A Memorable Father’s Day Gift – Viewer Project
Here is another project inspired by the Gadget Station series. This was submitted by jason, and what a great project! And a great story to go with it! His Dad must be incredibly proud!
This was my first creation that was not to serve a purely utilitarian use. This was a Fathers Day gift for my Dad who is a minister. My little brother was staying with me for a week while his place was being remodeled and had an idea for a gift for Dad. He had an old beat up Bible and wanted it displayed with a plaque that said, “A Bible falling apart can be found in the hands of a man who isn’t.” As soon as he told me about it I went into design mode. I’ve been wanting to do something with the Greene and Greene style joints ever since I sat down in rapt awe and watched you build the Gadget Station. I’m afraid I may have ripped you off a bit but that piece has really stuck with me.
I started by looking at what I had in the garage. Pine 2×4s and some birch and oak plywood and some small scraps laying around. I’m a bit strapped for cash right now so I used what I had. My woodworking tools consist of a Ridged contractor table saw, some Blue Chip chisels, some tapes and squares and a hand me down Porter Cable plunge router (no table yet). I found an old picture frame we weren’t using and stole the glass out of it and that minus 1/4 inch all around became my size to work with. I did some basic drawings and jumped into cutting down some 2×4s to square 1×3 stock. (I use my table saw with an Amana Prestige for all my cutting because it’s all I have and have had great luck creating square boards no taller than 3 inches.) 
After that I cut to length and started working on the proud standing finger joints. I did not batch them out all at a time but cut one with the center finger and two shoulders and then matched it up to the mating piece and cut it. When both were done, I went on and did the next pair starting from scratch. To make the first cut was simple: two kirf cuts on the sides of the finger and then two more to remove the waste and then chisels to clean it up (my greatest woodworking revelation to date is the use of a nice sharp set of chisels and if I could, I think I might do everything with them). Then I laid that piece down on top of the next and traced it out and cut just inside of my lines with the table saw and then removed the excess with repeated passes. Then, a little nibble at a time, I got it to fit the first piece with a nice snug fit. I went on in this manner until all joints were done and then cleaned everything up with the chisels and sanded it all down. Now my frame had a basic shape.
I worked with a rasp I had bought for rough metal work and had never used and some sand paper to create the rounded ends on the fingers. Next I had to figure out how to create the super thin dados for the back piece and the glass in front. The top and bottom pieces I could make with kirf cuts on the TS but on the sides, the groove had to go past where you would see them on the outside fingers to give full depth for the panel and the glass to fit. I sat for 45 minutes trying to figure that one out and ended up doing the scariest thing I’ve ever done on a TS. I marked where the blade started and stopped on the fence at a certain depth and transferred those lines to my work piece and turned on the saw and dropped my workpiece slowly down onto the moving blade and ran it until I reached my line and stopped the saw and pulled it off. Now I was left with the cut too shallow for the panel and glass at the very edges and the panel side was OK because it was 1/4 inch and I have a chisel that would fit in that, but the groove for the glass, I ended up cleaning up with a jewelers screwdriver and a hammer.
I cut to length and glued up a panel of 1/4 x 5 oak plywood for the back (My very first time gluing wood) and fit in the slot and fit the glass in the front slot and looking at it and said to myself, “something’s missing… PLUGS!” I watched your videos again and set out to find a 3/8 hollow chisel mortising bit and some wood for plugs. WOODCRAFT! YES! I was thinking walnut but at Woodcraft I fell in love with a wood called Bocote. I went home and googled, “square plugs” and who pops up but Marc Spagnuolo on FineWoodworking.com with pillowing square plugs. I watched and learned again and went back to the shop. I didn’t do pillow tops but beveled the four corners on the top with a chisel and then chopped them off using the miter gauge and a short auxiliary fence on the TS and tapered the backs. I made a handle for my hollow chisel mortising chisel and used it with a 3/8 forsner bit and a hammer to create the square holes for the screws and plugs and slapped it together for a dry fit. It looked good so I batched out a bunch of those plugs and then went to work on getting the inscription in the box.
