TUMBLEWOOD

Number 9, Number 9, Number 9...Everyone must build Roubo

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:25:00 +0000

If you've been paying attention and you know the bloggers I do, you know that for one reason or another workbenches are "it" right now. Kari Hultman of the Village Carpenter has started her version of the Andres Roubo workbench. Erik Gilling of Better Living Through Woodworking and Chris Adkins of High Rock Woodworking are just two off the top of my head that are building along with me and we're building along with The Woodwhisperer Guild, headed by yet another bench builder and entrepreneur, Marc Spagnuolo. It seems everyone is taking slightly different approaches to the bench, but the one thing they all have in common is they are the Roubo workbench that Chris Schwarz popularized in the woodworking community with his books on workbenches. Be sure to check out their blogs, you can even view Marc's progress on his woodworking blog that is housed on his free site The Woodwhisperer.

This last week I finally got back into the shop. I'm now in the process of building the parts and assembling the Benchcrafted leg vise. The first step was after I finished fitting the glide to the roughed out chop, was to figure out the location of the of the hole for the vise's screw and the mortise for the guide rail. I just clamped everything in place, leaving about 1/16" on the top of the chop that I will flush after the complete install.

I transferred all the marks to the chop and drilled for the screw.

For the glide mortise, I started by using my Triton router with an edge guide to make the initial slots on either side of the leg. I drilled the waste between the two slots with my drill press and cleaned everything up with my chisels.

After checking alignment, I drilled the hole through the leg for the screw and laid out the design on the chop, which is a continuation of the design used for the glide. The design is based on the chevron design found in the art deco style. You can barely see it laid in this picture of the chop.

The wheel and screw are actually fastened to the chop with machine screws and required tapping. Luckily, my Grandpa had given me his tap and die set. It was nice to finally be able to use it.

I mounted the hand wheel and tested the clearance of the glide in the glide mortise. After that, I cut out the design for the chop and cleaned it up with my chisels. My chisel of choice is my 2". It's probably the most used blade in my shop. The weight and size make it very easy to yield for many operations.

I made some 3/8" dowels on my Woodrat from the Osage Orange, drilled the holes to pin the glide and drove the dowels home. Since Orange Osage is so hard, it should do well as a pin for this purpose.

Late last night I posed the question to my social media friends, should I inlay this nut or not? Was there any reason I should other than that seems to be the thing to do. The overwhelming response was to do the inlay, but no particular reasons why it may be better to do so, in terms of integrity. I decided to go ahead and do the inlay, thinking that besides being slightly better looking, it would put less stress on the machine threads that are only holding in Fir, which is considered a softwood. Today, Marc Spagnuolo saw that I had decided to do the inlay and concurred on the possibility of this being slightly better in terms of strength.

The operation was again at the drill press using my large diameter forstner bit to hog the majority of the waste from the recess. I cleaned the perimeter with a chisel and got to the final depth and a clean bottom with my router plane. Here is the nut after the inlay process.

This morning while I drank my coffee, I decided to do some detail work on the chop and glide. The glide "stub" sits proud and rather than cutting it off flush to the surface, I decided to facet it, as well as cleaning up the final edges of the chop. This is a detail I later found will need to be changed.

The last thing I did today was start to rough out the glide wheel brackets. Once I get these done, I can finally glue up the base and set the tops on!

I'm pretty close to wrapping this project. I still have dogs to make and the lower shelf.

TWW Roubo Build - Part 8: Builder's Block

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:02:00 +0000

I'd like to say I just haven't had any time in the shop this week, but the truth is I hit a wall. Earlier this week I milled the stock for my leg vise, deadman and parallel glide. All was going extremely well. I had routed the groove that the deadman needs in the bottom of the top of the bench. As you can see, I even had a knot explode on me.

No problem. These things happen. It wasn't catastrophic, just an annoyance. No one is ever going to look under the bench and I believe the leg will cover the transgression. I proceeded to figure out the design I wanted to incorporate into the leg vise and the parallel glide. I cut the design out on the bandsaw for the parallel glide, cleaned everything up with my chisels
and then proceeded to layout and drill the holes that are used to keep the leg vise from racking. CATASTROPHE!!!

I had horrible tear out. Luckily, I have many friends on Twitter and other social media sites and I ran the situation by them. Some felt I should just be OK with it and move forward. "It's just a bench!". My buddy Chris Wong of Flair Woodworks and Time Warp Tools thought I could simply do another, thicker glide and plane off the offending tear out. My Hand Tool School teacher, Shannon Rogers, explained the forces that the glide encounters doing it's job and suggested that maybe Fir was a bit too soft to handle the situation. My first reaction was to follow Chris' suggestion to go thicker and stay with the Fir. A little background might help here. I'm a bit obsessive compulsive in certain things of my life. I really wanted to build the entire bench out of Fir. If I was to introduce a contrasting wood, I would have done the end cap of the wagon vise in that wood. I envisioned me sawing apart the end cap from the bench, which is now glued in place, simply to appease a compulsion that would gnaw at me endlessly until I succumbed to the somewhat psychotic demand. Ultimately, I am choosing to move forward with the glide being made from some Osage Orange I have on hand, which over time will fade, but is fairly close in color to the old growth Fir I've used on the rest of the bench.
While I had the part dimensioned and the mortise fit, I laid out the cuts I need to make on the leg.
I will wait to do those until I have the new part, just in case the dimensions change a bit. Only time will tell if I have to start tearing things apart to make them either match or properly contrast. YES, I'm weird, but I'm OK with that.

The Woodwhisper Guild Roubo Build-Part 7

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:32:00 +0000

It seems some parts of this build go quite fast and others, not so much. The fitting of the tenons is something you really want to sneak up on. So, I tend to cut everything a little fat, then pare, test, pare, test, pare. Except for the haunch for the long stretcher that was cut deep enough to accommodate the extruded "V" shape that the deadman runs on, all the joinery was originally cut using my Excalibur for the tablesaw. That particular cut was going to take me outside of my comfort zone on the tablesaw and the litmus test on anything you do on power tools should be, "if it doesn't seem safe, DON'T DO IT!" There are many ways to accomplish the same thing. In this case, I got to use my Doc Holliday saw from Bad Axe Toolworks.

In this first shot, you can see I used a flip-stop to enable repeatable cuts and I drew a line on the fence to make it easier judge to where I needed to cut after the initial shoulder.

