Summer Project

Recipe for summer woodworking fun.

Project parts - in this case for a boat.
The dowels, both large and small, serve to align the other parts.
Additionally, the large ones are also the smoke stacks.
The darker parts are walnut, the lighter (except dowels) are maple.


Tools - clamps, glue, dead blow hammer, glue brushes and sand paper.
We ended up only using the large clamps.


Eager helper.
My nephew, N, 5 years old.
If you look closely (click on the picture to make it larger) you'll see the holes for the dowels.


Ready for clamps.

Clamped and drying - time for a kayak ride.

Look what I made!

(If you look closely you'll notice that the boat still needs sanding and finish.
We'll have to do that the next time we get together.)

A couple of design notes: I'm not entirely happy with the prow of the boat.It needed some more shaping but I was having trouble getting my head wrapped around how to do it so it looked right. Oh and the kid better not drop this on his foot, cause it's heavy!

You may have noted that we used regular wood glue, not waterproof glue, to hold the pieces together. This was intentional . If I were building this by myself I'd have used polyurethane glue. However, as anyone who has ever used it will tell you, it's really messy and if you get it on your skin it turns your skin brown. I wasn't comfortable using it with a 5 year old.

As far as I know, the boat has not been tested for seaworthiness. At some point we will have to see how it floats.

Best Laid Plans

Amy and I watch a fair number of home improvement shows on tv. More often than you would expect there are problems caused by poor planning on the part of the homeowner, designer or carpenter. In most cases this is not the point of the show. The exception is one which uses the tagline "why learn from your mistakes when you can learn from theirs". When we approach a project we normally do a lot of planning up front to avoid those sorts of oops moments. This is especially true if Amy is part of the planning. (This is a major component in the delay our renovation.)

My workshop contains a lumber rack I built years ago. I've never been satisfied with the sturdiness, and have been expecting it to disintegrate for years. A couple of months ago one of my woodworking magazines arrived with a supplement full of projects for the shop, one of which was a very sturdy looking lumber rack. I thought it would work well in my shop and so set about acquiring the materials to build it. Because of the clutter in my shop (it desperately needs to be emptied and reorganized) and the size of some of the components (8 ft 2x4s) I took advantage of a couple of warmish, sunny days to do assembly in the driveway (the garage is also suffering from over-clutter).

Much of the early assembly was done with the unit laying on it's side since the shelves are too heavy for me to lift by myself. When it was time to wrap up my work after one of my days in the driveway Amy came down to help me set it upright and move it into the garage. And that was when we discovered problem number 1.

As some of you may remember from the garage door replacement, or from visits to our house, the ceilings in our basement are low. I can touch the ceiling while standing flat footed, and I'm not tall. When I decided to build the shelves I didn't take the height of the ceiling into account. And when we set the unit upright Amy pointed out that it didn't look like it would fit into the garage. So, with the sun setting in the west I pulled out the tape measure and circular saw and shortened the uprights by 6 inches.

I've yet to finish the shelves - mostly because we've been busy and I can't lift the shelves by myself. Meanwhile, we've been entertaining plumbers - each of whom has a slightly different idea of where the tankless water heater we want installed should go. (Stay with me, this is actually related.) The most logical location, given the venting requirements for the water heater, is at one end of my workshop. That end of the workshop is currently home to the about to collapse lumber rack. This has made finishing the lumber rack of higher importance.

Which brings us to problem number 2. The root from the garage to the workshop includes a rather tight squeeze at the corner of the furnace. The new lumber rack is eight feet long and, as my very observant wife pointed out, it will not make it around that turn. We could take the rack via the back yard to the exterior door to the shop, but that is a soggy, weed ridden route. In the post-renovation version of my shop the lumber storage will be in the garage. So we've decided that the new lumber rack will take up residence in the garage a little early.

Now I just need to finish the rack, clean out the garage, and move a whole lot of lumber. Oh, and stop thinking all those people making mistakes on tv are careless.

Biscotti Weekend

I'm a bit late with this report, no explanation other than that it was December. Biscotti Weekend is my annual pilgrimage to New Jersey to spend a weekend with my nephew, D, while his parents bake biscotti, Shelley, and work, Terri.

