Adventures in Woodworking

Back at the end of January (yes, 2008), I said that I wanted to make, and I quote myself, “a simple dovetail box.” I planned to make it for my wife. I don’t think I really expected to finish it by Valentine’s Day, but I did expect that it would be done for her birthday (mid-March). That came and went, leaving me with Mothers Day as my next target date. As I finally figured out how to do the lid, it all started coming together very quickly, and I found myself on Mothers Day Eve with a great chance at being done. So here we go:

First off, the hinges. This was quite tricky. First time with hinges, and you’d think I’d have done some research first, but nope. I carefully pared away the mortise for the hinge until I had each one on top and bottom at about 1/16″ deep. As you can see, I’m working at night with just a desk lamp. The kids’ room is just on the other side of those windows, so I can’t use the big bright lights.

Then it was the moment of truth. Sheesh, it seems like near the end of the project, every single thing is a moment of truth. It’s nervewracking. I did read about how easy it is to mess up brass screws, but I didn’t have any steel ones that size to bore the hole with, so I folded over some duct tape and drove the screw in with the tape protecting the screw. I think it worked!

At last. The final moment of truth. Screwing on the other side of the hinges, and seeing how the lid mates with the box. Actually, I had to do a little bit of tweaking (which does not mean I bent the hinges) to get it to mate well, but it did! It’s not perfect, though; the lid is just a bit too far forward, but the sides are flush. I can live with that.

So here are final pictures of the box as I’ll present it to my wife. After I finish it (oil/varnish/mineral spirits), I’ll post it on my Projects page and I’ll give a rundown on how it went overall, what I learned, etc. In a nutshell, though, I’m happy with it overall although there are many things that went wrong and I had to fix - and the fixes don’t look all that great in my eyes. But more on that later. I’m proud to present this box to my amazing wife for Mothers Day, and I’ll also present to her this series of posts so she can see how it came together. Here’s the box!

Okay, okay, so the woodworking community has spent all week talking about how to be safe in the shop, but let’s be real: Accidents happen. So when they do, how do you treat it? From time to time I read in the forums or bulletin boards about treating cuts with Super Glue, and invariably someone questions how safe it is to do so. So for Woodworking Safety Week 2008, I spent a half hour Googling the topic and here’s what I have for you:

It’s fine. Go for it.

Okay, now for the longer answer. One of the first practical uses of Super Glue (also referred to as “CA” for its chemical name, cyanoacrylate) was to treat wounded soldiers during the Vietnam War - to control the bleeding until they could get back to the hospital. It wasn’t just used externally, either - it was apparently used for such things as patching up lacerated livers as well.

CA is a great workshop solution because it instantly and securely seals off the cut and quickly eliminates pain (because the pain, apparently, is from oxygen hitting the exposed nerve endings). It wears off naturally in a day or two, so you may need to reapply - but by then, the bleeding has stopped and the pain is much less anyway. CA apparently also reduces scarring.

Experts (who are these guys anyway?) say that CA can irritate the skin and should not be used on deep cuts. A more helpful “expert” advises that over-the-counter CA is less preferred because it has a cheaper type of methyl alcohol in it. No one seems to have a problem with using CA on smallish surface cuts, especially those that can easily be closed up while glued. For a medical variant of CA, try Dermabond, Band-Aid Liquid Bandage or 3M No-Sting Liquid Bandage Spray.

Personally, I’ve recently become brave enough to try it, and now I’m a big fan of Super Glue. Just last month I ran a marking knife into my thumb up to the nail. After a minute of holding it under the faucet, I dried it off, glued it up and was back to woodworking in minutes, with no worry about bleeding on the workpiece. And just yesterday I ripped a fingernail pretty bad at the pool (when is Swimming Pool Safety Week, anyway?), and put some Super Glue over the nail to help seal it up. Yeah!

In conjunction with Woodworking Safety Week 2008, here is my very first attempt at a video. I think I can give The Wood Whisperer a good run for his money. I’ve got everything he has except woodworking skills, customers, power tools, a nice shop, groupies and sponsors. Other than that, we’re the same. Covered in this video are the chisel, marking knife and saw. Enjoy!

