Tag Archives: Cherry

Box Making, EAIA, featured, Historic Places

Shaker Oval Boxes

July 14, 2016 @TheRainford Leave a comment

I’ve always wanted to make some Shaker Oval Boxes. I love a good challenge and learning a new woodworking skill. Back in May I attended the Early American Industries Association (EAIA) annual meeting which was held at Pleasant Hill Shaker Village in Harrodsburg, KY.

In preparing for the meeting I figured a nice set of Shaker oval boxes would be a solid addition to the EAIA’s silent auction.

In order to gather up the correct supplies and learn how to make a proper oval box I reached out to John Wilson of Michigan who is a well known expert on making these boxes.

From John you can order an instructional DVD, book and templates along with supplies for the boxes and other related projects (baskets, trays etc). In this post I won’t go through all the steps necessary to make these boxes, but I will cover a highlight reel of some of the more interesting steps in the hopes it will whet your appetite for making some boxes yourself. (Links provided at the end of this post)

First off I laid out the templates for all the bands I wanted to bend into boxes and box tops. For this project I used Cherry. Then I pre-drilled the holes for the copper tacks.

Next up was filling the copper steam box with water and heating it up. under the box is a double burner electric hotplate and blocks to keep the tray steady on the burners. When using Cherry you may also want to use distilled water as minerals in your tap water can leave some stains.

I then steam the ends of the bands, cut the tapers in the end with the tack holes and feathered the other end of the bands on the belt sander.

After letting the bands steam I pulled them out one at a time to wrap around the appropriate sized form and marking the overlap. Then remove it from the form and hold the band tightly in place at that same size marked while you take it over to the heavy round pipe anvil and clinch the tiny copper tacks in place to secure the band. This set of forms is a large block of basswood in the size and shape you want the box to be.

I had never clinched a tiny copper tack before so I grabbed a shim and practiced with a few tacks of each size on the anvil. After a tack or two you’ll get a good feel for it.

I got a rhythm going and could feel/read how the tack was going in and move it on the anvil relative to my hammering to make sure I got the tack head nice and even with the surface and got a nice clean clinch on the inside.

With the band tacked the next step was to get them over to the second set of forms to dry. These forms are two blocks of wood also in the shape of the box, similar to the first form, but these forms have a tapered edge profile and holes to let air/water in and out and give your fingers a place to pull the forms out from when they are dry.

The bottom band is steamed, tacked and setup on the second set of forms. The top band is wrapped around the bottom band on the form. The goal is to get a nice tight fit and line up the tack holes.

Let the bands dry for a day or two and then it is time to fit the tops and bottoms into the bands. Trace your band onto the top or bottom blank, cut it near the line on the bandsaw and then use a fixed disc sander with the table set at a few degrees under 90 and sand them to shape and test fit as you go. You don’t want any gaps or spaces between the band and the top or bottom.

I got all the tops and bottoms fitted before moving on to the next step.

Next up was testing out a special drilling jig to make pin holes for attaching the tops and bottoms to the bands. There is no glue in these boxes.

The pins that will secure the bands to the top and bottom blanks are made from hardwood toothpicks that are cut in half on a band saw.

I made pencil dots where I wanted the pins to be, fired up the drill in this jig and made all the pin holes.

For very tiny boxes with thin tops and bottoms I made a tape loop out of blue painters tape and taped some thin cardboard onto the face of the jig to center the holes in the thickness of the top or bottom of the box.

The pins are then tapped into place, clipped off and then sanded on the belt sander to remove any protruding pin left and make sure the bands are level with the tops and bottoms.

The boxes nest inside of each other similar to a Russian Nesting Doll. This made it easier to bring 5 boxes on the very long, and very full car ride from NH to KY with my wife, two babies and me.

At this point the boxes all have a bit of a dull fuzzy look about them.

I gently hand sanded all the boxes and made sure the top and bottom fit the way I wanted. They should have a nice snug fit, but not too tight nor too loose.

All the corner edges, and inside and out of the box get a final sanding and cleanup. Then time for the finish. I applied Tung Oil to the boxes to bring out the grain in the Cherry and finished it off with a couple of coats of amber shellac. Each box is also signed, dated and notes that they were part of the 2016 EAIA annual meeting.

I was very pleased with how well the boxes turned out especially given this was the first time I ever made shaker oval boxes.

I was also glad to hear EAIA members also liked them as my set of boxes in sizes 0-4 turned out to be the second highest grossing item in the EAIA silent auction and I was humbled to receive the plaque below.

I know they went to a good home, the home of Judy and Bill McMillen of Eastfield Village and Richmond Hill fame and good friends of mine. I’m also happy to report I was able to win the auction for some of the items Billy made as well including a Tin-Smithed dustpan my wife and I both had been wanting for a while when we saw one that Billy made at a prior event, but that is a post for another time.

I had a great time making the boxes and we all had a great time at the annual meeting. I had wanted to visit Pleasant Hill Shaker Village for a long time and I’m glad I finally got to see it and spend the better part of a week living in the village.

If you’d like to make some Shaker Oval Boxes of your own, please check out the link to John Wilson’s website below along with links to more information on Pleasant Hill Shaker Village and the EAIA.