The weekend started with a mostly uneventful drive to New Jersey. The only moment of excitement was when a particularly impatient driver decided to pass me in the left hand breakdown lane on I-95 in Connecticut.

Having arrived fairly early I was able to pick D up from school. Once we'd gained access to the house, we turned our attention to fun. We played a couple of games, D shared his "Egypt book", and treated me to a magic show and we read some Harry Potter.

Saturday morning I accompanied D to wrestling practice. The wrestling room teemed with boy energy. Even the little guys are quite serious about the training. The older boys help the younger ones with their warm-ups, then the group splits into three age divided groups.

I was most impressed by the balance that the adults manage to convey a serious, tough guy attitude while still being nurturing. At one point one of the boys in Ds group got accidentally poked in the eye. After making sure that he was going to be okay the coach got the attention of all the boys. He lifted the boy who'd gotten poked onto his shoulder and had the other boys give him a round of applause for receiving the first "eye poke of the season". While he had the boys attention he reminded them that wrestling is a contact sport and they would get poked in the eye, and mat burn, but that they were "tough" and could take it.

We spent the afternoon working on our project. Each year I arrive with supplies for D to create a surprise for his parents. Last year he suggested that we make houses this year. He was still interested in that when we talked in November. I put my thinking cap on and finally settled on creating a wooden "gingerbread" house. The design was based on my gingerbread house cookie cutter set with simple joinery. I included gingerbread men, trees, and candy decorations.

Ds friend G joined us for the project assembly. After gluing together and clamping the walls of the house we spent an hour or so painting the decorations.

While we were painting D decided that some of the pieces were too rough. So we pulled out the sand paper and the boys spent some time fine tuning the parts. While they were at it we had a conversation about sand paper grits. At one point D told me, "this is pretty rough I think I need the 100", which made me smile.

The roof of the house is designed to be removable. So, the walls were covered with plastic wrap before the roof parts were glued and clamped on.


Clamped up.


Decorations

Energy ran short so none of the decorations got attached to the house while I was there. Despite that we ended up with a pretty nice result.

Saturday night Shelley and I headed off to a folk-singing gathering which was great fun. Sunday morning I headed off to meeting (Shelley is a Quaker)with Shelley and D. Shelley was on baby duty so attended meeting by myself. The Princeton meeting house is a wonderful space. Built in the 1700s, it is a small stone building. On the first Sunday in December with snow falling outside the windows it was magical. The crackling of the fire was the only sound as I joined the other worshipers sitting in silence.

The snow, and ice that joined it made the drive home difficult. I only slid once, coming down a hill in Katonah, New York, after which I drove with much less speed and much more caution. Traffic through Connecticut was thick, and there were quite a few cars off the roads. The turnpike, though also full of cars, was a welcome site not only since it meant that I was nearly home, but also because the roads were in better condition than those I'd driven on earlier in the trip. I arrived home safe and sound several hours later than it would have taken me in clear weather. Based on this trip a new condition has been added to the Chelles, or is that Shelleys, (our names are pronounce alike so out loud it makes sense) driving rules - no trip will be started when a Winter Weater Advisory or Watch is in place for any of the states to be traveled through.

The driving rules were enacted four years ago when I drove into a blizzard on the way to New Jersey at the start of Biscotti weekend. On that trip it took me 5 hours to get from Newark to Princeton (normally less than an hour) because the roads were covered with ice and traffic was moving at a snails pace.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend and I had a great time.

Concord River Paddle - Table Design

I've posted the design for the dining table that was the impetus for my kayak trip on the Concord River on October 18th. You can find the story of the paddle here, and the design here.

Enjoy.

Concord River Paddle

I took a few vacation days to make this a long weekend (Thursday, Friday and Monday off). Amy is off in Arkansas visiting her Mom, and I've had the house to myself. I've been working on a project and enjoying the time off. On Thursday I loaded up the kayak and headed to the Concord River. I had an ulterior motive which was to get pictures of the bridge in the Minuteman National Historic Park. This is the bridge in the Ralph Waldo Emerson poem Concord Hymn - "By the rude bridge that arched the flood". (Incidentally when I looked up the full text of the poem it references that it was "sung at the completion of the battle monument". I didn't realize that it had been sung. I'd love to find the music.)

