MWA Podcast Episode 23 - David Venditto of Infinity Tools (61:06)

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Senin, 28 Maret 2016

Thats Not A Petite Workbench This Is A Petite Workbench

With the coming of his newborn son, I for one suspect that Marcs Split Top Roubo bench build will fall behind schedule. I cant think of a better reason to delay a project. Along with the entire Woodworking Community Id like to wish Marc & Nicole the very best with their little bundle of joy.With the delay of the Split Top Roubo in mind, I set about building a smaller bench that Marc could use with his son. I ended up making two.

My Petite 21st Century & Petite Split Top Roubo Benches

The first is a Split Top Roubo, much as Marc plans to build. Only I made my petiter than Chris Schwarzs Petite Roubo.

If these benches dont do it for you, then join in with the Guild for the actual workbench build. Given that Marc has a newborn at home, I might actually keep up with him this time.

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Woodchat is Yours

This is a very quick post via the Blog This extension for Chrome, but please check out Matts list of #woodchat topics and be sure to vote. Last Wednesdays re-introduction of #woodchat brought both new and old participants together for a lively discussion. This weeks #woodchat is looking to be even more.

Upper Cut Woodworks Woodchat is Yours: Vote on the Woodchat List of Topics for Woodchat Wednesday Upper Cut Woodworks:
via Blog this

Its Wanderful Part 7

When everything was sanded flat, I checked the bottoms on my tablesaw and joined them as necessary in order to eliminate wobble. Then it was time to sand. All four (4) wand stands were hand sanded from 80 grit to 220 grit.

As I wasn’t concerned with the walnut blotching, and shellac is a resonable blotch control in it’s own rite, I skipped the blotch control and went right to shellacing the bases.

The wands, mid-finishing.

2 coats of ½ lb and 4 coats of 1 lb clear shellac were applied, using rags. Once the shellac was dry, I buffed it with synthetic steel wool. I had originally intended to add glue on plastic feet to the bottom of the want stands. As I played with the stands in my hands, I couldn’t bring myself to add plastic feet. Instead I decided I should make my own feet, out of brass.

Ripping the brass by hand.

I started with a ?” x 1½” brass bar from work. Then I used a hack saw to rip and cut it to pieces about ¾” x 2” (I say about, because I used relative dimensioning and my eye to make them, I never actually measured them). Once the were cut, I used a bastard file against the edge of my workbench to square the edges and clean the faces.

Two (2) sets of finished feet.

Then I tried to polish them using buffing wheels on a 6” bench grinder. This didn’t go so well, and after the first 3 or 4 feet I left them as the filed faces.

Ready to mix the epoxy.

I cut out for the feet using one (1) of the full blades from my dado set for an ?” wide, flat bottomed cerf. Unfortunately, all of the filing left the feet less then ?” thick. The gap was barely visible, but the fit was also less than snug. In order to secure the feet I used a two part epoxy paste. So far, it’s doing a fine job at holding the feet in. Hopefully it continues to.

The finished wand stands.

Now that the wand project is finally done, it’s finally time to again return to the  shop renovation. Thankfully, I not only created four (4) nice and appreciated wand and wand stands, I also learned a bunch of new techniques and expanded my woodworking horizons along the choice.

A finished want stand, armed with my wifes wand.

What have you done to push the boundaries of how you work?

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Ghetto WorkCenter Boom Arm Part IV The Tool Holder

As I was finishing up the boom arm for the Ghetto WorkCenter, it dawned on me that I could also hand a tool holder on it.Festool includes tool holders as part of the WorkCenter. They also sell individual ones that fit on their CT vacuums. I have one of the individual ones. Unfortunately, my CT22 is too old to fit it. I have mine set into a block of wood that I clamp to my bench and BenchMark table. My ultimate plan is to use the Festool Tool Holder as a model to make a cabinet to hold all my sanders. For now, it served as a model to make a Tool Holder to fit on my Saw Tray.

This is how it began.

