this is how it looks compared to a piece of the same material:

and a closeup :

the process is very fool proof and easy. just beware of drips… in retrospect i should have drilled the holes after putting on the finish. its very hard not to have drips when you have a hole…

after the acrylic dried i sanded it down a bit with 320 grit and started the tedious process of finishing.

i used waterborne poly (Resene – a local firm) as i wanted to keep the white colour. i was pleasantly surprised – putting it on left no brush marks, it dried very quickly and left very professional looking finish. I could probably put all 4 layers in one day but it got very dry and hot and it was not the perfect weather for waterborne poly.

after finishing everything it was time for the final assembly.

i have created proper spacers for the beam so it can go in with friction. marked the middle and marked the middle on all horizontals
also made spacers so the verticals will be positioned in the middle of the verticals. this is how it looks just before the screwing:

I have pre-drilled counterbores for the screws. these are 3” roofing screws. i like them very much – they are self drilling and have very coarse thread so hold very well to endgrain. they also have very wide hex head so no need for washers.

here are the supports fully assembled:

I have used wooden hex nuts from some bits ane pieces of exotic timber i had – something from the philippines i think. finished them with tung oil.

last part will be just pictures of the assembled base

all nice and drilled

i did not take pictures of the next stage. you dry assemble the uprights and he beam and mark where to drill with the same bit. again, it is important to keep orientation and affinity to the pair that used for the marking.

drilled on the drill press, made some threaded rods, used the nuts from last time and voila!

it is rock solid!

next i will put some finish on (combination of tung oil and white oxide, wiped off and left to dry)

first, i milled and chamfered the beam. although the plan calls for laminating two 3/4” pieces i used single 1.5” piece

as i am making the table easy to break apart and move, the beam will not be glued and doweled to the uprights. to get more lateral strength, i routed dadoes in the upright that fit the beam.

as you can see my dado blade leave a groove :-(

uprights sanded together to 180P

and chamfered according to the plan. this is not an easy part. they recommend using full face mask and i should have heeded their advice. you have to look very closely at the router to stop at the right places.

closeup on the detail (before final sanding):

this detail collide a little with the dado, hopefully it will look ok.

tomorrow i’ll assemble the sides. Have a good day!

Here is one support all done with lots of shaving:

now all the blanks are resting, waiting for trimming and final sanding (and for me to have some more time):

The trestle table is very delicate compared to most and uses laminated blanks to be strong enough. the original plan is “fixed” (not breakup) but i will modify it a little.

OK, to work:
after gluing up the blanks, I cut them roughly to shape on the bandsaw. unlike the plan that calls for exact cut and sanding i decided to use router template.

here you can see the laminations

I prefer to do my routing outside as its messy. here is the blank “clamped” to a sawhorse, after the first pass that used the mdf template.

second pass used the first pass as template

for the last pass i flipped the blank and used bit with bearing at the end and used the second pass as template

here it is… still have to trim the ends.

That’s it for today. its the school holidays so not much free time.

I couldn’t resist the temptation and scraped clear part of the smallest slab:

so, i decided to make a jig:

to make it, you will need:
base board (mdf or plywood, 3/4” works best)
piece of mdf, slightly wider than your hexagon
1 bolt

start by gluing the offcuts from cutting the parts of the hexagon so they make the “press” from both sides.
make sure you have no glue in the “corner” (its actually better to file a little dent there)

now, rip the mdf to 1/3 and 2/3
take the 1/3, drill in it a hole that just bout fit the bolt. the bolt should screw in with some effort but not too much, it will break the mdf. countersink one side or the hole, put some wax (tallow?) on the bolt and bolt it in.
put some glue and brad it to the edge of the board (if its not on the edge, its going to be harder to use the spanner). make sure its 90 degrees!

now, take the 2/3, cross cut “dove tail” (blade at 15 degrees) in its middle (leave at lease 2cm on both sides)
hold the 3 parts together and brad the sides to the board (you can also use glue – i did not). put some wax on the middle part to ensure it slides smoothly.

screw the static side, wax the bottom and “press” and you are done!

perfect glue line every time.

I figured the pole will have to rotate on some support from belo, so i used pocket screws to add a piece of timber below it:

and now all the frame is together!

