Media Magnate

Brian's Garage Workshop is stepping outside the garage (literally) to give you our first streaming video. Well, its really just a cool time lapse of me building a swingset for my kids, but I DO use wood, so it counts.

Since this is my first time doing this, I'm going to try a few different services to see which is the best.

Here we go...



...and heres the blogger player...

[removed. its crappy]

And i suppose we'll try Blip TV as well...



and hires..



another attempt at hires...



For those that are curious, this was shot with a Nikon D200 SLR and 18mm lens. one exposure was taken every 12 seconds and the pictures were simply strung together at 15 frames per second making 1 second of video time = 3 minutes of realtime. It compressed ~6 hours of working time into 2 minutes. I think i might try this technique in the shop when i am going to be out there a full day working on a project.

Skynet is self aware

Hi all. I came to a realization today thanks to quasi-anonymous commenter David (aka runningwood).

I was sitting in a meeting at work when a mysterious email came across my handheld device. It said "Anonymous has commented on your blog." I had only had one other comment in the entire history of my blog and figured that one came from somebody happening across my little corner of the internet by happenstance, or perhaps with the help of the "next (random) blog" feature at the top of all blogger pages.

I read David's comment and thought - "holy crap, people are actually reading this thing. I dont know how they found me, but they found me." then i read further on davids comment and he said he learned of my site from THe Wood Whisperer.

"cool" i thought. I had used this site as 'my website' when commenting on Marc's blog in the past. "somebody must have clicked on my name in one of the comments and found it" i thought as my meeting dragged on past 6pm.

A little more digging and i come to find that I was listed on the TWW Network webpage as a full on amatur woodworking blogger. imagine my surprise - i guess Marc is really on top of the whole woodworking blogger thing. I have been up there for a month almost and nobody bothered to tell me. (thanks for the heads up, Marc...)

Well, since people are actually paying attention i suppose i should be a little more diligent in putting up content. Here is an explination of why things have been slow around here for about 3 weeks...

1) I am in full on finishing mode. blogging about finishing sucks. I take all my pics with my cameraphone and try as it might, it really cant discern between wood that is fresh off the planer vs. wood that has been sanded to 320.

2) I have had to do some actual work at my job the last 3 weeks. this cuts into my blogging time as i was spending a couple hours a day writing about furniture-building instead of tending to my spreadsheets. I will hire someone tomorrow to do the spreadsheets so i can get back to this site.

3) I have been saving up for a massive finishing post that takes you through the process on the hourglass table from start to finish - it seems to flow better this way.

Here is a quick update in advance of the big finishing post. I pre-finished all the pieces BEFORE glue up on this one. this is my first time trying this and it worked pretty good. all the major components are more or less through their full treatment and the table is glued together and i am afixing trim over the next few days.




Here is the most recent pic. the thin pieces of wood you see lying on the table are the edge banding for the plywood shelf and for the underside of the apron.

I am having some cupping issues with the top, but i will address those in a future post.

thanks to everyone for reading.

-Brian

Hourglass Table Dry Fit

It's all coming together now. With the mortises in the apron stock complete, all the substantial cutting for the table is almost done. Today I dry fit the table together and took the measurements for the lower shelf that I laminated up last week (it turned out fine - i will definitely use this method again.)

With those measurements in hand, sizing the shelf took about 10 minutes and I was able to see the table in its rough final form. Here are the pics:

Thank God for Tivo

I have been gripping over exactly how I was going to cut this mortise in the 45 degree angled surface at the end of the aprons for the hourglass table. My foray into poker chip racks was really just my postponing the cut I had no idea how to make. Then, Tivo saved my sanity.

I have my Tivo set to record Woodworks every weekend and lo and behold, this weekend David Marks was working on a project where he made this exact cut. Here is my adaptation of his method--i built a jig that would hold the apron stock at 45 degrees to the routerbase.

First step is to create a box that can house the apron stock at an angle and accomodate a top that sits parallel to the floor. here is its skeleton, with the top removed.



Here is the entire jig with one of the aprons clamped into place.



