Ronin Woodworking #2: Start cutting wood

Weekend three: (pause for dramatic effect….) Wood gets cut!

There up on the top shelf is an old walnut board a friend gave me. Its just been waiting around to be useful someday.

There is also some oak on there that had a project assigned to it when I bought it. I might use some of it for this. The drawer sides and back are going to be oak. You can see some hardwood floor scraps on the bottom right shelf. I might just make the drawer parts from that. Its a very shallow drawer (shallow in dimension that is, as far as its character I can’t say as I haven’t got to know it very well yet) so those scraps would work well. The only reason for not using them is that I really like how easy the hard wood floor scraps attach to my miter gauge as a sacrificial fence.

Here I am with my desktop organizer/ walnut board.

You’re thinking, gees Waid thats a huge board. You can easily make your small project outta that. Well its only about 3/4” and not at all straight. Its cupped bowed twisted checked and has knots. But it looks awesome in this picture doesn’t it.

Now I’m off to the table saw. I put this on my cross cut sled to get some more manageable pieces. Then I rip it down to get rid of a pretty rough edge. Like I said there are checks throughout and I am just pulling out the usable pieces. After ripping a piece about 5 inches wide I have something that fits on my jointer no problem. After jointing and planing (power tools) I put three biscuits in a couple pieces for the first of three “panels”.

While that sets up I get to work on the four corners of the project.

Thats it for weekend three. I think I’m about 6 hours into this now not including any design time. Doesn’t seem like much for 6 hours.

I didn’t get any shots of the panel after glue up. D’oh It did have a glue line that needed a little smoothing. I went at that with a card scraper that made QUICK work of it. I used this opportunity to try Todd A. Clippinger's card sharpening method. It was fast and easy although the finish was not nearly as fine as when I use stones and roll an edge. BUT if you are a guy who is gonna finish up with 220 on an ROS anyway then Todd’s method is THE way to go.

Weekend four: it will start to look like something.

Later
Spaids

-- Wipe the blood stains from your blade before coming in.