Hall table

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A Good Thing

June 14, 2009 in Hall table | 3 comments

I’m currently in New Mexico on vacation with my wife, Lindsey.  On Tuesday, the 9th, I received a phone message that I was invited to attend the Design in Wood awards dinner.  As Martha Stewart would say, “That’s a good thing.”

Unfortunately, the dinner was Friday, and I was still here in New Mexico.  That was a bad thing.

I was hoping Bob Stevenson, the coordinator of the event, might email me after the dinner with some news.  Saturday went by with no additional information, so I emailed my friend Pam Goldman of Woodworker West.  She and her husband Ron cover the event and are usually present during the judging.  They would know.

She emailed me back with this message:  “You got the Master Woodworkers Trophy which is the most skillfully executed furniture piece, and an honorable mention in your category.  Ron went on Sunday after all the judging was done so he didn’t have any inside info…  I didn’t go with Ron so I haven’t seen any of the pieces.”

That “inside info” can be very enlightening, and would undoubtedly explain the seemingly incongruous awards.

I was a judge at the exhibition last year, and Bob does a really great job making sure the awards get spread around and the good stuff gets recognized.  There were many excellent pieces in my category (which I mentioned in my last post), and an honorable mention does not surprise me, given what I saw when I delivered my piece.

The other award is the result of Bob doing his thing (a good thing as far as I’m concerned).

This will probably be my last post on the hall table project.  Thanks to all of you for your encouragement here on the blog and at school where I teach.  Your support means a lot to me.

Humbled

June 5, 2009 in Hall table | 1 comment

I delivered my hall table to the Design in Wood show yesterday, taking the afternoon to drive down to Solana Beach near San Diego.  I got there around 4:00 pm, the halfway point of the noon-to-eight delivery window, and about half the pieces were already present.

Last year, I had the privilege of judging one of the special categories at the competition.  Through a friend referral, I had been asked to select Popular Woodworking’s Best Use of Traditional Woodworking Techniques award.   The judging process was a real eye-opener, in that I got to really see “behind the curtain.”

It’s amazing what you find when you can open doors and drawers.  Poorly sanded surfaces, lousy joinery, home center plywood drawer sides, and various other workmanship shortcomings not seen by the masses.

With those thoughts in the back of my mind, I perused the entries present yesterday.  Most of them were amazing, from what I could see.  I didn’t feel comfortable prying to much, so I only opened a few doors and drawers (and only those in my category, Contemporary Furniture).

Let’s just say I have low expectations for garnering any awards.

My hall table, although (IMHO) it is nicely done, just doesn’t stand out like some of the other pieces.  It’s a pretty understated piece, and may not get the judges’ attention as they take their first looks.  No exposed joinery, no sinuous lines, only one drawer, few curves.

I’ll be curious to see how things turn out.  While my expectations are low, I must admit I’d be a bit disappointed to leave with no award.  We’ll see…

Top Attach II

May 27, 2009 in Hall table | No comments

I have received some questions from my students regarding how my top attachment system works.  I know my description in the previous post was a little hard to understand, so I made a cut-away mockup of the setup.

This photo should clarify any issues.  Please comment if you have other questions.

ht43-top-attach

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Table Top Attachment

May 20, 2009 in Hall table, Jigs & fixtures | 1 comment

There are lots of ways to attach a table top:  cleats, buttons, figure-eights, pocket screws, Z-clips.  All work with varying degrees of elegance and effectiveness.  But none of them will work for my hall table; with the exception of the pocket screws, they all incorporate parts that would interfere with the drawer or would be visible from the exterior of the table.  I suppose some version of pocket screws would work, but that just occurred to me right now as I’m writing this…

I mentioned previously that one option would be to use a method similar to the frog attachment on a Stanley Bedrock plane (or Lie-Nielsen).  After lots of thought, I decided to go this route.  It appealed to my engineer brain; it was functional, elegant, and challenging.

The pins are 3/4″ brass, turned on my Jet mini-lathe.  The brass mills surprisingly easily with standard turning tools.  I located and drilled 7/8″ holes in the base, then made a locating pin using dowel stock and a dowel center.  The table top was already located via two 1/4″ dowels, so I installed the locating-pin/dowel-center in one of the 7/8″ holes, mounted the top on the 1/4″ dowels, pressed down so the dowel center did its thing, then repeated three more times with the locating pin in each hole.

