Hailey's Christmas bookcase

We'll I'm frantically trying to finish a bookcase for my God-daughter, Hailey's Christmas present. her brother, Reid, has a nice big built-in bookshelf in his room and I think Hailey's a bit jealous. These kids are wonderful readers and just love books so they have quite a collection and not a whole lot of place to put them. That's the inspiration for this piece. I did some online searching on google images for a bookcase suitable for a little girl's room and came across a photo I liked. The case had to be both challenging to increase my skill level and be simple enough that I'd be able to finish it by Christmas. I started it with lots of time to spare and had most of the case put together over a weekend. but, of course, life steps in. My wife wanted me to finish a basement bedroom and that took precendence for a few weeks and worked got hectic. Same old story. So here I am, 8 days from Christmas eve and I've yet to start putting any paint on the thing. I turned the feet last night and tonight I plan on attaching the feet to the case bottom plinth, attach the plinth and the top to the case and then start the drawers. of course, the drawer fronts are curved and I'd like to dovetail the drawers at least at the front, which will add some complication but I think that by the end of this weekend I'll be able to put my first coat of primer on the case and then spend the evenings next week applying 2-3 coats of white paint. Wish me luck and Merry Christmas

Cherry Sofa Table

Well anyone who has been following my blog (including me, that's likely a whole 1 person) has seen that I had previously posted a screen capture of a walnut sofa table. For some reason, that version of the table just wasn't doing it for me. I had cross-grain issues, build issues, etc. I just plain couldn't get inspired by it. Then one day, while at work, I catch out of the corner of my eye one of the many furniture pictures I have for inspiration scrolling by on my screen saver. I don't even remember downloading, or having ever seen that photo before, but I fell in love with it immediately. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with the model in the image.

The table is made of solid american black cherry with the only exception being the the bird's eye maple drawer fronts. It is essentially all frame and panel construction and is comprised of about 110 individual parts with over 50 mortise and tenon joints. From a design point of view, I think one of the reasons I didn't like the old model was that I tried to include too many strong visual elements. Too much exposed joinery etc. One this table there are only three featured design elements: the first is the contrasting wood drawer fronts. the second is the through dovetails on the drawers and the third more subtle is just the cherry wood grain. If I had to categorize this piece in a certain style I guess it would have to be shaker with some craftsman influence.

In the original photo of the piece, there was also a Harvey Ellis style craftsman inlay in each of the two doors. Though I'm keen on learning how to create these inlays, I think it would be too much for this piece. I'd much rather incorporate the contrasting wood tones.

To date I've purchased about 50 bd ft of cherry and have milled the parts for the two side frames and I've just started laying out the joinery in the legs. Stay tuned for some photos of the work in progress.

Craftsman Curtain Rods

My very talented wife has taken up sewing and I have to say that she has a real knack for it. She's in the process of making these curtains for our living room windows and I couldn't resist taking a picture to post. She still has a couple of things to complete such as trimming the thread ends and making the tie backs but I think they look pretty awesome. This blog however, is not about sewing, it's about woodworking. So not to be outdone, I decided to make the curtain rods for the windows and of course turned to the interwebs for inspiration. We did a search for craftsman style curtain rods and we found something very similar to what's show here.

I started by making the rod out of some scrap red oak I had. The only embellishment is that I cut small "pyramid" shapes at the ends of the rod. For the supports I found a 1" thick red oak board ans sketched the design right on it. I bored the mortises for the rod out with a forstner bit and cleaned out the hole with a mortising chisel and file. I then inlaid the walnut accent squares and then rounded over all the exposed edges with a coarse file and sandpaper. once this was done I turned my attention to how I was going to hang the thing. Now being a structural engineer you'd think that I'd had this figured out before I got to this point. But, I'm purposely trying not to over-engineer things and let the design come first. What I decided to do was take a trip to the hardware store for ideas. I found some small steel plates with "keyholes" in them that I could recess into the back of the supports using a router. I finished everything with a coat of Varathane mission oak stain topcoated with shellac. It turned out to be a fun little project that I was able to complete in a weekend for under $10. God I love woodworking!

Sofa Table Design 2

So I've done some more work on my sofa table design and I'm feeling alot better about the whole thing since I've added some personal touches. As you can see in the photo, I've incorporated breadboard ends and a crest rail on the top, added wedged through tenons on the side stretchers and changed the door joinery from a through mortise and tenon to pinned miters.

For some reason that big top just didn't feel right without a crest rail on it and after a few different designs I settled on the one in the picture with a very low profile that enhances the horizontality of the piece. I'm considering putting a series of square holes in similar to those I incorporated into the crest rail on my nightstands (previous blog post) I'll put some more thought into that but I'm scared to overdo it with the craftsman details. The breadboard ends I added to help keep the top flat, because I really like the look of them and frankly because I've always wanted to try and build them.