I found a piece of pine from old landscaping timber my neighbor gave me that I thought would be perfect. This timber had been buried underground for about ten years, I think. He pulled it out to reinforce a retaining wall with concrete and gave a bunch of them to me. It has some beautiful grain but you won’t be able to see in the pictures. I cut this with an angled front and wrote out the words for the inscription and then went over them with a woodburning tip on my soldering iron and glued it in place to the back and the bottom pieces and then glued the Bible in place above it and let it cure over night. I also used a key hole bit in the router to make places for mounting to the wall. In the morning, I screwed it all together and pounded the plugs in place with a claw hammer and a block of wood and that was it…no glue (I’m afraid the glass may break sometime in the future and have to be replaced) and no finish (no time, it was Sunday morning by then).
When my brother, Greg and I gave it to Dad after church this morning, he broke down in tears and said he would cherish it for the rest of his life. It was the best Fathers Day ever.
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Brian – Great innovative use of tools and wood, and good design also. Shows how you can make almost anything with just a few tools.
A great gift.
You mention squaring stock with your table saw. If you wanted to make even thinner stock you can reswaw those 2×4 using a resawing technique on your tablesaw.
Just Google on the phrase ‘resawing on a tablesaw’.
Has Marc covered this? If not, it might be a good idea for a video. Just sayin’.
Excellent project and it’s clear from reading this description that you’ve got the makings of a great future in woodworking. Good description.
Your Dad sounds like a great man, and it’s apparent that he did that he did his job well.
Awesome! Thanks Jason for such a uplifting story and a wonderful final product. Great encouragement for those of use that have limited tools and supplies.
The best gifts come from the heart…You and your brother have proven that point by creating something from an idea by using everyday supplies. It’s not the value of the supplies but how they are used. Great job, your father must be as proud of both of you as you are of him.
Wow! What a story. You put alot of work into this and your project turned out great, your father must be proud. I read very few of these but your story kept me reading.
Conrad
Impressive is all I can say.
What a great story. Its funny I really make thing for other people because I love the look on their faces when they receive it and it just feels good. By the end of your story I felt like I received the gift and it just made my day.
Thank you for sharing!
Very Nice Brian, Great idea too.
Hey Jason, Great work there.
I’m only just starting proper woodworking (”good enough” stuff) and I also don’t have that many tools so this story was really inspirational and proves the old saying:
“Necessity is the mother of invention”
I know marc’s monthly giveaways are randomly picked otherwise giving this guy some more tools could only lead to good things!
Thanks for sharing!
Very nice work. I like how you adapted Marc’s design.
Jason – nice work and nice story!
As a new woodworker, it’s inspiring to see what can be done without many tools, or much on hand materials.
I think the “no finish” look works here with the worn Bible and woodburned inscription.
I really enjoy these viewer projects…..
Nice job on this… i like contrasting pins…… I think they will be in my next case work.
ShopMonger
KnickKnackwood.com
That was an amazing story. Gifts from the heart are always the best to receive. I do have a suggestion about how you cut the grooves in the sides though. I know you said you don’t have a router table yet but for a specific purpose like this it can be as simple as a piece of 3/4″ MDF with a hole in it (centered over the collet of course) screwed to the router base through the base plate screw holes. The fence can then be as simple as another piece of MDF clamped (or screwed) to that. Then you just hang the whole thing from a couple of sawhorses an follow the same procedure as you did with the TS. It’s inexpensive and a whole lot safer. Congratulations on making such a truly beautiful and inspiring project.
Proof positive that it’s not the wood, it’s the working. It should be a rule that any aspiring woodworker be required to execute at least one project using recycled, scrap or dimensional lumber just to drive that point home.
That said, I cringed at the thought of doing a “dropped, stopped dado” on the table saw. The only major injury in my school shop came when someone tried to lower a workpiece onto a spinning blade. Some suggestions:
* If you absolutely have to do a plunge cut on a table saw (and that’s a huge if), lower the blade, secure the work and then stand back while you raise the blade. Measure the final height and keep count the number of turns of the handle it takes to reach that height.
* That said, there’s a much safer way to do what you described. A stopped dado is nothing more than a through dado with plugs at each end. Keep the piece flat on the table, push it all the way through and then glue small slips of wood into the ends. You also end up with perfectly square corners inside the groove, meaning that cleanup is done with a flush saw and block plane, rather than digging stuff out with a chisel.
Start with ten. End with ten.
Good design and good craftsmanship will always get you farther than a shop full of tools. You seem to have both. Nice work.
What a wonderful story and work of art – the birth of a family heirloom!