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Yesterday I decided that each year I’d make a cross on Good Friday. Not only would this result in something meaningful each year, but it would also give me a gauge as to my progress as a woodworker.
So this my first year, I thought I’d go as simple as you could get: a cross cut from a single block of wood. Sounds easy, but I still managed to take a few hours doing it. But still, I’ve never had a “weekend project” that didn’t take weeks (or months) to complete, so I felt quite a sense of accomplishment at having gone from rough lumber to finished product (except for 2 more coats of finish) in a day.
So here’s the cross:
And here’s the back:
I got to try out some new skills doing this, like chamfering (which I’ve never done before). I did an initial chamfering with the chisel, but later found that sandpaper does a pretty good job too. I did have to tinker with my chamfers on several occasions when I accidentally went a bit far with chisel or sandpaper. I really like the way inside chamfers meet, but I’m not sure what the outside chamfers should look like when they intersect – mine are all over the place.
This is also my first time trying the BLO-varnish-mineral spirits mixture for finishing. It’s what I plan to use on my wife’s box, so this is a good test run. I’ve already applied one coat (which was dry enough for me to handle for these pics) and will add two more tomorrow (AM and PM). Not sure how to handle the piece while it dries, I had it resting on four nails which were pushed through a piece of cardboard. Oh, and I’m not sure what kind of wood this is. I got it from what used to be part of a drawer. I’m guessing it’s meranti, since that wood is so plentiful here.
Not the greatest piece of workmanship, but a good place to start, I think. Happy Easter!
I’m guessing that most of you who read that entry title uttered, “Yeah, you and me both, pal.” So I know I’m not alone in this.
I feel competing urges. On the one hand, woodworking is great. It’s a fun hobby, and even though I make countless mistakes and sub-par attempts at anything I do, I can see progress. And that’s rewarding. On the other hand, my family is great. I love them, they love me, and at the end of the day I feel the best when I’ve spent some good time with my wife and kids.
My wife is very patient with me. She knows I have the pull to the shop. Right now, she’s maybe a bit more patient because she knows that the primary thing I’m doing is something for her. But even if I was just doing stuff for my own benefit, she would support it. Still, when my wife spends most of the week taking care of our kids, it seems quite selfish to assume that she should do the same thing on the weekends, instead of me giving her a break for a change.
I think one of the best things I can do at this point is to do woodworking in small chunks. So after dinner, I go excuse myself and make a few cuts, or a glue-up, or some measuring and planning. Half hour or so. Then I’m back. On the weekends, I might be able to take a bit more time.
What do you guys do?
So I don’t have access to store-bought veneer (no stores) and I don’t have a bandsaw, so it looks like I’m on my own for veneer. And since I needed it for this box lid, why not start now? I was feeling pretty confident going into this endeavor with my new ryoba. And it didn’t let me down.
I didn’t measure or mark anything. A fellow LumberJock told me it should be 1/16″ or thinner. So I just put the saw a smidge away from the edge of the board and tried to keep my line even horizontally and vertically. I also don’t have a real vise, so I just laid the board up against the “bench” and sawed away!
After resawing the veneer off of my board, it looked pretty good – mostly even thickness, and it was right around 1/16″ thick at its thickest point.
I sanded it down a little (tricky to hold on to such a thin little piece!) and then slapped it good-side-up onto my plywood panel.
And there we go! The veneer might be a tiny bit short, but I’m starting to lower my standards a bit and just want to get this thing done. I missed my Valentine’s Day deadline and just missed my wife’s birthday – I don’t want to let Mother’s Day go by before finishing! The other thing I should have done was to sandwich the plywood/veneer glueup in between a couple pieces of wood, for a more even clamp. When it was all dry, I saw that the veneer had lifted up very slightly on one edge. Shouldn’t affect the end product, though, as the top of the veneer is what I’m making flush with the top of the lid. So here’s what it looks like (none of the components are glued yet):
Thanks to everyone who gave me such great advice on how to do the lid!
I knew of a sawmill that was only about a minute’s drive from one of the places we used to live when I was getting my Master’s degree. Since I had to go down to the university on some business the other day, I thought I’d pay the sawmill a visit and get the low-down on what was available. I also brought my camera and got away with taking a handful of pictures, although I felt a bit CIA-ish doing it. All pictures have a full-screen version if you click on them. So enjoy!