This next shot is the view of the nibbling out of the waste. Again, I didn't find the time savings of installing the dado blade to be worth it. I'd rather cut the shoulders of the tenon with my Freud Fusion blade and so made a series of cuts, broke off the waste and pared with my 2 inch chisel.

Although I don't want to fill the splits in the legs with epoxy, you can see here that it may prove inevitable. When I go to glue the ends with the short stretchers, I will use the West System epoxy and make sure they are set to dry with the split upward. I'll also use some blue tape to keep any epoxy from coming out of the split. After the glue up, I'll reassess whether I need to fill the cracks. Most of what I'll be concerned with is the aesthetics. If I get too much epoxy visible in the crack, I will fill it completely.

Once all the short stretchers were cut and were a snug "slip fit", I did a dry fit and squared them up to enable me to take the measurements of the long stretchers directly from the piece.

If you are a follower of Marc Spagnuolo's The Woodwhisperer, you'll be familiar with this process known as relative dimensioning.

These two final shots are a couple views of the base dry fitted. Although the entire project is built to be "knock down", it is quite the feat to both assemble and disassemble. The mortise and tenon joints on the long stretchers will be mechanical held together with hardware that came in my Benchcrafted kit. Therefore, these joints were slightly more loose than a "slip fit".

After the first assembly, I checked for square and found I needed to slightly move the position of the tenons that let the top sit on the base by about 1/16 of an inch. To do this, I had to get on the bench and lift each end out of the mortises and carefully slide each long stretcher from the legs, all the while trying to avoid letting anything crash to the floor.

After seeing the piece as a whole, it seemed to me to be beefy enough to not need a fifth leg. Luckily, there is the The Sagulator. I entered the dimensions of the bench with 200lbs of dead weight in the center. Even with that, the bench should only deflect by .003" and the threshold on The Sagulator is .020", so I'm well within engineering tolerances.

A Beefy Base - TWW Roubo Build Part 6

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:27:00 +0000

Welcome back for the sixth installment of my build for The Woodwhisperer Guild Roubo bench build. Upfront, I apologize for not capturing and subsequently glossing over some of this process. I'm still not great at remembering to always document. I get caught up in the process and totally forget.

The first up was laying out the mortises for the top to land on to the base. Again, the Sketch Up model that Aaron Marshall did for Guild was open and constantly referenced. Using Aaron's model has convinced me that Sketch Up is a must for me to learn. Any questions I've had during this build have been easy to answer by referencing the exploded views. I am always tailoring some of the measurements due to my bench being both 10 feet long and only having a 3 inch laminate top.

I had been planning on routing the mortises, but wasn't really looking forward to it because of all the dust it would be creating. More on dust later. Through discussion on Twitter and an earlier recommendation by Rob Bois of The Bois Shop (A VERY excellent podcaster), I decided to buy the Triton 2 1/4 HP plunge router. While, according to all the input, the Triton did not have the 5 star rating of the Festool routers, it did have really good dust collection and at a much lower price point. Luckily, Milne Power Tools, which is conveniently right across the street from my office, carries the Triton brand. When I got the router home, I made a few modifications with foam tape to help the dust collection to be a bit more effective and set up what I like to call my white trash boom arm.

This allowed me to route without dealing with the weight of the vacuum hose, which I fed over the top of the only interior wall and suspended with a rope. If I had only had some baling wire!

Once the mortises were cut, I set up the Excalibur sliding table with the miter fence and cut the legs to length and also cut the tenons.

I'm essentially a lazy person, so I just nibbled the material away rather than deal with changing out my everyday blade with the dado set. It really didn't take up any time and the cheeks cleaned up quickly with my 2 inch chisel.

I spent quite a while perfecting the fit of the legs to the top, but I'm finding more and more I actually love hand work. I can lose all track of time while I'm playing with a sharp blade on wood. The size of these tenons was a real joy to work with the 2 inch chisel. The angle is set rather shallow to be a really great paring blade.

Once I was happy with the fit of the legs to the top, I stopped and milled all the stretcher parts. This is a process that I forgot to document. I still use, and sure I always will, power tools for any of the processes that would be labor intensive with hand tools.

Since I plan to first assemble the ends, I made sure the legs were dead square and marked the shoulders of the tenons. I then laid out the mortise on the legs that will house the stretchers. Again, I extensively used Aaron's Sketch Up model.

The next part, which I know some are interested in, was again missed in photo documentation. The Woodrat, a machine that I really love, is also a machine I really hate. I have not come up with a good solution for dust collection while using it. I couldn't cut the tenons with the Triton because they were too deep for the Triton plunge capacity. The Woodrat really excels at rather quickly cutting mortises, although I don't have mine set up to easily handle this size of timber. You can get a pretty good overview of what the Woodrat is capable of on the Woodrat Site. I don't remember the name of the guy, but before he died, he reviewed tools and showed how to use them in great detail. He always had some young lady helping him out. If you remember his name, please post it in the comments.

Tonight I finished up the mortises and will start the stretchers tomorrow. If there are any processes you have a question about or frankly advise on a better way to do a process, please let me know in the comments.

Thanks again for following the build!

Whew! Part Five - TWW Guild Roubo Build

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:10:00 +0000

This was easily the most intimidating part of TheWoodwhisperer Guild build for me. I've only cut one dovetail up to this point by hand. It did not go well. This time I'm cutting blind dovetails and from reading the BenchCrafted instructions, you either get the fit of this vise correct, or it doesn't work well. What good is a premium vise if it doesn't work like it should?

So, I laid out my dovetails and put my little Doc Holliday to work. I tried to employ what Shannon Rogers has taught us at the Hand Tool School and did my best to "split the line". I don't know if it was because I was cutting horizontally, the learning curve, or I'm just a spaz, but I managed to drift on each dovetail when cutting the right side. Both were straight and true on the left where I could actually see the line, but the right sides both drifted to the left as I approached the bottom of the tails.

After cutting out the dovetails, I needed to "straighten" them and pare the waste. I got to use my Knew Concepts fret saw. I think next time I can get closer to the base, but even though I was probably being overly cautious, it was fun getting there.

Right off the bat, I found I needed to fire up the sharpening station. My chisels and, as I found, my planes all needed drastic attention. I had too shallow an angle on my chisels and was damaging the edge trying to chop out the waste. The station proved to work very well. Since I still haven't been pleased creating the initial angle on my Delta variable speed grinder, I used the DMT Duo Sharp in the bottom drawer, moved up to the wet stones, then finished on the sandpaper on glass. Considering I was completely reshaping the blades, I was surprised how little time it took to get them from rough to a polished finish. Because I tend to be a space cadet, I made sure to write the settings I used on for the Veritas Mark II honing guide.

