Trundle bed surround headboard, curved

From an earlier post, via 'ketchup, i am attempting a surround back for the corner built-in trundle bed in our guest room:

I begin by making an "L" shaped plywood base that I will in turn veneer with some of the redwood.

The profile and plan view curves are drawn to full scale on my new bench. I will lay out the frame components directly on top of the drawing.

I then focus on the frame components, which are oversized finger jointed pieces made from laminated redwood. I will glue the slanted stiles into place once the interior curve has been cut and faired. but I'll leave the vertical stiles unglued. I did it this way because I want to build the interior panels by scribing them into the inside of the slanted/curved stiles. I will need room to place these curved interior panels inside the frame in order to get the curve just so.

I'm sure this doesn't make any sense. gluing up the finger joints at angles was a colossal bitch. The glue grabbed and I couldn't recover on one of them. I used a bunch of hot-glue gun affixed wedges to allow for clamping, but the hot-glue wasn't durable enough and I probably should have gone with regular wood glue, allowing to cure overnight. This sort of thing should never have been hurried.

With the frames more or less shaped on the interior, I set out making a plywood rib-cage that will then receive 2 layers of 1/4" wiggle wood bendable ply. These skins will then be scribed as best I can into the inside edge of the frame, and then veneered with redwood

Loading the Hammer A3-31 into my shop

An exciting day, not enough photos but my companion Chad and I were too anxious about delivering a 750 pound machine from the alley beside my house, through a small lake of ginger rock, and into the threshold of my garage. The machine rests as it's sits here. And while I identify as a hand tool woodworker, the drudgery of milling material into the dimensions I need necessitate a planer. I've not had a jointer aside from my winding sticks, planes and bench. after about 3 years of consideration, I finally ordered a Hammer A3-31. Rob Pocaro's blog says enough about why I wanted this machine.

Herin are just some photos of the process getting it into the shop. We used 3 sections of plywood, leapfrogging to form a track for the pallet jack, through the ginger rock. no photos because one is not thinking about photos when you're not even sure you can get it done.

I am humbled at the patient assistance of my friend during this. I surely could not have done this on my own, and that's a good lesson about life.

I rented a hydraulic pallet jack for this operation. couldn't do it without one.

We incrementally raised the pallet up on cribbing from the various 4x sticks on hand around my shop. We then built a platform under the assembly, supported by 2x4 "joists" that were screwed into the temporary plywood underneath. then with a shop-made furniture dolly, lowered the pallet onto wheels to take it inside. From here, it was more shuffling and looking to see how the Austrians did it on their website, before we got it on it's own mobile base.

standing laptop computer station installed

Finally got the laptop standing workstation installed today. I sunk most of the important screws into studs behind the walls. Always a stressful moment fitting ergonomic furniture to 100+year old walls. I posted a video at the bottom of the how one could use the assembly in both a seated and standing orientation.

Here's the unit in action.

standing laptop computer station progress

More progress getting Sarah's standup/sitdown workstation sorted. Her birthday is next Saturday, and I am confident I'll have it installed before then. Below, see the laptop shelf at right next to keyboard mouse tray. When installed the shelf will actually be on the facing adjacent wall, at 90deg. Height adjusted for both fixtures using 5/16" bolts with nuts press-epoxied into wooden knobs.

the keyboard shelf is hinged with an original door hinge from the house that was removed during remodel. It's a gorgeous old Stanley sweetheart brass thing. Kind of sloppy motion for this application, but I enjoyed reusing the hardware for this. Notice the tension knob is recessed into the keyboard shelf. Normal operation would require sarah to remove the keyboard/trackmouse from the tray when folding up, but that's OK.