I have used different joints for this:

to reduce friction, the pole will rotate aginst metal. I can tell you that this metal artifact cost 50 cents :-)

and thats the “needle” it rotates on, the nuts are just for adjusting the depth:

Almost done! but I made a mistake and trimmed the upper pole brace in a way that will never work, so I have to re-make it and thats denailing, etc…. afterwards, metal strips to hold the pole in place and we are ready to go!

I think the winch is heavier now that the pole…. I will not take it with me to Murchison as i didn’t try it and I have no time to finish it.

I also added screws to help with the shearing force. not sure if it was wise:

another addition was more screws to hold the parts of the circle together, as i was afraid the edge will catch:

now I could set my mind on the frame… first comes denailing. For those of you who never worked with recycled timber, here is a photo if a relatively easy to denail piece of Rimu:

usually each piece has about 10-20 nails per meter… the worse ones are the 3 3/4. they nailed them into the frame while the timber was still wet and it shrank around them. very hard to denail…

Lengths of timber were cut to length (about 1.2M long) drilled, counterbored and joined with coach bolts:

Couldn’t resist a small test:

So far so good!

now for the vertical supports:

they were actually pretty hard to put in place as I only had 4” bolts so had to drill deep. I should also get some extra long drill bits. I should have gone with different joining method, as i think this will make the bracing too weak.

Finally for today, the back brace:

If you are wondering what is the black arrow, its just marking a nail that was broken in the timber.

tomorrow i wont be able to work on this, so i am not sure it will be ready for the weekend.

worse comes to worse, i’ll bring it with me and finish it there.

Thanks for reading!

So, I looked at my timber rack and found that the only reasonably sound “beam” I had is 3×4. However, it was a wonderfully dense heart Rimu. So, I denailed it (hard work – its from recycled buildings and taking out these 3 3/4” nails out of it is really hard) milled it to just under 3×3 and started experimenting with making the round parts. I started with cutting on the bandsaw Rimu arcs that would “complete” the square to circle. this did not work well. the parts were too thin and splitted the minute any force was applied to them.

So, plan B. I cut circles of 1” oak on the bandsaw, marked the square on them and then cut the inner square (extending the lines) so I got two L shaped pieces that when joined together makes a circle with an empty square in its middle. hukked them in place with 2” screws – I hope this will hold…

Next – the ribs. denailed, milled and cut some more Rimu to 2X2, made a template for the arc, maked and cut the arcs on the bandsaw. attached it in place using 2” screws again – this should hold as the forces on the ribs actually hold it together.

I have also denailed milled and bandsaw the supports for the collars, but didn’t take pictures – beefy pieces of 8×2 heart Rimu – they take most of the load so should be strong.

Last thing for today – I am worried about the thickness of the pole, so I am beefing it up with some oak. I have just glued it in place so will continue tomorrow to drill the holes for the handles and add some bolts to prevent the pole from splitting from the force.

Here is what I ended with today:

as we can’t just cut the forest and we have no hydraulics, we need to go back in time and find how people did this kind of things 1000s of years ago. After ruling out some great ideas (enslaving Australia, Importing elephants, using horses), we resorted to leverage.

Basically, we are going to jack one side of the log up using car jacks, insert some round things underneath and pull it using block and tackle or a winch. we are also going to cut it to a more manageable size of ~2.5 meters which will bring the weight of each segment to 1.5T (estimated).

Now, for the winching part. we tried “come a long” and it was very scarry – its rated 2000lb but i think that only the label is rated that high.

so, Steve found another winch that was used in the re-construction of a castle in Czech:

the winch we are talking about appears for the first time in 0:47

Steve, having endless supply of logs, is trying to build one just like this. As I have access to dimensional timber I am trying to build this version:

We also got some strong ropes and all that remained to do was to build the winch….

To be continued real soon now, as I already built it partially.