Take care,
-Bill

Black Belt Display Case

November 8, 2015 @TheRainford 4 Comments

Who doesn’t like a nice curve?
I recently had the honor of building an appropriate display case for my friend Lee Lemoine who is a Tae Kwon Do black belt. We talked a bit about what he was looking for, captured some dimensions for the coiled belt and looked at some sources for inspiration and then it was time to hit the drawing board.

I spent about a day and a half drafting and revising my design until I could find something that would work. The cabinet is wide but not too deep nor terribly tall so it was going to be a challenge to make the joinery work. I thought about making the back access panel hinged or sliding or secured in some other manner, but I really didn’t want to see any hardware on this piece. I bought some small brass hinges and a clasp and just didn’t like how it would look. After sleeping on it an idea hit me….to hide a magnet catch since this case will rarely be opened. I also had Jim Tolpin and George Walker’s writing (By Hand and By Eye) echoing around in my head as I worked out pleasing proportions for the overhang of the top, size of the curve etc.

After completing the plans, I planed all my stock and started working on the joinery.

For the magnet catch I made a template on the band saw and used a router with a template bit to cut out the recess.

The catch was captured and would not be seen from the front (shown below)

Next up was constructing the core of the box. The core box needed to capture the glass front in a series of dadoes. I also wanted the box to be serviceable if the glass was ever broken. I needed to keep the joinery simple and decided to go with pocket hole screws since that would allow someone in the future to take the top off of the box and remove the top of the core of the box as well. The overhanging box top is affixed to the core box via screws. The challenge with the screws was the interior of the box was only 2-1/4″ tall so I had to use a square drive bit in a set of vise grips in order to secure the screws through the core box and into the top. (I pre-drilled both to make sure everything lined up where I wanted it)

Next up was cutting the very long strip of glass for the front of the box. I used a stained glass ‘strip cutter’ which works much like a woodworking panel gauge with a fence. You score the glass in one even stroke and break it as you would any other piece of glass.

Next up was laying out the curve using a faring stick — which is a thin strip of even grained wood that you can bend to make the curve you want, then clamp it in place and draw your line with a pencil. If you thin out the strip you can adjust the rate of curvature.

I cut out the curves using the band saw and cleaned them up with some spoke shaves.

For the back of the case I needed it to fit tightly so it doesn’t let any light in and also created a rabbet to keep the bottom in the correct place. The magnet catch secures the top in place.

Shown above you can see the box opened and below you can see it closed.

A small turned knob allows someone to remove the back and is often hidden in the shadow from the top — so when the case is on a table or similar you generally cannot even see it.

The piece is made from a single piece of cherry, finished with a Tung Oil Varnish and wax.

As I was building this case I was reading up on Asian design aesthetics and Tae Kwon Do (TKD) and all that Lee had to go through and master. As he rose through various levels of black belt he had to demonstrate skills and self control and continually work to learn and improve himself.

In my research, a concept that really jumped out at me was Wabi-Sabi — which represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. TKD comes from Korea, but from what I could find also has a similar concept in that country as well.

With all the clean lines and symmetry on this piece I wanted to incorporate a tiny little something to try and capture a bit more of that Wabi-Sabi aesthetic or at least some of that spirit. So between the top of the core box and the overhanging box top I inlaid a tiny veneer strip of mahogany. It’s almost imperceptible as it hides in the shadows from the overhanging box top. As I worked on the piece I felt it was a reminder of imperfect beauty, self improvement and a reward for anyone really exploring the piece in detail in their hands.

Lee presented the case with his black belt to his parents during a touching speech and I hear it enjoys a sunny place in their living room.

It was great to see Master Lee Lemoine’s ceremony and I have a whole new respect for what Tae Kwon Do offers and what students can achieve through it. If you’d like to learn more about TKD and specifically the Tiger Claw NH school where Lee is now a Master you can visit their website here.

Take care,
-Bill

Children's Projects, Made In The USA, Traditional Woodworking, Woodworking Techniques

Building Bradley’s Crib Part 5 — Choosing the Right Finish

February 24, 2015 @TheRainford Leave a comment

How do you choose the right finish? That is a question I’m often asked. In this final installment related to the 3 in 1 crib / toddler bed / adult bed building project I will walk through my own through process for how I picked the finish for this project.

Setting High Level Project Parameters:

Customer input — in this case, my wife Alyssa. We wanted something in that warm amber to medium brown color and tone range. She wanted something to potentially match a darker rocker and changing table we had and I wanted something more on the natural side given this wood was of higher quality and thought it would be a shame to hide all that figure.

I chose Cherry wood for this project as I like cherry’s grain, workability and warm tones once it has time to age. Given that the project is for my newborn son I wanted a child safe finish that would be durable. (So that has me think of shellacs, low or preferably no VOC finishes that cure to hard film that will protect the wood and be easy to clean)

Freshly milled cherry has a light, almost pink finish so I likely will dye or stain the project to get a jump on the aging process and even out the tones of the wood.

Cherry also has a tendency to blotch, so I always want to seal it with shellac as a sanding sealer to try and protect against blotching.

Color Sample Chips:

With some high level parameters in hand, I first take a look at the color chips and samples I have on hand.