The laptop shelf has a full 19" of vertical translational movement because it also serves as a perch for the laptop when seated. It's best to not hunch over when looking at your lap top, and by elevating the screen to eye level, it should foster good posture.

standing keyboard and rodent-input tray proof of concept

a corner of our guest bedroom functions as sarah's writing desk and recently she had expressed interest in a standing desk for her laptop. I'm going to make a keyboard tray that bolts to the wall and folds up like in this video below. There will also be an adjustable height shelf in the adjacent wall where her laptop will perch and approx eye level. Everything should fold up as conveniently as is possible, without interruption of thought. twist knobs will fine tune the height of the components. Wireless keyboards/track-pads will be used.

There should also be room for a cup of coffee to spill off the top of the ledge. Welcome the splashes.

workshop cabinet countertop installed and ready to roll

finally got the countertop installed, and all the drawers populated with crap that had been hanging out on open shelves coated in thick layers of dust and goo. best part is now the west end of the shop is clear of open shelving that housed things that should never have been there given my workflow. Screws and hardware are closer to where I actually apply them instead of being on the opposite end of the garage.

The countertop is just 1/4 masonite, atop 3/4 cbx ply, and then a 2x4 frame. There's another long stick of 2x material on front with a few coats of water based poly to take a beatin'. Gotta mount my grinder before too long. That will be my sharpening area, close to the workbench. The water bucket on ammo cans below the bench is where I keep the sharpening stones.

I still keep a fair number of the important hand tools in my japanese toolbox in the corner there. some of the heavier bench planes have been relocated to drawers but we'll see how it goes.

A neighborhood kid was here with his brother for the afternoon. He stepped onto the threshold of the garage and said he likes to paint. I thought: "well that's definitely the best thing that I've heard in about 45 months!" I asked him what color he likes and he said "blue". So we set him up with a brush and some of the surplus milk paint from the cabinets. he sat for about 45 minutes painting the model of our house that i made couple years ago testing out designs for our remodel. Stick around, kid. I'll have some canvases stretched on frames for ya next time :-)

workshop cabinetry progress

Well I've been busy making plywood boxes inside boxes. Working with sheets of plywood tests the muscular endurance quite a bit. Feeling pretty beat up but I think this cabinet/drawer installation will really help keep a lot tools/supplies/documentation out of the dust shroud that covers every surface here.

I used 3/4 birch ply for the cabinet carcasses with whatever extra scraps of cbx ply were kicking around the shop. Drawers and drawer fronts are 1/2" with 1/4" bottoms. Used lock-rabbet joints for drawer boxes. Full extension 75# sidemount drawer slides from Lee Valley when they had free shipping recently. they work okay, but demand you be really accurate with your drawer box sizes. I did okay, none of them were binding irretrevably and I didn't need to shim them.

This is General Finish's Milk Paint that I mixed in various amounts of Corinth Blue, Black, and Brick Red. I wanted to aim for a slate-purple but nobody around here sees it as purple. I'm colorblind and so it looked OK to me when I mixed it. I like the flat/velvety finish of milk paint well. It will scuff up a bit and that's OK.

I have my hand-tool box perched on the two ammo cans there temporarily. That space will open underneath the counter. I'll position the grinder and various sharpening habiliments on the countertop there eventually. Maybe a pattern maker's vice, too, if I can find one.

Sarah thought i was being pretty clever with my plywood portaging hack here, but there are plenty of ideas on the web of folks doing something similar. It really helps and I highly recommend you make yourself one if you're carrying even one sheet around. I can and have injured myself carrying these sheets around. My shoulders, and back do not regret it at all!

Here, i'm a bit farther along, all the drawerfronts have been applied, and there's a 2x4 web that I'm stringing across there for the "countertop" which will be 3/4 cbx ply and then 1/4 masonite.

Here are my quick-n-dirty drawer-pulls. You can imagine these being done on the tablesaw, first rabbet the edge of a board along the length, then rip to thickness, then cut the resulting stick to 4" segments, then a jig/sled that holds them at 45deg to take that last little nibble out. They are easy to grab hold of in the shop though probably not what you'd want to use in a more domestic setting :-)

the 1/2" plywood had a fair number of voids in it at $33.88 per sheet from MacBeath lumber in Berkeley.