bookshelf prototype in reclaimed fir

First, hello to any of you visiting via the Unpluggedshop's blog aggregator! Mr. Luke Townsley who manages that site recently included this blog into his pipeline (along with a handful of other intriguing ones).

I hit Unplugged Shop's front page at least 3 times a day since so much cool stuff is happening there. While I read nearly all of the new blog entries, I always take close note of what Bob Rozaieski, Rob Porcaro, and Adam Cherubini are up to.

Start with the end here. I'm trying to set up our guest room as a library of sorts and am experimenting with various book shelving approaches:




Project started from recycled, old growth fir from my my favorite crustacean pit. Much work ensued removing rusty nails and getting the wood fairly true with my bench planes. The 2x12s forming the shelf planks were terribly cupped and twisted -- a real test of one's muscular stamina. The joinery itself was very simple once I decided on the approach. It's gappy even by my standards, but this is a prototype.









I wanted to minimize the 'thick-ankled' appearance of the material by tapering at the edges. A spokeshave and a scrub plane performed a majority of the shaping while a random orbit sander was invaluable during clean up some of the tool marks.



Glue up is always harried, but successful today. A rubber head hammer helped knock it into approximate squareness.



Now with a little tongue oil, ready for installation.



It's bolted to the wall via some tabs screwed/glued to the top shelf using toggle bolts:

propeller dojo

Todd E. showed up this morning to get a bit of a primer on how one might go about carving balsa propellers for these wonderful indoor/outdoor models he's been building from various kits recently.

We began by milling some stock, and marking, carving and sanding to lines. We started with two blanks and took turns switching off to keep the blades reasonably symmetrical.

Somewhere along the way, Takumi, Ling and their two beautiful daughters stopped by for levity.
















Todd wanted to attempt a freewheeling prop with a cleat much like what you see in the plastic props. Being the sucker that I am, figured "why not?" and so we cut a "cleat" into some aluminum tubing to act as a shaft for the wire...in this picture, an observant modeler might be able to see what I did wrong:




ANSWER: I cut the notch in the wrong directioN!!!! much cussing had occurred as we had glued the thing in with CyA. Todd, being the optimist had some add'l tubing that fit around the existing piece, so we cut a notch into that one in the correct direction, and then glued it into place. We'll see how it works, but now that Todd knows how to carve a propeller, I expect he will have all sorts of opportunities for trying new configurations.



The model looks like a really nice flier and just with a few practice winds, it flew "right off the board" in our garage (and into my sketching easel -- hope the leading edge spar repair goes well for ya, Todd!)

behemoth

arrived today via pleasant and adaptable gentleman FedEx agent, 378 Lbs of bandsaw joy. a large installation manual, six gallons of RedBull and a weekend where I'm not at the office all need to coincide before this thing is making delicate cuts into the wood I have in mind.



After first test run yesterday afternoon following a bunch of fussing around with feeler gauges and machine squares

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