The pictures of the bridge are for a post on my woodworking blog and LumberJocks. A couple of months ago LJ launched a virtual challenge. The challenge was to acquire 3D modeling software called SketchUp (free from Google) and use it to create a dining room table based on an inspiration - bridge, building, mountain, etc. It took me a while to decide on an inspiration and even longer to get a handle on the software. I missed the challenge deadline, but finished the design anyway. The last step was to acquire pictures of the bridge. I could have used someone else's picture but since the bridge is nearby I wanted to use my own. I haven't posted the design yet, I'll post a quick note here when I do.

Anyway back to the river. I got a later start than I wanted and then couldn't find the road I was looking for. Downtown Concord is very confusing. With the help of my trusty map I did finally make it to the launch site. This is just down river from the confluence of the Assabet and Sudbury Rivers which join to become the Concord.

This is a really nice launch site. There's a gravel road down to the water's edge, and this year there is even room to turn the car around without going into the water. The last time I used this site was in the spring two years ago. We'd had a really wet spring, as opposed to the fairly dry summer and fall we've had this year. That time the water was well beyond where my kayak is in this picture (click for larger view). The large rock, partially hidden by the tree, was underwater then.

While I was getting the boat off the car and loading it up with my gear I heard a many, many geese honking. This continued for several minutes. As I was setting off at least a hundred (yes, hundred) geese flew overhead. I'm not sure what caused the mass evacuation but there were numerous geese sightings along the river. Seeing geese on the rivers around here is not unusual. What was unusual was the number of flying geese I saw and heard. Geese honking was definitely the sound track for this paddle.

There wasn't much in the way of fall color along the river. Some of this may be because the colors weren't popping. It was a hazy day - there was fairly thick fog in the morning, which had only just begun to burn off when I hit the water just after 11. What color there was was primarily yellow the red leaves in this picture were about the only ones I saw.

Other than the geese and a few ducks I didn't see much wildlife. These turtles were hanging out soaking up the sun. You'll need to click on the picture to see them.


I did see quite a few tourists, though. The picture at the left is the bridge that was the impetus for this journey. If you look carefully at the larger version you will notice a group of people at the right edge. This is a tour group which was passing over the bridge as I went under. The guide was loud enough for me to learn that this bridge is wider and higher (more arch) than the original.

I continued down river another mile or so before heading back to the car. All in all it was a very pleasant paddle. Oh, and the drive home did not require unplanned detours.

Woodworking Project Completed

I couldn't resist posting this here, you can find details on my woodworking blog. I finished this Thursday night. We haven't figured out, yet, where it'll live.

Sunday Scribblings: Simple

A little late to the party...

I'm in the midst of building a table for a woodworking challenge (details here). The deadline is Thursday. As per usual I'm going to be cutting it close (no pun intended). My goal for the weekend is to complete the construction of the table so I'll have time to put finish on it before I have to post pictures of the completed table.

On the to-do list were:

• dovetailing the drawer parts
• adding dadoes to the stretcher for the shelf
• finishing the jig I designed to cut plugs with
• adding dadoes to the sides of the drawer
• attaching the drawer front
• easing all the edges (rounding over or chamfering the edges so they aren't sharp)

I figured the dovetails would be simple. Several years ago I purchased a dovetail jig. I figured that having a jig would make cutting dovetails easier. I'd pulled out the jig earlier in the week and though the instructions were somewhat lacking it looked simple enough.

When I cut the drawer parts I made a bunch of extra pieces so I would have test pieces with which to set the jig up. Six hours later I had a lot of sawdust, and a pile of much smaller test pieces. What I didn't have was a completed drawer. I just couldn't get a precise enough fit using the jig.

After much deliberation I decided to cut my losses and put the skills I have to work. You see last year in a workshop class at the North Bennett Street School I learned to cut dovetails by hand. I haven't mastered them yet, but I can make a pretty serviceable dovetail. I considered other joints, but dovetails are what I wanted. So I pulled out the drawer parts and started marking out the dovetails. After 4 hours (last night and today) of hand sawing and chisel work I had completed the drawer joints.

Here's one corner. A nice simple dovetail.

The moral of the story - don't overcomplicate situations. Keep it simple.

More Sunday Scribblings.

My woodworking blog.