From the road, all you can see is wood. It’s stacked really high, and they have so much of it that they store some of it right out there in the open. The guard shack is on the left side of the gate, and after telling them I wanted to look at wood (is that the passphrase?), they opened up and let me in.
And here we are. The top part of the sign below is in Malay, and simply says, “Bangi Board Factory Sdn Bhd” (the Sdn Bhd stands for Sendirian Berhad and I think is similar to Inc. or Ltd.). Bangi is the name of a town (which, oddly, is one town south of where this is). The bottom line is in Chinese, and it says, “Measure once, cut once. Then you’ll be back for more.” Just kidding. I don’t know Chinese.
When I drove in, I was just amazed at the massive amount of wood they have here. It is a sawmill, though, so what should I expect? You can even see some former trees just waiting patiently there to the left of the shelter.
Here is a better look at those logs:
So they’ve got spacers in between the boards to help dry them out, but they are apparently counting on our recent dry spell to continue…
And here is what it looks like under the roof. Isn’t it beautiful?
Now for some details. All of the wood here is meranti – 100% of it. I’ve talked a lot about kempas, since that’s what I bought for my bench top. But meranti is much more common here in Malaysia. As far as size, they have 4/4 boards as small as 1×6 and as large as 1×13 (or whatever they could get out of the log). They also have 8/4 and 12/4 boards of progressively narrower widths, obviously.
As far as the prices, I’ll give you what I know and you let me know if my board foot calculations are correct. The amount I chose was how much I thought I’d need for my bench top.
30′ of 3×4 (30 bf): $2.67/ft ($2.67/bf)
25′ of 3×5 (31.25 bf): $3.61/ft ($2.88/bf)
So how are those prices?
NOTE: As is my custom, my list of newbie questions are at the end of this post.
So a week or two ago I wrote about my plans for the box lid. In short, it was going to have mitered edges with a thin strip of the lighter-colored sapwood (would you call it an inlay?) in between the mitered edges and the center piece. Today I took advantage of the Saturday down time to try to make it happen.
A few days ago, I resawed a small block of wood 1/2″ thick and ripped it into four pieces each about 3/4″ wide. I was trying to rig it so that the sapwood inlay would be visible about 1/4″ in from the edge as you look at the underside of the lid. Then I ripped very thin strips of sapwood (I really love that ryoba), and here’s what I had (the bottom sapwood strip would be cut in half, for the shorter edges):
I glued them onto the heartwood pieces and was pretty pleased with the tight edges. A small amount of tinkering brought the mitered edges together (more or less). I did a combination of planing and sanding. It’s mostly there, but I’ll need to do a little more to have them be perfectly tight. You can also see a bit of unevenness in the height of the pieces; one of my weak points is getting a perfectly flat board. So once it’s all together, I’ll plane it even. But overall, I think it looks okay:
Then came the center piece. I chose to do this last because I recently heard Marc (aka The Wood Whisperer) say that in joinery, he always did the “female” part first, and then fit the “male” part to that. So for example, he’d do mortise and then tenon.
So I already had a piece that was the original top (before I went with a thicker one) that is about 1/4″ thick. My idea was to have that be the center piece, flush with the edges on the top and recessed on the underside. I’d bevel the insides of the mitered edges so that they met the center piece and give it a nice little look (I even thought of putting a mirror in there, but don’t feel like going to get one cut to size).
But then inexperience reared its ugly head and smashed my teetering confidence. I spent so much time trying to get two of the sides flush with the mitered edges, I ended up having a very slightly undersized piece. Here’s the pic (click to enlarge):
It’s grossly undersized lengthwise, and just a tad undersized in width. My first inclination was, “Fix it!” I thought maybe I’d cut that center piece in half and glue another thin strip of sapwood in between them. But maybe I’d be better off just resawing another center piece. So here are my questions:
- Most importantly: How would you advise me to fit the center piece to the mitered edges, using only hand tools? Maybe my method is okay, but just needs more practice. Would you do it differently? The mitered edges are still loose (unglued), by the way.
- I’m considering having the centerpiece be slightly thicker than the mitered edges, and having them stand a bit proud on both sides (and chamfered). What do you think? Might make glue-up a bit tricky.
- Is there a way to “cheat” to get the edges to mate well, or at least to disguise a less-than-perfect mating?
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