The box is not a snug fit for the apron stock, so I wedge it onto place to keep everything square and stable.



And here is a view looking down through the opening in the top of the table at the mortise that is about to be cut. if you look closely, you can see where the mortise has been marked out.



Now cutting the mortise is as simple as using an edge guided router to make the plunge cut. I took special care to make certain that the reference edge of the top is square to the sides of the box, and therefore ultimately square to the piece being cut. Here is the setup:



And here is the result:



For those that are interested, here is David Marks method

Why Dust Collection is Overrated

Before I get to the dust collection commentary, let me update you on the Poker Chip Trays.  I spent another 2 hours tonite and drilled out the last blank and started gluing them up. Here is where I am so far, about 3.5 hours in. 4 trays are glued up and 2 more are waiting for the final assembly.



OK, so much for the update. In making these, I used the bandsaw, the tablesaw and the drill press. I hook up a shop vac to my bandsaw when i am using it, and it does a pretty good job of collecting the dust. Here is what was produced from this operation:



The table saw was used to crosscut the racks to length and to clean up the bandsawn edges. I didnt bother to hook up my shop vac to the dust bag i have underneath the tablesaw. Here is the dust it created.



not bad huh? That leaves only the drill press. I have seen some god-awful rig-ups that people use for collecting dust from drill presses and lathes, but they seem clumsy at best. I bet in most shops WITH full blown dust collection the drill press is not connected to the central system. So while a fully plumbed dust collection system would have saved me the "hassle" of cleaning up the mess in the two pictures above, it would have done me no good cleaning this up:




are you kidding me? for reference, the base of that drill press is 4" tall. Here's some interesting math--i drilled 15 holes 1 5/8" in diameter ~2 1/4" deep. Thats a total of 70 cubic inches of material, which is just over a liter.

I learned 2 things building these trays.

1) it doesnt take a lot of material to make a really big mess (1L of wood = that big ass pile, which filled up my 5 gallon shop vac.)

2) Dust collection would have saved me about 2 seconds of clean up on this particular job.

My Friends Are Dorks

I have a few friends (more than a few, actually) who are avid poker players. The recent popularity of televised Hold-em tournaments has only served to further fuel their passion for the game. They play a regular game every other Wednesday. Over the years, the game has gotten more and more sophisticated and we (royal we, I mean they) are now to the point where custom tables are being purchased and a dedicated gaming hall is being built at a friends place of business.

I had this piece of scrap left over from the pictureframe project and didnt know what I was going to do with it. It is basically an 8' bubinga 2x4.



I had thought to make it into another smaller frame, but there really wasnt enough stock to do anything or reasonable size. I stumbled across a picture of a poker chip rack on TWW and thought chip trays would be a great use of this scrap. Google quiclky turned up a design similar to Marc's.

Since the process for making them is already laid out, I will not repeat it here. I will say that my goal was to make 3 sets in 2 hours and this is how far I got.



The most time consuming part of this whole thing is drilling the large holes that comprise the channels in each tray. I bet I spent an hour doing just that and I still have one more group to go. I also have a very large pile of bubinga shavings around the base of my drill press.

I plan to complete them this evening. I'll let you know the total time to complete - it's a good quick project for your friends who love poker. I'm sure you have some.

Leg Construction - Blanks to finished product

The picture above shows the 3 steps I will be progressing through today. Start with the glued up blanks, then shape the curve on the bandsaw and router table, then taper the legs using the tapering jig. There are lots of ways to do this, and my ways are not likely the best but they work well for me. your mileage may vary.

The first step is to afix the template to the blank. I use double sided turners tape for this--it holds the pieces together well, but is not impossible to remove after use.



Next it is off to the bandsaw to rough cut the shape of the legs. I use this jig i built to make the process as idiot-resistant as possible (nothing, in my experience is truly idiot-Proof).