I extended the tenons on the side stretchers and turned them into wedged through tenons. I still plan on using ebony wedges (If I can find some) The tenons are 1/2" thick and I may still play with their proportions to get the top and bottom of the top tenon to line up with the depth of the drawer.

The pinned mitres on the doors I saw in Fine Woodworking issue #200 in an article by Russell Jensen. This is a traditional japanese joinery technique called "kane tsugi" that I find very beautiful. I'm pretty pumped to try and make this joint.

Of course, I had to pass all of the design ideas by my better half to see if she'd veto any of these decisions. She was a bit unsure about the pinned mitres because she felt that it was a bit too much but after a few seconds changed her mind. phheuw! What are your thoughts on them. Below is a picture of the piece with the regular through mortise and tenon joints on the doors for comparison.

Sofa Table Project

Here's the sketchup model for my next project. It's a sofa table for my living room. I took inspiration from a picture I found online and scaled. I've been busily modelling the inside of the case to try and eliminate any cross grain joinery in solid wood. At this point it's my intent to make this out of walnut for a primary wood and white birch as a secondary wood. There are a couple of black accent strips which at this point are intended to be ebony but due to cost may well end up being ebonized walnut. Once I have the inside of the carcase and back figured out I intend to make a few modifications just to dress it up and make it my own. A few craftsman details such as through tenons, set back drawers etc come to mind, but I don't want to overdo it. if anyone has any suggestions I'd gladly entertain them.

Blog revival

Here are a couple of photos of projects I've completed.

Completed nightstand

Hi guys, well I'm sorry it's been awhile since I last posted. Once I get close to the finish line on a project I guess I go all out to try and get it done. I've finally completed my nightstand (or should I say my wife's nightstand). I'm very happy with how it turned out and am quite proud of it. My wife loves it. Here are a couple of pictures:

I really struggled with the finish on this project. It's funny how the more you learn about woodworking and finishing in particular the more you're willing to get outside your comfort zone and try something new. At the same time trying something new can lead you into trouble.

Though I couldn't stray too far from the finish I used on the bed right next to it, I still wanted to try a couple of things I've read recently on finishing and finishing prep work:

The first was to do alot more scraping than sanding. Like most woodworkers I hate sanding. So after having read countless articles on the subject that say you can almost totally do away with sanding by using a card scraper I decided I'd take this path. The key word above however is the "almost". Because the sides and back of this case are frame and panel construction, I had to be very careful to get away from making cross grain scratches with my card scraper. So after having scraped the thing prior to assembly and then spot scraped after assembly to make sure all the joints are flush etc, I spent about another 3 hours hand sanding with 180 grit and suing steam to get rid of any dings etc that tend to show up during assembly. Of course the second I put a stain on the thing, I find all kinds of cross grain scratches, dents etc. It's enough to drive you crazy. So after sanding off the trouble spots and restaining all went well.

The second thing I read decided to try was to use a glossy sheen for the first two coats of polyurethane and then apply the satin sheen for my last coat. The logic behind this is that this type of finish is naturally glossy. Silica is added to the glossy to turn it into a satin. If you can imagine tiny little grains of sand inside the finish reflecting the light in different directions you can see how this would work. If you apply satin finish for all coats, you are hiding a little bit of the wood on each coat. So by doing it the way I did it you theoretically get the best of both worlds. This seems to work quite well but as you can probably tell in the photo the nightstand is a bit shinier than the bed. In retrospect, I should have placed a second coat of satin on it to dull it down a bit to match the bed. I think I'll do that as soon as my wife isn't looking!

This project gave me my first experience hand cutting dovetail joinery for the drawers. As you can see from the picture, they turned out pretty good. There are tons of online articles on this subject but I'd like to make a couple of comments regarding my experience in the hopes of helping along other first time dovetailers.

1. Every article I've ever read about drawer construction says "make your drawer front 3/4" thick and use 1/2" thick material for the sides and back. This is a big pill to swallow when you're planing 1" thick material down to 1/2". It's natural to think " hey if 1/2" is strong. then 3/4" is even stronger!" However, when you cut your drawer sides the extra thickness amplifies and error you make with the saw. I cut my tails first and then transfer the outline of the tails onto the pin board using an Xacto knife. When you do this you're marking on the hidden side of the board not on the show side so you have make sure your cuts are square.

2. Because I wanted to match the colour of the bed, I had to stain this project. I put alot of thought into how to treat the pins on the drawer front so that I had a nice contrast with the drawer sides. Finally I read an article by Jeff Jewitt in Fine Woodworking that explained what to do. First stain the drawer front and use a #2 or #4 artists brush to stain the pins. I used an oil based stain and had to be very careful not to put too much stain on the brush so that the oil didn't wick into the tail board. It's painstaking but it can be done. Then I applied one 2lb cut coat of dewaxed shellac to the whole drawer. This is the final finish for the inside of the drawer and I chose it because dewaxed shellac has the nice property of having no smell after about 1 hr of curing and is compatible with the polyurthane topcoat. The final step is to apply the wiping poly to the drawer front.