I began with the same piece of ½” baltic birch Ive made the rest of the Ghetto WorkCenter out of. I began by tracing the V shape of the tool holder onto the plywood. I used a forstner bit to make the rounded bottom of the V. Then I cut out the rest on the bandsaw. My bandsaw cuts weren’t exactly straight, so I used my rasp to flatten them out.

The Vs, fresh off the bandsaw.

After smoothing the sides with a rasp.

Once the V’s were rounded over with the router, it was just a matter of attaching the cleat and spacer so I could hang it on the saw tray.

Im loving my Bosch MRC23EVSK. It has great dust collection & visibility to boot.

The cleat on the left hooks the saw tray and the spacer on the right keeps in basically plumb.

Even with the ½” plywood, it’s working great so far.

She holds like a champ.

I’m not sure if I’ll add more accessories to the Ghetto WorkCenter, but for a little bit of plywood and some cheap fasteners, it’s proving to be a great addition to the shop.

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Its Wanderful Part 1 Where to Begin

About 3 months ago my Sister-in-Law asked me to make her a wand to take to the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II. It’s not that she often requests things (though she does have a bookcase I built), it’s that she’s A) a harry potter fan and B) a follower of mine on Google Buzz.

Kenneths awesome wand that made my Sister-in-law go "Oh."

You see, in November of 2010, my friend, Kenneth Woodruff, wrote a blog post about the fantastic Harry Potter wand he made for Halloween that year. As I was truly impressed, I of course shared it on Buzz. I happened to be visiting my Sister-in-Law at the time, and as soon as I shared it “that’s a cool wand” could be heard from her corner of the living room.

Fast forward to May of 2011 and as the movie date approaches I get asked to make wands, wands for my Wife, Sister-in-Law and her partner. Wands like Kenneth made.Had Kenneth made a tool cabinet or a vacuum boom arm, I would have jumped right into the project. However, as Kenneth’s wand was faithful to the original (in that it is round and has carvings), it was a project well outside of my woodworking comfort zone. I’ve never worked in the round or carved before. As neither round work nor carving have held any appeal for me, I’ve never even read up on them (as I have with many other woodworking methods that I am interested in but have yet to try).

Kenneths great carved wand handle.

My first reaction was to stall. I didn’t really think about the project for 2 or 3 weeks. When I finally did begin planning, I went right to the source and contacted Kenneth about the wands. He was nice enough to provide some details on how he made his wand and some more detailed photos. The instructions still left this carving virgin wondering how I was going to make the wands. The photos though, were a fantastic help and a full 8.5” x 11” print out on photo paper served as my plan for making my wands. Following Kenneth’s advice, I then contacted the best and most enthusiastic carver I know, Kari Hultman. Unfortunately, my total carving naiveté was a deficit that even Kari’s detailed email instructions could not overcome.

One of 16 draws worth of carving gouges my dad has.

Frustrated, I then turned to my Dad, a rather proficient carver in his own right, for advice. He pointed me towards his vast collection of carving tools and said have at it. Unfortunately, as sharpening is a task I’m only slightly better at then carving (and his curved carving tools looked awfully hard to sharpen), I turned down his offer to lend me his carving gouges and I decided to make the wands from my own tools that I knew how to use.

What projects have your family talked you into?

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The Return Of woodchat

Once upon a time, woodworkers gathered on Twitter to chat about woodworking. It was usually driven by a topic, with lots of great participation and sharing of ideas. It was really good. But then it stopped, and we miss it. For some, their path to becoming a better woodworker took a detour. Its time to get things back on track.

Woodchats Future

After a lot of conversations in the last three weeks with Dale Osowski (Timberworks Studio), Dyami Plotke (Penultimate Workshop), Matt Gradwohl (UpperCut Woodworks), Vic Hubbard (Tumblewood Creations), and Tom Iovino (Toms Workbench), we will berestarting #woodchat this Wednesday November 2nd at 6pm pacific time, thats 8 central and 9 eastern. Weve got permission from the former woodchat crew and have been working behind the scenes to ensure to define how wed like this to work best for everyone.