Moody Monday: Disorganized

My shop is desperately in need of better organization. Seen and not seen in this picture - two projects, my safety glasses, mallet, burnisher, wood scraps, googles, knife, scroll blades, dust mask, plans, scraper, clamp blocks, glue pallet (yogurt cup lid), sand paper, hardware, glue...

More Moody Monday.

Sunday Scribblings: Deepest, Darkest

I'm a woodworker.

Now you know my deepest, darkest secret.

What? You already knew? Oh, right almost everyone who knows me knows that, and those who don't know me or don't know that can follow the link to my workshop and figure it out.

What you probably don't know is that I've gone over to the dark side, wood wise.

I haven't developed a jones for ebony, yet, but while at one of my favorite suppliers on Thursday I was drawn to a gorgeous slab of wenge. It was the deepest, darkest piece of lumber I've ever wanted to get my tools on. Many kinds of wood have found their way into my shop - pine (not so much lately), maple, birch, aspen, cherry, mahogany, walnut, and even zebrawood and purpleheart. I've been pretty much a light to medium wood kind of girl. Wenge isn't the right texture for the project I'm working on, and it costs more than I was ready to spend, but boy was it attractive.

The wenge didn't come home with me, this time. But now I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate a small amount into the next project.

P.S. This picture I just added (Sunday night) is an ornament I made for family and friends for Christmas 2005. I've made an ornament (different designs) almost every year since 1999. I've missed two years both because of work obligations. There are pictures of a few other creations in my flickr account (link to the right).

More: Sunday Scribblings

A New View

I spend a fair amount of my free time masquerading as a woodworker. I've set up a new blog so that you can have a peek at that part of my life, if you're interested. There isn't much there yet, just my project list, but I promise to add to it soon.

My New Nickname or Gravity Always Wins

I'm a very careful woodworker and I have all ten fingers to prove it. I get splinters regularly, I have gotten cuts from the edges of chisels, I've even sanded off skin (not recommended), but I have never had a major woodworking injury. I know how to use my tools, I think about how I'm going to accomplish the task at hand, and I stop working when I'm tired.

My workshop is cluttered (like much of my house). One of the home improvement projects on my list is organizing the shop - it'll happen one day soon, really it will. There are parts for numerous projects, bins of cutoffs, tool containers, and of course saw dust covering most surfaces. While this isn't the best way to work, I do make sure I clear off the space where I'm currently working. This frequently means that I make use of a work mate (small folding workbench) in addition to the workbench top. I sit on a counter height stool most of the time while working in my shop.

So Monday night I was working on the latest project - cutting dadoes with a router fitted with the plunge base using a homemade jig. The work piece and the jig were clamped to the work mate, which was sitting perpendicular to the work bench, and when not being used the router was placed on the work bench. After making a pass with the router I decided that the bottom of the dado wasn't even enough. So I turned to the bench picked up the router (plugged in but off) and turned 90 degrees to my left to position it on the jig. That's when gravity took over.

In turning I became unbalanced and tumbled off the stool toward the concrete floor (and the tool bags sitting on it). There wasn't time to catch my balance (my left foot was probably on the rung of the stool rather than on the floor. Because the router was in my left hand I didn't try to catch myself with my hand - which was for the best since that's a quick route to a broken wrist.

Amy heard the noise - the stool crashed to the floor shortly after I did - and came down to investigate, and helped me shut off lights, unplug the router. We left the sweatpants I had been wearing next to the washer. The sawdust they'd picked up while I was working had been supplemented by most of the sawdust from the floor - they looked like we'd dusted with them.

I ended up with a dime sized scrape on my elbow, an impressive bruise just above my elbow, and a very swollen knee which also has a couple of small cuts - I landed on it. The injuries are too gruesome for pictures! The good news is that the swelling is going down thanks to regular icing. The bad news is that the bruises have only just begun the inevitable journey through the spectrum. It's a really good thing that it's winter so I'm not tempted to wear shorts.

Amy overheard a couple of the guys at work talking about calling me Crash from now on (just what I need another nickname). The moral of the story - I need to organize the shop, including adding more rubber pads to the floor (I've got a few and they are very nice to stand on. While I don't plan to take any more dives I expect that they might have cushioned the impact a bit.); I need to pay more attention to my position when moving in the shop and remember _gravity always wins_. In the words of Beakman - "gravity - it's the law".