The jig acts like a poor mans bearing guided router bit. it allows the stock to pass underneath and keeps the bandsaw blade a constant distance from the template. here is a close up of it in action.




after the stock is roughed out on the bandsaw, i use a bearing guided bit (two, actually) to trim it flush with the template. Marc Spagnuolo, aka The Wood Whisperer, just posted a video on template routing curved table legs. One of the issues he adresses is the tearout that comes with trying to flush trim the 'uphill' portion of the grain on a curved piece of stock. He suggests sanding as close to the line as possible for the uphill sections, but i have found this to be time consuming and that it still yields imperfect results. My method avoids 'uphill' cuts altogether. Here is how i do it:

We will employ TWO bearing guided bits in this process. The first step is to determine which sections of the leg will be 'uphill' cuts when the template is on the BOTTOM of the workpiece. i have marked those 'uphill' sections in the pic below so i can avoid them in the first pass. Note that the bit has the bearing on the bottom, and the workpiece is positioned with the template face down. With the bottom bearing bit and the template facing down, i flush trim the DOWNHILL SECTIONS ONLY and then stop.



After that routing is complete, i switch to a bit with the bearing on the top and make the cuts with the template facing UP. the set up is below--note that the X's are still there, as i left these sections rough in the previous pass. through the miracle of Euclidean Geometry, the formerly uphill sections are now downhill, and are flush trimmed without incident (or unsightly tearout.)



the result of the above operations is a perfectly shaped, tearout-free leg. The final step in construction is to taper the planar faces of the legs. I will use the tapered sled i made earlier. First, I afix the leg to the sled with the top against the cleat. the cleat is on the low side of the sled, so i will be removing stock from the foot of the leg as it passes through the planer.

I mark the face of the leg with chalk and in she goes! (low side first)





here is the result, you can see where the taper ends--there is still chalk remaining on the top of the leg. It took about 5 passes to remove ~5/8 of an inch of stock.




once all 4 legs have had their first face tapered, i install a shim so that the opposite face will rest on the sled as though the first side had never been tapered.



I made this shim from a scrap piece of stock using the tapering sled. I passed it through until one end was about 1/16 thick. once the shim is complete, just rotate it end for end and screw it down. Here is it with a leg taped to it, tapered side down.



Pass the legs through the planer as before and you have all 4 sides tapering neatly from 2x2 at the top of the leg to 3/4 x 3/4 at the bottom.

Lower Shelf Assembly

For the lower shelf of the hourglass table, solid wood is not an option. The shelf is bound on all 4 sides by the table legs, and the inevitable expansion and contraction of a solid wood shelf would break the table apart. therefore, I need a piece of 1/2" walnut ply.

I went to my local dealer and of course all they had was 1/4 and 3/4. so i bought 2 pieces of 1/4 and am laminating them to an MDF core. I have never done this before but hear it works well. I'll update if there is any problem.

Final steps

The splines are glued in place. I wanted to post a view of the front of the pictureframe for you to see.

Pictureframe - Substantial Completion

The pictureframe construction is substantially complete.  I put the bevel on the back of the outside edge using this setup (the blade has not been tilted and the fence is not in final position):

Afterward, I hand shaped the front of the outside edge using a block plane.  The profile is now very pleasing to the eye and should look good on a wall.  After the outside edges were shaped, I cut slots for the splines using this setup:

I will probably finish (as in varnish, not complete) the Pictureframe and the Hourglass Table at the same time so look for the final pics of the frame when the table is done.

Starting the Legs, Gluing the Top

Lots of progress on the Hourglass Table over the last few days...

As you many have seen in the background of another pic, I milled the lumber for the legs and top of this table about a week ago.  It is pictured above - the legstock is 1 7/8" square and of varying lengths to fit the template

The first step after milling was to cut the mortises in the pieces of the legstock that will ultimately become the top of each leg.  The position of this piece within the leg lamination is fixed. That is, the top of this segment will always be at the top of the leg so you have a 'reference surfance' from which to cut.  The other pieces are glued together imprecisely, so cutting on them prior to the glue up is not possible.

I worked out the location of the mortises and cut them on my router table using stop blocks and a spiral up-cutting bit.

Once these mortises were cut I could glue up the legs to rough shape, as I did with the prototype.  