I made friends with the demolition people that demolished the old house on the property I bought. They happen to fell a tree every now and then. this time they cut down a 105 years old European beech.
The log was 5 meters long, about 80 cm wide. they were good enough to bring the log to their back yard so I can mill it at my leisure (really really nice people). I loaded the mill on my trailer, unloaded it, set it up (oh, my poor muscles… the term “portable” is a bit overrated). The next day a friend came over to help with the milling andwe cut it into 6×2 dimensional timber. really nice timber… nice grain. heavy… two people had to carry each milled piece so the milling took most of the day. we wanted to have a slab as well, so we stopped about 1/3 from the bottom and tried to flip it over. no go – its 500kg. luckily the demolition guys happened to pass there and flipped it with a crane. I finished milling it the today. now i only have to load it on trailer and get it to the kiln and I will have dry timber in several weeks!!! joy!

I got about 1.5-2 CUM out of this log and I have a big branch that I might mill as well if a crane will happen to go by.

I didn’t take my camera on the first day, so I only have pictures of the second day:

From 220310 beech milling

From 220310 beech milling

From 220310 beech milling

From 220310 beech milling

From 220310 beech milling

http://www.puzzleworld.org/PuzzleCraft/pc92.pdf

First, a picture:

From 230809 milling almond

At first I was not sure that milling this was worth my while. However, the good LJ’s here pointed me in the right direction and so I found myself loading the mill on the trailer on Sunday morning heading toward my friend and the tree. BTW, the mill was kept loaded on the trailer for a month and no opportunity showed itself. two days after I unloaded it, I get a call from this friend. go figure.

Anyway, as Steve (daltxguy) is now in the woods i got another friend to help me with the setup and just keep an extra eye. you can really make stupid mistakes sometimes.

managed to back the trailer into the right place (I am actually getting better at doing this) and we looked at the tree. two obvious problems – there was a 30 degrees bend in the middle and a fence wire (good thick quality one) was popping from about the thickest part of the tree.

as for the first problem, we managed to cut the tree to two parts with a small chainsaw and big bowsaw. took a while to do…
as for the second problem – we tried to pull it out but it seems to start in the middle of the wood. we nibbled with the chainsaw but we couldn’t get it out. eventually we decided to try and keep it in the slab.

this wood was cut about 3 weeks ago. it hardly dried (its winter here) and it was HEAVY. it took 3 strong (ok, 2 strong and me) man to roll each half it to the middle of the lawn (the smaller half was about 2m long with 30-40 cm diameter, the larger half was 1.5m with 50-60 cm diameter)

once positioned we set up the mill around it, making no more than 4 mistakes..

we started milling the thinner half and didn’t get much quality dimensional timber from it, but the slab the we had at the end was very pretty and just shouted “I am a Y shaped bench!” (sorry, no pictures of this, maybe in a few days)

we milled the thicker part and got lots of excellent quality 8”X1” boards with fantastic grain.

From 230809 milling almond

From 230809 milling almond

From 230809 milling almond

the end of the milling was very hard as the blade was very blunt, and I did not have the sharpener with me, but we finished it (at the end I think it cut by friction only…)

you notice that the timber is sunset orange. this is really weird – its pinkish white when you cut it and within a minute or two its orange. at the end of the day the lawn looked like a scene from Mars:

From 230809 milling almond

and you can see there the bigger slab that might end up as my living room table…. who knows…. here is a closer look. the photo was taken right after the cutting and the timber did not reach its full orange colour

From 230809 milling almond

All in all it was a fun day and I would like to thank all the LJs that tried to find how this timber looks like for me.

I ended up with making these, which I find so far VERY satisfying. Actually, they are much better than i thought they would be. The overall cost for the pair is ~5$.

ok, lets do it:

From 270509 hold down

these are the things you need:
1) 2 lengths of threaded rod (i used 8mm). they should be (the thickness of your bench) + (the thickness of the work you aim to hold) + 3-4cm. don’t make them too long, it will make work awkward. you can make another set of longer rods if needed. I used 15cm pieces of rod
2) 2 knobs that fit the rod you used. i used knobs from hafele just because i had some. you can make your own knobs from t-nuts and piece of plywood the niki way.
3) 2 heavy washers
4) two pieces of softwood (I used Douglas fir)
5) some T-nuts that fits 8mm rod

Thats all!

From 270509 hold down

Drill some 10-11 mm holes in your bench all the way through where you want the holddowns to be. I drilled 8 holes. use the threaded rod, the washer, a nut and a spanner to pull the t-nut firmly into the bench on the bottom of the holes. this is how it looks from below.