Lets make #woodchat like a dinner conversation among woodworking friends.

Our First Four Woodchat Principles

1. Easy for People to Get Involved

There are lots of woodworkers already on twitter, and its easy to sign up, so continuing to use the #woodchat hashtag makes things very easy. No special download, no separate account. So well start on twitter but may incorporate other technology as things progress. Right now, Tweetchat is the easiest choice to participate.

2. Approachable for All Skill Levels

If youre a beginner woodworker, you will be welcomed in and find people ready to help and encourage you. If youre a skilled woodworker, youll also find encouragement and help, and be asked to share your experience and knowledge by welcoming and being helpful to new woodworkers.

3. Focused on Actual Woodworking

In the past #woodchat drifted off topic at times. Well focus on woodworking: inspiration, design, stock prep, joinery, finishing, tool selection, shop safety, or shop layout, for the beginner, part time hobbiest or full time woodworking business. No preference towards power tools or hand tools.

4. A Team to Make it Successful

To make sure that chats happen on Wednesdays without one person carrying the workload, were going to work together to ensure success. We all have busy schedules with our day jobs and families, but with five (or more) people committed to making this successful Im sure well establish a regular rhythm.

Woodchat is Yours

Ultimately though, woodchat is ultimately driven by those who participate, so we need to know what topics youd like to discuss, what technology you might suggest that we incorporate, what days and times work best. Let us know on Twitter or leave a comment below. See you all Wednesday night.

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Its Wanderful Part 6

To make the stands for the Harry Potter wands I began with wood from my scrap pile. I took lengths of walnut which were left over from my Sawdust Chronicles Fall Build Challenge project and thin strips of curly maple left over from my Shaker Table Guild Build.

I created the curve with my oscillating spindle sander.

I milled the walnut flat and square and ripped the maple to an equal width. Then I took the maple, and using a block of wood clamped to the base as a fence, I sanded out shallow curves on the end of each piece with a 2” diameter drum in my oscillating spindle sander.

I set the bevel angle my eye, as it only had to look good and not match any specific angle.

Next I set my table saw to about 10° and made a cut across each end of the walnut, about 1” from the end. I used my Lee Valley Stop Rule to mark down about 1” from the top of each maple piece. I used this line to reference the top surface of the walnut and glued on the maple pieces to the center walnut piece.

Since the maple had been left long on its bottom end, I needed to create a custom caul that would have space for the long maple ends while still providing a reference for the walnut ends to be glued coplanar with the walnut center piece. To do this I laid out the wand stands along a piece of Timberstrand, marked out the recesses and then removed the wood with successive cuts from my miter saw.

The wand stand on the custom caul.

Though this notched caul worked great for alignment of the center and end pieces of walnut, I wasn’t thinking when I laid out the notches and there wasn’t enough room to allow clamping of adjoining pieces. Once I covered the caul in packing tape to prevent the glue from sticking to it, I then had to clamp the stands in two (2) alternating groups.

In clamp up.

Because the walnut was cut at a 10° angle, the maple-to-walnut glue joints were essentially end grain to side grain. Though I don’t expect much abuse, I wasn’t comfortable with this joint. Luckily (it was luck as no forethought went into it), standard sized Miller Dowels were long enough that they projected about ½” passed the walnut end/maple leg section and into the walnut center. I installed one (1) Miller Dowel in each end in order to reinforce the joint.

Though I assumed the stepped design of the Miller Dowel would make their installation easy, I found that the only choice to properly seat them was to compress the entire wand stand in a parallel clamp and crush the dowels into submission. Once I figured out to use the parallel clamp, the dowels went in without much trouble.

Sanding the ends so the Miller Dowels are flush with the ends.

After leaving the dowels overnight to dry, I was able to cut off the excess dowel and the long bottom sections of the maple. The stands returned to my Ridgid orbital sander, this time with the belt set up in place of the drum. A few minutes of sanding on each stand, and the sides, ends and bottoms were left perfectly flat between the walnut, maple and dowels.

