Hand Planes

It has been a while since my last post. Life has been interesting the last few years and I've had very little time for woodworking or the money for that matter. It's an expensive hobby. However it is one that I love so I try and do little bits here and there. The latest project I completed was a set of Hand Planes. In a recent issue of
Wood Magazine they had an article on making your own hand plane. I have wanted to do one of these for a LONG time and really enjoy making my own tools and jigs etc. I'm finding the jig side of things is going to be very helpful in building guitars. Anyway. I thought I would share my hand planes with you. Hope you enjoy. Oh and you should see a new logo on the blog now. I like it much better.

We start by gluing up the blank for the hand plane. It's roughly 2"x8"

All the parts next to each other

Cut the bed out for the blade. That center triangle later becomes the wedge.

Gluing all the parts together.

Glued up and ready to cut the wedge.

Bottom of the plane with the throat opened

Test fitting everything

The Wedge is now cut out.

After everything was shaped and tuned

The woods are Spalted Maple, Sapele, Walnut and some oak veneer in between

Here is the two that I have built so far.  The one in Front is Curly Maple Sapele and Oak.

Both planes work beautifully and I couldn't be happier

--Grover

Jelly Cupboard to Pie Safe. A Family Affair.

Hey Guys/Gals….  Sorry I haven’t been posting much this summer with the heat, the day job and trying to spend as much time with my son as possible this summer it’s been a little lacking in the woodworking and blogging department.  I will be back at it more when the weather starts to cool off.  In the meantime my Dad built an amazing Pie Safe for my sister and did a write up/story on it and I wanted to publish it for him.  I hope you like it.  I have a feeling I will be having him guest blog for me more so we can bring you additional content over the months. 

--Grover

 

It’s funny how things sometimes happen. A couple months ago, Grover decided he was going to build a Jelly Cupboard (Grover is my son). Well about that time, my daughter, who works for a public library, decided she would like to have a pie safe. I thought that would be a good project, so I told her to find the plan she liked and I would give it a try. So a few days later she brought home from the library a New Yankee Workshop plan book written by Norm Abrams. I looked at the plan and thought, this could be more than I could handle. Dado’s, biscuit joinery, and so on, seemed a little much.

Well, Grover started building the jelly cupboard. We discussed the pie safe, and before I could say, “Table saw dado blade” three times, he had ordered the plan from the New Yankee Workshop, and had bought a great set of Freud dado blades. Next thing I knew I was being instructed on the use of a dado blade setup and Kreg pocket hole jig. He handed me a set of plans and a video on how to build the pie safe and said “No excuses, build it.”

Grover patiently explained to his “old dad” that it would be easy. Since he was building the jelly cupboard, it was the perfect time to explain the similarities in the two projects. Dado’s, pocket hole joints, and door construction. So, I brought the plans, video, and dado blade back to my shop. There they set for a couple of weeks, until my daughter asked “How’s the pie safe coming? Uh, Uh, well I gotta get the wood, then I can get started. Next thing I knew, we were at the home improvement store, with cut list in hand. Loaded the truck with the need lumber and back to the shop we go. A few days later, I made the first cut, then the second. “Hey this ain’t so bad.” Guess Grover, was right, this is easy. Then it happened. There’s and old saying, measure twice and cut once. Well, I read the other day a saying that more fits my situation. “Measure twice, cut once, scream loudly, reach for another board.” But I guess that’s why you buy a few extra boards.

Woodworking is suppose to be a learning experience. Anyway, since this is turning into a family project, my daughter, had at this point, seen the progress and said she would like to help. She wanted to punch the tin that would go in the doors. No problem, first find the pattern you want, second find a supplier for the tin, third order it, and fourth build the jig that will be needed to hold the tin so it can be punched. Well, she got the pattern, found a supplier for the tin, and even ordered it. I didn’t really think she would build the holding jig for the tin,   so since it was only a 20 minute project, I made the jig. I told her 3 out of 4 wasn’t bad. That’s when she informed me she got three out of three, said she never intended to build a jig. “Would you be interested in punching the 6 panels of tin that will be needed to complete the project.” She said “sure” and started on the first one. Well, you know a big hammer and a punch can really work on the wrists. So the next day after completing one panel, her wrist were so sore, I like a good dad said, “Hey, that’s gotta be rough on your arms, let me do the next one. Ooops, before the day way done, I had finished the next 5.