I have a real nice collection of General Finishes samples that I use in my teaching and they are one of my go-to finish providers as I’ve found their products to be high quality and reliable.

PRO TIP: Whenever you test a sample on a cut-off or similar piece of wood, label it with the finish — maker, type, color, date, #coats and wood species. I keep a box of these sorts of samples in my shop and they can often help in this process as my samples are larger than the standard chips that are usually on paper or small bits of veneer plywood. As the samples age they provide that much more information on how the pieces you make will age with a given finish.

From looking at the chips in a few different lights and in the baby’s room we decided on the following three samples:

Test your top 2 or 3 choices:

In the photo below the wood is set up in pairs. The left piece of wood is raw cherry. The right piece of wood had a wash coat of blonde shellac applied to see how it would reduce the amount of blotching in the cherry.

Trying out the dye and gel stains I liked. Left samples are raw wood, right samples have a coat of shellac under the stain.

PRO TIP:
You can help jump-start the cherry aging process by exposing it UV light. With the above samples I kept them on a sunny window sill in the shop for a few weeks to get a feel for how the finishes might look as the project ages.

I didn’t love the results from the above experiments, I wanted a warmer tone, so I decided to mix up a batch of garnet shellac (described here) and continue my experimentation. On my next round of sample boards I experimented with a few coats of garnet shellac to see what I liked best. The garnet shellac alone did a fairly good job of warming up the cherry.

Trying my favorite stain from the last round, but trying it out with garnet shellac

The experiments continued with several pieces of wood scrap from the project to see how the recipe of garnet shellac and dye stain looked on knots, different grain orientations etc.

Testing the recipe with a range of woods on the project

In the end my wife and I both liked the same samples, so in the end I wound up going with two coats of garnet shellac with the second coat having a small amount of dye stain in the second coat. All of the above experimentation was well worth the time as I would not want ruin a project like this with a poorly executed finish.

Top coat:

I decided to go with General Finishes High Performance Water-based Polyurethane Top Coat in a Semi-gloss. I like this finish as it’s easy to apply by hand or via sprayer, low VOC, it’s UV stabilized and once cured is a durable child safe finish. For fine furniture when it comes to a top coat I adhere to the mantra of ‘if I wanted it to look like it was made out of plastic, I would have made it out of plastic’, but for this crib it’s very nice but not super fine furniture and from what I know about babies the ability to quickly and easily clean off any accidents makes this higher gloss sheen all the more worthwhile.

Crib outfitted with mattress, sheets, skirt and of course stuff animals

For this project I applied the poly by hand using a folded up lint-free white cotton rag. I worried the sprayer would cause too many drips around the many slats and after all the work I put into the project I didn’t want to foul it up in the finishing room.

I’m very happy with how this project turned out and look forward to seeing how the cherry ages in Bradley’s very sunny bedroom.

If you’d like to read some other posts related to this project please check out this link here.

Take care,
-Bill

P.S. How do you choose your finishes? Feel free to share your thoughts and tips in the comments section below.

Children's Projects, Made In The USA, Traditional Woodworking, Woodworking Techniques

Building Bradley’s Crib Part 4 – Final Assembly

February 21, 2015 @TheRainford 1 Comment

Molding plays with light and shadow, it blends transitions and it can be pleasing to touch. I’m glad molding has so many positive features as I had to make a LOT of it to finish off this project. Below is a quick walk through of what it took to complete the woodworking on this project.

Making Molding:

As you can see from the photo above a had to mill a lot of stock and produce a lot of profiles to produce all the moldings necessary for this project. I won’t go into the minutia of each profile, or how to create molding using a handheld or table mounted router as that has been covered to death elsewhere. I will talk about a few of the things I do to help get consistent results when using a router.

1.) Make sure your router bits are clean and sharp. Make sure to use a bit cleaner to remove any pitch left on the bits. A diamond card or file can also be used to tune up a bit that is not cutting as well as it used to.

2.) Feather-boards. Whether they are store bought or shop made a feather-board is a great way to help keep stock where you want it. This project required many thin moldings with several different profiles on the same piece of stock. To ensure that the stock stayed exactly where I wanted it I used feather-boards to keep the stock pressed firmly against the table top and against the fence, both before and after the cutter. Without this seemingly heavy handed setup the stock could flex and you’d have to run it a few times. A push stick is also nice to have nearby. For this project the blanks were 2 to 6′ long so I was able to safely move the stock through the cutter with my hands kept at a safe distance from the cutter by virtue of the feather boards.

Extensive use of feather-boards on the router station

3.) When possible, try to be aware of the grain orientation when passing it through the bit to minimize tear-out

4.) After coming out of the router I hand sand the profiles to remove any scallops left by the bit. For tight or very complex profiles I will also use a profiled sander (a bit of formed rubber (shown above), piece of dowel or block of wood) that will help me get the sandpaper into the portion(s) of the profile I want to sand.

Molding profile details

5.) Use the right tool for the job. For the cap moldings above I used a dado set on the table saw (with feather-boards there as well) to create the dadoes, and round-over bits in the router table for the round-overs. (You certainly could use a straight bit to cut the dadoes on the router table, but it would involve taking a few passes which takes more time and could introduce error).

