Making the Legs - Part 1

I decided to start with the legs on my Mission style table. In my last posting, I showed the rough stock. The next step was to joint and plane it to the correct thickness, 3/4 inch or less. The process is simple in concept. You put the jointed face down on the planer bed and run the board through the planer, taking off a little wood with each pass. I took 1/4 turn on the planer handle each pass, which amounted to about 1/32 inch each time. But the rough boards were 1-1/4 inch or more thick to begin with and there were 14 boards. What that meant was a lot of passes in order to get the lumber correctly thicknessed. All told, it required about two hours to finish the job.

The biggest concerns were to avoid tearout and to minimize snipe. The reason I took such thin cuts (1/32 inch) was to hold tearout to a minimum. Snipe is another matter. I set up a roller stand to supplement the small outfeed table on the planer. While this took care of most of the problem, I still grasped each board as it emerged from the planer to hold it as level as possible. This nearly eliminated snipe on all boards.

It is fortunate that I planed a number of extra pieces. Some will be used for jigs, some for test pieces during setup of the router bit and some for extras to take care of any mistakes that occur. In addition, though, I found hidden knots and other anomalies in some of the boards that only emerged as they were planed. Thus, some of the extras will go to replace boards that now appear to be unusable as leg stock.

A word about my planer, shown in the photo. It is the entry level Sears Craftsman planer, a 12-1/2 inch planer with only two blades. Although I will probably replace it sometime, it does a very creditable job and I regard it as a good purchase when I was setting up my shop last year. I cannot see any defects in the quality of the planing it produces and the resulting surfaces are smooth, which is all I can ask of it.

Now that the planing is done, I will select which boards to use for leg stock and which for jigs, etc., and rip them to width. Then I'll be ready to make the jigs I need and to rout the edges of the leg stock, prior to gluing up.

Norm

Starting a New Project

Recently, I've started a new project--a Mission style table to sit beside my leather armchair. I've spent the last several weeks learning Google SketchUp, at least enough to be able to draw up a couple different designs to get the dimensions right. That wasn't easy; SketchUp has a steep learning curve. But once I got through it, I found it makes design a lot easier and more accurate. Probably, it is faster too.

Awhile back, I bought a supply of quartersawn white oak to use for the table. Now I am ready to start cutting and dimensioning the lumber into actual parts. The photo shows the stock that will make up the legs. Clearly, this 4/4 stock is not thick enough for the legs, which will be 1-1/2 inches square. So instead of cutting four legs from thicker stock, I'll be cutting 16 pieces to make up four faces for each leg. These pieces will be routed on each end using a lock miter bit so that when assembled four pieces will lock together into a single leg. The advantage of doing this is that the legs will also show quartersawn oak on all faces, making them much more attractive than if I had used a single board for each leg.

I've already jointed the boards in the photo. Next step is to plane them to 3/4 inches thick and make the two jigs I'll need to rout the edges. I'll plane that wood at the same time so the boards in the jig are identical in thickness to the leg pieces. I hope to have the planing done by the end of the week.

I will chronicle this project, the first of my own design, step by step in this space.

Norm

Reproduction 1820s Chairs

Yesterday, David Beach of Whispering Woodworks delivered three chairs he reproduced for us. The original, which is in my wife Betsy's possession, is one of a set of 12 dining room chairs that, along with a dining table, were crafted by a slave artisan in King and Queen County, Virginia, possibly as early as 1820. The whereabouts of the table and the other chairs is not known. They were dispersed among various family members generations ago and if they still exist are no doubt widely scattered.

The reproduction chairs, as is the case of the original, were handcrafted from curly or tiger maple. The finish of the original is not entirely certain since the existing example has been refinished, but the reproductions are probably close in appearance. The maple was treated with two coats of aniline dye to deepen the color and bring out the figure in the wood. This was followed by seven coats of varnish wiped on to create a solid yet low sheen finish.

The photos show the reproduction chairs, which will be given to my wife Betsy's children and her other family members.

Norm

Learning the Secrets of Traditional Design

I recently ordered a DVD on furniture design, which came in yesterday's mail. It's Unlocking the Secrets of Traditional Design, produced by Lie-Nielsen Toolworks and featuring George Walker. Of course I couldn't wait to watch it.

The hour-long production is divided into three parts. The first segment emphasizes the importance of learning to see proportions and design elements in furniture and architecture. Though beautiful and interesting, this is merely an introduction to the real meat of the program, which comes in the second and third parts.

The second part, which addresses the use of proportions in design, makes up the gist of the presentation. The key message I took from it is that most traditional design, in both furniture and architecture, makes use of simple, whole-number ratios of one design element to another. Using a drawing of a 18th Century Philadelphia chest as an example, Walker breaks down the design into a series of squares and rectangles and then shows how the elements of the chest are simple proportions of each other. Through the use of highly effective communication aids, he illustrates how the proportions can be used to establish symmetry, contrast and punctuation in designed pieces.