Once I had the tails cleaned up, I created a 1/4" rebate on the bottom of the tails to register against the end cap and transferred the tails to the end cap.

After rigging up a clamping solution, which I will NEVER have to do again once this bench is built, I again pulled out my Bad Axe dovetail saw and got to work. It all seemed to go well, but as you can see in the second photo, I was over zealous in marking my lines. After using the knife to mark, I wanted to define the line a bit better with my chisel and I think I pushed too hard and "moved" the line.

After chiseling out the waste and doing a dry fit, you can see my joint had almost as big of a gap as my front teeth.

With much finessing and dry fitting, Saturday night I glued everything up and called it a day. I did, however, return to the shop about an hour later to clean up my glue mess. I'm still not very good at applying just the right amount.

Luckily after clamping up and paring down the end cap, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd originally suspected. I've thought about using glue and sawdust to help hide the mistake, but I think this is a good lesson to remember. The second and bottom is much better than the top and, as time goes on and I keep practicing, I WILL get better.

Now came the fitting of the vise. Because I went with a bench top thickness of 3", the Benchcrafted directions said to use 3/4" thick spacers to properly position the tail vise runners. That ended up being too thick and made the hardware bind too much to travel as freely as the video shows. After trying a couple pieces of 3/4" plywood, which is actually 23/32", I thought momentarily about just using it.

Considering the reclaimed aspect of this build, I decided not to introduce man made wood. It turned out that was a good decision in terms of the vise, too. I ended up with a even slightly less thickness and the vise's action was incredible. So, if you are building along or using a Benchcrafted tail vise on a future bench. Test it out and play with the thickness.

The last thing that was kind of freaking me out was the drilling and final set of the runners. In the previous post when I'd drilled for the retaining bolts, I had not though about the placement of the runners I think I dodge that bullet by a hair, which you can see in this photo.

I think the hardest part is over. I already have the legs, dead man and tail vise parts milled. I need to mill the rails still and then on to the base construction!!!

The Woodwhisper Guild Roubo Build-Part 4

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:45:00 +0000

The last two evenings I haven't had any time in the shop, except to clean up a bit. But, this weekend, which started on Friday, I awoke to a damp and frosty morning. It was the perfect start to a blissful weekend in the shop.

The first thing I worked on was the finishing touches on the mortise and tenon for the end cap. This was the second tenon I've cut. The first was at WIA '11, where I was fortunate enough to have Adam Cherubini give me some one on one instruction on sawing.

For my second tenon and a monster tenon at that, I did pretty darned good with my new Bad Axe Beastmaster and Wyatt Earp saws. The tenon required very little work to fit just right into the mortise.

The fit was just about perfect. I left the cap a little proud on both sides to allow me to flush it up after I've got everything together.

Next, I went back and poured over the PDF from Benchcrafted and the Sketch Up plan that Aaron Marshall has put together for the The Woodwhisperer Guild before I started drilling holes to both attach the end cap to the top and the ones needed for the tail vise.

The Benchcrafted instruction are VERY clear that a perfect fit is essential for flawless operation.

Next up was the part I was dreading the most. I really hate dust and have tried to design excellent dust collection through out the shop. The one weak area is any hand held routing operations. On the next post I'll review the Triton router I bought in response to the mess made when I routed the channel for the tail vise screw.

The initial fit looks very good. I think it will be dead on!

For the next exercise I got to put my sharpening station to good use. I drilled the holes for the bolts that attach the cap to the bench and drilled and chiseled out the holes to capture the nuts.

You can see in this photo how hard the winter growth rings are in this Fir. After talking to Shannon, who is my Hand Tool School teacher, I'm increasing the angle of my bench chisels from 20 degrees to 25 and adding a steeper micro-bevel.

In the midst of all this, I managed to mill up my legs, deadman, and leg vise boards. I'm going thicker on the legs than in the plan. Mine are 5 3/8" x 4 1/4".

Hopefully, this weekend I'll finish up the top and move on to the base!

Split Top Roubo - The Top First

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:28:00 +0000

When building a bench, I think most people opt to build the bottom stretcher and leg assembly first. While that makes sense to me on one level, the sheer mass of the top made me think it would be much easier to tackle it first. The following is the process I went through from rough to finished (mostly) top.

The first step is assessing what exactly you need to do. With my very high tech winding sticks, I found the twist and high and lows of each timber. These winding sticks are made from two pieces of some 1"x4" MDF I have in stock for the house trim. Both are primer white and I ripped one down slightly and used a Sharpie on the other for contrast. They're straight and cheap!

Next, I used a long straight edge to level four roller stands on either ends of my jointer. I'm lucky enough to have an 83 inches in jointer table. Having the roller stands dead on helped in taking the twist out of the timber.

Normally, if you try to joint a twisted board, you end up following the twist as move the board across the jointer. The sheer weight of these actually allowed me to use the weight of the timbers to establish a flat face. I only had to push and keep the timbers in one position as I moved them across the blades.

Here are the before and after photos of one timber. They're representative of the majority of the wood.

There are also many "defects" such as this throughout the boards. Luckily, all the knots are nice and tight still.

Once I had a face flat, I made one of the adjacent faces square to the face. The next step was to resaw the remaining twist out of the timbers. I had to move my bandsaw to accommodate a 12 foot operation.

After I had the timbers resawn, I staged and numbered them for the planing operation which which would take them to a uniform size.

I, again, put infeed and outfeed rollers in place for handling these large pieces of wood.

Now that all the timbers were "roughly" finished, I could decide the sequence of boards for the top. Taking into consideration knots, color, and material size in relation to the final project size.

At this point, I ripped some of the timbers down and then cut them to length. One of the boards I ripped was then processed at the tablesaw with the Excalibur sliding table and a dado blade to make the square dog hole strip.

This is the glue up. I used a paint roller and about a 1/4 gallon of glue. A total of about 14 parallel Jet clamps, 8 Bessey F-clamps, and four cauls to help keep the pieces all lined up.

Here are two shots of the top all glued up and ready for the next step of installing the BenchCrafted tail vise and laying out for the base.

The entire build is going well. As usual, it's taking me far longer than I anticipated. Maybe someday, I'll either get faster or better at estimating my time.