The constructed want stands go for a dry run.

To catch up on the want build (it was August of 2011), check out these posts.

Also, sorry for the blurry photos. Ill blame the crappy camera in my old Motorola Droid X.

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Sabtu, 20 Februari 2016

The Cold Approaches

For those of you reading along (on Twitter & Google+ more than the blog for this topic) I’m working on a bench. That is . . . I will be working on a bench.

My bench design , as of a year ago (and awesome avitar).

I’ve been obsessing over a bench for a long time and a few conversations with Aaron Marshall at Woodworking In America had my bench build leapfrogging over many open projects to the top of the list. One of the projects it jumped ahead of was the insulating of my shop. That is, it had jumped over the insulating until the cold hit.

In the background you can see my barren walls.

That cold reality has rearranged my project order once again. The insulating will come before the bench.

Unfortunately, before I can insulate, I must wire. Two and a half years ago, when I started my siding project I ripped out not only the existing insulation, but the wiring too. Since then I’ve been working in a cold shop with one outlet next to the light switch and one behind the miter saw.Today I began by starting my clean up, and oh how much clean up there is to do. In the two hours I worked, I managed to clean the far back corner, behind my shelves.

The cleaned corner.

While this is going to be a slow process and will delay my bench until January (or longer) it is well worth it and promises to transform the shop into a much nicer place. What, after all, is there not to like about having a warm, well powered shop?What needed project have you been putting off?

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Its Wanderful Part 2 The Begining

Having reviewed the wands with three (3) fellow woodworkers, and having been given solid advice by all three (3) of them, I was still not completely sure how I was going to make the wands. Yet, since I had been  procrastinating like a pro, I decided the time had come buy the lumber and start the making if I was to have any chance of finishing them by the movie premiere. As I’m not familiar with any good local hardwood dealers and the project itself was enough stress, I went to my go-to source for nice wood, Bell Forrest Products. Though I had received advice on good carving woods, I completely ignored everything I’d been told and ordered me up five (5) 1.5”x1.5”x18” turning blanks of hard maple. I know . . . this didn’t make for easy shaping.

Heres a somewhat random picture of the walnut book stand I made for the
2010 Sawdust Chronicles Fall Build Challenge. It doesnt have anything
to do with the wands, but I like it and I dont have any photos relevant
to this stage in the wand saga.

About the same time as I ordered the wood for the wands, I also was lucky enough to have my Slide Out Storage Cabinet featured in the Tools of the Trade section of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The Lee Valley gift certificate I received as a result was put to good use. I ordered a spokeshave, rasp and cabinet scraper. Finally, having received all the advice I could manage and with tools and wood in hand, it was time to start making some wands. The first thing I did was take one of the blanks, and turn it into an octagon by cutting off the corners on the table saw. I then went crazy with my new spokeshave and turned it into a dowel, about ¾” in diameter. Though useless as a wand, this first test piece was set aside for carving practice and dye and finish experimentation.

How did you finally start that project youve been procrastinating about?

Its Wanderful Part 1

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Jumat, 19 Februari 2016

Its Wanderful Part 3

After I spokeshaved the first blank into a dowel, I regrouped and took a full size sketch I had made based on Kenneth’s photos and made copies. Then I took the copies and the remaining four (4) blanks down to my Dad’s shop. I glued on the sketch copies and fired up the band saw (mine doesn’t quite run right now). When I was done, I was left with four (4) square pieces of wood that had the rough in and out nature of the wands.

Two (2) wands fresh off the bandsaw, and one post rasping.

I took the post-bandsaw blanks home and started to make them round. I began with my spokeshave on the thin, long business end of the wands. This quickly knocked down the corners and the round shape began to emerge.

The wonderful Shinto Rasp.