Assembly:

With the moldings all milled, sanded and cut to size it was time to glue up the various assemblies. Shown above I am gluing up the top and bottom molding onto the adult bed rails.

Shop made jig for drilling centered holes

After the glue dried overnight on the rails it was time to drill holes for the through bolts using a shop made jig constructed out of plywood. This made it very easy to line up and drill consistently centered holes on the ends of the rails. I also made use of some of the stopped drilling techniques outlined here.

Clamping each section using extended bar clamps

Next up was gluing up all of the large sections of the bed — head-board, foot-boards, side panels etc. Given the width of this project I had to break out the Bessey K-Body rail extenders which allow me to bolt two K-Body clamps together to effectively make an even longer clamp. The connector section also works as an extra set of feet to keep the clamps level. I used hot hide glue again for its long open time and compatibility with finishes. Once in the clamps I checked everything for square, adjusted as needed and let the section dry overnight.

Once the panel was dry it was time to glue on the top cap/hand rail. Next I cut the cove molding to size and glued it in place with the help of some dowel cut-offs.

Installing the slats:

I milled and test fit the slat spacers when I produced the molding above. I gently eased the corners with some sandpaper and cut them to length using my crosscut sled on the table saw and a stop block that was clamped in place against the rear fence of the sled. My OCD side also kept them in order so the grain matched across each panel.

Installing the slats is a bit of challenge so I did a full dry fit/test run before doing it for real with glue. You start from the center slat which you mark with center lines on blue tape (that way you can remove the lines easily as they are only on the tape) on the slat and the panel and install at an angle to insert the slat and then straighten out when it is firmly in the top and bottom slot. I then install spacers to the left and right of the slat and repeat the process. When I get near the end of the assembly I install the last 3 slats at once (otherwise there would not enough room to angle them into place), move them to where they need to be and finish gluing in the spacer blocks.

When laying out the slats in the dry run I also examined the individual pieces and laid them out so that the completed piece had even grain patterns and tones. I also made a few extra slats so I could swap in grain I liked etc. Some of those extra pieces were recycled into a baby blanket display rod here.

Once I completed all the assemblies, I test fit the bed in all three configurations. (You can see several photos of that process over on my public Facebook page here.)

Now it was time to pick a finish and head out to the finishing booth. To cap off this series, I’ll be talking about choosing and using a finish.

If you’d like to read some other posts related to this project as they get posted please check out this link here.

Take care,
-Bill

Children's Projects, Made In The USA, Traditional Woodworking, Woodworking Techniques

Building Bradley’s Crib Part 3 – Stopped Drilling and Hardware Finish Modification

February 19, 2015 @TheRainford 2 Comments

When we last left our woodworking hero he completed the legs and was heading into the home stretch — installing the hardware. But wait….some of these things are not like the others. The bed bolts in the hardware kit were ordered in a nice antique bronze finish. The bed frame has a nice enameled finish in a similar dark brown metallic color. The threaded inserts and bolts that hold up the bed frame were a bright silver zinc finish. I worried these shiny bits would stand out like a sore thumb.

Then I remembered a trick I learned from my friend Chris Schwarz that he used on his Anarchist’s Tool Chest. I soaked the zinced hardware in a bath of citric acid for a couple hours, then brushed them off with a brass bristle brush, rinsed them in water and dried them off. I then applied some ‘Super Blue Liquid Gun Blue’ to the hardware with a Q-tip and rinsed the hardware in water and dried it off to complete the process. The Super Blue creates a chemical reaction that creates a nice patina on metals. In this case it made a dark brownish color that gets the threaded inserts into a color spectrum very close to the rest of the hardware. (Check out the photo below to see the before and after). I’m very happy with how that color treatment went.

Modifying the hardware's finish — Modifying the hardware’s finish

Next up I had to drill a large number of stopped holes for the various bits of hardware this project included — threaded inserts, bolts and barrel nuts. To accomplish this I made use of some of my favorite methods for drilling a fixed depth hole. The quickest and dirtiest way to drill a hole to a consistent depth out in the field is with some blue tape wrapped around your drill bit. When the excess tape wipes away all your shavings you know you reached the depth you set out to drill.

Next up is using a fixed metal stop collar. This gives a more precise stop, but if you press too hard the collar can mar the surface of the wood, so I mainly use the collar with a dowel centering jig (As the collar stops when it hits the jig) or in places where the wood rubbed by the collar will not be seen.

When I have the luxury of a drill press at hand I can make use of the built in quill depth stop (left side of drill press in photo below). When buying a drill press make sure you get a heavy duty depth stop and easy to use depth setting mechanism. Even with a nice stop I don’t trust the scale on it other than for macro level adjustments. For checking hold depth with a higher level of accuracy I use a depth gauge.

A depth gauge can be as simple as using your combo square with large holes, or a piece of dowel in smaller holes used to determine how deep the hole has been drilled. For real tiny holes or times I want a very high level of precision I use an old Starrett Machinist Depth Gauge I got at a tool show years ago. I like this gauge as it has its own macro and micro adjustment which is a very nice and completely overkill feature. 🙂

Old Starrett Depth Gauge with Micro-Adjustment

I set the gauge to the depth I want as shown above. I then place the gauge in the hole, as shown below, and tweak my drilling until I reach the depth I am going for. It’s a quick and easy process.

