a coffee table in reclaimed lumber

Finally got our coffee table done in the living room here. Our new cat Tux represents:



The top is a three part lamination of vertical grained doug fir that I recovered from Urban Ore:





I wanted to do breadboard ends and made some out of an old sign post of very ring dense material...i think it's redwood since it's very light weight...not the best structurally but fun to work. These ends would be attached using draw-bored pegs made of wood dowels with the outermost holes widened a bit across the grain to account for moisture expansion in the top. No glue here.










With the top structure done, it was time to work with the legs. I opted for through-tenons that would be wedged once glued up. These legs were stocky, so they would want to be shaped up





A bandsaw would have been handy:





Here's the leg glue-up. You can see the wedges I pounded into slots cutting into the tennons. You can also see a slight bumpy texture in the top. That was done using my scrub plane. Sarah and I wanted something rough hewn with some texture to it.



Now with with 2 coats of tongue oil

knew concepts fret saw

Uploading details on my knew-concepts fret saw for some questions I have out to them

After reading Popular Woodworking Magazine review of the saw, I was confused about their model having detents in the adjusting swivel for both 0, and 45 degrees. I see one external detent holding the zero position on mine below but there does not appear to be any visible detents in any other position. I do sense a tactile click within the swivel mechanism when i turn the front barrel clockwise (facing saw handle aimed away from me). I dont sense the same click when I turn the other direction (which happens to be the direction I would want to use most of the time when removing waste from dovetails). It might be that the mechanism relies on friction alone to hold the blade in this position, I don't know:

Addendum

Thanks Lee for your response below. So, it turns out that friction alone is enough to keep the blade tensioned in the slanted position.

Anyway the saw is a joy to use and very light weight; surprising how light compared to the cheap Bahco steel coping saw I'd been using. The cam tensioner is also a joy to use. I found the cuts I made in 3/8" poplar very clean.

I was going to do a side-by-side comparison of how the two things cut out waste between some practice dovetails, but In my ham-fisted zeal, I managed to snap the fret saw blade. I think I know why: First I was using a very thin razor saw for my dovetails which leaves a skinny kerf to begin with. Then, I wiggled the fret saw blade into the kerf, rotated the saw and THEN tried to start. I really should have started the sawing motion AS i was rotating the saw when operating in such a fine kerf..beginner mistake, i think.

Pics to follow.

First smoothing plane

First foray into smoothing planes with their steeper blade angles and ability to take fine shavings is this Kakuri wooden body from Lee Valley (USD$36.50)

Click on the photo for the item in their catalog



It is sort of Japanese in that it has a white-oak heartwood body, and you operate by pulling the plane *towards* you as is done with japanese saws. Typically the blade is held in place in the body with a wooden wedge that you tap into place with a hammer. This one uses a chip breaker and a threaded knob to press the blade into place. However, you still perform fine adjustments to the blade depth with small taps to the body. It sounds tricky but it actually works really nicely once you get the hang of it.

First, though, the blade arrived in very poor tune. Not sharp enough to shave with and very out of square

30 minutes of steady work across 50 grit sandpaper on a glass reference surface with my honing jig, and then a quick polishing from my 700 to my 8000 wet-stones, and...

bench surface holding

Finally conjured the strength to drill an array of 3/4" holes through the top of my bench. These holes can then be used by various kinds of appliances to help keep pieces in place. It's very 16th century.



With a spoke shave and a block plane made a few bench dogs that friction fit into the holes. You just tap them with a mallet from underneath to expose them.



One row of 8" spaced holes along the front for the surface vice, and then a row of wider spaced holes along the back for the hold-down



A close up of the hold down by lee valley. The neck fitting into the surface has some toothed ribs to find purchase in the holes.

Hold-down

It really does a nice job and will obviate a lot of rube goldberg clamping machinations that I've gone through to hold material down while dovetailing. Probably also would have spared me a recent trip to the ER for 5 stitches in my thumb a couple weeks ago.

Surface vice

The one disappointment of the day was the surface vice Lee Valley sent me...in concept it's really cool, but I think i got a defective part. The aft support has threads only on 1/2 of the chanel, such that you can turn it counterclockwise to disengage the threads and quickly reposition the vice fore/aft. Once where you want it, you turn the support clockwise to re-engage the threads, and then tighten it up to hold your work. Well, mine doesn't quite engage the threads enough so it jumps out of adjustment without hardly applying any load to the threads...drat

old salvaged wood, fine grained but muddy, unappreciated

sometimes i like to just look at my stickered wood and dream...this stuff came from my favorite architectural salvage site, Urban Ore located in Emeryville 3 blocks from where I work. Most of my material comes from this place because you can find old old doug fir from demolitions. fine grained, smooth, beautiful wood encrusted in years of rusty nails and neglect. still good and quite amenable to repurposing for the stuff I like to do.

On the left, a few pieces of 4x material that I want to join together for a coffee table. On the right, shelving possibilities. our house is in dire need of some good wall hung shelving...soon



I'm edge joining a few pieces for a coffee table for our living room here. stay tuned to see how it turns out :-)

rehabilitation box

a late holiday pressie for my wife sarah ends in a hastily wrapped project with a cryptic note:


the project began with some african mahogany that i needed to rethickness from 3/4" to some planks roughly 5/16" for a small box project that she can put do-dads in:



joining resawn material like this is called a bookmatch:


I don't usually like the hinge hardware you find on small scale boxes, so I'm looking at different ways to make a hinge from wood. this one bonds the axle to the interior of the lid, then with two holes drilled in the sides, you get a mechanism that can work okay. I first made a small dado in the lid to better accept the axle and prevent it from squggling around during clamp up:




lid detail. I have to relieve the corner in order to rotate inside the box with this hinge design. I did this trimming with a chisel, and preferred to leave the cut marks in place instead of sanding this part smooth


Pre-assembly cross section, just to see how this little thing goes together. The bottom is facing upwards here, and so the idea is to place the lid into the side holes, and then glue it all together at the dovetail pin/tail junctions. Pretty simple


closed and finished. I'm no fan of stains that change wood's intrinsic colors and varnish or thick sticky resins are not my thing either. I use a paste wax. It doesn't really change the color much at all. I find it very sensuous to apply, and it smells like oranges...wonderful.

Here, you can just make out the 1/4" dowel pin where the hinge nests through the side of the box. everything is encased. sure, you loose a bit of storage capacity by my answer to that problem is: make some more boxes!!




yawning open. Sarah likes the tab for the lid. makes it easy to open. The box is still new and there is a bit of friction in the hinge and the lid sides rub against the inside of the box. I imagine it will loose this friction with use, which is too bad (i like the way it behaves right now)

Ecco!