The Taylor Garage

I wanted to jot down a few things about what I did today in the shop,  but I don’t have a huge write up or pictures – so I’ve come up with “The Day in Shavings.” I think this will let me post more frequently,without the “pressure” of putting together something long and/or pretty.

I’ve started working on a set of candle stands, as shown in Woodsmith Magazine #185. I bought a 4/4 birdseye maple board a few months ago. However, these plans call for 1/2″ stock. I don’t have a planer, so I had to head over to my buddy Brian’s basement to work the stock down. I decided I couldn’t bring myself to wipe out half the board, so it sits at 5/8″ instead of taking all the way down to one half.

Once I got back to my garage, I started working on constructing the jig to cut the windows in each side of the stands consistently. Rumaging through the scrap bin was enough to find the pieces I needed to complete the jig, which is currently sitting in clamps.

I also started working on the strips that will form the bars in each opening.  I have a little bit of walnut and much more paduak, so I cut both to proper width on the table saw. I barely have enough walnut to complete one candle stand, but I should easily have enough paduak to complete two (which is the goal).

My next opportunity in the garage should be enough to cut the sides to size out of that maple board, perhaps even complete the beveling on all the pieces as well.

Over the last 9-10 months, I’ve constructed my first labor of love – Briana’s crib:

Over that large period of time, not only did the project grow in size, but I grew as a woodworker. When first reading through the plans for the crib, I had a very difficult time visualizing two steps ahead.  This, combined with a not so great plans, led to a few mistakes and more than enough frustration along the way. With those mistakes and frustrations came solutions and lessons learned.  I wanted to write this post to collect those various lessons and thoughts that were significant enough to remember.

• Plans – After this set of plans let quite a bit to be desired, I’m a little soured on doing projects from plans.  However, this may be a case of getting what I paid for (these were cheap). I’m a little disappointed, because I’ve seen plans in $5 magazines that surpass the $14 plans uesd to build this crib.  The plans were also written assuming the user has very little, if no, woodworking experience.  That became more annoying as I progressed, both through this project and through my skills as a woodworker.
• Cut Lists – Many people have said it many times, but I definitely now know to not cut everything up front. Really – they are all telling the truth.
• Dowels – This project was almost entirely comprised of dowel joints. I have come to loathe them, but they get a future second chance for two reasons: 1) The joints were almost exclusively end grain to edge grain, and 2) done with just dowel-center pins, not with a dedicated jig.
• Finishing – I still need to work on my finishing in general. I haven’t taken any pictures of the mistakes, but there are places on the crib that are darker, mostly because some shellac dripped over an edge.  Part of this is because I was a little cramped in my finishing space, so I wasn’t able to view all angles of all part of the crib while I was finishing.  [pipedream]A dedicated finishing room in a future shop would be great for this, I imagine. [/pipedream]
• Time – As this project drug along (as Briana aged), I felt more of a time crunch in trying to get the crib completed.  This brought out some “just get it finished” tendencies that I’m not very proud of having commited.  Some of them ended up not mattering, some of them ended up causing me more work later.

Looking back, there are a ton of things I would have changed, both in the design of the crib and my techniques for executing.  But shouldn’t that be a positive sign of growth – the ability to look back on both successes and mistakes to see how to improve? I certainly hope so.

For my tenth design of this exercise, I returned to all straight lines. I do, however, have some non-square angles, so I’m easing back into my comfort zone.  I present a free-standing cupboard:

In this cupboard, the shaded panels in the doors would actually be glass, perhaps beveled glass to give a raised-panel effect.  The shelves in the cupboard would fall right behind the horizontal muntons in the doors. I think this cupboard’s use could vary from holding fine china in the corner of the dining room to a pair bracketing a flat screen TV in the den.

There are a couple of points in this design that I like. First I really like having the inside stiles of a set of French doors being sandwiched between the rails, thus being shorter than the outside rails of the door. I think the design decision draws attention to the center-line of the piece, emphasizing that there are two doors that open from the middle.  Second I think the pyramid blocks atop each of the corners add some drama to the top of the piece. I didn’t think that a crown molding would look right on this piece, but I didn’t want leave the top unadorned. These toppers are similar to the feet, but taper on all four sides, whereas the feet only taper on the inner two sides.

I’ve also included two possible pulls for the doors.  The difference is subtle on the inside of the handles, differing  on how and where the inner side of each end meets the length of the handle. Either way, they are both pulls to keep for future use.

As an aside – I consciously made a point of changing my perspective for this drawing. Most of my previous sketches were drawn from the left side, but with this sketch I wanted to make sure I approached this drawing from what appears of be off-hand side – the right. I think it is important to work on not just what I’m drawing, but also the act of drawing itself in order to grow through this exercise.

For Love Potion submission #9, I’ve strayed slightly from human furniture. The inspiration, nay impetus, for this entry is my beloved Old English Bulldog – Ditka:

Ditka already owns the couch under the front windows of the house.  He has recently started to scout a position on the couch downstairs, so in an effort to reclaim my padded sofas, I wanted to create a bed just for him:

Put a nice pillow/cushion in this and I think we have quite the place to call home. I know what some of you are thinking – “FINALLY, some curves!” Don’t worry, I’ll get back to nothing but straight lines in the next sketch.  I felt like the curved tops to the legs add a few dimensions.  First, they keep the pieces from looking like a topless box.  Second, they help open the top and make it feel bigger than it actually is.  The feeling I was going for was a tropical throne with palm branches at the corners.

