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25 September 2018 at 1:09 pm #312980
Here are the three slideshows with audio comments by Christopher Schwarz for the projects in the book:
The packaging box
The school box
The chest of drawersLet’s see, if that works….
25 September 2018 at 1:01 pm #313138I just made my first box last weekend. Here is the decription and some pictures:
First Box
Description of the cutsThe whole box was made from one thicker board, split into two halves for thickness. One of these halves is the bottom with some leftover wood, the other half is used for all the walls of the box.
This box took me like 8 1/2 hours alltogether.
Stock preparation for beginners really takes time until we get some more practice and the knowledge about when to use what tool, saw or plane.16 July 2017 at 8:43 am #313750A Video about a drawer to a table would be a nice idea. I am also thinking about a bedside table with a drawer that I would like to build in the future.
13 July 2017 at 9:03 pm #313706My “workshop” is closed for now, until I can figure out a way how to keep my cats inside of the appartment while I am outside on the balcony. I can’t lock the door from outside.
My landlord forced me with threats of taking legal actions to take down the safety net, that protects my cats from accidently falling down.
My lawyer said that it is the landlords right to do so, so I cannot work on the balcony for now, since I cannot see, what the cats might be doing behind my back.
🙁9 July 2017 at 6:22 pm #313618Lots to do in the office, so I could not do a lot during the week, but today the gloves came off and I got busy.
All the seating and back slats are done, cut to size, curves done and sanded.
Somehow this might truely become a chair 🙂
I admit, that at one point, I just thought that this project might be too big for me yet, but piece by piece it will come together.I am learning a lot along the way, like planing end grain without a shooting board and getting some practice with the spoke shave, which I really learned to love. All of this takes quite a bit of time though.
I discovered, that it is more efficient, to clamp similar pieces together and work on them together.
Thanks for the advice of adapting the layout, but I am kinda stubborn now. I take this chair as a challenge and a learning project, so I’ll have to figure out how to make it work.
Oh, by the way, I talked to my friend and he rather wants a finish with the wood showing instead of an opaque paint.
2 July 2017 at 5:57 pm #313431I started out a few weeks ago as an absolute beginner in woodworking. While restoring old tools is nice and might be cheaper, keep in mind, that you will have soo many skills to learn doing the actual woodworking, stacking the other skills like restoring old planes and saws on top of that, might pile up to a mountain of skills too high to master in the beginning.
I started out with an old wooden plane, watched lots of videos and thought, that might be not that hard. The “problem” is, that you don’t have any experience or knowledge about how that tool is supposed to feel in your hand, how easy or hard it is to do the actual work. Once you have an idea how a tool is supposed to behave, restoring a tool to get close to that point is a lot easier than doing it from scratch with no experience at all.
I will not say, that this will be impossible, but it will be a steeper learning curve.With that in mind, I’d say that going for a used metal #4-plane might be an okay idea. You definatly need to learn to sharpen the blade anyway. At one point I gave in and got a new no #4 plane, because I was really unhappy with the old wooden plane.
I’d go with a japanese ryoba saw as a first saw. You don’t need to sharpen it and keep that skill for a later time and you get a crosscut and a ripsaw in one saw. It might not be that long as a usual handsaw but you can handle 4 by 4 material with it with no problem.I had a wobbly workmate knockoff which I used to build my current “workbench”, which is basicly just an oversized sawhorse, adapting the dimensions of the Paul Sellers sawhorse and following his videos.
Tools used as far as I remember:
– ryoba saw
– combination square
– sliding bevel
– 20mm / 3/4″ chisel
– wooden/ nylon hammer
– drill with drillbit & countersink bit
– screwdriver
– tape measure
– some cheap knife with disposable bladesLink to a thread about the sawbench:
In hindight, the combination angle of the legs proved to be tricky for a beginner, there is another design by Christopher Schwarz, that might be more easy.
http://contrib1.wkfinetools.com/cSchwarz/sawBench/Sawbench-1.pdfA workmate and this sawbench got one thing in common, both are way to light to work for planing. You will push the workmate around. I can prop the sawbench against a wall though and it will not move, which you cannot do properly with the workmate. I padded one end with cork, which was actually a cork pot coaster from Ikea.
My second “project” was a dovetail template and winding sticks. I made these out of one storebought piece of beech with the proper width and thickness. I just made sure, that I got a really straight one. Beech was not the best wood to use, as I was told later.
Tools:
– ryoba saw
– 3/4″ chisel
– hammer
– combination square
– sliding bevel
– tape measure
– marking gauge
– plane, depending on the woodI just used a black marker for the dark line of the one winding stick and marking the middle of the sticks.