With all the holes drilled I was able to install all of the threaded inserts into the posts. As the natural cherry ages it will become a golden brown color that will blend in with the brown colored hardware.

I’m very happy with how the hardware came out, and as you can see in the photo below, even on this freshly completed piece the hardware, and the threaded inserts and bolts in particular blend in quite well.

Next up in this series I’ll be talking about final assembly and finishing.

If you’d like to read some other posts related to this project as they get posted please check out this link here.

Take care,
-Bill

Children's Projects, Made In The USA, Traditional Woodworking, Woodworking Techniques

Building Bradley’s Crib Part 2 – Tapered Legs

February 18, 2015 @TheRainford Leave a comment

Today I’ll be talking about what it took to build the legs — 3 pairs — for Bradley’s crib and cover some of the more interesting techniques employed. This project was more of a ‘modern woodworking’ project compared to the period furniture and architectural details I am normally working on, but as I’ll show below there is a place for both styles of woodworking and they complement each other well.

Rather than having massive posts from a solid piece of cherry that needs to be mortised, this set of plans called for laminating up the stock from 4/4 pieces that were milled down to 3/4″ thick. For this project I tried to mill as many pieces as I could at a time, so for quite a while in the shop there were a lot of small piles of wood that would migrate around the shop as they were ripped, jointed and planed. I’m pretty sure my wife thought I was just moving the wood around like a child moving vegetables around on a plate to make it look like they are eating them. I’d mill things a bit heavy and let them sit stickered for a few days to acclimate further to the shop and mill to final size just before I’d use each piece.

By ganging blanks of the same type together I was able to mark them all at once saving layout time and helping to ensure they are all consistent.

Used a dado set and miter gauge with sacrificial fence to cut dadoes

By using a dado head cutter in my table saw with a zero clearance insert and a heavy duty miter gauge with a sacrificial block to help limit tear-out I am able to quickly create what will become the mortises in the laminated post. This not only saves some time, but produces a nice clean mortise bottom. Make sure you make your mortises a tiny bit deeper to allow room for glue, any crumbs and a tiny bit of wood movement in the post. Given that the panel is cherry veneer plywood it will not move much.

Making sure the rails have a nice tight fit

The goal is a nice square fit, and since the panels were already sized during the earlier ripping operations — see Part 1 — you could test fit them as you go.

With the mortises all cut, it was time to laminate up each leg. In picking the stock for the legs I was careful to choose the best grain orientations for the faces you’ll see. The pieces are all a little bit long and a little bit wide so the excess could be cut off after the glue dries. You want to be careful with your glue application, I applied warm hide glue to the both sides of the center piece of the lamination to make sure I didn’t get glue in any of the mortises. I also shot a couple of finish nails into the inch or so of waste on each end as that helps stop the pieces from sliding around when clamping up the lamination and it will be cut off later.

You can never have too many clamps...if I had more I would have had more baking at the same time — You can never have too many clamps…if I had more I would have had more baking at the same time

I glued up as many legs as my clamps would allow. You want to use nice strong clamps like the Bessy K Body clamps shown above to eliminate any voids in the laminated pieces. After the glue cured overnight I cut the legs to length — thus getting rid of the nails that helped keep things aligned. Next up I jointed and planed each leg to thickness and laid out the tapers on each leg — the two inner faces were tapered to give the legs a slightly lighter look.

I tapered the legs on the band-saw and then cleaned up the mill marks with a hand plane. The plane made quick work of that task and yielded better results than a disc sander would be able to produce. Then using a palm router I rounded over all the appropriate edges using a 1/8″ round-over bit and cleaned up any mill marks from the router with 220 grit sand paper.

Next up in this series I’ll be talking about modifying and installing the hardware, followed by final assembly and finishing.

If you’d like to read some other posts related to this project as they get posted please check out this link here.

Take care,
-Bill

Children's Projects, Traditional Woodworking, Woodworking Techniques

Building Bradley’s Crib Part 1 – The Curved Headboard

February 15, 2015 @TheRainford 4 Comments

As promised I’ll be making a few posts covering some of the more interesting aspects of building the 3-n-1 crib, toddler bed and adult bed I recently finished for my son. In today’s installment I’ll be talking about what it took to make the curved headboard.

The first step in the process was to make the template and bending forms. For bending forms you want stock that is stable, cheap and dense — won’t dent when a template router bit passes over it (MDF would be too soft). So in this case I used 4’x8′ sheets of particle board.

Ripping Heavy Sheet Goods Straight From The Truck -- Saves space in a tight workshop — Ripping Heavy Sheet Goods Straight From The Truck — Saves space in a tight workshop

These sheets are heavy and make an incredible amount of dust when you cut into them so to save myself some headaches and shop cleanup I ripped the sheets to rough width right off the back of my pickup truck, through my job site table saw and onto rollers. Thankfully my wife Alyssa was on hand to help handle the offcuts as I pushed the stock through the saw. It worked out great.

