diy wood

Well, it's been a little crazy around here lately. Between the general chaos of the end of another middle school year, and shopping for a new vehicle, I haven't had much time, or energy for the shop. But Teague's first bithday was last week, and I did suceed in making him a special present.


A skunk bench for a little stinker!

After cleaning up the caulking irons, I just couldn't put them back in the ammo box they came in. I had a vague idea that an airtight box, while certainly keeping moist air out, would also trap moisture in with the irons and would probably not be the best home for them. That seems like a good, practical idea - but of course there was more to it. I just didn't like the ammo box - not for these irons. It didn't make me happy. This might sound familiar...

Anyway, I needed to design and build a box for the caulking irons and this seemed like a good excuse to try an experiment. I've noticed that many pieces built by old timers have a certain "funky" element to them. They don't seem to follow any "rules" of design, and they sometimes flat out break them. But they have character in spades and are wonderful, unique pieces. Often times it seems that there was a material influence on the final form. Maybe they used what was on hand - a thrifty use of offcuts. Sometimes they aren't successful - the piece feels heavy or clunky - but sometimes it is successful, and the piece has a wonderful, funky, organic, improvised quality (and I mean improvised in a good way - like a jazz solo - not like a shoddy cover up...).


For this project/experiment, I decided to restrict the materials I could use, design as I went, and see what happened to the final product. I could only use scrap, or left-over wood and hardware. This was going to be a quick box - no worries about perfect surfaces etc.

Here's what I ended up using:

Wood:
Some pine shelves I took out of a cheapo CD cabinet I resurrected from Salvation Army
A piece of mahogany left over from the wood stove fence project
A chunk of 1x2 that was formally a sticker for a wood pile
3" hunk of 3/8" dowel
1 bamboo skewer

Hardware/fasteners:
Cheapo piano hinge from aforementioned cheapo CD cabinet
Screws from the wheel of homeless fasteners
Nails - aluminum tacks! From - well, I don't know where these came from...


The tools to be stored set some dimensions and the material available set others. The caulking wheel was 16" long. I only had two pieces of the pine shelving longer than that. Since I needed the two sides and the top and bottom to be 16"+ I had to get four out of two. One piece I ripped down the middle. This became the two long sides of the box. To hold all the irons the box needed to be wider, so I resawed the second piece and ended up with two thin (approx. 5/16") pieces for the top and the bottom. The ends I made from one of the shorter shelf pieces.

My original idea was to use wooden pins as hinges, so I made two cleats for the top that would overlap the ends of the box and provide me with a location for the pins. After making those from part of the 1x2, I couldn't work out the details of the pins/hinges, so I scrapped that idea and cut a chunk of piano hinge. Then I found the tacks, and used those to fasten the hinge to the back and the top. The front edge of the lid looked funny, so I ripped a strip of mahogany and glued that across the front edge, overlapping the ends of the cleats. Better, but now the base looked odd. More ripping of mahogany strips and I attached a mitered base to the box. Not too bad, but the box still looked top heavy.


I ignored that "problem" and moved on to the handle. I did find an old metal handle, but attaching it to the thin top would have required adding a strip of wood under the lid. I avoided that by sawing and carving a wooden handle and screwing up through the lid into the handle. Not only did that solve the practical challenge of how to attach a handle, it somehow solved the top heavy aesthetic problem as well (at least to my eyes). Unintentionally, the handle came out with an "Asian" flavor, and paired with the top being wider than the base, it gave the whole box a quasi pagoda nature. Weird.


To keep the lid from just opening when I pick it up by the handle, I made two locking pins from the dowel and the bamboo skewer. Then, to avoid losing them, I made two holes in the top edges of the ends to hold the pins. This also has the bonus feature of propping the lid open so it is obvious that it is not locked.


Two coats of bright red milk paint pulled the whole thing together and hid the different woods used. I followed the paint with my own mixture of mineral oil and beeswax.


I think this experiment was successful. The box is functional and has a pleasing design in a funky, improvised, unique way that keeps drawing my attention back to it. Much more enjoyable than the ammo box.


Here's the tool kit for this project:

Okay, first I should say that I am not in any way short on projects, or potential projects. Seriously. But, sometimes I just can't say no. Here's the latest example.

Last month, while visiting family in Oregon, I'm walking through an antique store. A real one. Which probably doesn't overly excite you, except you probably don't live in Alaska where 99.9% of "antique" stores are actually "junk" stores. So, anyway, I'm drooling all over the store. I turn a corner and there is this cute little arts and crafty rocker.


I'm about to move on, when I see the tag. $35! What? In Alaska, assuming you could find something like this, it would be at least $100 to $200 more. Now I'm interested. The tag says "as is"- hmm. I start to give it the once over.