While waiting for the glue to dry, I turned my attention to the tabletop.  It will be 3/4" thick and approximately 20x36 in overall dimension. It comes from the same 8/4 stock the legs were made from.  I set aside the best looking 36" of the 8/4 stock and planned to resaw it into 2 10x36 pieces 1" thick.  

Everything went according to plan, until with about 1" left to go on my resaw cut, the board broke under its own internal stress.  one half of the board was so strained, it simply popped the final inch of the resaw cut apart.  one of the resawn boards was so badly warped I was uncertain if i would be able to plane a 3/4" board from it.

Well, turns out I was able to get enough thickness for a usable top.  It is only about 5/8" thick but it is flat and stable.  I edge glued the two boards together after gluing up the legs.  Here is a pic of the final product.

Pictureframe Glue Up

Finally got around to cutting my rabbets and miters in the pictureframe.  I glued it up tonite without much fanfare.  This weekend I will treat the outside edges - Bevel the back and round over the front to ease the outside edge a little bit. I will also add splines to the corners once I know the final thickness of the outside edge.

FYI, this is the back of the pictureframe.  The old inlays are out and the new ones are in place (and look great) but they are face down in this pic.

A keen eye will note the milled up walnut for the Hourglass table in the background...

Table Leg Prototype Complete!

Turned out great!  Now to make 4 of them out of walnut...

Hourglass Table Leg Prototype

I milled a douglas fir 4x4 down to 2x2 stock and glued it up so it would conform to my template for the legs of the hourglass table. With the remainder of the stock, i created a tapering sled, which will be used to taper the planar faces of the legs. the final dimensions at the top of the leg are 2x2, and the final dimensions at the foot of the leg are 3/4 x 3/4.

I know that the taper will begin 25" off the ground, and that the thickness of the leg must decrease by 1 1/4" (2 minus 3/4.) To achieve that result, I must taper 5/8" off each side of the leg over the 25" span. Therefore, the top of the tapering sled is pitched at a 5/8" drop over a 25" run. We'll see how things come out.

Update: The leg is out of the clamps and there is a pic below with the template.  Bandsaw, router and planer tomorrow...

Hourglass Table Concept

Here is a concept for a table I am going to build for my wife. She saw a picture in a magazine and i thought I could build it so i am going to give it a shot. I just got a new bandsaw and figured I could put it to good use. I plan to taper the planar faces of each leg using a thickness planer and a tapered sled.

I think the apron is too tall in this mock up. I will probably reduce it by around 40% to make the table feel lighter. I may incorporate a drawer too. The main construction challenge I see is attaching the aprons to the legs--they meet at a 45 degree angle and cutting the joinery will be a challenge.

I'll let you know how this one goes...

Houston, We have a Problem

Well, I put in a lot of handwork smoothing the cove of the pictureframe. The Cove looks great, but the inlays dont. Once I planed them down to be level with the frame, I discovered that the Cocobolo was not quite as dark as I had hoped it would be. There is not enough contrast between the Bubunga and the Cocobolo for the inlay to dramatically stand out, as you can see in the picture above.

I have cut some strips of Ebony I will use to replace the Cocobolo, but i have to get the Cocobolo out of there first. I have screwed the frame pieces to a piece of scrap MDF and I am going to recut the dados with my router.

Fairing the Cove

I got busy with my new router table tonight and further faired the cove on my pictureframe. I used a 1" Core Box bit to get the cove as close to a 'curve' as possible. I'd simply raise the bit a little and move the fence a little and keep making passes until all of the sharp edges were gone.

As you can see in the foreground of the picture, there is still a good bit of wavey-ness in the cove. I will shape the rest of it by hand with a convex spokeshave, sandpaper and scrapers.

Also, I glued in the Cocobolo inlay. It's starting to shape up!

Router Table Construction

This was a multi day project, but I thought I would consolidate my activities into one entry in case anybody out there wanted to replicate my work. It should be easier to follow this way.

Step 1 - Laminate the top. I began with 2 pieces of 1/2" MDF for the top. I roughed them to size and then glued them together to create a 1" thick top.