I then mounted the brass pins using #10 screws, installed the top, and marked the pins with the locking screws (#8 x 2″ Spax screws) to get the correct height of the groove in the brass pins.  The pins were put back in the lathe and a groove was turned with my parting tool.  Each groove was located slightly off center from its locking screw in order to provide some hold-down force.

I hope that all makes sense…

Some photos:

Top attachment pins

Top attachment holes and alignment tool

Drill jig

The bottom photo show the little jig I made to drill the lock screw holes.  It worked great; all the grooves into which the lock screws protruded were at almost identical heights.

When I put the whole thing together, it works great.  The top feels very solid and is right where I want it.  I emphasize “right where I want it” because the other option I looked at was using keyhole hangers.  They would have worked, but I was concerned about the lack of a fixed location and getting them all equally tight.

Despite the extra work, I’m very happy with how it came out.

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I’m In!

May 13, 2009 in Hall table | 3 comments

Just a quick post to say that my hall table has been accepted into the Design in Wood exhibition at the San Diego County Fair.

If you’re anywhere near San Diego between June 12 and July 5, you shouldn’t miss this show.  To quote from their site:   ”Described as ‘the biggest and best woodworking exhibition in the country’ by the editor of Fine Woodworking magazine, the international Design in Wood Exhibition now averages over 300 entries.”

Highly recommended!

Get a Grip

May 11, 2009 in Hall table | No comments

Handles have alwasy been a challenge to me.  The problem is,  I can’t just go out and find some nice handles at Lee Valley Hardware or Whitechapel Ltd.  I have to make them, and it’s never easy finding the right shape to complement the piece.

My mockup, because it was made of nondescript MDF and baltic birch, had no grain.  That’s typical of how you make a mockup; you don’t want the grain to take away or distract from the form.  But once the table came together, the grain on the doors changed things significantly.  I suspected early on that my round handles weren’t going to work.  But I forged ahead. 

ht37-handle1 ht38-handle2

They were made by turning them on a lathe, veneering (iron-on technique, as described by Mike Burton), then cutting them in half.  I used a Japanese saw to cut them, minimizing the kerf.  I then trued up the cut edge on my disc sander.

I don’t have a photo of them installed, but trust me when I say they look like someone played “Pin the pig-nose on the hall table.”  The beautiful grain on the doors was broken up by the shape of the handles.  When I showed them to my wife, she was speechless for about ten seconds.  That pause is always a sure sign that something is amiss.

I considered my options.   Perhaps, I wouldn’t even use handles; because of the door design, the doors could be opened by pushing on their outer edges.  Workable, but I didn’t like it. 

After some trial and error, I came up with handles that were about at unobtrusive as I could imagine, but still functional.

ht39-table

They are slightly undercut on their outer edges, just enough to open the doors.  Tenons, 3/16″ thick, are used to mount them.  I would have mounted them higher, but the grain on the doors has a slight hourglass shape just above where the handles are mounted.  Mounting the handles in the middle of the hourglass looked incongruous, and moving them above the shape placed them too high.

When the photo was taken, the table wasn’t quite complete.  I had to get a picture, though, in order to enter the Design in Wood competition.  I’ll take some better pics when the finish is fully applied.

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Adventures in Finishing

May 2, 2009 in Finishing, Hall table | No comments

I have a pretty good handle on finishing, at least as far as hand-rubbed finishes go.  I even received an award for the finishing on a piece in 2002.  The finish was shellac and wax, which on a hard wood like shedua is really beautiful.

But we all make mistakes, especially when we get in a hurry.  In my haste to get the hall table completed in time to make the Design in Wood entry deadline of May 1, I goofed.  The doors, which are MDF panels with applied sawn veneers, had been sanded on a wide-belt sander to get rid of some minor tearout.  They were dead flat, but had relatively large sanding scratches in them.

I carefully sanded them, using a random orbital sander, starting with 120 grit and working up to 320.  I then applied a coat of oil/varnish blend (one part tung oil, one part polyurethane, one part mineral spirits).  The next morning, I took a look at them and noticed an area, about 2″ in diameter, that was a little darker than the surrounding area.  (Insert a few choice words here).  Big scratches…

That was last Saturday.  I knew I had to resand.  A little voice in the back of my head said, “You should resand both doors – they may not look the same after re-sanding only one.”  But I ignored that little voice, and I paid the price.