Next I began rasping. The rough shaping was continued with my Shinto rasp set up in course mode. By holding the rasp at about a 75° relative to the length of the wand and working my choice up and down the length while tipping the rasp back and forth over the wand I was able to get all three (3) sections of each wand relatively round. They weren’t perfect, but as they are hand made by eye, they were just the right combination of uniformity and uniqueness.

A wand, post rasping, and the wonderful Auriou rasp I used to fine
tune the work of the Shinto.

I cleaned up the initial rasping with the Shinto set up in fine mode and for the final shaping I moved to my Auriou rasp. I used it to clean up the inside corners and edges as well as create the recessed area in the middle of the handle portion of each wand.

The four (4) wands, ready to be freed
from their bases.

At this point the wands were shaped, but still attached to square stock at the butt of their handles. The square stock had been left to allow them to be clamped in my bench vises.

Time to cut.

I cut the square stock off using my Veritas Carcass Saw. I then went back to the Auriou rasp and made the final shaping to the butt end of the handles.

The four wands, ready for finish (not for cutting).

Once you finally get there, do you often find the scary part of a project actually wasnt so bad?

Its Wanderful: Part 1

Its Wanderful: Part 2

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Jumat, 12 Februari 2016

Its Wanderful Part 4 Carving

Now that the wands were just about shaped, I thought about the carving. Kenneth’s wand that I was using as a design basis is covered in wonderful carving that he managed to create using just a set of cheap carving tools. I had picked up the same set of tools, so off I went. First I practiced on the initial blank that I had turned to a dowel with my spokeshave. Then I went on to the first wand.

Marking lines I drew on the initial blank to carve. In the background
you can see a close up of the awesome carved handles of Kenneths wand.

I found the carving results to be acceptable (I certainly wasn’t thrilled with the results). They were however, far too time consuming. At this point I was beginning to seriously run low on time. Knowing that un-carved wands derived in time for the movie premier were better than carved wands delivered weeks later, I completed the carving on the business end half of the first wand handle and called it quits on the carving.

The one wand I half carved (dont tell that the order of the
description is slightly out of  order for better continuity)

Even though the carving phase of the project was aborted due to time and the results leave something to be desired, the process did intrigue me enough that I plan to take Kari up on her offer to provide some guidance. Having gotten my feet wet and seeing the beauties she’s able to turn out, carving is now certainly on my list of woodworking skills to learn.

Whos ready to sand?

Once the carving was done aborted it came time to sand. Though I normally enjoy sanding (thanks to my nice random orbit sanders, vacuum boom arm and headphones), I found the hand sanding of these damn wands almost unbearably tedious. By the time I had worked though the 80 and 100 grit sanding pads I was ready to call it quits. Luckily the small windows of evening shop time I get meant that by the time I was fed up with it, it was time to call it a night anychoice. Over the course of a few days I did manage to sand all four (4) wands to 320 grit.

Do youre natural work breaks break up the tedious tasks too?

Its Wanderful: Part 1

Its Wanderful: Part 2

Its Wanderful: Part 3

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Jumat, 05 Februari 2016

Its Wanderful Part 5

Finally, the sanding was done and it was time for finish. Given the shape of the wands, I made a drying rack for them before beginning the finish. The rack is made of two pieces of .040 aluminum which were bent into an L shape in order to hold the wand on the 40 mil thick end of the aluminum sheets.

My impromptu finishing station set up on my Dust Deputy.

On advice from The Wood Whisperer I used Charles Neil’s Blotch Control (luckily I was able to order it before his store went on summer hiatus). It seems to have worked well (no blotches in the final finish) but did raise the grain considerable. I sanded after the first coat of Blotch Control with 320 grit and after the second with 600 grit.

Between the coats of Blotch Control application.

Next came the dye. I used two (2) coats of General Finishes Water Based Dye Stain in Merlot for the business end of the wands. I applied the dye using a foam brush and rubbed it in and off with a cotton rag. For the handles I started with two (2) coats of General Finishes Water Based Dye Stain in Ebony. As the tone lacked the depth I was looking for, I added India Ink to the dye for the third coat. This added depth, though if I was to do it again I would be much more liberal in my adding of India Ink to the dye. I was given the India Ink advice on Twitter, and I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember who recommended it, so whoever you are, thank you.

