Buying Curly Cherry

Jeff Fleisher and I made a trip the other day to Willow Run lumber yard in Harrisonburg, VA, in the Shenandoah Valley. He was looking at some highly figured walnut boards as a possibility for the Winchester desk he will be making in the class we are taking. I wanted to look at curly cherry. Jeff drove us from his place in New Market in his bright yellow pickup truck with the license plate BMBL BEE. Willow Run is just a half hour from his place.

The walnut boards Jeff was looking at were matched, cut from the same log, and had a beautiful figure to them. But Jeff isn't certain yet whether he is going to use solid wood or veneer his desk. He said there is some really pretty veneer available and he might use that.

I pawed my way through a large bin of curly cherry and after that another pallet of it. There was a lot to look at, mostly 8-10 foot boards. I pulled out a dozen and took them for the outside of the case. Some of the boards are shown in the picture. Only one was what I would call spectacular and I could not find a matched set to use for the four drawers, which I would like to have the same pattern to them. I'm going to look elsewhere for four boards cut successively from the same log and that have a special curly figure to them.

When we got back to Jeff's place, I tied the load to the top of my Subaru and away I went up I-81 to I-66 and back home. The boards rode well.

When I got home, I put them inside on a shelf I had cleared, stickering them between small lengths of thin board to allow them to acclimate to the humidity level in my basement shop. In a couple of weeks, I'll begin crosscutting them to rough length after marking them up for the parts they will make up. I'll talk more about that process as I get into it.

For the rest of the cherry, I may have to make a trip into Pennsylvania. There are some good lumber companies there that have Pennsylvania cherry I may be able to use for the drawer fronts and slant front and writing surface of the desk.

More later.

Norm

Plane Talk

I was once quoted, and not all that long ago either, as saying that I didn't think I'd have much need for planes in my woodshop. I expected to do the vast majority of my work with machines. While my love of machines has not diminished and I intend to use them for productivity, the possibility of enjoying the older methods of woodworking has been growing in me. I'll need to learn the proper use of chisels to hand cut dovetails for the Winchester desk I'll be building. That much I expected. But now I find myself fascinated by handplanes.

I think my burgeoning love affair with planes began when I picked up Chris Schwarz's Handplane Essentials. It's a wonderful collection of essays on various aspects of the choice and use of planes. Since then I've gotten Garrett Hack's older volume The Handplane Book and I'm working my way through it from front to back.

But anticipating work to come, I've also started to collect some planes to use in my shop. The largest of these is the Lie-Nielsen No. 7-1/2 bevel up jointer plane, which I'll first use to flatten a nice wide piece of curly red oak I'm planning to use for a pair of cutting boards. Don't look for this plane on their web site; it isn't listed and may not be offered any longer. Pity, because the bevel up feature will be good for highly figured wood like the curly red oak.

I also have a pair of planes to use for smoothing the surface of the wood--on the cutting boards and later on the drawer fronts of my desk--a No. 4 Lie-Nielsen corrugated sole smoothing plane and a Veritas low-angle bevel up smoothing plane. The latter will be especially good for avoiding tearout in highly figured wood, again like the curly red oak and the curly cherry I'm planning to use for the desk front. The corrugated sole on the former is intended to make it easier to move the plane across the wood.

Other planes I've acquired are the Lie-Nielsen No. 97-1/2 small chisel plane, which I'll use for removing glue from joints and evening the ends of dovetails, the Lie-Nielsen medium shoulder plane for evening up tenon shoulders, the Veritas edge plane and the Lie-Nielsen No. 60-1/2 adjustable mouth low-angle block plane for working the end grain of boards.

Now that I've built up my collection of planes, I feel that I can handle just about any situation required of them.

Now if I only had them fully sharpened and set up for use, I could start on that curly red oak today. Well, perhaps I will!

Norm

Starting Out With a Lathe

Late last year, I got turned on to the possibilities of making bowls on a lathe. I did some investigation and decided that the Nova 1624-44 would be the right one for me. It's not a variable speed lathe so it requires moving the belt to change speeds. But that cut about $500 off the cost. It has a reasonably long bed that can be extended another 24 inches with an optional bed extension. The headstock rotates so it is possible to turn bowls as large as 29 inches in diameter, much larger than I'm likely to be turning. Nova is a New Zealand company and is well-respected. All-in-all, then, my new lathe is a multi-purpose machine that should serve me well for many years.

As the above photo shows, there are already a lot of chips on the machine. I started out not with bowls with pens, which is, I think, a good way to begin learning how to use the lathe. I've now turned 30-40 pens of all types, giving them as Christmas presents to many family members and friends this year. The photo below shows the machine set up with wood blocks ready for turning into a Slimline pen.