Cleaning Timbers and an Early Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 07:01:00 +0000

I know, it's way too early for talk of Christmas, but people are gearing up and I'm especially filled with holiday cheer. Santa Claus must think I'm a very good boy, because he's recently sent me two very excellent Christmas gifts. I've received my Bad Axe saws from Mark Harrell.

Meet Doc, Wyatt and The BeastMaster! The beautifully handcrafted saws are exquisite. I had mine made with Cherry handles and stainless steel backs and split nuts. I can't wait until I get to play with my new little friends!

And today, my Benchcrafted hardware for my
Roubo bench arrived. The entire kit includes the leg vise and wagon vise hardware, along with extremely beefy bolts for the the bench stretchers. Those will allow me to adjust for seasonal movement, or if Sylvia ever decides I'm too damn expensive, she can take the bench apart and sell it after she's gotten rid of me. Remind me to make sure she stays happy!!!

The timbers are almost all cleaned up and I wanted to get you caught up. I brought over nearly 380 board feet of the reclaimed barn timbers, which is nearly three times the amount actually needed for the build. The reason for this is that it is a bit rough in places and without being able to see the wood, I really don't know how I am going to choose which timber becomes which piece of the build.

This is a shot of the board I'm cleaning right now. This is the last board that needed cleaning before I start laying out the pieces and start the rough dimensioning.

These are the tools I used for the surgical removal of all the errant nails. Pictured is the Wizard metal detector, gloves and ear muffs, dead blow hammer and chisel, small nail puller, cats paw, side cutters and a dental pick.
I used the Wizard to find the nails and marked each with chalk, then went back over each and used whichever tool suited the situation best to get the metal out of the board.

As you can see I had to excavate to get to the nails that had broken at the surface and rusted inward.

This final shot is how I set up the belt sander to remove the old age, grit and god knows what from the surface prior to subjecting any edge tools to these boards. The next step is selecting the parts from the oversized pile of lumber and start the rough dimensioning.

I HATE DUST. As you can see the floor is covered in sawdust and chips from the chiseling, but nothing got airborne. I've still got to figure out a better solution for my router operations.

Here's to Another Hundred Years

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 02:57:00 +0000

Finally, summer is gone, my winterizing chores are done and I get to build something. First up, I'm going to be building a Roubo Split Top Bench from the BenchCrafted plans via The Woodwhisperer Guild winter build. I have some phenomenal hardware on the way, also from BenchCrafted. Today, I went over to the warehouse and brought home some very old friends.

These old joists and timber frame members were bought over 15 years ago from a guy that had already been storing them for about twenty years. They were taken during a deconstruction of a 100 plus year old barn in eastern Oregon. I'm thinking they might be dry enough to work already. As you can see, old growth red fir has some very tight growth rings! I can't wait to clean these ladies up!!

Stay tuned for updates!! THIS is gonna be fun!

A Slight Re-design to Pay Due Respect

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 02:59:00 +0000

You may notice my blog has a little different layout. I don't know why I hadn't already addressed this, but now is better than never. I have been following Marc Spagnuolo for about four or five years. I think I discovered him shortly after he entered the realm of woodworking podcasting. The guy is simply a genius. He is a constant student and never claims to know everything about woodworking, but he does knows a hell of a lot and he knows a hell of a lot of other great woodworkers, who know a hell of a lot. (Could I use "a hell of a lot" anymore?) He's accessible and his podcasts are the best on the internet and, in my opinion, the best woodworking shows period on or off the internet. I've been a member of The WoodWhisperer Guild since it's inception and although I don't usually build along with the projects that The Guild is making, the enormous amount of information make it very well worth the money spent to become a Guild member. Please take the time to to click the affiliate link on the right side of my page and peruse his Guild site. If you don't know who Marc is or the online presence he has built, check out the free The WoodWhisperer offerings: The WoodTalk Online site for a really great talk radio webcast featuring Marc, Matt Vanderlist of Matt's Basement Workshop, the Podfather of Woodworking and Shannon Rogers - The Renaissance Woodworker. On Woodtalk Online you'll also find a new radio show featuring Marc and Matt reviewing woodworking DVDs and giving them a rating of 1 to 5 "grape sodas"; The WoodTalk Online Forum, which is the most friendly woodworking forum you will visit. Mean spirited or overly judgmental people simply aren't welcome; Last, but not least, is the Live Chat/Live Stream page where you can chat in real time with fellow woodworkers and usually get a glimpse into one of the many shops that stream live via Ustream, including mine. All these sites can be reached via the main The WoodWhisperer site.

Another addition is The Hand Tool School badge. The Hand Tool School is the brain child of Shannon Rogers, mentioned above. The premise behind the school is to capture the apprentice experience as best we can in this cyber age. You will learn how to use hand tools, which is an essential aspect of creating fine furniture. While I'm what is referred to as a hybrid woodworker, which means I make furniture with both power and hand tools, all the fine tuning and fit is done with hand tools. You simply can't set up any power tools to give you the fine fit and finish you can achieve with hand tools.

If you love woodworking as much as I do, are a beginner or even a well skilled woodworker, you have a more available knowledge base than ever before. Take advantage of that. I hope to see you around the community I love so much.

Modular Sharpening Station

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 04:27:00 +0000

YEAH!!! SPRING IS FINALLY HERE!!!

Spring brings mixed emotions. We had a very long winter and what has seemed to be a quite wet and extended spring has turned our very beige environment into a very green one. Sylvia's Garden that we planted last year with a bunch of trees and a perennial wildflower mix is vibrant! More than anything SUMMER IS ALMOST HERE!! Our summers here are great. The days are hot and the evenings are perfect for hanging out on the patio and taking evening swims. The flip side of that is I don't get into the shop nearly as much as I'd like, due to spring wake up and weekly maintenance chores.

Here and there, I've managed to get into the shop and my latest project has been to install my deep sink and small hot water tank.

This, of course, facilitated a great place to have a sharpening station.

To design this station, I took a few things into consideration. First, I wanted it to be modular to enable full access to the water tank for maintenance flushing and the sewer clean-out in case I ever need access to that. Second, I wanted this station to house all my sharpening arsenal, except the variable speed grinder, which will mount around the corner. Finally, I wanted a no mess solution to my water stone sharpening regimen.

The first thing I did was build the base,

then the cabinet to house my sharpening tools and supplies. The drawers come later.

