounding over a lot of the edges for safety but I didn’t show that in the SketchUp model. My plan is to start from scratch again and make an “as-built” SketchUp drawing with the proper techniques. The plan I used to build it was very much a working plan so I want to clean it up.

There were a lot of things that came up in the building of this that I said I would need to fix “next time.” I guess I’ll have to make at least one more of these.

I’ve been designing this for almost eight months now. I planned to complete it before I got deployed in June but I got busy with other things and wasn’t able to really start on it before I left. This allowed me to spend a lot more time thinking about the design and refining it while I was in Iraq. I’m currently home for a short leave so I decided the design is locked in and I’m trying to crank this out in about four days.

My niece is going to be one at the end of January so I thought that a rocking horse would be a good project to make for her. I decided that it’s much better to make toys for new kids instead of things like cribs. That way you have a lot more time after they are born to work on it. I’ve found that kids can go for a while without toys but they need a crib pretty quickly after they get here.

I wasn’t really satisfied with making a traditional rocking horse so I wanted to make something different. I looked at rocking tractors, zoo animals, motorcycles, etc and decided those weren’t right. I also looked at gliding rocking horses but I didn’t like the look of all the hardware that was required. I really liked some of the push car designs I saw but I figured that cars are not really the thing for a little girl.

So I came up with the Rockin’ Ride. It’s a horse that you can push around and steer but it also comes with a rocking base to place it into. I figure this will allow the toy to be used for a longer time than just a rocking horse.

I’m headed back to the workshop to try to get this completed.

As always: comments, suggestions, improvements, and random jokes are appreciated.

This is the finished product. It’s the biggest project I have done with hardwood and I learned a lot.

I finished it with two coats of Minwax gel stain and 3 coats of Minwax brush-on lacquer. The stain was really easy to work with and especially to get into all the inside corners. The brush-on lacquer I had a lot harder time with. I couldn’t get it to lay down smooth on the large plywood pieces because it seemed like it was drying too fast. I’m sure there is a way to fix that with thinner or something but I think I will stick to wipe-on finished from General Finishes.

I used the Kreg jig exclusively for the assembly as I mentioned before and it worked great. I’m pretty sure I could use this as a jack stand for my truck and it would be rock solid.

The lid closers are from Rockler and were very easy to install with little adjustment. They have a pad for calculating the weight of your lid and therefore how many you will need. That said I would need three but I only put two on and it works perfectly. I’m sure I can find something I need at Rockler when I return the other one.

The top is just a frame with half inch plywood in the center and it bowed a little bit when sat on. This was a design oversight I suppose but not too hard to fix. I started stripping the finish off in 3 strips.

I made some supports from 1×2 and clipped off the ends at a 45 degree angle. I finished the supports like the rest of the box and glued and screwed them. The top is very solid now.

Overall I have a happy customer who likes to look out the window.

And just relax.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

It is very important to clamp the pieces properly when using the jig. The vise clamp comes with the system the others are ones I already had. I didn’t use any glue because the screws make it rock solid. It’s also nice to be able to take it apart in the event of a mistake which I had the occasion to test.

Another key to using the Kreg system is to drive the screws slowly. When I was testing on some scrap pieces, I had problems with the wood splitting. I was trying to drive the screws like you might drive a drywall screw into the wall. The thing to remember with Kreg is that the hole is mostly pre-drilled and the screws themselves are self-tapping. Driving them slow worked the best for me and of course you want to make sure you have the correct screw for you application.

You can’t always buy new tools when you need them and I just didn’t have clamps that were long enough to reach the whole way. I just combined two of my clamps which held it well enough to drive the screws.

Another new tool (or tool accessory) I got was a 1/2” rabbeting bit. Previously I had cut rabbets with two cuts on the table saw. It was hard to get setup properly and I didn’t always like how it turned out. This is also the first bit I got with the 1/2” shaft for my new router.

I cut a 1/2” x 1/2” rabbet in red oak in two passes and it was extremely clean.

That’s all for now. I’m still working on taking more pictures while I am working on the project. My next entry will be pictures of the finished product as soon as I get around to taking them.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.