Merlot on the business ends.

Ebony on the Handles.

Once the dying was done, I finally moved on to finish. In order to finish the wands I applied 12 coats of 1 lb shellac. The shellac was applied with a foam brush in a manner similar to the dye. The first 5 coats were done using amber shellac, hoping that the amber color would add a richness of tone. When it didn’t, I switched to a 1 lb cut of clear shellac I already had mixed up rather than mix a new cut of amber shellac for the final 7 coats.

Eyeing down the wands, mid-shellacing.

The rapid dry time of shellac allowed me to apply all 12 coats in less than 5 days. Once the final coat had dried for 12 hours, I buffed it out with synthetic steel wool and wands were complete. They were apparently the hit of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II screening that my family went to on the opening Friday night.

The finished wands, ready for the movies.

Over the following weekend my Sister-in-Law even told me how much she liked the wand, and all she needed now was a wand stand. Work on the stands began the following week.

Its Wanderful: Part 1

Its Wanderful: Part 2

Its Wanderful: Part 3

Its Wanderful: Part 4

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Rabu, 03 Februari 2016

Let There Be Light Part I

A few months ago, my good friend Aristotle Dreher starter Arisitotle Photo. In order to assist with his fancy studio shots, he asked me to make him a light ring. He’s a good friend, who’s done all my shirt and blog design work, so how could I say no (it also seemed like an interesting project)?

The raw materials.

The light ring consists of 12 light sockets arranged in a circle. The middle of the circle is open and the camera is placed there and the photo taken through the ring. This provides balanced light on all sides of the image (or at least this woodworker thinks it does).

Determining the ring layout.

I began the light ring project by buying 12 cheap plastic light sockets. I asembled them in a circle, and used that to determine the size of the ring. I also used the width of their bases to determing the width of the ring. I left about ½” of space between the sockets and on the inside and outside edges.

The ring itself is constructed from two (2) pieces of Baltic Birch plywood. The front piece is ¾” thick. This was the first piece I made. Because all of the circles are referenced off the center, I worked from the outside to the inside so that I didn’t cut out the middle and then realize I still had to reference it.

After determining the outside diameter of the ring, I marked it out and cut close to the line with my jig saw. Then I built a trammel out of scrap Baltic Birch and routed exactly to the line with a fixed base router and ¾” diameter straight bit.

The outside is milled.

Once the outside circle shape was finished, it was time to route the wire trough. This trough is centered on the width of the light ring. I made it using the same ¾” straight bit. I used a small piece of wire to determine the proper depth using relative dimensioning.

When routing with a trammel, plunge routers are more versatile.

That’s when I realized my mistake. You can’t use a fixed base router to plunge a trough into the center of a ring. I switched the trammel setup to a plunge router (this required running out for longer mounting screws), reset the circle diameter and depth and went to town.

The center trough is milled.

I routed the center trough in three (3), roughly equal depth passes. The feed rate was nice and slow and I thoroughly vacuumed between passes. It still resulted in a bit of burn on the wood and on the router bit. Since it’s a functional (rather than aesthetic) piece, I’m not sweating any burn.

Just about done with the front ring.

Once the Center trough was done, I re-set the trammel again and hit the inside of the ring. I paused briefly and considered switching to a narrower bit for the inside (as I only needed to cut through, not create a trough wide enough to house wire), but since the trammel was already set up for the ¾” bit in the router I just went ahead and routed. I again made it though in 3 passes and had about the same level of burning as I did for the trough.

The connecting trough.

I finished the center piece by routing one (1) more trough connecting the center trough to the outside edge at the bottom. This trough will allow access for the power cable. I first made this trough with a pattern bit to keep it straight, but when it proved too shallow, I deepened it with router freehand.

Next, on to the back . . .

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