Rail Saw made quick work of some long thin rips where I wanted to control veneer tearout and grain orientation

For ripping out cherry veneered plywood panels I used my rail saw to ensure accurate cuts, minimize grain tear-out and control grain orientation.

Using a fairing stick to lay out the curve for the headboard and templates

I used a fairing stick to lay out the curve on one of the bending form blanks. A fairing stick is a thin, flexible piece of wood that allows you to lay out a curve. (And if you thin out one or both sides you can adjust how it bends and thus change the curve to suit your project) With the fairing stick clamped in place I could trace the curve onto the stock. The next step was to cut out the curve on the band-saw and use belt and/or disc sanders to even out the curve and split the layout line. With that first pattern in hand it was time to work more like an assembly line. I’d trace the template onto the next blank, rough saw it out on the band saw and then clamp the two blanks together and use a router with a pattern bit quickly and easily produce another template. Once I had 4 templates in place I lined them up and screwed them all together. With the bending form all in one piece I cleaned things up a bit more with the disc sander, added center and end lines to the form and the bending form was now ready to go.

To create the curved headboard panel I followed the same procedure I used for creating templates — traced the curve, rough band-sawed out the blank and used the form and a template bit to create a panel that exactly matched the bending form.

Using the form with a templating router bit to copy the curve

The next step was to re-saw a single cherry board into three 1/4″ thick strips for the cap, being careful to minimize any waste as I want the side and end grain to match up as close as I can get it in the laminated and curved headboard cap. The strips are left a bit longer and wider to allow for easy cleanup after the lamination process.

I used Old Brown Glue (Hide glue) warmed up in my double boiler to glue up this lamination. I used hide glue because of its long open time and friendliness to finish — I’m far less likely to see any hide glue in the finished piece when compared to PVA glue which sticks out like a sore thumb. With the glue applied to the lamination I started clamping it to the bending form working out from the center towards each end and let it sit in the clamps for 24 hours. Once removed from the clamps I was able to joint off any glue squeeze out and round over the edges using my router table and hand-held router with varying sizes of round-over bits.

Using dowels to help with clamping of the curved cove moldings

With the completed head-board cap in hand I was able to glue and screw it onto the headboard frame assembly. The screws were located at the ends of the cap and bite into the solid wood posts/legs. They’re set into countersunk holes that were plugged. I made the plugs from the same piece of wood I made the cap from and made sure to orient the plug grain direction to match the cap. The plugs blend in well. Next a nice cove molding is installed under the cap and after cutting it to size and matching the 10 degree angle on the ends there was a mild challenge of how to clamp it in place. The solution was to use small pieces of dowel stock to help transfer the clamping pressure from the clamp pad onto the molding — it worked out well.

Overall I am very happy with how this process of cold bending cherry to make a curved headboard cap went. I made two caps just in case one got messed up in the process, and I’m happy to report that both turned out well, so I have a second curved cap ready to go if I ever have to make another crib for a second baby.

Next up in this series I’ll be talking about the challenges of making the legs and modifying the hardware.

If you’d like to read some other posts related to this project as they get posted please check out this link here.

Take care,
-Bill

Children's Projects, Finishing, Made In The USA, Traditional Woodworking, Woodworking Techniques

Bradley’s Crib

February 3, 2015 @TheRainford 9 Comments

The past few months out in the workshop I’ve been building a crib, and a toddler bed and a full size adult bed for our new baby — Bradley. The story of how I wound up building this crib is an interesting tale about baby furniture in America today…

With a baby in the house, we had a clear need for a crib. I wanted to build a crib, but with everything going on in our lives — our work, my teaching, writing, preparing the house for the baby etc my wife Alyssa and I were all set to buy a crib for the baby before he arrived. We went to all the usual baby stores — Baby’s R Us, Baby Depot, Buy Buy Baby, Target etc — all the cribs were poorly made imported junk that looked terrible on display and were more than I was willing to pay for such junk. Then we tried all the usual furniture stores in the area and while the price tags went up exponentially the quality was only marginally better and I could not find anything I was willing to buy at any price. Eventually we found a brand and product line we liked by ‘Young America’ — a company that specialized in higher end youth furniture, made in the USA from American Woods. With a 25+ year history in the marketplace and long running product lines you could keep adding pieces as your child grows — all things I liked. It was expensive, but I found a way to get it at a reasonable price via a buying club my parents were part of. We were all set to place our order and the week we finally went to enter the order the manufacturer said it was no longer accepting new orders. From searching online we found out that the parent company Stanley decided to shut down the factory (and with it eliminate about 400 jobs). If only I placed my order a week earlier…

So it was back to the hunt. If I couldn’t find anything American, maybe a European brand? Some friends recommended Bellini — an Italian company with a good reputation that specializes in baby and youth furniture. They had some nice designs and pricing was a little higher than that of Young America — but from reading reviews and looking at the current product line I learned that recent years the furniture was no longer made in Italy, but made in Asia and had a decrease in fit and finish quality – yet the prices remained just as high as ever. If I am going to pay European prices I at least want it to be made in Europe. Quickly running out of time and patience I decided the only way I was going to get a crib that made me happy was to build it myself.