As we kick off Woodworking Safety Week 2008, I thought I’d offer some improvement on marketing it to the woodworking community. It seemed like something was missing: a tagline. I mean, just saying “Woodworking Safety Week 2008″ sounds kind of boring, don’t you think? So I’m proposing the following taglines for your consideration. Please choose the one that sounds most appropriate (or offer your own in the comments below).

P.S. This is just for fun. Marc Spagnuolo is in no way obligated to apply the tagline to this or any other Woodworking Safety Week.

Last week I cut the grooves for my “t-keys” and the other day I glued up the lid. Yesterday, I glued in the t-keys. Here’s a shot of the t-keys just prior to glue-up:

Since I cut the slots by hand, the slight variations in each meant that I had to cut each t-key to match each slot. Even though I carefully fitted each one prior to glue-up, I still had a major glitch with one of them; it wouldn’t go in. When I tried to pull it out, the base of the “t” broke off. So I cleaned it up as best I could and glued in a simple key. Here’s the post-glueup shot:

This morning, I cut off the waste, and then sanded the whole thing down from 80 to 240 grit. Here are the before and after pics (click to enlarge):

I’m definitely feeling it all coming together very quickly now. All that’s left is to veneer the top and bottom of the lid panels, chamfer/shape the lid, glue it on, cut it off and hinge it up!

The moment of truth. The point of no return. The bridge beyond despair. Okay, I made that last one up. Time to glue up the lid.

I felt like a surgeon preparing for a big operation. First, I did about three dry runs to practice the glue-up, assembly and “cord clamping”. Finally, it was time. I laid out all of my equipment in the order in which I’d need it: glue, spreader (the innards of a foam brush), two squares for the opposite corners, parachute cord and a pencil for tightening, small clamp to hold the pencil in place, and a ruler to measure the diagonals for square. It was harrowing and yet fun.

When it was all said and done, I had a squared-up lid. For the cord clamp, I actually ran the cord in the key slots. I then tied two loops near each end and ran a pencil through those loops. Then I wound the pencil up as tightly as possible, and used the clamps merely to keep the pencil from spinning back the other way.

One last shot just for a different angle:

Next stop: Cutting the keys, and slicing off some veneer for the top and bottom of the lid.

When I asked for feedback on how to glue up the frame pieces for the lid to the box I’m working on, Luis had suggested that I not glue the miters, but rather chop little mortises in the miters and glue in some floating tenons. The only problem is that with the size of my miters, they would have to be very tiny mortises, and I just didn’t have it in me to do it. So here’s what I came up with: “T Keys”. I decided to run grooves down the length of the mortise, create the key slot, and then cut little t-shaped pieces (of the lighter-colored sapwood that I used for the inlay) which would fit right in. Follow me as I show you what I did (all pictures are clickable for full-size):

First, I put a connected miter joint in the vise and cut the outside lines of my groove and key (to match the thickness of my mini chisel). And yes, I know my pieces are banged up. They’ve been in the shop too long without being worked on, and have fallen once or twice. I’ll probably chamfer that out.

Next, I put the pieces miter-up in the vise and, using the notches as my guide, I cut down the length of the miters (I didn’t measure how deep, but it was close to 1/4″ I guess).

Enter my new allen chisel. I put the mini chisel bevel down and, using the bend in the wrench for leverage (worked nicely), I hogged out the wood in between the cuts.

Next I figured out how wide I wanted my keys to be. I have no idea what the rule of thumb is, but my keys will extend about 1/2″ each way from the corner. I then marked and cut down to a line from that point perpendicular to the miter - the depth of my keys. Following that, I hogged out the key slot with my chisel (using a mallet this time).

And that’s it! I now have t-shaped slots in all four corners. We’ll see how it actually comes together later.

I’d been thinking about how to cut the slots in my box lid for the miter keys. The narrowest blade I have is my 1/4″ chisel. Actually, I think my mini router plane blade is a touch smaller than that, but would still have cut far too wide of a slot. So here’s what I came up with: the allen chisel. My idea was to simply (simply, ha!) grind a bevel on an allen (or hex) wrench and then hone it up on my stones. I don’t have a grinder, so I had to do all my grinding with a file.

