sandhill's Blog at LumberJocks.com

Book Shelf... Lots of them #1: From start to finish, as I get the photos I will ad to it..

sandhill — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:25:51 GMT

Here is a project which I had been putting off until I had the cash to buy all the stock for building a complete set of kitchen cabinets. As you can see it is a somewhat simple set of shelves that will go at the end of a cabinet run on the back & side to gain roughly 78” of cabinets including a refrigerator and allow the refrigerator to be recessed about 5 ½ “ to keep the counter as flush to the refrigerator as possible. The shorter shelf will hide the side of the refrigerator and face the dining area. The photos are of course the shelf sides and tops all cut to size with a rabbit to accept the backs of the book cases. When I cut the side pieces I ended up with the last piece being only 11” but the actual depth of each shelf is 11 ¾ “so what I decided to do was take a 1” piece of solid paint grade maple which I have a fair amount of left over from other projects and join it to the front edge of all the plywood with a tong and groove joint. I am doing this for two reasons. 1. Save me from have to spend another hundred dollars on more plywood. 2. It will add strength to the edge of the shelf walls and shelves them self, due to it being a traffic area I felt plywood can become damaged more easily then the solid wood and also repair would be easier if damage did occur. The drawing was done in sketch up but is only conceptual and not to scale. I have to make some kind of jig to allow me to route perfectly parallel dado’s that will accept the shelves then I will move on to sanding and filling any imperfections. The finish will be a semi-gloss paint with diluted Polyurethane sprayed on as a protective coat, as you may have found out painted surfaces tend to cause things to stick even after it has dried and cured. If anyone has a trick or tip in that area I would appreciate hearing it along with any jigs you may have built for this type of project.

Thanks for looking

Night Stands #1: How do I get this smooth

sandhill — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:56:07 GMT

Well my first problem is to over come the chip out. I am building the tops first and this is what it will look like if all my lines and splines square and true. The real problem here is I am getting a lot of chip out (not snipe) when I run the boards through the planer. These are very sharp blades! I think the problem is that the wood is Makore and very, very quilted. I have both tops glued up to about 24” X 17” just a bit over 1/2” thick. The outside will be Maple and after looking at it I may do the maple all the way around. Oh, and it will be tiger maple, as well defined as I can find. I guess I need some feed back on the wood of choice? I don’t want it to make to loud of a statement and I’m a little concerned about the Quilted Makore. It almost looks like 3D even with no finish. Kind of like the dashboard in a caddy. picture of wood Here’s a photo of the makore. The only thing I can come up with is to bring the top to a shop that has a wide belt sander and have it rough sanded just to level it and get it to a more uniform thickness.

Any one have any ideas or feed back?

Exotic Wood

sandhill — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:07:56 GMT

While in transit back to Florida from NY I stopped in Maryland at an Exotic Lumber supplier and I thought I would share my treasured find. I bought some Purple Heart and Walnut for a few gift projects but while searching through other stacks of lumber I came upon 3 boards I found absolutely stunning! I don’t have a specific use for them but could not pass up the chance to buy them. Here is a photo of what I found ”Quilted Makore”

I can’t seem to settle on a project so it will sit until I can make up my mind or someone makes a suggestion to point me to a decision. My first idea is to use it as an in-lay boarder on a dining room table about 4 inches in using Tiger Maple as the boarder and apron. A friend suggested to cut it up and sell it as pen blanks which I thought a bad idea.
When I make a final choice of what to use it in I will post the project and its progress here as parts of a series so off to brainstorming on what to make.

Ceramic band saw guides; do they really work better than conventional bearing type? #1: I will be installing ceramic guides and a 1" re-saw blade let’s see if it makes a difference.

sandhill — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 01:14:05 GMT

Blade guides for band saws are designed to aid the blade’s ability to resist deflection at the sides and back of the blade by the use of bearings usually a guide assembly at the top and another set of guide supports below the table. The problem we have learned to live with is the blade is still able to twist as pressure from the wood being cut is transferred to the back blade guide or as the wood or stock is turned. In turn these bearings do there job by keeping the blade running true to the wheels they travel on. This works pretty well except for a few issues. Heat build up and accuracy of the cut on the vertical plain when performing re-sawing.

I saw a video on Laguna’s web site and looked into the ceramic guides.

LAGUNA features a set of “ceramic guide blocks” that they claim supports both side to side and thrust support. The ceramic pieces are integral to the mounting block and permitted to touch the side of the blade, as well as the back without heat build-up, as well as giving stability which sounded good to me due to the amount of re-sawing and book matching I do so I went and ordered them along with a 1” re-saw blade which they call the “King Blade” made exclusively for re-sawing.

Time to install the blocks and the new blade

I thought this would be a good time to perform some maintenance and cleaning to the saw new tires on both wheels, a new capacitor for the motor and a full cleaning and a full inspection while I wait for FedEx to deliver.

Come back next week and see how everything went together and we turn on the saw for a test cut. I will be cutting a piece of 4/4 Walnut for book matching panels. If I can I will post some pictures along the way…