Adult Bed -- Full Size Mattress — Adult Bed — Full Size Mattress

After a lot of searching I finally settled on a set of plans from Wood Magazine — the 3 in 1 bed which you can find here. The cheap Yankee in me liked the concept of these three in one cribs/beds and figured it would mean less furniture to store in the attic. It starts out as a crib, then converts into a toddler bed and finally converts to a full size adult bed by way of some nice hardware (decorative metal bolts and barrel nuts). The hardware — bolts and nice heavy metal bed frame are made in the USA and available from Products America here. The folks there are friendly and they produce hardware used by other baby furniture manufacturers.

I modified the design a bit by making the short side sections slatted — just like the front and back — being careful to adhere to government safety guidelines for cribs. I’m happy I did as I really prefer this look and the baby seems to like the extra light as well. I built the bed from Cherry instead of the maple you see in the article. I hand selected the cherry to have nice looking grain patterns and even tones. It took longer to build than I would have liked, as life, the birth and other obligations got in the way, but I am happy I finally finished this project and Bradley has a nice place to sleep. I am also happy with how rock solid this bed feels compared to the models we saw in the stores which felt flimsy in comparison.

On the bottom of the headboard is a small note — “For Bradley M. Rainford — Love Dad” for Bradley to find someday when he’s older.

Now the trick will be getting the baby to sleep in it — it’s only been a day or two and he loves playing in the crib more than sleeping in it, but he’s used to sleeping in the master bedroom. Thankfully the bed will be there waiting for him to play, grow and eventually sleep.

In a couple of upcoming posts I’ll talk a bit about how I built this project and some other modifications I made (baby safe finish, hardware patina modification, jigs) and other interesting construction challenges. If you’d like to read some other posts related to this project as they get posted please check out this link here.

Now its time to build him a dresser….

Take care,
-Bill

Children's Projects, Design, Woodworking Techniques

3ft Invisible Paper Towel Holder

January 29, 2015 @TheRainford 3 Comments

In August my wife and I had our first baby — Bradley. And with his arrival we went out and bought him all kinds of baby stuff to get his room ready. One of the key pieces of decorating his room was picking out his bedding. We picked a nice comforter set that coordinates his window curtains, changing table, pictures etc. The funny twist is that young babies should not have a comforter in their bed with them, so you spent all this money on a comforter you can’t use right now, what do you do with it?

Don’t worry the marketing folks were on top of this — sort of. They sew a nice loop in the back which is designed for a curtain rod or similar device to hang the comforter on the wall, but nobody makes one sized for a baby. The curtain rods look ridiculous as they keep the blanket too far off the wall, I refuse to use two binder clips handing from nails, and standard quilt racks/shelves are all way too wide. I guess the baby marketing team was too busy selling us wipe warmers, bottle sanitizers of all sort, teething chew toys and novelty onesies.

Then one afternoon as I was gathering up my scraps from building the crib a workable solution came to me…

Paper Towel Holders on my NYW Sharpening Station

I’d use the same simple mechanism I used to hold my paper towels on my New Yankee Workshop Sharpening Station. It’s a simple solution that makes use of a dowel and two corner blocks to hold the dowel in place. One of the blocks has some wood removed so gravity will keep the dowel in place, but downward forces keep the dowel secure. To remove the dowel you lift that side straight up and it comes out via a path you have cleared for it.

36" Wide Baby Comforter Holder — 36″ Wide Baby Comforter Holder

I used a 1 1/4″ diameter 36″ long cherry dowel and some cherry scraps (extra crib slats) to make the holder. The dowel is only about 3/4″ off the wall, so when the comforter is in place it hangs very close to the wall the way I wanted it to look. The corner blocks are carefully glued and screwed through the back. The holder is affixed to the wall via some countersunk screws that are hidden by the dowel when it is in place. Since I was using scrap wood, I used the thin 3/8″ cherry stock I had on hand, but if I were to build this project again I’d beef up those blocks some more. I used a Forstner bit in the drill press to drill out for the dowel and for the open ended side used a chisel to remove the extra wood.

Finish set to match other pieces of baby furniture in the room

The finish is garnet shellac, followed by several coats of medium brown gel dye stain and finished with a few coats of semi-gloss poly-acrylic. When the comforter is put in place it completely covers the holder. The comforter is 2 inches wider than the 36″ pocket in the back so once on the wall the holder disappears.

Bradley in front of his new wall hanging

All in all it was a quick and easy project that solves a problem the baby marketeers haven’t gotten around to yet. Bradley seems to enjoy jumping in his jumparoo and looking at all the animals on his comforter so I consider this project a success.

If you wind up making your own version or have solved this problem in another way, let us know.

Take care,
-Bill

Fine Woodworking, Historic Places, Writing

A Visit with the Frid Family

March 28, 2014 @TheRainford 5 Comments

This past weekend I had an amazing opportunity to visit the home of Peter Frid — Tage’s son, and visit with his family. Beyond seeing some of the many items Tage made it was great to hear stories of what life was like with Tage and Emma from Peter, his wife Kathy, their son Oliver and his wife Cherie.