It went something like this:  resand one door, reapply OV blend (looked really bad); resand both doors, reapply OV blend (didn’t look like the rest of the project); resand both doors to remove all finish and get back down to raw wood, reapply OV blend (finally got it).  I’m leaving out all the painful details:   removing as much of the finish as possible prior to sanding with mineral spirits, uncured oil clogging numerous sanding discs, hours of time and energy which could have been spent on making handles (more on that later).

I knew better.  I would have told a student the correct thing to do in the same situation.  I was in a hurry and thought I might get away with it.

Lesson 1:  Slow down.

Lesson 2:  Listen to that little voice.

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Hall Table Getting Close

April 24, 2009 in Hall table | No comments

With the SDFWA Design in Wood entry deadline rapidly approaching, it’s time to get my arse in gear and finish this thing.  At least to a point where I can take a picture.  Part of my “stuckedness” lies in a decision on how to attach the top.  More on that in a moment.

Drawer front pieces

Here, I’m determining the position of the “wings” on either side of the drawer front.  (Yes, the clamps are bearing directly on the veneer, but I have them clamped very lightly and my clamp pads are clean!)  The piece on top is there for alignment.  The wings need to be accurately placed, so I can create the filler blocks behind them.  The filler blocks are solid walnut, veneered with the redwood burl like the drawer front pieces.

Filler blocks installed

The filler blocks are shaped, veneered, and screwed in place.  The front ends are also glued so any movement will occur on the back.  I have also put on the first coat of finish.  Shellac on the inside, oil on the outside.

My dilemma on attaching the top is this:  How can I do it without the fasteners showing?  The only way I have come up with is similar to how the frog on a Bedrock plane is held down.  Not sure I want to go to that much trouble though.

I may just screw it in from the bottom side of the filler blocks; it won’t be visible to the casual observer.  Of course, a curious woodworker (is that redundant?) will search out the answer.  The issue then becomes, how will I answer the question, “Why didn’t you just…”

 

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Who Needs a Scrub Plane?

March 25, 2009 in Hall table, Hand tools | No comments

In keeping with the overall design of the table project, the table top looks best if it tapers towards the ends.  If you look closely, you can see it in this photo of the mockup.  I don’t want to taper the whole underside of the top; that would unnecessarily weaken it.  So, I will only shape the edges, leaving the center at full thickness.  How to do that?  I suppose I could jig up something to make the cuts on the bandsaw, but by the time I did that, I could have done it with a handplane, or a series of handplanes.  My students sometimes ask when they would ever need a scrub plane, if they own or have access to a jointer and planer.  Here’s an answer.

The first pic shows the unmodified top, with my layout lines.  You can see only one of the lines in the photo.  There is also a scribe line on the end grain, created with a marking gauge, and another pencil line on the right edge.

The next pic shows the bulk of the material removed with a scrub plane.  Note the size and shape of the shavings; they will change as the tools change.

Next, I used a #3 bench plane, set for a pretty course cut, to get within about 1/32″ of my lines.  I was still planing across the grain, and the shavings reflect this.

I used my #5 to make sure things were flat, then finished with my #4 smoother, set for a light cut.  The shavings are much thinner, and the surface is more clear.  The process took about 30 minutes.

Finally, I shaped the front edge.  I need to wait until I determine the final width of the top before I shape the back edge.

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Feeling Groovy

March 16, 2009 in Hall table | No comments

It’s easy to cut a square groove, square to a face or edge.  Just raise the blade on your table saw the appropriate amount, set the fence, and go.  Works great for through grooves, not so great for stopped grooves (I use my router table for those).  Also helpful is a Forrest Woodworker 2 blade, custom grind #1.  Awesome blade, cuts cross grain as well as with the grain and leaves a dead square kerf.

But what happens when your groove is at an angle to the face of the board?  Tilt the blade, right?  That works if you are only making a single pass with the blade, but if you move the fence to widen the groove, you now get a stepped bottom.  You could raise or lower the blade to compensate, but that would be difficult to get things just right.  Not an option.

I needed angled grooves on my drawer sides for the hall table/cabinet.  To make them, I ripped a length of stock, with the correct angle, then cut it into four pieces about 2″ long.  I then used hot-melt glue to stick them to the inside face of each drawer side.  Cutting the grooves now becomes virtually identical to cutting a square groove.

Prior to cutting the grooves, I dry-assembled the drawer front and sides, and used my marking knife to mark the width of the grooves.  With some careful alignment of the fence, I was able to cut the groove widths to within .004″ of the groove on the drawer front.  Groovy!

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