You’ll absolutly want a benchhook. I made one with a little apron instead of a cleat, so I can clamp stuff. A benchhook can also act as a makeshift shooting board.
Benchhook turned sideways:
Tools:
– ryoba saw
– dovetail template
– 3/4″ chisel & hammer/ mallet
– combination square
– plane
– tape measure
– marking gaugeA nice thing to have is an improvised “moxon vise” until you get a proper bench.
All of the above can be build by a beginner with a limited toolset and those little helpers will help you along the way.
So my tool recommendation apart from the tools used for the mentioned projects:
– a fine saw, be it a dovetail/ tenon/ carcass saw or a japanese dozuki saw. I went with the dozuki
– a few more chisels in different sizes
– lots of clamps, for clamping stuff to your workbench, whatever that might be and for glueing stuff together
– sharpening tools for chisel/ plane blade ( and saw, if you go the western route).
– drillbits & drill, be it a manual one or a power tool of some sorts.
– marking knife of some sorts
– card scraper & burnisher are nice to have, to remove pencil marks.
– if you don’t plan to work on curves or round stuff, you can get the spokeshave later.Here is a tool recommendation for a starting kit from the Renaissance Woodworker:
A video worthwhile to watch.
1 July 2017 at 10:13 pm #313395Pepperpot,
Each time you edit your post it appears as a new post and doesn’t replace the previous one.
You should delete the old for each edit, otherwise there appears multiple almost identical posts.
I don’t know why the forum software doesn’t replace the previous one automatically, but it doesn’t.
Thanks,
CraigPepper Pot,
Well you’re now up to 5 pages with quite a following and still not deleting your edits.
You may wish to considering having your own web blog page such as Greg Merritt did.
Best,
CraigActually, I was desperatly looking for that delete button, similar to the “edit” or “quote” button in this thread, to please you and all the others. Sadly, there isn’t one an I was quite frankly a bit confused what you might have meant.
As there are some issues with this forum, like the missing attachment function a few days ago, I thought that this button might have vanished as well.It might have been a good idea to mention, that I should delete the edit in the “Activity log” on the dashboard, a whole different page than this one. If I had known about this, I, of course, would have done it, just to please you. I am relativly new to this forum and you seem to be a bit of a pro, so a little hint or pointer would have been nice.
😉Who is this Greg Merritt? I am trying to find a blog, could you give me a link? Maybe it is an interesting read.
PS: The quote function does not work properly either.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by Pepper Pot.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by Pepper Pot.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by Pepper Pot.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 10 months ago by Pepper Pot.
1 July 2017 at 6:11 pm #313392I’ve done some “easy” stock preparation with the seating slats. I take my time and use it for planing practice.
I really have some problems with planing the edges to a 90° angle. Somehow I seem to prefer the edge closer to me, allthough I seem to get a full shaving. I am trying to compensate and fine tune the edge with a block plane, which is easier to manipulate.
Well, I am just at the beginning of my “apprenticeship”, so I will have lots to learn and practice.
With the bad weather, it is not that much fun on the balcony though, I hope it is getting better tomorrow.I am also in the middle of drawing the templates for all the pieces with a free CAD-program. I actually wanted to include them here, once I am finished.
There is one problem though, which they did not get by using a band saw. It is the bevel of the upper and lower rear crosspieces. The devil is one little detail and difference to using Hand tools. They just tell us to set the table of the band saw to a certain angle. If you are sawing those pieces, the lower part of the boards just follow the upper template correctly.
If you do those curves and bevels by hand, you kind off need templates for the upper and the lower side of that board. The small sketches in the original plans/ PDF-file are only for the upper side of those boards.The templates of the lower side for these boards depend on the thickness of the used material.
All the beveled edges in these templates shift byy = x * tan(α)
in radial direction perpendicular to the curves.
For the upper crosspiece with a bevel of 30° and a thickness of 27mm that results to 15,6mm, which is actually quite a lot. Even with the suggested thickness of 3/4″ that would be 11mm ~ 7/16″.
So, it does not make sense to release a generic and complete set of templates, if everyone uses a different material.
The former “easy” setup of the chair just became a little bit more tricky.
27 June 2017 at 8:06 pm #313310For the US:
With 128 US.fl.oz. to 1 US.liq.gallon and 16 oz to 1lb, this formular relates to1/8 oz shellac per 1 US.fl.oz. alcohol
for a one pound cut.
27 June 2017 at 7:10 pm #313308Here is a formular for the metric system.
A one pound cut means one pound (453,6g ) of shellac for one gallon (3,785l ) of alcohol.
