MWA Banner Rack Beginnings

Last summer, Kari Hultman kindly shared her lumber stockpile with me, and let me take as much as I could fit on my truck (leaving room for the contents of my Sister-in-Laws apartment). Since I brought it home, this lumber has resided in our sun/hot tub/miscellaneous storage room. Unfortunately that room is the only choice to the back door that lets out onto the deck. As the room had to serve duty as a buffet station during our Memorial Day Party, we set about cleaning it out.

The sun/hot tub/miscellaneous storage room lumber pile.

Moving the lumber was, of course, my job. As I broke down the stacks and transferred them one-by-one to the attic I came across a piece with two live edges that looked particularly like a tree to me. I couldn’t initially think of what to do with it, but its form struck me and I set it aside.

This beauty caught my eye.

By the time I was done moving the lumber, it had dawned on me. I knew what I would do. The piece would serve as the left vertical member of the banner rack I have to make for the MWA banner we’ll be displaying at Woodworking in America.I immediately broke out an assortment of sanders and took the rough sawn face and still partially barky edges to a smooth, 80 grit. Then I successfully filled a face crack epoxy. When it came to the multiple cracks in the back face, I first routed out the cracks a little bit to make the epoxy application easier. Unfortunately, the epoxy application didn’t go so well on the back face. I probably mixed it wrong, but whatever the reason, my 5 minuted epoxy was still tacky 2 days later.

A typical crack on the back, routed to allow additional epoxy to fit in.

I allowed it a third day to dry, and when it was still tacky I posed the question to Twitter. What should I do? One of the ideas I liked was to heat it up under a heat lamp in order to accelerate the drying. Unfortunately, within about an hour the heat lamp took hard and tacky to soft and bubbly. Thankfully, removal of the heat and time seem to have restored it to hard and tacky.

Not a formula for dry epoxy.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working on the Banner Rack so far, but since I have to design the rest, buy the lumber for the rest and it was one of may pices of word stacked in the shop preventing me from walking around, I took the piece as was and put it achoice in the attack. It gets warm up there, but not crazy, heat lamp hot. Hopefully when I pull it down in a month or two, it’ll be dry enough to work on.These videos walk you through the process of sanding and epoxying the piece.

I’ll keep everyone posted when I get back to it, and please don’t forget to check out the MWA Banner Rack in person when you visit our booth at both Woodworking in America Conferences.

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Racking The Quilt Part V

To finish the Quilt Rack I first installed a pan head screw in the bottom of each foot point to hold it just above my protected table saw surface and allow me to easily finish it without resting the foot on wet finish.

This choice the wet finish doesnt stick to the drop cloth.

Since I was short for time and only ended up with one day to apply finish, I used Bull’s Eye Sealcoat shellac. With the help of Kenneth’s great Woodshop Widget app, I was able to mix up .5 lb and 1 lb cuts of shellac (it’s a 2 lb cut in the can).

Shellac, post cutting, ready to be applied.

First I applied two (2) coats of .5 lb cut and then 10 of 1 lb cut. I spaced the coats about an hour apart and applied them all with a rag. Between the first few coats I sanded with 00 synthetic steel wool to get the rough spots out. After the final coat, I rubbed it out with 0000 synthetic steel wool.

As the coats went on, the "flame" really began to show.

I managed to finish it by about 9:30 the night before the party. This meant I was actually around the day of to help instead of being holed up in the shop frantically trying to finish. The quilt rack was a wonderfully received surprise. I’m happy to say it made my mother-in-law the envy of all the old quilting ladies in attendance. In fact, the quilt rack was received so well, I’ll be making a second one for my wife’s aunt this fall.

A poor photo of the beautiful finished quilt rack.

The formal presentation, tears from the recipient and fondling by the other sewers in attendance.

The quilt rack in its new home.

Quilt Rack Photo Gallery

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