Well, it wasn’t actually quite that easy. First, I realized that when you grind the bevel on a hexagonal wrench, the “meat” of the bevel is wider than the cutting edge. This would make for a pretty sloppy groove. So what I had to do first was to grind the sides of the wrench to square the edges, essentially making it rectangular at the front. Then I could grind the bevel. I tried to estimate a 25-30 degree angle, and when I measured it with my Starrett protractor, I was pretty close. I just needed to touch it up a bit and I was in business. Take a look:

Honing the allen chisel was a bit unnerving. My stones cost a lot of money, and I didn’t particularly like dragging a little tiny blade across it, making little tiny grooves. Also, on two occasions I raised the “handle” just a tad too far and made a couple mini divets in the surface. Great. Needless to say, I didn’t put a microbevel on this sucker. Here’s another pic:

Someone told me that an allen wrench isn’t tempered or hardened or whatever, and that as a result, it wouldn’t hold an edge. I figured no problem, I’m only using it for a few inches of grooves; it should stay sharp enough for long enough.

Stay tuned for the next post to see the allen chisel in action!

After talking about the most embarrassing tools I own, I thought it would be good to get my mind off of these purchases by talking about my favorite tools in the shop. Feel free to add yours in the comments, or on your own blog (and post the link in the comments).

3. My Irwin chisels. From what I hear, Irwin chisels haven’t lost much of the original quality that their predecessor Marples provided. And I love ‘em. Use ‘em all the time. The best thing? If I ever do run out of blade (unlikely), or lose one, I can get me another for $10-$20. They’re pictured here in my chisel box in progress.

2. My great grandpa Rudolf’s tools. My great grandfather came to the States in 1913 (at the age of 17), and made a living as a carpenter. Last year, my dad gave me any and all of his old tools that I wanted, and I took a lot of them here to Malaysia (the rest I took a rain check on). Pictured is a Stanley Victor #1105 jack plane, a Stanley #60 1/2 block plane, and a Millers Falls #772-101 bit brace. They’re by no means in mint condition, but they’re still perfectly functional and it feels special to be using them.

1. My Guyokucho 9 1/2″ Ryoba (for Hardwoods). Sorry for bumping you to #2, Grandpa Rudolf, but this saw has changed my life (woodworkingly speaking, that is). They say that tools don’t make you a good woodworker; all I know is that this ryoba makes me look like a good woodworker, so I’m not complaining. You can’t argue with my pics showing how clean it cuts and how fine the kerf!

Last month, I posted about my adventures in hand-cut veneer. I was pretty proud of myself for how well it turned out; I felt a bit like David fighting Goliath (Goliath being the giant hurdle of working without power tools) and cutting off his big fat head.

I got several very positive comments both here and over on LumberJocks. The comments made me feel like even though I am still brand new in the craft, that there are already some things I can do well. One comment in particular (from Luis) still rings in my ears:

You are an excellent sawyer!!

There are a lot of areas in woodworking where my brand new skills are quite raw - including sawing. But knowing that experienced woodworkers see promise in what I’m doing has given me more confidence in attempting new things.

Tonight I needed a thin strip of wood for my chisel box. It will be glued to the inside of the box lid and will rest against the chisel handles to keep them pinned down when the box is closed. None of my plywood was thin enough, so I said, “Guess I’ll have to just cut a strip myself!” Telling myself, I’m an excellent sawyer! I jumped right in, grabbed the only scrap left of the wood I was using for the interior, and started in on it.

When I was done, I had a strip of wood that was 3/64″ all the way down. And when I sized it up where I needed it to go, I had cut it way too thin! So I’ll have to mix and match the woods after all. Oh well, it’s just a chisel box.

But tonight was a lesson in confidence. Kaleo recently passed on advice from one of his instructors to “trust in your hand tool skills” and not to worry about screwing up. Confidence goes a long way. And so do compliments, so let’s all keep encouraging each other as we all progress in the craft!