If you use the rule of proportion, that means that for a volume of “y”-liters, you need “x”-gramm shellac.x = y * 453,6g / 3,785l
For a small amount of mixed shellac, like 100ml = 0,1l, which is enough for small projects this results to:
x = 0,1l * 453,6g / 3,785l = 11,98g ~ 12g
If you want a two pound cut, multiply the formular with 2, for a four pound cut with 4.
Btw, if you only want to use a scale for measurement, 100ml alcohol weigh 78,9g.
I guess one gramm more or less, does not matter that much, if you want to do it quick and dirty.
27 June 2017 at 9:47 am #313274Did you check if the manufacturer has a website with information?
I got waxy shellac flakes the other day, and mixed up a batch with alcohol. After a while, two layers separeted. I think that I read somewhere that one of the layer is the wax.
Industrial products might have supplements that prevent the separation though.25 June 2017 at 7:08 pm #313238🙂
I got the idea when I wanted to take a nap. Halfway asleep, I thought about a moxon vise and how to work around it. I actually had to get up and see if this would work.
Not having a proper vise of any kind is challenging, but since you need quite a few clamps in the “shop”, you can work around that. Is is a poor mans solution. The beam is a leftover from the bench, the rest is scrapwood.
Allthough having a vise would obviously be more practical.25 June 2017 at 5:00 pm #313235Here comes the next project:
Norm Abram’s Adirondack Chair
The original plans and cutting list can be found here:
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/wp-content/uploads/August_05_Norms_Adirondack.pdfThey were released in Popular Woodworking, issue August 2005.
Since I cannot (yet) work with imperial dimensions, I transfered everything into the metric system.
* Adirondack chair – cutting list metric: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwAX6pt9HnElQjBaeTNIMUlLT3M/view?usp=sharing
* Adirondack chair – rough cutting list for each board: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwAX6pt9HnElZWktN0tpcHlLUWM/view?usp=sharing
Boy, this forum is buggy as hell when it comes to using the link-tags ….
If you want to use the lists, check everything again. I did my best to get everything right though.
During this project, there will be some edge planing and more importantly lots of curves and waves. Due to the limitations of my “workbench” I came up with an idea, how to fix the pieces to the bench, so I can work on them safely.
Here are two pictures of the general setup. I might cut out a corner of the front and the back of the top beam, so the two clamps that fix the beam to the bench will not protude over the the top of the beam.
With this setup, I should be able to clamp an adjustable planing stop to the beam and secure the board with two clamps.
25 June 2017 at 9:30 am #313230
@kamikazekrieger:
…
Outdoor stuff you really wanna go the extra mile and use the proper wood in my opinion, in Europe thats either Larch or Robinia/Locust/False Acacia which ever name you prefer. The latter being pretty much the most durable wood we have here however its not easy to work with and bloody hard, which is why id highly recommend you go with Larch.
…Ah, too late. I already got spruce yesterday. :/
If this chair turns out nice, my friend probably wants a second one, to hang out with somebody. I could make the second one with larch then.
I am not yet sure, if my friend wants the chair painted with solid paint or keep the wooden look of it. I guess it depends on how it looks in the end.
So the next two weeks it is probably going to be stock preparation and doing all the curvy and round stuff.
Due to the size of the chair, I am going to prepare everything here and the actually chair build up will take place at his place. The finished chair would be way too big for me to move it in my small car.
@cobhhive
The chair looks really nice and comfortable. Well done! I like the “rustic” look of the wood. I just hope that mine will turn out halfway decent too.
I got thicker material, the original plans use 3/4″ ~2cm thick wood, I went with slightly more than an inch/ 27mm.About used pallet/ reclaimed wood with unknown chemical treatment, I guess it comes down to the purpose of the project. I would not mind such wood for a tool box/ chest or other projects for the balcony or garden.
Today, the “First Box”-Project came to an end.
I used shellac and wax on it, following Paul’s guidance in this this video:
Finishing with Shellac | Paul SellersAnd this is how it turned out:
I’ve put some of the original wood below it, so you can see, how the color changed. I used “lemon” shellac, so I got a warmer more yellowy tint.
I kept the flaws and little gapsI also made a small design change. The small holding piece for the axis of the gauge is on the other side, so I can store it away with a locked setting. The dovetail template fits nicely in the gap.
Since I don’t have a nice polishing brush yet, I used cosmetic pads for polishing. It took a “whooping” three pads for the whole box.
I have to admit that I really like the feel of the smooth surface with shellac and wax. This is a finish, that I will propably use more often.25 June 2017 at 7:02 am #313224Maybe a wooden pallet might be an idea. Put on the floor and set against a wall, it might substitute for a very low “tabletop” and you can put clamps and planing stops in lots of places. You could build a frame from cheap construction lumber, if a pallet is too big.
Something like this might work too (which actually gave me the idea):
Cheap benchtop & clamping station
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