From 270509 hold down

Assemble the holdowns: knob, washer and piece of wood all on the threaded rod

From 270509 hold down

to use, just drop the holdown into the hole and turn the rod several times so it will catch the t-nut. now adjust the knob.

From 270509 hold down

sometimes when the edges of the piece are fragile, you might want the pressure to come from above. one way to do that is to notch the piece of timber (wide V). I just put another piece of timber on the back.

From 270509 hold down

and they can also be used as a very versatile bench stop (that can have an open section in the middle or slanted sides)

apparently all issues of american woodworker from 1980-1999 are available for browsing for free (full content) on google books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8fYDAAAAMBAJ&dq=american+woodworker&as_brr=1&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0#all_issues_anchor

This is the first of (I hope short) series of blog entries that follows projects and the mistakes I made while doing them.

remember that i am an amateur. I am sure an experienced professional would finish this project perfectly in a few hours…. I would appreciate any feedback.

first, here is the final result:

now, this is the original design:

The most critical mistakes were done at this stage – the design. i’ll go over them briefly:
1. the design calls for having the same exact angle at three places – the back and the sides. this is hard to achieve once, and much harder to achieve 7 times (for each shelf)
2. the design calls for very complex assembly. if the back is glued first to the shelves than clamping is very hard as the shelves are angled and many (so probably a jig with slots for the shelves has to be made which is not trivial as well). if the sides are glued first (what I did) than it is very hard to to complete the gluing in one go and it is also very hard to position each shelf so that the back will be flush.

ok. to the process itself:
initially the shelves where wider, but my saw sliding table played tricks on me (see the ducky project), so i had to recut everything. by now it was too narrow, so i decided to add a small piece of wood at the back as extension. that was actually not a bad decision. it gave the project a more “airy” feeling. it also simplified cutting the angle at the back as i could made this piece on the mitre drop saw.

the shelves are made from recycled Rimu, and not from my best pieces (mostly sap wood). Rimu has a very different colour before and after applying finish – it darkens substantially. being a recycled timber, it had lots of nail holes. I used timbermate filler (said Rimu on the packaging….) but as you can see in the photos it did not darken.

I have decide to use biscuit joinery for everything. this was a big mistake. I should have used screws for the sides. screws would provide me with much better ability to position the shelves correctly and would simplify the assembly process considerably. as it is, the big benefit of biscuits (they can be repositioned 1-2mm) was a big problem in the process.

I have decided to glue the shelves one by one to one rail and then glue the other rail. this was a tedious process…. I made a jig to position and support the shelves but the jig got in the way of the clamps so i had to remove it and the shelves moved.

after finishing the gluing of the shelves, when i tried to glue the back, i noticed that there are unbridgeable gaps:

luckily, it was convex, so i could still glue the back to the top and bottom shelves.

i learned heaps from this project. I hope this entry will help others in designing and assembling their projects.

Project Gutenburg has 3 very detailed books on building mission furniture. they contain detailed plans (although not as detailed as some modern books) and they have LOTS of plans in them. The construction ideas are also very enlightening and worth browsing through (for example this swing)

to make a long story short:

Mission Furniture
HOW TO MAKE IT
by H.H. WINDSOR

PART I
PART II
PART III

(i think the basic idea was taken from time life’s “art of woodworking”). The jig is basically piece of 19mm hardwood plywood with packing tape cover and 9mm pieces of plywood brad nailed at both ends. the wedges are tapped with a mallet to create the pressure.

Lately, i decided to recycle my thin scrap into coasters, very much like tonyu’s.

Unlike tonyu, i don’t have a lathe (I think that this is what he used, but not sure), so I had to use router for shaping the center. After several sleepless nights and much contemplation, i suddenly noticed that the gluing jig is perfect for holding the coaster while routing.

This is how it is done:

first, you put your thin material into the jig and wedge it.

Next, you put your template on top and brad nail it onto the plywood scrap

I used my router with the template collar that extends 7mm and the template was 9mm thick.

This is the piece after the routing, and an almost finished coaster (just one layer of LO/terp/varnish. going to put some poly on it as well)