diy wood

As hard as it is for me to believe, it's time for another birthday present for my boy. He loves to draw, so I decided on making a box to hold all his pencils, crayons etc.

Now normally my posts start from the beginning and follow the creation process through to the product. This one's going to be different - mostly because as the time crunch came on, the picture taking pretty much stopped.

So here it is, a bit backwards, but hopefully still worthwhile.

The completed box:










And now for what I have in way of "step-by-step" photographs.

The beginning:


The middle:


The end (assuming that you understand that by "end" I mean end of the beginning):


And pictures of two tips or techniques that I've found useful for making this style of box (which is really just a giant version of my pencil box):

The first involves shortening one end section to allow the top to slide in and out of the grooves. I rip down the center of the groove and then plane the remaining waste down to the bottom of the groove (well, "bottom" when the piece is oriented as it is in the finished box). It is easy to go too far, and then the lid does not fit snug; there is a gap between it and the end of the box. My improved technique is to first take a pencil and draw a line down the back corner of the remaining groove. As soon as this planes off, I stop. Pretty simple, but pretty darn effective. Why did it take me so long to think of that?


The second is a simple way to test the fit of the rabbeted bottom (or top) into the grooves in the box sides. I just grab an offcut of the grooved stock and use that as a handy gauge to test the rabbets. Again, simple but effective, and embarrassingly slow to come to me.



I guess I better start planning next year's birthday present, as it will be here before I know it!

About a million years ago, I started designing a new bench (sitting not work) to replace an existing bench that was on death's doorstep. Last week I put saw to wood and got started. Here's the progress so far:


What? It doesn't look familiar? Well, it has been a while since you saw the design. You remember, I worked on it forever. Here's a reminder:



There, see it now? No? Hmm. Yeah, probably not. Seems like I completely abandoned that design and just started building something different without a whole lot of thought going into it. How unlike me.

This one is supposed to be more "church pew like". We'll see...

Oh, and the original bench? The one that was about to fall apart. It's still there. Even though it is not well made, it is made of real wood. I just bang the doweled joinery back together every other day and it carries on - a daily demonstration of the power of real wood. Try that with pressed sawdust!

Okay, here's an update on the staining wood with tea experiment; I added two different oil finishes to the test.

First, let's revisit the test board with only the tea stain:


Applications of the tea stain from left to right: five, three, one, and none.

Now the oil from top to bottom: four applications of dark tung oil, four applications of Tried and True Danish Oil, and none.


And the same, but rotated 90 degrees:


I think it is interesting how the angle makes such a difference. The wood is planed, so the chatoyancy might be a factor - I don't remember seeing such a difference when the wood was sanded. But then again, it's been quite a while since I've done much sanding or staining, so maybe I'm just wrong about that.

Oh, and I'm still working on on the coffee stain - more on that later.

I meant to post this some time ago and then completely forgot about it. I only remembered when I stumbled across the pictures on the computer. So, anyway, here it is.

When I was getting ready for my classes with Roy Underhill last year (Dovetails and Mystery Mallet) I realized I didn't have an good way to transport all the tools I needed/wanted to take with me. It was time to build!

I thought about several different designs, but in the end I decided to make a larger version of the tool tote I made for my son's birthday. Here's how my larger version looked when it was loaded up for the class:


And here's a shot of the unpacked kit:


It's surprising what can fit inside - here's the list(from left to right):

8" Yankee brace, mallet (sans mystery), Gransfors Bruks sharpening stone, Stanley #71 router plane, Lie-Nielsen #98 & #99 side rabbet planes, Veritas marking gauge, Millers Falls coping saw, Stanley #60 low angle block plane, 6" dividers, bevel gauge, pencil box, auger bit file, still more dividers, square, Veritas spokeshave, another marking gauge, half-round files (single and double cut), Nicholson cabinetmaker's rasp #49, flat file (single cut), folding extension rule, auger bit (5/8th"), marking knife, Lie-Nielsen dovetail and carcass saws, my "Scary Sharp to Go" kit, and various gouges and chisels

This particular kit was based on a list specific to the class and additional tools I though I might need for the class projects. I can't remember why I took the Gransfors Brucks sharpening stone. It's what I use on my drawknives, but I didn't take any...hmm. I'm sure it made sense at the time.

I've been experimenting with making my own stain; I want something completely non-toxic. I've used tea in the past, but it really didn't seem to do much to the wood, but then I got to thinking about making it stronger somehow. Here's what I came up with.

I started with about two quarts of water. After the water got to a rolling boil, I added six teabags and just let it keep boiling. After about twenty minutes or so, I removed the bags and kept boiling the water down until I had about one cup left.

As you can see, it became quite strong tea:


To test it out, I divided a board into four sections:


Then I left one section unfinished and stained the other three:


After several applications, here were the results:


The first section was left unstained, the second section had one application of stain, the third section had three and the fourth section had five applications.

Conclusions/Thoughts:

• Well first, it obviously works. Cool.
• Second - since it's water based, I realized that you have to wait for the previous application to be completely dry before adding another. If you don't, the wood doesn't absorb the stain and not much happens. I think I could have achieved similar results with fewer coats if I had figured this out sooner.
• Third, the blotchy spots are due to my sloppy application and could easily be avoided.
• I'm curious about what might happen if I strained the tea through a coffee filter. Would it act more as a dye rather than a stain?

Next steps:

I'll oil part of the test board and see how that looks.

Also, now I'm curious about coffee...

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

I mentioned some time ago that I would post the shop-made leveler feet that I used on the benches at school. These are an improvement on the ones I posted about a few years ago. The main difference is that the whole jam nut adjustment system is gone. I went back to the original design (see link in first post) of embedding a nut in the leg. I also switched the hex bolts to carriage bolts, but I kept the shallow hole in the puck, just making it round instead of hexagonal. These are very simple to make and use.

This is all you need for each leveler foot:


Hockey puck, all thread connector nut, carriage bolt.

Here's the process:

Mark the center of the leg bottom:


Bore a slightly undersized hole:


I usually bore the hole to match the length of the connector nut, but I didn't have my Stanley 47 with me, so I used the much less accurate "tape system".

Then I used my favorite technique for removing chips from the bottom of the hole - just pass the straw between the fingers of your cupped hand and blow hard - no dust in face, eyes or hair:


Tap the connector nut into the hole with a hammer:


After starting it with the hammer, I switch to a heavy rubber mallet and a piece of scrap wood to drive it home:


If you drive the nut completely with the hammer, the threads can become distorted from the pounding and the bolt won't adjust smoothly. DAMHIKT.

And here's the bolt:


The hockey puck foot ready for boring:


Don't squeeze it too tight, or your hole becomes extremely oval when the puck is released from the vise.

Here's the finished foot:

This one is actually wrong - I forgot we reset the adjustable auger bit for a student's project, so the hole is too big. One important note: the hole needs to be deep enough to fully seat the carriage bolt head, but not so deep that the square shank is recessed as well.

And the finished bench leveler foot:


The foot is very simple to adjust - just slip an open-ended wrench over the square shank and turn. These new feet have made workbench leveling at our school shop about as easy as it can get. I think I might have to retro fit my own bench at home...