Next up was the sharpening basin. A buddy had an off-cut piece of Corian he let me have. I was originally going to use it for the top of my upcoming router table, but I really liked the idea of using it here as it is impervious to water. The first thing I did was create a sub-base that I could more easily create the actual basin in. This was made 1/2" plywood for the bottom and 3/4" for the sides. For proper drainage I needed to create slope. To do this I split the bottom of the basin. So, I cut the plywood bottom and then created a deep kerf to allow it to bend. I also added a small strip of 1/8" plywood on the left and front side, then added the 3/4" sides. Now, I was ready to start cutting the Corian basin. The first piece to fit was the thin strip shown here.

Next I cut and fit the remaining pieces and glued them up. I used epoxy for a watertight seal and torqued the basin as much as I could without breaking it to allow the slope I wanted.

After the glue up I tested it for leaks and proper drainage.

I also cut an other piece of Corian to be the dam for the basin. That didn't quite work, as you can see in this shot. It was a slow leak, but I'm kinda OCD and it wasn't good enough.

Next up, stone holders. For cutting these little pieces I pulled out my crosscut sled. It was the only solution I could think of that I felt was a safe option for cutting these.

Then over to the basin to position and mark everything out for glue up.

I used a file to round over the edges of the blocks, so they were less prone to chip in use.

I used pure silicone sealant to adhere the blocks into place. I preferred this over epoxy to allow me to remove them in the future if I get new water stones and they don't quite fit.

When I test the basin earlier for leaks and drainage, I noticed surface tension was making the water curl back around the end of the drain and get the wood wet. The solution to this was gluing on a little off-cut piece I still had.

Before I said the dam I'd made of Corian wasn't quite cutting it. I scoured the shop and found an old foam rubber sanding block I never use and this worked perfectly.

Here is the final product and everything in it's place!

I know it's not pretty. It is, however, functional and it's just shop furniture. I think the only two nice pieces I will ever build for the shop are going to be my hand tool bench and my hand tool cabinet. Those two objects deserve a little more love and attention. The rest only needs to be utilitarian.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope this has been helpful.

Trestle Cradle - Fine Woodworking Photo Gallery

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 04:50:00 +0000

Trestle Craddle - Fine Woodworking Photo Gallery

The cradle was published in the August 2011 edition and is now on the online site as well. Gretchin and Joe are pretty happy to own something published and I'm pretty darned happy to of had my work among some brilliant woodworker's pieces.

Wrap it up and put a baby in it!

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 05:04:00 +0000

At the close of the last post, I'd gotten most of the way done. Just a few more steps and Gretchin's Cradle was ready for finish. The first step at this point was to finish up the trestle ends. After figuring out where the top of the trestle ends stopped, I took them to the Woodrat to plow a dado to house the caps. I rounded the tops with a cabinet maker's rasp and finished the shaping on my oscillating spindle sander.

Now came some more fitting to make the caps/locking mechanisms fit perfectly. I drilled the holes for the peg hinges and made my pegs, also on the Woodrat, out of some Canoe Birch I have.

After conferring with the great and wonderfully talented Village Carpenter, Kari Hultman, I decided to leave the pegs proud, somewhat echoing the box joints of the cradle. In the following photos, you see the pegs in one and the stretcher for the trestle. I cut in a very slight curve to keep the weight of the trestle light. It is also a through tenon and chamfered with a similar reveal as the box joints on the cradle.

After the initial dry fit, I cut the wedged tenons of the cradle to a respectable length and then glued everything up. The cradle itself was a bugger. I will do a more thorough run through of the glue up on future projects. It was extremely nerve racking. Although, I'd made 3 degree cauls and adhered cork to them and then double stick taped them to my parallel jaw clamps, not all went well. The bottom portion of the cradle was fine, but I found I had little for opposing force at the top of the cradle. I used Tite Bond III and luckily the open time was just enough for me to figure out a quick solution.

The bottom panel of the cradle is only glued in the center for about 3 inches and has a total of approximately 3/8" to room to move side to side.

All glued up and ready for finish.

The finish I used for Gretchin's Cradle was Sutherland Wells Polymerized Tung Oil. It was suggested to me by Nabil Abdo and I must say, it's a dream to work with. I simply flooded the surface with the first coat and fully wiped off all excess oil. My second coat was a little less liberal and the third and final coats were applied more like you would apply wax. It was sanded between coats with 320 grit sand paper to knock any dust nibs down.

Detail of the exposed tenon. As you can see it is slightly more proud of the surface than the box joints of the cradle. I would've made them the same exposure, but found I like this reveal more for the trestle.

I'm still debating whether I like or dislike the layout line left from the box joint set up. My favorite aspect of the piece is the cap/locking mechanism.

Here you can not only see how that works, but also that the decision to keep the hinge pins proud was a good one. (Thank you, Kari!) I do wish I'd not gone to the full depth with the forstner bit and used chisels to get the final depth. I'm very unhappy with the machine marks still in place. Oh well, live and learn, right?

The final product. It seems it is also already time to invest in some good photography equipment. A nicer backdrop is definitely in order.

I am very pleased with how well the crotch figure popped with the tung oil and it was well worth the sacrifice of all the board feet for this particular placement.

One more view and then....

young Zander in his new digs. In this photo, taken by Gretchin, Zander is only two month old and already fills 2/3rd's of the cradle.

Thank you for following this build. After tackling this as my first, I'm really looking forward to the next. But, that will have to wait just a bit, as I have a few finishing touches to make on the shop and Sylvia has decided the installation of a shower stall in the master bath is going to be a major remodel. What the heck, it'll give me something to do.
Again, I would like to express my gratitude to all the great friends I've made in the woodworking community for the encouragement and help in building my knowledge and skill base. Without you I would never have tackled this as my first project. And a extra shout out to my buddy, Marc Spagnuolo for creating the community where or through I've met the majority of those friends.
As always, please let me know what you think of this post. Ask questions, give critique, be involved. I appreciate it.

The Trestle Starts to Come Together

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 03:59:00 +0000

On my last post, we got got caught up to the previous post. Now that the legs were out of the glue forms and I'd managed to clean them up and bleed all over them. It was time to go back to a little designing. I needed to figure out how I was gonna get them to be functional as the trestle ends. Because of the curves in the bottom of the legs, I wanted a fairly smooth transition and ended up designing a Walnut gusset that would solidify the curve and add a good amount of strength. Then figure out how I was going to make and install it. What I did was simply lay the legs out on the rather crude drawing I'd made and took measurements. I chose where the on the legs the curve would start and end and played with my compass until I had the radius dialed in. I used a piece of plywood to make a template of the overall shape.

