So I’m trying to take Sketchup to the next level. I’m having fun with it, but it is taking me a while to get the hang of “Layout”. I designed this Craftsman Bookcase (based on WoodSmith) with Greene & Greene influence. I will build two of these starting this fall. The shelving has stepped scallops with Breadboard ends. I’ll put the ebony buttons throughout the joints, but they were just too damn hard to draw in.
I drew the plans in “Sketchup” and exported to “Layout”. It’s a cumbersome piece to build, but I thought I’d share the plans in case anyone might want them …and for a chance to get a little feedback. Remember! This is my first attempt at “Layout” so there is room for improvement – Here it is, such as it is..
Schroeder

Link to Sketchup file
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=af379c610e49fd38f060fd797bfd4cad

Link to PDF plans (~35 pages)
https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=68a1224e-b555-4bb2-b9ec-420c8207bc4b

The final result – one of two finished and one of five in process.





















I also built two tables that complimented the chairs. (both on spec) These took a lot of time, way more than I thought – there is no way I will make money after figuring the time, but still it’s a learning process.

That’s one complete chair, ottoman and side table. It’s been a fun project, but man am I sic of Morris chairs;), only three more to go~ I’ll post as a project once they are in the home and I have some good photo’s. Hopefully, the client will buy a table as well, as it really compliments the set.
Like I said at first, I have details if anyone wants to build a Morris Chair along these lines, I’d be glad to help!
That’s what I know; hopefully it was interesting and maybe even helpful!
Schroeder

]]> Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:10:09 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/2192 schroeder schroeder http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/2152

Okay, at this point, legs are glued up, rails, stretchers are cut along with all the mortices and tenons. I decided to make two chairs and ottomans to completion and then come back to the other two. The next step is to cut the stiles and tenon their ends. I planned for 3/8” tenons and cut them at a horizontal router, (although a good backer board and dado setup works as well).

The glue up of each side – the tenons fit tight, so I bevel the ends even before I dry fit. It’s a little tricky getting all the stiles in, but it gets easier, put all in the wide bottom piece first with just a spot of glue so they won’t rattle later (I made sure all vertical grain was facing out), then hold the bottom piece on the bench and resting against your waist, set the top of the arm at an angle and roll on to the stile tenons.

When the sides were glued up, I glued up the bottom part of the chair and added the arm and seat supports.

“You can see in couple of these pictures that the tenon is angled. Since the arms are angled, you have to either angle the tenon or the mortise – I’ve tried both and like angling the tenon better. The table saw works well for these big tenons.”

With the bottom of the chair complete, I turned my attention to the backs – I had already cut the parts and dry-fitted (I do a lot of dry fitting)

At this point I’m ready for the arms. I use an old trick to cut the arms on an angle from a glued up board and block. You cut the top and bottom of the block on a 9 ½ degree angle (same as the rear leg tenon and arm slope).



































Next I laid out for the leg tenons and routed the bottom of the arm to fit over the stretcher about a ¼”. I rarely am able to cut a through mortise cleanly on these arms. I use glued up buttons to cover the leg tenons. A dirty trick, but it looks much better than my through mortises. I glue up the button stock in the same way as the legs so that all four quarters show through – they really look end up looking great and experience has taught me that the first thing people do when they sit in these chairs is eww and ahh over the buttons.

























So the next thing is to pin all the joints with black walnut dowels. I listened to what Karson had to say about the Veritas Dowel maker and bought one – what a great tool! I sink the hole using a “lipped tip” Brad Point bit for a clean hole with no tear out, drive in the dowel, flush cut and sand.














One last dry fit and onto the ottomans –

To be continued…

]]> Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:01:03 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/2152 schroeder schroeder http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/2142 …So I decided to take the plunge and make something for sale…on spec…I like the Morris chairs so that’s what I went with. Always a timeless classic, clean lines, and fun to build! I brought forth the Visa and bought $3000 worth of white oak (this is my first venture into the “professional” arena). I planned on building 4 chairs and ottomans. I’m not going to quit my day job, but thought I’d give it whirl on the side…The first thing I can tell you is everything that everyone has been saying about going “pro” is true,…I’ve worked 16 hours a day for the last 3 months (literally, and loving it!) not complaining mind you, just validating everything that has been posted recently about going full time.

So at any rate, I thought I’d blog the process as I know the lovers of craftsman furniture like the Morris design and I thought it might help those who want to build along those lines. I’ll try and go through the steps, but have really detailed info if someone wants help building one. First as I say I took the plunge and bought some clear, quartersawn white oak. Then picked a basic plan to go off of, ( I used the Woodsmith design as a starting point). Then started picking boards for legs, I wanted quartersawn on all four sides, so I used an old trick and glued up qtr sawn on all four faces (lostsa pix…that’s what I like, so I hope it works for you as well…)

At this point I cut and glued up for the legs (16), I made them big enough so I could joint and plane them down to final size…

Once the legs are glues up, time to cut the mortices, I’m fortunate enough to have a dedicated morticer, so after careful layup (a mistake would be bad here) got them all done. I like through mortices as I planned to pin all the joints. My goal was to create a piece that had no metal whatsoever in it, and really, once you get going, through mortices mean all the legs are the same (you don’t have to worry about left and right, back and front).

That is how the legs looked from the top, after gluing, morticing and cutting tenons.
At this point, I cut all the parts for 4 chairs and cut the mortices for the stiles.

I start from the center, then put in as many stiles as I want, always keeping an odd number so as to keep it centered.

I am also fortunate enough to have a “Multi-Router”, I cut all the tenons on this machine. The first couple of chairs I built, I used a table saw and it worked fine.