 

 Well, all during this time, I would go to my son’s shop and and get a few hints, watching the progress on his jelly cupboard. I even liked the Kreg Pocket Hole Jig so much I bought one. The plan called for biscuit joinery, but the pocket holes seemed to be much simpler. In hind sight, either would have been simple. Grover also taught me how to use a biscuit joiner. It’s very humbling to have your son teach you, after a lifetime of teaching him. But he made me feel better about the situation, when he said my four year old grandson (Grover Jr.) came in the shop a few days before and corrected him on a woodworking project he was working on. Now that’s humbling. So the pie safe started to take shape. I ordered a small plaque that said “Happy Birthday” and wood burned an inscription on the bottom of one of the drawers. Anyway attached are some of the pictures of the pie safe progress and also a finished picture sitting in the house. Hope it will inspire many of you to give something like this a try.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Happy Woodworking”

Grover’s Dad.

 

Technorati Tags: Pie Safe,Woodworking,Kreg Jig,Pierced Tin

A little bit of woodworking a little bit of home repair and One heck of a view

This past weekend I had the opportunity to do some work for a friend.  This friend has a house on a lake that needed some repair work done to a couple of exterior doors.  After many years of weather some of the wood finally started rotting. 

First of all this was my view at 7:30am Saturday morning……

 

 

 

 

 

I have to tell you it doesn’t get much better than this.  I have always been a lake guy even though I have never spent a ton of time on them and I love boats, so this view pretty much made my day.  I had to keep reminding myself that I am there to work not watch the boats go by.  So anyway…  To the work part of this…..

Take a look at the shots of the rot --

This is one of the doors. This one was the difficult one.  The one that scared me, the one that had me thinking for a few minutes what the heck did I get myself into, however after stepping back cooler heads prevailed. 

 

 

 

 

 

This one looks pretty bad but it was actually really easy to fix, so lets start here.

This is on a single open French door so this is the bulkhead between the door that opens and the static window/door.  The first thing we did was figure out how to separate the rotted board from the rest of the door or if we would have to build a patch.  We were able to find the seam and start to separate the bulkhead.

 

 

 

 

A little prying and she came right off.  You have to make sure not to pry to hard and damage the other side of the door.   Just take your time and go slowly.

 

 

 

 

 

I trimmed a board that was the same width of the bulkhead.  I just used a miter saw to cut it to size.

I attached the board using some finish nails.  I set the nails just below the surface and filled them with some caulk.  Make sure to use an exterior caulk.  One the board was attached I also ran a bead of caulk down the inside edge where the wood meets the door to seal any gaps, I did the same where the board meets the other part of the bulkhead.  One area that you want to make sure you get some caulk into is at the location of the original rot, make sure you get plenty of caulk at the bottom of the board between the board and the metal transition plate.  That way if there is ever any standing water it keeps the water from soaking into the wood as much as possible.

This is how that door turned out.  I painted the entire door frame and doors, in addition to the new wood that was installed.

 

 

 

 

 

Now onto the scary door…..

So you saw the rot from above.  I made some assumptions about the construction of the door that turned out not to be totally correct. 

*******  If my friend is reading this post please just skip this section.  This totally isn’t your house…   *************

  Once I started the demolition of the rotted area it became apparent that the door was not built as we thought.  Instead of being multiple pieces the door was a single piece or it was glued together so well that we would have destroyed the entire door trying to go the original route of removing the rotted piece.  Instead of being able to just pry the piece off like the other door I ended up having to cut this section out.  There was more rotted wood than what you could see with the eye so I cut a little bigger than the rotted wood so to make sure there was no bad wood left. 

To cut this section out I used a great new tool from Dremel tools, called the Dremel Trio this was a super handy little tool. 

From this point I started rebuilding the frame.  I used several pieces of wood to build up the thickness we needed to fill the gap.

Once I had the right thickness I was able to start test fitting the piece in the hole and fine tuning everything.

Here is what the section looked like after I got the piece built up, at this point I caulked the heck out of everything to make sure it was sealed up tightly.

 

 

 

 

 

After Painting caulking and painting some more here is what the door looks like now. What rotted wood and hole are you talking about.  I don’t remember any rotted wood or a large gaping hole in the door. 

 

 

 

 

 

So here is the whole area all cleaned up and doors repaired and repainted.  I think it turned out pretty well. 

I know it looked scary at first but keep in mind there are very few things that cannot be fixed and usually they are pretty simple once you step back and take a look and think things through. 

Have a Great Day!

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: wood working,home improvement,DIY,Home repair,paint.

Jelly Cupboard Build Update

Now that I have had some time in the shop I started working on the Jelly Cupboard Build again.  I need to get that out of the shop so I can get reorganized and cleaned up to start the WIWW nightstand/beach house nightstand. 

I thought I would post a few pics of that I was able to get done tonight. 

This is part of the door frame.  It is constructed with a half lap joint.  There are a couple of ways to accomplish this joint.  There are two ways specifically to accomplish this on a table saw (Well Two ways that I know of I am sure there other ways) one is to use a Dado Set which I have loaned out currently, the second and the way that I accomplished this is to use your regular blade and nibble away that the wood. 