After using the bandsaw to cut out the basic shape, I used double stick tape to attach the cut out Walnut and proceeded to flush trim the pieces on my router table. OK!! STOP RIGHT THERE!!!! I was being stupid. Trying to shape a piece such as this using just a piece of plywood was asking for a flying projectile! What I should have done was make a sled to use on the router table. I will next time. This was a scary thing to do. If something is scary...it's not something you should be doing. Bad things can happen. Again, although I didn't use a sled with hold downs, I will next time. But, now I used a rabbeting bit to put a tongue on the curved sides and a dado along the top to house the panel I'd be making later. I settled on approximately a 5/8 inch for the tongue and dado (measurements are fuzzy because I was building mostly in relative dimensioning). Unfortunately, I never took a photo of the gussets by themselves. All the dadoes in the leg were done with a rabbeting plane and the gussets were fit with a rather large spokeshave. I fell in love with the spokeshave. I'm getting more!!

The fitting of the gussets was done by marking the high spot where the gusset shoulder hit the legs with a Pentel Sunburst Med Gel pen and shaving it off until the leg and gusset shoulder came together. Once I had the fit as close to perfect as I could, I could put them together and get the measurement for the Elm panels. This was the one element that actually pulls the legs and the trestle together. The curves somewhat do but, as I'll make clearer in a future post, they really don't because they aren't the same radii of the cradle curves. This is the first glimpse I get of what the Elm panel will look like.

Again, I don't have any photos of the panel itself. But, after the panel was cut and fit, it was time to start designing the top of the trestle and how I was to do the stretcher(s). Before doing the mortises on the cradle, I had sketched this to be the rocking/locking mechanism.

From this I drew all the shapes on the wood and cut it out on the bandsaw and faired it with the oscillating spindler sander.

Once I had the layout, it was time to fire up the Woodrat again and make the slots in the top of the legs to house the cap.

You can see the jig for doing this is just thrown together out of scraps. As long as I could hold the trestle in place, I could use this to get it to the perfect depth. I then moved on to the caps. I used a forstner bit on the drill press to hog out the majority of the material.

The rest was done with hand tools. At this point, I'm really finding the most enjoyable part of all this is the hand work. I can never see myself building anything without using power tools, but I do love the parts of the build that can best be done by hand.

Here are the finished caps.

Now it was just a matter of getting a good fit of the caps to the trestle legs. It was starting to look good to me.

After this fitting I was able to drill the holes for the hinge pins. In the next post I'll finish the cradle and get a finish on it.

Thanks for stopping by to follow this build. It was a pleasure, and I appreciate being able to share the experience. Please ask any question or comment on anything you may find interesting.

Whoa there, big guy!

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:11:00 +0000

It seems I've jumped too far forward. The last post was about the bent lamination for the trestle stand of Gretchin's Cradle. That wasn't started until after I'd gotten to the point of dry fitting the actual cradle itself.
I think in an earlier post I mentioned that the design was somewhat dictated by the material. I had the sides from a beautiful crotch Elm board

and the headboard and footboard were from another piece of very figured flame Elm.

The problem was that I was originally wanting the side of the cradle to be at 5 degrees and I couldn't get both the headboard and footboard out of the panel and still keep the 5 degrees. So, I had to go down to 3 degrees. It may not seem like it would be much, but I'm stubborn and once I see something in my minds eye, that's what I want to produce. I performed this operation on my Excalibur sliding table. It's a nice piece of equipment. Not as nice as having a true panel saw, but much more in my budget.

Luckily the final product didn't look as bad as I feared. After cutting the headboard and footboard from the panel, I used my Woodrat to make the box joints.

I was purposefully making them proud by about 1/8 inch to allow a crisp bevel to the ends of the protrusions. This is somewhat mimicking and tweaking the Green and Green style box joints.
Once the joints were cut and I finessed them to the fit I wanted I did my first dry fit.

I laid out the placement of the mortises for the rocker tenons. These were done as a wedged tenon, which will keep the joint from ever failing. In this photo you can see that the mortise is angled to allow a wedge to be inserted at a later time.

It just wouldn't be good to have the old nursery rhyme come true. Down would come cradle, baby and all. Gretchin would probably beat me up!

Well, that at least catches up to the end of the last post. The next post focuses on more hand work, which is what ultimately sets a nice piece from a standard build. Hand work allows you to dial in perfection, or as close as one can get.

Around the Bend

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 01:32:00 +0000

A few years ago, while attending the AWFS (Association of Woodworking and Furnishing Suppliers) in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to take a short seminar from Michael Fortune. Those few hours changed the way I look at design. I knew a lot of makers have done curvilinear pieces, but it always seemed too difficult for a novice. Although, the class was more specific to steam bending, Fortune did get into laminate bending as well. That information along with what I've gleaned from David Marks of DIY Woodworks and from Marc Spagnuolo of The Woodwhisperer, demystified the procedure enough that I felt I could incorporate the technique into Gretchin's Cradle build.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I sacrificed board feet for spectacular grain pattern. This left me with a few options, of which I chose laminate bending for the trestle stand of the cradle. In the previous cradle post, I show the basic form that I'd come up with as my destination. The process of getting there is actually quite simple, although there are certain, key steps that made my heart stop along the way.

The first step was to get the form made. This was a simple matter of transferring the lines of the sketch onto a clean white sheet of paper and have it be a clean decisive line/curve. For this I used compasses, a straight edge and a French curve. I knew the thickness was to be 1 1/8", so the next step was to use a compass to make another line that distance parallel with the first line. I then cut took those and came up with the size of material I need to make my first plywood template. The template was squared on the tablesaw then the curves cut on the bandsaw and faired. Next up, I screwed another piece down to the template and used a pattern bit in my router table to flush trim that to the template and so on, until I had the thickness I need for the form. Since I wanted to help the outcome be symmetrical, I was going to be gluing up the width of two legs at once and then sawing them in half after the glue dried. I applied self adhesive cork to the inside of each side of the form to protect the wood and wrapped the entire thing with packing tape to allow the form to release when I was done with the glue up. Blocks were added to the top to help keep the form in position during the glue up.

