Learning from Past Projects

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French Foot BookcaseIt seems most of the furniture I build leaves my home as a gift, sale, or something similar.  I rarely get to see how those pieces hold up over time.  I haven’t had any complaints so I guess everything is just fine.  The pieces in my own home are still in great shape, but I also baby them so that may not be a good judge of their durability.  Two years ago I build a low bookcase for my wife to put in her voice studio at school where she teaches voice lessons.  My instructions were to build something quick and not spend a lot on the wood since the shelf would take a beating from hundreds of middle and high school students every day.  It was meant to hold the volumes of music she has both in binders and bound compilations.  These volumes would be pulled off and put on the shelves hundreds of times each day.  This shelf was going to take a beating.

Like any weekend woodworker, I couldn’t leave well enough alone and my version of a “simple” piece became a bit more complex.  French feet, sliding dovetails, and mitered cockbead moulding around the shelves was the end product.  The finished piece was painted so I did stick to the low cost wood requirement and used big box store Pine for the whole thing.  I visited her studio this week and was able to take stock of how the book shelf is holding up.  It looks great really.  The french feet are strong and the moulded details on the sides and the top are still crisp.  The problem area is the cockbead moulding on the bottom of each shelf.  All those heavy books and book bags dropped hastily in front of the piece along with the occasional bump from a vacuum cleaner have caused several areas to crack and break away.  The moulding is still intact and I will be able to glue the cracked piece back in place but how long will that last.

This is a valuable lesson that is only learned after getting some time with your furniture after heavy use.

Cracked cockbead moulding1) Don’t make cockbead moulding out of Pine.  It is too fragile.  The total footage needed to make these moulding is so small that the expense of using something more durable wouldn’t be notices.  Plus with the whole piece getting painted, I don’t have to worry about blending the appearance.

2) Keep the reveal less than 1/8″.  This moulding is about 3/16 proud.  It looked great but it just leaves too much sticking out that can break off.

3) Sliding Dovetails can withstand a bomb.  They are still tight as can be and the case sides are flat even though this home center lumber was probably not very dry during the build.

That being said, I’m really glad to see this little shelf standing up to the beating it takes each week.  My wife still tells me that people compliment her on the shelf every day so something must still look good.

What have you learned by examining your old furniture pieces?

But I Followed the Plan?

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Smooth Plane ShavingsI have written some rants on using woodworking plans before on this site so it is probably pretty obvious that I don’t like them.  That doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t use them from time to time.  There are times when I need to knock out a project and I’m happy with the design of something already in existence.  Usually this is a project from a woodworking magazine and there are already good drawings and a lot of the “figurin’” is already done.  Hey no thinking, more building…so I jump on it.

Wait, no thinking?  (cue sad trombone)

Just because I am building the same project with the same joints and dimensions doesn’t mean the process is the same.  In fact with my crazy neanderthal leanings, I can almost guarantee that my process will be different.  Hand tool methods need to be approached differently.  Layout is key and the order of cuts is usually different.  The differences telegraph back to milling of the stock too as sometimes you want to leave your pieces oversized to give more room to cut the joints.  Then the piece is planed/sawn to final size afterwards.

Maybe it is just me but when I choose to use a plan, the tendency is to follow it step by step like a recipe and before I know it, I have started down a path that I can’t go back from making my hand tool centric tasks much harder.  Ever try to chop out a mortise 1/4″ from the end of the board without blowing out the end?  See what I mean?  The funny thing is that when you end up in this situation, even though you know better, you stare dumbfounded at your plans.

“But I followed the instructions???”

This is probably the same way accidents happen, by blindly following a set of steps laid down by someone who isn’t you with different tools, and different working conditions.  So here is my new take.  Use plans, go ahead, knock yourself out.  Just make sure you do your own planning first.

 

Wood Talk Online Radio 97: The Jig’s Up

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Wood Talk OnlineIn this episode Marc and I are on our own as Matt couldn’t make the recording time.  So while the show is thin on chortles, it is packed full of woodworking goodness.  We talk about hand tool jigs and at what point a power tool is the better answer, saving money by building furniture yourself, making rule joints, and protecting your tools during long term storage.

Joinery Bench for Small Work Pieces

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It is more than 8 months since I completed my Joinery bench.  I have cut a lot of joinery from dovetails to dados, tenons, and miters.  I have been practicing my carving a lot lately and that has all happened on this bench too.  Basically as any small shop woodworker knows, if you have a horizontal surface it will see some action.  The big front vise holds so well that I find myself using the joinery bench for all kinds of things especially fine details where placing the work right up close is helpful. I have even started using my rabbet and plow planes on this higher bench top.

Using Joinery Bench for Grooves

Grooved stile in the vise, rabbeted rail behind, saw hook on the left for trimming pieces to length. Everything you need in one place.