The process is fairly simple. I select a chisel and with the lathe turning at about 1400 rpm I round off the blank, working in from the ends. Once it's round, I can cut more aggressively to narrow the blocks to closer to their final size. After that, I begin to shape the wood to the configuration I want. In the case of the Slimline pen, I want it to be voluptuously curved in shape, coming to its narrowest points at each end and in the middle, where a ring will be attached during the final assembly. Once fully shaped and sized, I sand in ascending grits from 150 to 600, then polish with EEE cream before applying friction polish for the final coat. It takes only a few minutes to shape a pen and I find it to be good therapy.

Kits for pens and pencils, as well as wood and acrylic blanks, come in a variety of sizes and are available from a number of sources, including Woodcraft. So far I've concentrated on the Slimline and Wall Street II models so there are many more for me to explore.

I'm planning on selling my pens at some point, perhaps on the Web, and at craft shows with a friend. But before I can do that, I'll have to build up a large enough stock to merit the effort. Sounds like I need to spend more time in the woodshop!

Norm

Preparing to Build the Winchester Chippendale Desk

Recently, I've turned my attention to preparing to build the Valley of Virginia Chippendale desk I wrote about previously. I'm taking the class in June and July from Jeff Headley and Steve Hamilton, who teach at the Woodworking Workshops of the Shenandoah Valley, located in Berryville, not far from me.

The first task was to estimate the lumber I will need to build this desk. I'm going to use cherry for the casework and will probably use curly cherry for the drawer fronts and lid. The drawer sides and bottoms and other interior parts will be poplar. I happened upon a program called CutList Plus, where you enter the dimensions and type of wood for each part. The program then calculates layouts on the boards I'll be using and from that I'm able to estimate the amount of lumber I need to buy.

I hauled in a first load of poplar the other day and have it on the lumber rack and stickered. It should be ready to begin processing in a couple of weeks. Tomorrow I'll call some hardwood suppliers in the region to see if they have curly cherry in stock. My plan is to check it out in the next couple of weeks so it too can be acclimating to my workshop humidity level.

Although the course does not start until June, I'm counting on it taking me weeks to joint, plane and cut to size all the pieces for the desk. This all has to be completed before the class begins. I've put together a schedule that will allow me to do all this without rushing and so far I am on or slightly ahead of schedule. But I'll have to be diligent in order to keep it that way.

In addition to preparing the wood, I'll need to learn some new skills. The case is constructed with hand cut dovetails, so I'll need to learn how to cut these before the class starts. I've never yet cut one. And, some of the pieces of the cherry will need to be hand planed because of their size and in order to avoid tearout. I've purchased a good set of Blue Spruce chisels and several Lie-Nielsen and Veritas planes, so I have the tools in hand. Now I need to learn how to use them well.

I'll be updating my progress as I go along on this ambitious project.

Norm

Missing in Action

It has been several months since I've posted anything. There are lots of reasons, many of which I would have written about here had there been time enough. I'll say just a few words now.

First, I attended the second Woodworking in America conference in St. Charles, Illinois, in August. That was a great conference and I learned a lot about furniture design. I had intended to write about individual sessions and speakers, but the time for that has long since passed, so for the most part I will have to be content with saying that it was a great conference and I am glad I attended. I did purchase several tools while there, the most important of which was the Veritas bevel-up smoothing plane. I've had just a little time to use it and it is a fine tool. I was also very impressed with Jeff Headley's Winchester desk, which he brought disassembled and put together during his presentation. I was so impressed, in fact, that I will be taking a class with Jeff next June and July to build one, along with three other friends from the Washington Woodworker's Guild.

Second, I took a part-time job with the Woodcraft store in Springfield, Virginia. I had never before done retail sales until I helped out with a Lie-Nielsen event last June. I discovered that I love working with customers (and tools, of course). I love this new job, despite the fact that it takes me away from woodworking and cuts into my free time for things like blogging. And I also like the employee discounts, which so far have greatly exceeded my meager wages.

Third, I bought a lathe two weeks ago, the Nova 1624-44. It is large enough to do bowls, which I hope to do eventually. But in the short term I will be making pens. I've always had a passion for pens (fountain pens, that is). Now I can combine that passion with my passion for wood and working with it. I'll be writing more about that in future entries.

Finally, I'm very involved with a men's organization called The Mankind Project, also known as New Warriors, which helps men get in touch with authentic masculinity. I'm an officer, trainer and newsletter editor for the Greater Washington group, which takes up a good deal of my time.

So there you have it, some of the reasons I have been absent from this space lately. I hope to be more regular in the future.

Norm

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