Because I'm fortunate enough to have a drum sander, my approach to making laminates varies from the norm. Normally, you should joint the wood, resaw, joint, resaw, etc. I find I don't have anymore waste just by jointing the wood and setting the cut wide enough to compensate for the amount of sanding that will need to be done, which is about 1/16". To get the thickness I was shooting for, I ended up with 9 laminates just under an 1/8" thick after sanding off the saw marks

After a couple dry runs, I was finally ready for the real glue up. I was lucky enough to have Al Navas of Sandal-Woods in my corner via instant messaging on Facebook. This is the part that has the possibility of making your heart stop. Per Marc Spagnuolo's suggestion I used DAP Weldwood Plastic Resin Glue, which is a urea formaldehyde product (respirator required). Using warm water and my wife's good mixing cups (they're mine now...oops), I mixed up a batch that I thought would cover my needs. I had the clamps all ready to go and started pouring the mixture onto the laminates and rolling them out with a stainless steel roller. Almost to the end of the first set, is when my heart stopped and I realized I didn't quite have enough glue mixed up. This stuff has a long open time, but that didn't seem to make me feel any better. So, I hurriedly mixed more and finished up. I place the entire pack of laminates into the form and started cranking things down.

Here you can see how much better the second round of glue ups went than the first.

Yeah!!! I had my first leg out and, although it was covered in what seemed to be a very hard plastic, it didn't look bad! I glued the next one up the following night and then spent about a week cleaning them up. I didn't have near the mess on my hands on the second glue up. But, that IS how we learn. I cleaned both glue ups with my carbide and regular scrapers and my Stanley No. 80 Cabinet scraper.

If you decide to use this glue, be mindful that it fractures much like glass and leaves very sharp edges. I was quite bloody by the time I was done.

I apologize for the extremely long post. I try to keep them rather short, but a couple guys from the Woodtalk Online forum have expressed interest in copying the project, so I'm being much more detailed in my descriptions than I would normally. Please feel free to ask questions or comment on anything you see here. Thanks for stopping by!

Don't Limit Yourself - You can DO IT!!

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 02:12:00 +0000

I'm currently experiencing my 15 minutes of the fabled Andy Warhol fame. My first fine furniture project is being featured in The WoodWhisperer Viewer Projects. The reason I'm writing now is to let all those of you who think you can't do amazing things out of the gate know that it's that thought that keeps it from happening. Yes, you have to tune your machines and hand tools. Yes, you need to study and practice. But, this is indeed my first furniture project. I have done construction related projects over the years, but that has only made me comfortable with most power tools. This project was night and day away from a construction project. The things I had on my side were a GREAT support system that consists of people like Marc Spagnuolo, my wife Sylvia, my good friends, Neil Lamens, Kari Hultman, Al Navas the many folks in The WoodWhisper Live/Chatroom and most of all a positive attitude that enables me to tackle anything without first telling myself I can't do it. There are many other people who have encouraged me and helped me figure out how to do something, but the point is to surround yourself with people who want to see you succeed. YOU can do it. Stop saying negative things to yourself. If you have people around you who don't believe in you, avoid them! It's really that easy. If you are going to accomplish any of your dreams, you have to first and foremost believe you can.

Getting it Down on Paper.

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 00:51:00 +0000

At the close of the last post, I'd made some choices in figure placement that greatly lessened the amount of Birch I had left for the Gretchin's Cradle. Luckily, one of the few things I like to shop for is wood. I can spend hours milling through the selections at Jensen's Hardwoods. Like I mentioned before, it's the happiest place on the earth..for me. Several months before I had gone up with several hundred dollars burning a hole in my pocket and picked up some what I can only describe as leopard spotted Claro Walnut,

a book-matched set of crotch figured Elm,

a beautiful piece of Cherry

and some nice straight grain Black Walnut. Like many of my shopping adventures, I shopped until I ran out of cash in pocket. None of these boards was purchased with any particular use in mind. They're just nice boards.

When thinking about how to move forward on Gretchin's Cradle, I thought that if I'm going to get into a different wood anyway, I'm going to go for contrast. One option would've been the Cherry, as it darkens with exposure to the sun, but not quite the contrast I was looking for and I'd already claimed that for one of my "ongoing" projects, the Guild Shaker Table Build (more on that at a later date). The prominent figure in the crotch and flame Birch would clash against leopard Claro. Even though my wife has to pick out my clothes, I DO know stripes don't go with spots. At least I don't think they do. Garanimals anyone? I have a "grown up" version. So, the straight grained Black Walnut had to step up. Since it was straight grained, I thought I would try my hand at bent wood lamination. It's a technique I had seen many time and figured, what the heck, it can't be too hard.

The first thing was to come up with a design. After a whole lot of sketching, I had this on paper.

As I have yet to learn SketchUp, I'm still doing thing the "old school" way. The good thing is I actually love to sketch. This sketch shows that you don't have to be an artist to sketch designs. This part of the process probably took me the majority of my evenings for a week and by the following weekend, I was ready to start figuring out how to do my first bentwood lamination. I'll cover that in the next installment as well as how I have my band saw set up for resawing. Enjoy the week!! I hope you get lots of shop time!

Sacrifices - Figure Placement Dictates Design, or The Beginning of an Organic Design. Gretchin's Cradle - Part Two

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 22:57:00 +0000

As I mentioned in the last post on Gretchin's Cradle, this ended up being more of an "organic design process". There is probably an actual design term for how this design came about, but since I don't have any formal design training, I'll stick with "organic". The basic idea is that I let opportunities and problems guide my decisions through out the entire design process.

In designing a project, one aspect that is often overlooked is the specific use and highlighting of the grain or figure in a board. Many times a design is decided upon and, although the boards are chosen for their general color or characteristics, when its time to cut you are just trying to get the most efficiency or parts out of that lumber. This is where I've seen good pieces of furniture separated from great pieces of furniture. Sometimes, you just have to make the sacrifice.

When I first purchased the lumber for this project, the basic plan was very similar to Tim Clark's cradle. I had used perspective drawing in combination with a print of his cradle to get my starting dimensions. I wasn't planning a full set of drawings, only a few basic dimensions. There are numerous articles on how to cull building plans by using perspective design along with photographs to find all the pertinent dimensions of a full set of drawings. I can revisit this in the future if you are interested.

I planned on the entire build from the two Birch boards I had purchased. The "problem/opportunity" I encountered was that, by putting the crotch grain in the most pleasing orientation and position, I would be cutting from the center of the board and no longer be able to get the trestle ends from this piece of Birch.