Step 2 - Add cutouts for table bolts. I realized that my 1" thick top would be too thick to accomodate bolts to my table saw top and fence rails. The problem I face is the mounting holes in the sawtop and rails are only ~5/8" from the surface of the sawtable. When the 1" thick top is installed flush with the sawtop, the mounting holes would be covered.

To fix this I just marked the spots on the torsion box where the bolts will come through and I routed out recesses. Now when the sides of the torsion box are installed, there will be a cavity behind them into which the bolts can go.


Step 3 - Torsion Box Sides. The 1" thick top is probably not strong enough to support the weight of the router over time, so I am adding structural members to the sides and to the 'field' of the box to help carry the load. Here the sides have been glued and finish nailed into place.

Step 4 - Cut recess for router, miter corners. I am installing a Triton plunge router into my tabletop. It will be a permanent fixture. I decided on this particular model because it is easily adjustable from BOTH above AND below the table. I find that I make adjustments from below the table about half the time because I need to get a 'router bit's-eye view' of the setup. It is easier to reach below the table to make this adjustment than to mess with a crank above the table when you are bent over looking at the bit.

The Triton also has a single wrench, auto locking arbor that eliminates the need for a large 'bit change access' cutout in the tabletop. I plan to only have a 1 1/4" opening for my router bits. In order for this to work with my table, I need to cut a recess for the router so that it can extend the arbor far enough above the tabletop to get a wrench on it.

I move around the table a lot when routing so I wanted to trim the corners a bit so I could have easier access to the bit from all angles. I dropped the torsion box onto my mitering sled and simply cut the corners off. I then added small sides to the void.

Step 5 - Laminate Top. No real explination necessary - I found the smoothest piece of scrap Formica at my local cabinetshop and they gave it to me for free. Luckily it was off white.

Step 6 - Install router, add more supports, mount in table. After laminating the top, I drilled the mounting holes and a 1 1/4" hole for the bits to come through. I also drilled a hole for the crank you use to adjust bit height from above the table.

Advice for those of you building one of these yourself: put some thought into the orientation of the tool under the table before you drill your holes. I decided to mount the router so that the hole for above the table adjustment in directly across the bit opening from the fence. This allows adjustment from above the table with the fence set in most cases. Also, for a right-handed person, it aligns the below-table adjustment levers and knobs perfectly for easy access.

Why i built my table this way:

• I didnt have room for a dedicated router table in my shop
• My old table used a Rockler lift and my workpieces were constantly catching on a slightly proud edge somewhere - where the plate met the tabletop, where the lift was screwed to the plate, on the insert - I wanted this table to have as few possibilities for hang up as possible.
• I have a bigger worksurface than I would have with a dedicated router table.
  

I hate my fence

So, while i was cutting my dados for the pictureframe project, I decided it was finally time to do something about my rip fence.

I have had this trusty craftsman contractors saw for 5 years and it is great, but the stock fence is just simply too difficult to keep parallel to the blade.  I have lived with it for all these years, and it can do excellent work but it is time to upgrade.  

I installed an aftermarket Delta fence and i love it.  Now i have added rip capacity and, more importantly, i can incorporate a router table into the wing of my saw.  The pictureframe is on hold until I can construct the torsion box router wing.  stay tuned for pictures.

Roughing the Cove

I started roughing the cove of my pictureframe today.  

I am using a dado blade to remove the bulk of the material, and will follow this step with a core box bit to further refine the shape.  Note that I have left a small sliver of full thickness stock on what will be the interior edge of the frame.  This will allow the stock to sit face down & flush on my router table when it is time to further refine the curve.

The small dado you see is to accomodate the cocobolo inlay that will surround the outside edge of the frame

Pictureframe Concept

I decided to start this blog with a simple pictureframe.  I found a nice piece of quartersawn bubinga that was 12" wide...it was a shame to rip it down but so it goes.

the rendering is above.  I plan to shape the cove, then install a cocobolo inlay around the perimeter and back-bevel the outside edge.  I will post as I complete major steps.

Happy New Year!