The Moxon vise design that Benchcrafted has come up with where the chop floats on the screws is very versatile. The elongated holes allow for a small amount of racking which can be really useful when clamping odd shaped parts but also narrow pieces. I was making a small glass door where the rails and stiles have a rabbet on the inside face to hold the glass. The rail was only 1″ wide and 1/2″ thick. By clamping the rail on edge with only 1/4″ of the width in the jaws, the chop pivots like a leg vise providing solid contact and immense clamping power. I had gauged a line marking the outer edges of the rabbet and was able to drop the boxed corner of my rabbet plane right into the gauge line to start my rabbet. I do this technique any time I stick mouldings but being able to set the work piece up at chest height made it so much easier to see my cut and maintain a square joint.

This was so comfortable, that I proceeded to plow the grooves for a panel door, then the tongue and groove joint for the back panels of the cabinet. Certainly you lose some leverage working up that higher, but for small pieces like these, taking 3/16″ wide cuts, the force to move the planes is minimal.

The more I think about it, I realize that when I cut joints like these on my Roubo workbench, I spend a lot of time bent at the waist checking my layout lines and how the cut is progressing. It doesn’t seem like much but the time to stop, bend, and check my proximity to the lines really added to the time to cut the joint. Now I’m starting to think about building a sticking board up this high…it is worth experimenting to determine if the loss of leg power during the cut will be detrimental in the long run (literally).

Carving Fundamentals Class at Acanthus Workshop

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Back in 2008 I picked up some carving chisels wanting to add some carved details to my furniture. I bought just enough chisels to tackle a few practice exercises and to make a Queen Anne fan. Several books and videos later I had tried out several more forms and acquired more chisels to make each one of those forms. It was frustrating that with all the tools I already owned, each new project required a seemingly whole new set of gouges. While the “experts” kept telling me that I didn’t need to buy a lot of tools, I kept seeing them reach into a seemingly endless toolbox and pull out yet one more chisel to execute a specific cut. I understand that through all the compass of shapes and forms you can carve there will be many radii to match and specific situations to address with V tools, veiners, and fishtails. Anyone who carves a wide variety of forms will need a tool kit to match. Here’s the thing: I don’t want to carve all that stuff. I was looking specifically for period furniture details like fans, shells, and acanthus leaves. Even more simply, I was wanting to carve furniture details, not sculptural pieces in the round. All this tool buying for a specific form was discouraging and I wasn’t getting any carving done. Most important of all was that I was not getting to practice the fundamentals of carving by tackling these specific forms. So over the last 4 years I have picked up my carving chisels and put them down hundreds of times to execute ham handed examples of period furniture carvings. I have gotten better results but my speed of work has never improved and it seems my use of sand paper has only increased.

Queen Anne Shell Carving

Chuck Bender's Example Shell

So what do I usually do when I want to cut through all the chaff and get to the core of a skill? I call Chuck Bender. I enrolled in his Carving Fundamentals course and spent 2 days at The Acanthus Workshop. As usual Chuck has a no nonsense (you might say No BS) way of approaching woodworking tasks. His emphasis all weekend was on reading the grain, something that sounds pretty obvious but when confronted with changing grain in a compound convex curve things quickly get confusing. Chuck laid out some very simple exercises that focused us on a specific skill. The object wasn’t really to complete the whole form (we could do that on our own) but just to get a feel for reading the grain in various situations. As each exercise was introduced, he upped the ante by throwing us a curve, literally, in each shape.

Once we had completed straight and flat relief, curved and flat relief, convex relief, concave relief, and combination concave and convex relief carvings it was time to tackle our first actual form. Chuck presented us with a typical Queen Anne shell pattern and went through some great drawing principles to layout our own shape, create a pattern, and saw it out. Then like some kind of Mr Miyagi magic the steps for carving this more complex shape just fell into place. It turns out all that sanding floors, and painting fences early in the weekend paid off and in no time we were shaping our shells.

I have some work still to do on my exercises, and I just ran out of time on my own shell carving, but I feel confident that I can finish them on my own and know how to get myself out of the trouble I will encounter with changing grain direction.

Chuck Bender teaching cabriole legsAs usual, another successful weekend at The Acanthus Workshop worth every penny. In typical fashion I didn’t leave with earth shattering knowledge but a lot of subtle little things that improve my skill set across so many areas. Chuck’s teaching style is one that teaches you by doing, but doing so in a controlled manner that ingrains the basic movements into your body.

I urge you to get to Chuck’s school. His DVDs are good (2 new carving DVDs are due out any day) but there is no substitute for being there in person and hearing his solutions and see him do it for specific situations right in front of you. And there is no topic out of bounds. If you have a question about another technique on your mind just ask, you might be surprised what kind of impromptu tutorial ensues.