This photo shows how the crotch grain dictated the fall on the sides of the head of the cradle and the movement of grain the subsequent rise toward the foot. The bottom of the cradle sides were taken from a piece further down the same board.

Now that I knew I wasn't getting the entire build out of these two boards, I had some decisions to make. In the next several installments of the Gretchin's Cradle build, we'll get into some of my options and where those took me and the build.

Enjoy the week!!

Marketing Genius - An Energy Efficiency Post

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 01:09:00 +0000

Two weeks ago, my co-hort at work attended an energy efficiency marketing conference and came back with this among the many other great tidbits. The link is to Heatballs!! That's right folks...HEAT BALLS!!! You know you want 'em, you know you need 'em. Coming up in 2012 incandescent light bulbs over 60 watts will no longer be available for sale. The reason for the change is to put a limit on how inefficient a light bulb (lamp) can be. This is also the death of the fat tube T12 fluorescent lamps.

This company and the genius behind it decided to see how they could get around the new efficacy rules and I believe they will succeed. Hey, if the Eden Pure, which is a light bulb in a box can sell for hundreds of dollars, why not Heat Balls!?! They are, after all, 95% efficient. The 5% being lost in light!!

Timberwerks Studio: A Year In The Life Of:

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 02:21:00 +0000

Timberwerks Studio: A Year In The Life Of:: "For 2011 I'd like to invite you all in for a glimpse of what a year in the life of a furniture maker is really like....

This is a rare opportunity! Dale Osowski (DJO Furniture Maker) creates some beautiful pieces. That he is willing to share his experience and those around him with us, is a treat! Check out his post and his work.

The Happiest Place On Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 19:47:00 +0000

No, it's not Disneyland, it's my lumber supplier. My wife, Sylvia, accompanied me on a recent road trip to Jensen Hardwoods in Walla Walla, WA. Jensen Hardwoods is about 45 minutes away in one of my favorite little towns in Eastern Washington. Walla Walla is the "new" wine country, at least that's what my wife and best friend tell me. I'm partial to good beer.

On this particular trip, we were shopping for a new cradle I was building for my best friend since 6th grade and his wife's new baby. As of this post, the baby should be here any day!!! I can't wait to meet him. Sadly, they are choosing not to name him after me. Go figure!

The name of this project is Gretchin's Cradle, after the beautiful woman for which it was built. To start the design process, I emailed Gretchin about 12 different images of cradles from the internet, to get a feel for what she would like. She settled on this image, a cradle built by Timothy Clark. Once we had that settled, I contacted Tim to make sure he was OK with me using his design as the start for mine. This is a subject that is discussed quite a bit in the woodworking forums and magazines. I believe strongly that original designers should be credited even if they are merely the main source of inspiration for a piece. I do understand however that many designs are unknowingly influenced and in that instance, no harm, no foul. But, if you are aware of specific influences, definitely give credit where it's due.

The following are some shots of the boards early on in the design and build.

One aspect of this design which was quite fun, was that it was a constantly changing design. I think of it as organic designing. You start with an idea of where you think you'd like to go and tweak things along the way. In the coming posts, I'll try to convey that concept in a bit more detail.

Woodworkers Fighting Cancer - Shaker Table Build Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:09:00 +0000

A few issues have come up during the rough dimensioning that have steered my design in a new direction. Originally, I planned to have the entire table made of the Cherry board from the first post, with a small Mahogany band running up the outside of all the legs and terminating to the Mahogany breadboard ends for the top. Either because I'm fairly new to this or just an oversight (probably both), I found I didn't have enough Cherry to also do the top.

I also found one of my legs had a check running much higher than I originally anticipated. Due to these challenges, I decided to rethink my approach. During Wednesday night's The Woodwhisper Guild meeting, I was able to bounce the idea off of Shannon Rogers of The Renaissance Woodworker, Rob Bois from The Bois Shop and Nabil, who is a prolific woodworker from The Woodwhisperer Chatroom. Thanks to their advice and encouragement, I've decided to go with this approach: From the floor up; Mahogany feet will be attached to the bottom of the Cherry legs to reach the length the legs need to be; I will still be banding the outside of all the legs up to the top of the piece; The top will now be veneered with the Canoe Birch on the bottom, a "breadboard" border of Mahogany and a "sunburst" cut from a piece of Osage I recently picked up at Jensen Hardwoods in Walla Walla, WA for the top.

Woodworkers Fighting Cancer - Shaker Table Build

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:08:00 +0000

I thought this would be a good time to start blogging again. Marc Spagnuolo of The Woodwhisperer recently challenged all of his TWW Guild members to join in a community build to raise money for cancer. Marc himself is donating $5 for every member that completes this month's build and he has also got several companies on board. In the short time that he has had a donation button on his podcast sight, he has raised over $1670 in cash.

While I was not really ready to start building anything and still getting the shop "just so", I thought this was a good reason to get off the pot, as it were. So, this will be my actual first piece of "fine" (hopefully) furniture. It's gonna be great that so many are building along. If I, or any of my fellow guild members get stuck, we all have each other for support. It is really a great community Marc and his wife Nicole have built.

About a month ago I picked up several pieces of very nice lumber at Jensen's Hardwoods in Walla Walla, WA. This is the piece I'm going to use for the build. I'm heading to Portland, OR mid-March and will pick up some mahogany for accents.

Wish me luck!! I certainly hope I don't just end up butchering this beautiful piece of cherry!!

Where did he go?

noreply@blogger.com (Vic Hubbard) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:07:00 +0000

Hey everyone,

I thought it's about time I explain why the posts have fallen completely off. As you know, I had and still have a large list of things to accomplish here at "the ranch". In addition to that, because of my love for energy efficiency and the environment, I'm part of a group that is in the process of starting a non-profit education network. My job on the board is Secretary and a good portion of my free time is being spent disseminating information to the board and our members as we grow our network. By the way, the name of the network is the Mid Columbia Energy and Environmental Network (MCEEN). I'm thinking this endeavor is going to take the majority of my energies for the next several months, at least. We have a very affluent team to get the organization started. We plan on the network to be a "go to" place for information on all energy and environmental education, both residential and non-residential. Our event planner, Tracy Roberts who owns Tri-City Events, is helping put together a website, forum and blog for MCEEN. When it is up and running, be sure to check it out. It should prove to be a great resource for information.