So begins the story. I hope to encourage all the woodworkers who are a fan of the “craftsman line”. Some one on LJ has a tag that goes something like; “everything is difficult, until you know how…” This chair design was my personal test of my abilities; they are not super easy to build, but straight forward, very fun and rewarding.

To be continued….

]]> Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:14:56 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/2142 schroeder schroeder http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/1687 We have glued the breadboard, fitted it with Mountain Mahogany caps, and sanded…and sanded….and SANDED! (dark wood – lotsa sanding)






This is with the third coat of sealer – now six coats of poly and we have to think about moving it (man its heavy!). Worth the effort thought to make such wild grain in the table.


















I’ll post once more when we have the final coat and put together in about ten days.
Thanks!

]]> Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:38:28 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/1687 schroeder schroeder http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/1617
Stickley Done “Darkly”


This is a table we are building for friends, (based in part on a design by Rex Alexander). The table above is a similar one I built out of White Oak. We have this group of friends who have a “retreat” (basically a hunting lodge built by men – for men). Kinda looks like the interior was done by Cabela’s, clearly the wives had no influence. It has a shower on the deck, six bedrooms lined up in a row, tile floors throughout, leather chairs and couch… rustic look through and through. At any rate, it’s a pretty nice place, but in the photo album, for the past 20 years, there is always this crappy fold up picnic table for a dining table. Even after they built this new “lodge” there is that crappy little table…Well they very graciously invite Al & I over each year to hunt pheasants and never let us pay, so we thought we would build them a table worthy of the surroundings.
This is a mission style, similar to the one in the picture, but from Black Walnut, really gnarly Black Walnut and we have decided to carve several “appropriate” sayings on the underside. There are four in all…
”If you can read this…your Drunk …Go To bed”
“If you’re going to be dumb…you gotta be tough…”
(these last two are in Latin – We’re not going to tell all of them the translations)
“Don’t sweat the little S#@$…” and “Bull#@&* baffles wisdom”
So – that’s the story. We are almost done, so I thought I’d post the blog, and here it is as a step by step process…I hope you enjoy it!
Top is 1.75 inches thick,45 inches wide and 98 inches long – heavy!
Board Selection:
From the stash that Al has been hoarding for 25 years, they are ROUGH! And required a lot of work to get em ready.




Next I milled the long rails, legs and short stiles…









While I worked on the base Al got started on the top –




We designed the table so that we could glue up in stages. We made three glue-ups that would still fit through the planer. We left everything a little thick, then when we had three panels for the top, we planed them to final thickness. This gave us only two glue lines to clean up by hand. I ran a chunk of bees wax along the top of the glue joint so that any squeeze-out could be easily cleaned…


Then we trimmed the thing to the final length, and sunk 5 – 1” dowels for the breadboard. These give us some long grain to screw into, since we won’t be using any glue on the outer 1/3rd.



Now we were ready to route the tongue for the breadboard – The breadboard is 6 1/8” so we wanted a 2” tongue for holding power. I put a 30 degree taper on the ends of the breadboards and left them proud about ¼” to allow for expansion. I mortised out the slot for the B.B. and had a test fit!




I went back to work on the frame…



Fitting and cutting out the center to prevent racking, squaring and aesthetics.



…And base is done with three coats of sealer…



Where is the top…o-yea, carving the final details on the “pontification’s”



I’ll finish the post with the final photo’s in a couple of weeks. We are finishing with 3 coats of clear poly-oil, and seven coats of satin poly with a final dark wax.
Thanks for lookin! ( I gotta start building lighter projects!)
Schroeder

]]> Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:28:55 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/1617 schroeder schroeder http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/1041 It’ll be apparent that I have no idea what I’m doing…, but did the best I could…
Schroeder

]]> Fri, 18 May 2007 17:44:10 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/1041 schroeder schroeder http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/1031 Thought I’d post a couple extra pix and a shaky video walk around – final on this table.

De Vid

Extra #2

]]> Thu, 17 May 2007 21:00:14 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/1031 schroeder schroeder http://lumberjocks.com/schroeder/blog/972

Woke up at about 2:30 this morning and all of a sudden realized how to do the cloud lift in the lattice work (I do that alot – wake up after pondering a problem and know just what I want to do) – anyhow, it worked okay! That was the last big hurdle holding me up.

I refit the drawer runners so they wouldn’t show, dry fit (again…seems like the 30th time) and started the inlay for the rest of the pieces ( which will take me awhile! ) I even found time to start the video tour of our shop (I put in the part showing one of the tables here). Then I had to go to work, but overall, it was a productive morning!

So this is what its going to look like ( I think!) – does this look proportionate?

I wanted to combine the project with gifts for two different weddings this summer. I opted to make them from Black Walnut, with a “Rodel” kind of look. I think Walnut is regal on it’s own, so I tried several methods to add the detail shown in the original design and ended up going with inlay of the same wood. I think it adds a complementary, but still subtle detail.

I book matched the tops and started gluing up, I’m not sure if the wild grain will detract from the overall look – but, it’s too late now!

I laid it up for a concealed drawer – I think I will use the same inlay pattern on all four sides –

Instead of a shelf, I’m using a lattice-work to span the bottom stretchers – I am going to try to cut it to a cloud lift pattern…

For the breadboards I flushed them with the top and extended out a bit (I just like that look) with 30 degree cuts on the ends and on the plugs concealing the screws. I laid out the tongue to be able to screw the breadboard into dowels (long grain).

That’s where I’m at so far – lets see, how many days do I have left…..Man, I need to get BUSY!