To go with that tropical throne theme, I have a couple of alternate additions to the bed. First, curves to match the legs in the center of the back:

Second, a handle to connect the front and rear legs on each side:

I could go either way with adding either of these details to the final piece. In addition to those possibilities, I need to figure out how I want to make the flat sides.  The curved legs are thicker than the sides, so I could center the sides on the legs, rather than have them flush to the outer edge. That would make the joinery a little easier, because I could use the whole board as the tenon rather than having to cut the tenon at the ends. I may have just talked myself into it!

This marks my second design of the week. Two more this week and I’ll be caught up to the calendar!  Anyways – on to this submission, my take on ladder-back dining room chairs:

Inspiration can come in the strangest of places - the idea for these chairs sprung out of some doodling I was doing during a meeting this past week. Although the back on the left bears a strong resemblance to a sternum and ribcage, I assure you I wasn’t drawing skeletons!  I want to keep the “ribs” an alternate wood from the rest of chair, but I could see swapping light/dark and up/down angles to make any of four variations of the chair.

As an aside – I feel my 3D drawing is getting better.  I still have problems drawing legs that are consistent and don’t appear bulky, but otherwise I’m happy about how these drawings are progressing. I have another design in the hopper that is pretty much square, so I feel good about how that drawing will come out.  The design I’m cooking up for entry #10 is almost purely circles, so we could have an adventure in the sketchbook on our hands…

When I first started working on Briana’s crib, I was already thinking about this week’s design – a coffee table:

I’ve thought of a few possible variations on the details of this piece, perhaps adding keys to the mitres at the top of the legs. I’ve also envisioned a couple of different bandings of a third wood that wrap the legs and center cross pieces. Right now I see the frame being made of walnut with maple plywood for the panels. Maybe I should choose a more figured wood for the panels. It would be more distinctive, but would it be too busy?

I’d also like to put in a plug for SketchUp here; it’s the program I used to create this drawing, as well as the drawing for Week 1′s end table. I do actually plan on building this table and that task would have been ridiculouly more difficult, if not impossible, without having created this detailed of a drawing. If anyone is interested, I can post a picture of one of the tabletop sides and the crazy overlapping cuts/joinery contained in just that one component.

The last remaining task for the crib was to construct the drawers that go into the base.

The drawers are a simple box of 1/2″ birch plywood, with 1/4″ oak plywood for the bottoms. To hold the drawers bottoms, I setup a 1/4″ slot cutting bit on my router table and cut a groove in all of the 1/2″ plywood pieces. The fronts and backs of the drawers have their through grooves hidden by the sides. The face of the drawer will hide the grooves on the front of the piece; only on the back of the drawers will be exposed – which will be hidden inside the case. Once all the grooves were cut and passed the dry fit test, I applied some glue and clamps.  I even channeled my inner Norm and added a few pins to each joint for strength.

While the drawer boxes were drying in clamps, I started working on the drawer faces.  Because I liked the look it gave the rail tops, I eased the edges of the drawer faces with my block plane. Besides making them slightly safer for children (this is a crib), I think it softens the profile of what is otherwise a square piece. The next step was to drill a hole for the drawer pull. I’m using just a single knob for each drawer, so I needed to find the center of the board. I decided to draw lines corner to corner and drill at the intersection of the lines. Because I was marking on the back of the board, I only drilled the hole deep enough to just puncture front side – to avoid any tearout on the front. Then I flipped the board over and completed the hole from the front.

Once the glue on the boxes had dried, I clamped the drawer boxes to the faces and drilled pilot holes for the screws attaching them.  I also outlined the box on the back of the drawer faces, so I didn’t finish that section, both to help with gluing and to avoid wasting finish. With everything marked and drilled, I set to shellac the drawer faces.  Same as the rest of the crib, I brushed on two coats of shellac, followed by wiping on a final coat that was cut 1:1 with denatured alcohol. Drying time, some glue, and a few more screws left the drawer construction complete.

Little did I know that mounting these drawers would be far more frustrating than building them! Some of the frustration was due to the way the “plans” were put together (I’ll have a separate post on that), but some was due to slight mistakes I made during construction.  The center support is the mounting point for the inner drawer slides on each drawers.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have it perfectly centered.  This meant that in order to get the drawer box AND two sets of slides (one on each side) to fit between the center support and the leg, I was going to have to cut into the support to mount the inner drawer slide.  I really didn’t want to drag the crib’s base back into my shop and I didn’t want to run my router – and it’s high speed sawdust – in the baby’s room, so I went galoot and hollowed out the groove with some chisels and a mallet. I guess the next two hours were my penance for using my nail gun on the drawer boxes…

Despite all that chopping, I finally got the drawers mounted, opening, and closing. This project is finally done!

I’ll have a wrap-up post some time next week to go over the entire project!