The joints are loose. No problem. That's good really (already planning ahead). One of the metal supports that holds the seat springs has broken and someone "fixed" it by jamming a board in there. Not comfortable - true, but it is fixable. And the rockers aren't original. The holes in them don't match up with the legs. More serious, but I'm not collecting, and it still has my interest. And come on - $35!

So I buy it. I did try to resist, I mean I don't need any projects - did I mention that? But two day's later it's sitting in my Mother-In-Law's garage. Now to get it home to Alaska. I thought about checking it on the airplane. Don't laugh. Up here we check stuff that seems crazy anywhere else. If you go to the airport in Anchorage you will see various duck tape wrapped objects on the carousel: moose racks, guns, huge coolers full of salmon, guns, TVs (in boxes), fishing poles, guns, BBQ grills, a case of Tabasco, more guns, groceries etc. But after thinking about the prices they are charging these days, I opted for Old Blue. The U.S. Postal Service to the rescue!

Step one. Take the rocker apart. No problem - the joints are already loose. Except that someone has tried to hold them together by nailing through some of the joints. I dig these out with minimal damage using a tool I made from a screwdriver that I sharpened and put a "vee" notch into with a file (got both at the local hardware store - a real one! No borg!). While taking it apart, I manage to read part of the decayed sticker that tells me it is The Phoenix Chair Company's Model # 21434, from Sheboygan, WI.


Step two. Box it up. The postal service has a web site that covers pricing. If you ever find yourself in this situation (I doubt it, but who knows...)it's a very handy guide to knowing how big you can go before prices hit the roof.

Step three. Mail it. Done. I've now more than doubled my investment. I'm still happy.

Step four. Wait. Parcel Post to Alaska can take weeks. Especially when the volcano keeps messing around.


Step five. Put it back together. This will be the fun one - but it will have to wait. But one fine day, the rocker will rise from the ashes like a Phoenix...err...from the boxes...whatever. Fun.

Caulking irons.

One day I WILL build a boat...

In the meantime, I enjoy watching Bob Easton build his Fiddlehead.

In part one I discussed the design, layout and cutting of the brackets for this simple paper towel holder. Now let's look at how I finished the project.

After cutting and shaping the second bracket, using the first as a pattern, I started on the base. Because of the way this holder is mounted under the cabinet (the cabinet bottom is actually recessed) the base will not be readily visible. So nothing fancy here - just a board with two dados to hold the brackets.

Dados are like grooves, except they run cross grain, while grooves run parallel to the grain. There are many ways of making these by hand. I decide to do a side-by-side (literally) comparison of two of these ways: knife, chisel, and router plane; and dado plane.

After laying out the dado with the square and marking knife, I used the router plane to mark the final depth of the dado. Of course, you could do this with a marking gauge etc. but I find this a convenient shortcut.


The next step is just zipping out the waste with the chisel. As shown, I started with the chisel bevel up, and then switched to bevel down action. There are two things to watch out for here. First, you need to be careful to avoid tearout on the far edge of the board. I do this by either cutting a small ramp with knife and chisel, or avoiding the issue entirely by working in from both edges. You also need to be careful to keep the chisel (and your arms and body) moving in a straight line. If you pivot or arch your stroke to either side, the chisel will dig into the sides of the dado and cause tearout. I find short, almost "jabby" strokes work better than long smooth ones in most cases - which somehow seems counterintuitive... Also, the knife lines will need to be redone as the dado deepens.


After getting close with the chisel, I switched to the router plane to clean things up and insure a flat, level bottom. I prefer the spear point cutter, but a square one works too.


For the second dado, I used a tool made specifically for the job. The dado plane combines the abilities of all the tools used on the first dado. It has dual nickers that knife the cross grain fibers to avoid tearout. It has a skewed iron that cleanly removes the wood between the knifed lines. And it has an adjustable depth stop to create a smooth and level bottom in the dado.

All the assistance it requires is a small batten attached to the board to guide it. Since I knew that the holes wouldn't show, I just nailed the batten to the board. If you wanted to avoid that, you could clamp it. Once the batten was in place, it was easy to plane the dado.



Both methods worked fine, but using the dado plane was easier (once it was properly adjusted) and produced a cleaner dado. Here's a shot of the test fit and a close-up of the dado joint made with the plane.



Once the brackets were nailed and glued into the dados, it was time to work on the rod that actually holds the roll of towels. I selected a piece of 2x stock with straight grain and using a hatchet and maul, split off a section.


Taking the billet over to the shavehorse I use a drawknife to square it up...


...then I created an octagon...


...and finally, using a concave spokeshave, changed this into a cylindrical rod.


