64- Gadget Station (Pt. 7)
Download High Resolution
I made quite a bit of progress in this video. The legs are cut from the bubinga blanks, and I finally have an opportunity to do a dry fit. I am in for a surprise as you will see, and a change is made to the original plans.
Links:
Gadget Station (Pt. 1)
Gadget Station (Pt. 2)
Gadget Station (Pt. 3)
Gadget Station (Pt. 4)
Gadget Station (Pt. 5)
Gadget Station (Pt. 6)
The Fujiwhara Chest - Project of the Week
This week’s project is from my good buddy Tom Iovino of Tom’s Workbench. Let’s hear his description:
It’s called a Fujiwhara Chest. (BTW - the Fujiwhara effect is when two hurricanes start to rotate around each other if they get too close… The swirls in the door veneers reminded me of that). Basically a Krenov-inspired chest on a stand. The legs are made of Sapele my hardwood supplier had in the burn pile, and the aprons and chest parts are made of hard maple. The legs are tapered through their bottom ten inches to give some motion to the bottom of the case. I wanted to get more of a circular flow into the piece, so I decided I should cut the stretchers in arches. That gave me a chance to really tune up the bandsaw to get matching curves. All of the parts are joined with mortise and tenon joints, cut with a plunge router and a dado blade on the table saw.
The chest was made of hard maple. The corners are joined with variably spaced dovetails made with a Keller jig. Yes, you can do it!
The tower in the middle is made of some free walnut that was - again - in the burn pile at my hardwood supplier’s shop. I made stopped dadoes in the piece for the shelves to sit, and the uprights sit in stopped dadoes cut in the top and bottom.
The back is made of three ship-lapped boards set into rabbets on the sides, top and bottom.
The doors are veneered in sapele pomelle, and the doors are made of maple as well. No, I didn’t use knife hinges (kinda thought about that AFTER I put the case together). I matched the curve of the top of the doors to the curve on the apron to echo the shape.
The finish regimen was to sand the piece to 220 grit and scrape the large flats. I sealed the entire piece with 1# cut of Seal Coat, followed by a buffing with #0000 steel wool. Brushed and vacuumed the thing off, then hit it with three coats of Watco natural, sanding between each with 400 grit paper….
Then I rubbed the piece down with a weasel ’till it glowed…
The Woodworker Within
I always enjoy hearing stories about how people get into woodworking. Was it mom and dad? Maybe grandpa? Or perhaps is was your old grumpy shop teacher? For me, it was growing up with a very handy step-father. We did a number of projects around the house and I frequently built projects of my own. Each project was promptly followed by a stern talking-to for not putting the tools back where I found them. As a kid, the most substantial “project” I made was a small wooden box that I eventually buried in my backyard so that I could hide my private treasures. What is it with kids and their need to have private stashes of stuff anyway?!?! So, what did I put in my secret box? A mail-order catalog with several pages dedicated to the latest GI Joe toys. To this day, I have no idea why I felt the need to hide that.
Years later when I was in college, my friends and I took up a wonderful hobby: destroying our hearing with loud music in our vehicles. So one of my first ever plywood projects was a custom speaker box for my pickup. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of it. But I do have a few shots of what could honestly be my first legitimate attempt at furniture. I was probably in my sophomore year of college, enjoying an eclectic mix of interests including lab work, girls, drumming, tattoos, piercings, and oddly enough….reptiles. I couldn’t afford a fancy commercial enclosure, so I set out on a quest to build my own. I went to Home Depot, picked up some melamine, a few furring strips, plexiglass, and some basic hardware. I used a hand saw miter box to cut the miters and built the frame using finish nails. Each enclosure had its own heat lamp and two ventilation inserts on the sides. The enclosure actually made the move to California with me a few years later, but was quickly replaced by my very generous roommate turned girlfriend turned wife, Nicole. Sadly, it eventually wound up in the apartment complex dumpster. These two low resolution pics are all that remain of the earliest signs that a woodworker lied within. I can distinctly remember thinking to myself at the time, “Why the heck CAN’T I build that?!?!”. And I like to think that the same mindset is what keeps me rolling today. I have no business being a woodworker, let alone making instructional videos on the internet!! I’m trained to work in a lab, not a wood shop! But apparently, the woodworker within won the battle for control over the direction of my life. And all I can say is thank goodness it did!
So, with that out of the way, I wanna hear from you guys about your early woodworking days. Who were you influenced by? When did you realize that a woodworker lay within? I know many of you are currently at the beginning of your woodworking journey, and I want to hear your stories too. Feel free to comment here, or leave a reply and post pictures in the forum thread I created specifically for this discussion.
Izzy Video Takes the Plunge!
I was delighted to hear that my friend Isreal Hyman, producer of great video tutorials like Izzy Video, Rolling R’s (Spanish lessons), and Paperclipping (scrapbooking), is taking the big plunge! He is leaving his current “real job” so that he can focus 100% on his videos. As someone who has experienced this himself, I can say it is one of the scariest and most exhilarating things a person can do. So I want to support Izzy in any way that I can.
To help bolster the business, Izzy is offering 20% off Premium Subscriptions. I’m not going to go into detail on the subscriptions, since you can read about that stuff here. But if you have any interest at all in shooting and editing your own videos, Izzy’s tutorials are worth their weight in gold. I have consulted with Izzy many times in the past about how to maximize the quality of The Wood Whisperer with minimal inconvenience, and I have him to thank for most of what I know. The man sure knows his stuff!
So the coupon code is 20B42, and you can sign up for a subscription here. On a personal note, Izzy is a father of three, and the sole provider for his family. I think you can imagine how scary (and exciting) this move must be for them. Good luck Izzy and family!
Danish Oil on top of Shellac? - Question of the Week
This week’s question comes from Eric in Canada who asks: “I know you like to use dewaxed shellac and transtint for a bit of colour, and finish it off with General Finishes. GF is extremely hard to find here in Canada. Dewaxed shellac and the transtint is pretty easy to get. I was wondering if I can use Danish oil on top of the shellac?”
And here was my response:
The only problem with Danish oil in this application is the fact that most Danish oil contains a high amount of oil. That oil will have difficulty curing on top of a pre-sealed surface (from the shellac). The General Finishes products are mostly varnish, if not all varnish (Arm-R-Seal). So what you are really looking for is a simple wipe-on varnish to put over top of the shellac. Minwax sells a decent one that is widely available. A few light coats should do the trick.
You might also consider using a different coloring agent. Even though I do occasionally use a dilute shellac/dye solution for coloring, its only for certain situations. In most cases, I do my staining with water-based dyes or gel stains. Neither of these really seals the surface and you should have no problem following up with a Danish oil if you use them. So really, the sky is the limit for your combinations of coloring agents and topcoats. But to directly answer your question, you want to avoid putting oil/varnish blends on top of sealed surfaces.
-
Just Starting?
-
Keep Up With TWW!
-
Support the Show
-
David Marks' New DVD