Armed with an understanding of how simple proportions can be employed in design, Walker turns in the third segment to application of these princples to furniture design . He draws plans for a simple chest, half of it in traditional form, the other half contemporary, with both halves based on the same design elements. As he does so, he shows how to create simple tools to help in applying various proportions to drawings of furniture designs.

For anyone interested in learning fundamentals of good furniture design, this DVD is well worth the $25 purchase price. It is professionally produced and Walker communicates in an articulate and easy-to-follow manner. The program will find immediate application in my own work developing the proportions for the mission-style table I am preparing to build. I highly recommend this DVD.

Norm

A Trip to the Lumber Yard

Yesterday, I took a trip to Herbine Hardwoods in Lucketts, Virginia, just a few miles north of Leesburg and not far from the Potomac River that separates Virginia from Maryland. My goal was to lay in a supply of 4/4 quartersawn white oak for a mission-style table I am preparing to build. I came with a cut list calling for 19 six-foot boards. But Rick, the owner-operator, had only boards in eight and ten-foot lengths so I refigured on the spot. I came away with 13 planks, plus a wide, planed 8-foot poplar board for the table innards. The total was 53 board feet of oak, eight of poplar. The load, once hoisted on top of my Subaru, seemed like a lot of wood for one small table. Perhaps it is. If so, I will have some left over for another project later down the line.

Next on my list is to get the wood into the basement and sticker it (separate the boards with slips of wood to help it acclimate to my basement's humidity level). Then, while I'm waiting for it to acclimate, I will develop detailed drawings of the table which will enable me to select and cut the boards to rough length before jointing and planing. And that means taking the time to learn more about Sketchup, the free computer-aided design (CAD) program provided by Google. Sketchup has the potential to eliminate some of the tedium of making drawings by hand and produce scale plans that can be used in actual construction. Learning to use it is one of my goals for the year.

More on the table later as I progress in building it.

Norm

Dust Collection

One of my long-term goals has been to install dust collection in my woodshop. I bought a Delta 1-1/2 hp. dust collector from my brother-in-law in North Carolina last November. But he wasn't able to deliver it to me until March. Since then, it has sat in a corner of my basement waiting to be connected.

It wasn't idled for lack of need. As the photo shows, my machines were turning out sawdust piles that were making it hard to move around safely. It also shows some of the tubing I acquired to help solve the problem.

Over the last few weeks, with the help of a friend, I installed a 4 inch main line along one wall of the shop that runs behind my larger machines. Then I installed flexible tubing to connect each machine to the main line. I finished making the connections this morning and tested the system. It works great and will help keep my shop clear of sawdust.

Some work still remains. The smaller tools--router, spindle and belt sanders and drill press--will be connected later via 2-1/2 inch hose that will reach down from a 4 inch line strung overhead. But these machines, with the exception of the router, don't generate as much sawdust and so I feel able to handle them separately. Still, I'll try to get it done in the next couple of weeks, once I get the needed supplies.

Norm

A Successful Show

Friday and Saturday, I participated in a Lie-Nielsen demonstration of their outstanding hand tools held at Exotic Lumber in Gaithersburg, Maryland. I was there to help take orders, for which I was paid in credits toward Lie-Nielsen tools. I had a blast! I had never done retailing before and I found that I liked the interaction with the customers, chatting about the tools (about which I learned a lot during the show) and about woodworking in general. All told, I was there and on my feet 10 hours and never even thought of getting tired! I estimate that I sold somewhere in the vicinity of $10,000 worth of tools during the two days, my two biggest orders being $1,340 and $1,175.

I also made some purchases. My first was not from Lie-Nielsen but from Exotic Lumber, whose space we were using. They have an amazing array of special lumbers from around the world, especially Africa. Though it is a long drive for me, it will be a good place to go for special needs in the future. I bought a nice zebrawood board with straight and pronounced grain that I think will make a pretty box. I also bought a burnisher for my card scraper from Czech Edge Hand Tools; it has a beautiful kingwood handle, but what I really liked about it was the size and feel of the handle, which was better, in my opinion, than the Lie-Nielsen version.

At the end of the show, I made a few purchases from Lie-Nielsen. The major items were a low-angle adjustable mouth block plane, which was paid for by my earnings, and a 15 ppi (points per inch) dovetail saw. Lie-Nielsen has offers two dovetail saws, the one I bought and a progressive pitch model, with teeth that run from 16 ppi to 9 ppi. I tried them both on a piece of cherry and much preferred the 15 ppi model; the progressive pitch model was actually harder to start and tended to slip out of position on the first stroke. The photo shows my new acquisitions.

Norm