Essentially I like to figure out the width of my cut set my fence that width and make my first cut.  Now if you do this make sure you use your miter gauge with a sacrificial fence, this does a couple of things.  It provides support to the back of the wood as well as giving you some additional support on the board you are cutting.  I make my first cut with the wood against the fence just touching not real tight on the fence you don’t want to cause a bind or have it kick on you.  Now with the first cut made I move the board just a hair to the left to let the blade nibble away at the next piece and then rinse and repeat until I get to the last cut.  You will need to do some clean up. 

If you look at the board you probably missed some pieces if they are large pieces you can line them up with the blade and cut them out.  If they are just fragments of wood hanging there your best bet is a piece of sand paper a 1/4 sheet sander or even a block plane.  I opted for the block plane because I have geeked out on using hand tools as much as I can lately.  I guess you could use a chisel as well. 

Once you have nibbled away at both the boards you will have a joint that looks similar to the one seen here.  Now you can see why it’s called a half lap joint.  This is a pretty neat Joint and I can see using this in future projects.

As you can see in the previous picture I also drilled a couple of holes for dowels.  They are supposed to help reinforce the joint.  With modern glue I don’t really think there is a need for reinforcement however from a cosmetic aspect they fit well with this piece. 

 

Here is a quick shot of the body of the cupboard.  I had some time to paint part of the inside.  I need to finish that up.  Obviously the inside will be white and the outside is going to be a grayish/green color.  Should be interesting.  I am doing it all with milk paint.  I will do a post on that at some point as it is somewhat different than regular paint. 

At this point I need to finish up the door frame and cut the hinge mortise and get everything mounted.  Mrs. Grover will be doing the punched tin for the door.  I’m hoping i can get her setup this weekend and get that knocked out. 

 

 

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: woodworking,hand tools,jelly cupboard,half lap joint,table saw,block plane

Changed the look a little

So tonight I decided to change the look of the site a little bit.  I can’t decide if I like it or not.  Give me some feed back in the comments or shoot me an email to let me know what you think and what you would change.

Have a Great Day!

Restoring and Refinishing a Five Drawer Dresser PT. 1

My wife and I inherited this five drawer dresser from her grandparents.  It’s a great old dresser.  The current finish has about four or five coats of paint on top of stain.  You ask how I know that it has stain under all those layers of paint, I know because I took a belt sander to the top when we first got it to the house.  I quickly realized what I already knew you don’t take a sander to a restoration project that has paint all over and OLD paint at that.  Not only did I have a ton of dust, it was one of the worst smells.  A combination of a musty sock drawer and that funk you get after about an hour on the treadmill. 

 

Here is what I was able to do with the power sander before the belt gummed up from all the paint and heat.  I discovered there was some great looking wood under there.  I honestly had no idea what I would find.  You can see in this picture that there is some stain underneath all that paint. 

Formby’s Paint and Poly Remover to the Rescue

I went to Lowes and got some Formby’s Paint and Poly Remover.  This stuff works great.  I really didn’t expect it to work as well as it did.  You paint it on thick to your surface and wait about 20 – 30 minutes.  After that you take a scraper(just a typical plastic spackle blade) and scrape the gunk off.

This is after the first coat and scraping.  I was shocked at how well it took it off in the first pass.  There were some stubborn spots so I reapplied the paint remover on the troublesome areas.  After another 25 minutes I scraped the rest of it off.  There were only a few spots so I just sanded those spots off.  My wife joined in the fun and games and helped with the side of the dresser.  After a couple of coats and a little bit of sanding we have an almost bare dresser side.

There is some wood missing on the bottom foot.  I am going to spend some time figuring out what I want to do with this.  I believe the wood is oak so I could get some oak and make a filler for it.  I might also just leave it as is.  The dresser does rake side to side when you push it.  I will go over how I resolve this in a future post.

 

 

 

 

We went back and forth deciding if we wanted to repaint it or not.  You may wonder why I would strip it if I was going to repaint it.  Two reasons 1) I really wanted to see what kind of wood was hiding under all that paint. 2) I’m not sure what kind of paint is on the dresser.  It might be lead based as old as it is but I am not positive and even though my shop helper doesn’t go around biting the furniture I would rather pull it all off and redo it, plus I have a better base to paint it.  If we decided to paint it, which is totally not what we decided to do.  We are going to stain it.  Out of curiosity I threw a little Cabot Ebony stain.  You can see that in the picture above.  I gotta tell you we both think it is going to look

great.  A few coats of stain to get a nice dark color on it and I think it is going to be great.  I hope to get this finished over the next couple of weeks.  Check back to see the finial restoration and further posts on shoring this thing up. 

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: stain,dresser,refinish,refurbish,formby's,paint,paint remover,woodworking