After rounding the rod ends by cutting facets with the drawknife, it was time to hang the finished holder from the bottom of the cabinet. A huge improvement in my opinion. Where before I managed to avoid noticing the junky plastic holder, I now enjoy noticing and appreciating the new wooden holder. Sometimes small things are big changes.


Here's the hand tool kit used on this project.

Left to right, top to bottom:

Rip saw, concave spokeshave, #6 fore plane, flat spokeshave, shoulder plane, #5 jack plane, #3 smoothing plane, cross-cut panel saw, �� dado plane, #71 router plane, fine and coarse half-round files, 14� Brace with #20 bit, hatchet, batten, �� bevel edged chisel, awl, nail set, hammer, drawknife, square, marking knife, zigzag rule, plane setting hammer, and compass w/ pencil.

You know how some things just hide right in front of you? You look at them every day, but somehow you don't really see them. And then, one day, BAM! "Where did THAT come from?"

That was our kitchen paper towel holder. For years, it's been there. I get paper towels from it every single day. But when I finally "saw" it - Yuck! It's awful. Dingy. Shoddy. Plastic. How could I have let that thing stay in my kitchen?


It's all the more shameful when compared to my shop paper towel holder. Which, although simple in design and construction, I do notice every time I get a towel from it. It's wood. I made it. It makes me happy. Big, big difference.


It was time for action.

First, I created a new design based on my shop holder, but with modifications made for mounting it under the cabinet, rather than on the wall. Then I figured out how much wood it required, and the dimensions of the stock.

After crosscutting a pine 1x12 to rough length, I used my panel gauge to mark the width for ripping.


After a quick trip to the saw bench, and a few passes of a fore plane, it was time for layout. I used pencil so I could make changes as I went. After the third redo, I liked what I saw.


The next step was to bore the hole for the rod that will hold the paper towels. I do most of my boring on my low saw bench. The slot down the length of the bench makes supporting the workpiece easy. For the boring, I used my Stanley "Yankee" clone, 12" sweep with a 1 1/4" (marked "20" - as auger bits are numbered in 1/16ths) auger bit. The bigger sweep gives me much more torque. Even in the soft pine, a bit that size has quite a lot of resistance, and although a brace with a shorter sweep would function fine, less effort equals smoother action and less likelihood of tearout on the face from wobble. The trick to avoiding tearout on the back is to not bore all the way through. As soon as the lead screw breaks through on the other side stop and flip the board. You can reach under to feel for the tip, but after some practice you can just feel it in the brace when the tip breaks free. It's pretty amazing, but that tip can just barely be felt with your finger tip, barely even be seen, but the tool and your body will tell you, if you are listening.

After you flip the board, place the lead screw in the tiny hole and bore in from the back side. As the screw has nothing to hold onto, you have to apply more pressure to keep the bit cutting. This is where having the low bench really pays off. I just lean over the work, put the back of my top hand on my chest and bear down on the brace, letting my weight do the work.


Side Note: If you don't have a bit this big, expandable bits are useful, but the flipping technique above doesn't really work. Because expandable bits tend to have only one cutting fluke, they don't rotate cleanly once the bit looses the guidance of the lead screw. In this situation, your best approach is to use a piece of scrap wood as a backer and just bore straight through from the front side. I used to put a piece of paper between the two boards to show me when I was completely through (just like a lot of old shop instruction books tell you), but you don't need too. If you pay attention, you can feel the brace tell you when you are in the second piece of wood. It's pretty cool.

Once the hole was finished it was time for roughing out the shape with my bowsaw. I like to cut with the grain when I can, so I cut and rotate often.




The bowsaw was followed by the spokeshave...


and the file.


Next I will use this piece to layout the duplicate bracket for the other end. Then I will need to cut a piece for the top, cut two dadoes in the top, make the rod, attach the brackets to the top and mount the holder under the cabinet.

Soon that plastic piece of junk will no longer be hanging in our kitchen. Which is good, because now that I have noticed it, it mocks me unmercifully every chance it gets.

When I got up this morning, I had no idea that in the course of my normal day I would stumble upon the definitive answer to one of woodworking's most puzzling conundrums. But that is exactly what happened!

That's right, without even meaning to, I have found the solution to the eternal question: "What is the purpose of the nib on old handsaws?"

Who knew that the solution was thoughtfully provided over 80 years ago by a helpful manufacturer of cigarettes? I didn't. And truthfully, I almost missed it today, all because of a slight linguistic twist (or Queen's English) that replaces the term "nib" with "notch".

Without further ado, I present to you now, THE ANSWER:





Messrs W.D. and H.O. Wills, of Bristol and London, we salute you! Now the collective mind of the hand tool world can focus anew on the remaining mysteries: bevel up, or bevel down; push or pull planes; Western or Japanese saws; planes resting sole down, or on their sides, or maybe with their toes upon little blocks of wood...