Tage Frid's iconic 3 legged stools and natural edge coffee table — Tage Frid’s iconic 3 legged stools and natural edge coffee table

I was very exited to see Tage’s iconic 3 legged stools in person — building a pair has been on my mile long todo list since I first learned about them years ago. I tried unsuccessfully to see these chairs at the MFA and RISD museum but every time I went they were not on display. Not only did I get to see them, but I got the chance to sit on one of them as well. The stool is very stable and surprisingly supportive given its seemingly diminutive stature. It was also just as comfortable to sit in it facing forward as it was to sit in it backwards. I had read the story about how Tage came up with the idea for the stool while sitting on a fence at a horse show, but it was neat to hear that the reason Tage and Emma were at the show was because Peter and his sister were riding in that very show.

Also shown in the picture above is a very nice natural edge coffee table with inlaid metal that is seen in the Gallery section of Tage’s 3rd book.

Tage Frid's Grandmother Clock — Tage Frid’s Grandmother Clock

In another room was Tage’s famous ‘Grandmother Clock.’ The black and white photos of Volume 3 of Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking do not do it justice as the wood has aged beautifully. Inside the case are all the traditional polished brass movements you would expect to find in a large case clock.

Adjacent to the clock is a beautiful liquor cabinet that is also from the Gallery section of Volume 3. It is made from mahogany and the panel details on the side and top are carved in. The cabinet also has beautiful copper/bronze hinges that pivot on an egg shaped knuckle.

Shown above and below is Tage’s favorite chair to sit in. With clean lines, expressed construction, and thickly upholstered cushions I can see why he liked this chair a lot. Like most Danish modern furniture the lines are clean, the details are subtle and piece has a visually light feel.

Expressed joinery and clean lines on this comfortable chair

The profile view reminds me of some cues from a morris chair and the forward lean of the legs reminds me of some of the chrome accents on cars from the 1950s — even while standing still it wants to be moving.

The end table above has another great story behind it. In some of Tage’s writings and articles he mentioned the rocky start he had when first arriving at the School for American Craftsmen wherein the facilities were not well setup and some folks were not eager to hear what Tage had to say. One morning while the students were attending lectures with another instructor Tage took a large board and started milling and working it. By mid-day he finished construction of the table and by the end of the day he even applied a scraped lacquer finish. This feat caused quite the sensation at the school and suddenly a lot more folks wanted to hear what Tage had to say as the existing way the program operated would have taken about 2 weeks for students to carry out this work and with inferior finish results. (You can read more about this story and many others in the Smithsonian interview of Tage Frid available online here.). The table has a delicate look that was ahead of its time and has aged well.

Round pedestal table and corner chairs — Circular pedestal pull-out table and corner chairs

In the above photo you can see the circular pedestal pull out table Tage made in Chapter 4 of Volume 3 of his book. The table base has some interesting design details that hide where the table expands from. The book details the intricate and interesting sliding mechanism that supports the removable table leaf. Also shown are some corner chairs with upholstered seats. They are comfortable when sitting upright and support you well even if you sit with a more relaxed or slouched posture.

While not a cabinetmaker by trade I suspect the knack for woodworking and artistic creativity is in the genes as Peter built numerous very nice cabinets and built-ins around the house, including the kitchen cabinets and tops shown in the background of the above photo and a very nice computer desk. Oliver is an art teacher and accomplished painter and you can see some of his work here.

A sampling of Tage's bowl turning — A sampling of Tage’s bowl turning

Tage also did a fair amount of bowl turning especially in his later years. Above are a few samples of his turning work. The large checkered/segmented bowl and blue lacquered bowl in the foreground were two of my favorites. The large salad bow near the top of the photo is also interesting. Rather than create a large tenon or undercut a tenon for use with a bowl chuck it seems that Tage used 4 wood dowels to presumably affix the large bowl blank to a faceplate or similar — thus maximizing the size of the bowl he could get from the blank and also allowing him to easily cut it off of the faceplate when the turning was completed.

Peter Frid (Left) and Oliver Frid (Right) — Peter Frid (Right) and Oliver Frid (Left)

Pictured in this last photo are Peter Frid (Tage’s Son) on the right, and Oliver Frid (Tage’s Grandson) on the left. I want to thank Peter for opening up his home to me, a thank you to Oliver for the introduction and a big thanks to Kathy and Cherie and the whole Frid family for their hospitality and allowing me to poke around admire some of Tage’s work. It was an inspirational visit and reminds me how I need to get back out into the workshop and finish off my Frid inspired workbench.

Take care,
-Bill

P.S. If you’d like to learn more about Tage Frid and his work, please check out my earlier post about him here.

P.P.S I also got to see some of Tage Frid’s workbenches and will be exploring those more in a future post.

Rainford Restorations

Tag Archives: Cherry

Shaker Oval Boxes

Black Belt Display Case

Building Bradley’s Crib Part 5 — Choosing the Right Finish

Building Bradley’s Crib Part 4 – Final Assembly

Building Bradley’s Crib Part 3 – Stopped Drilling and Hardware Finish Modification

Building Bradley’s Crib Part 2 – Tapered Legs

Building Bradley’s Crib Part 1 – The Curved Headboard

Bradley’s Crib

3ft Invisible Paper Towel Holder

A Visit with the Frid Family

A Joiner's Guide To Traditional Woodworking and Preservation