Woodshop plans: part

Showing posts with label part. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Building The Wine Rack Part II

Fabrication: Initial Cutting & Setup

Once I had the design sketched out on the LVL I began by making relief cuts in the back face which would make the concave curved cut easier.

These Relief Cuts Will Make Cutting The Rear Curve Easier.

I did all my cutting on the band saw. This was the first project I made using my new Carter Guides. I won’t say they turn my crappy Ridgid band saw into a super star, but they do make it usable and predictable. For that, I give them credit and appreciation.

Once I had made the relief cuts, it occurred to me that a square block would be much easier to clamp and work then a curved one. Thankfully I thought of this when I did and left the back square (if slotted) for the time being.

Next, I cut out the “L” shape on the inside face. This too was easily done on the band saw using the Carter Guide. Though an “L” because the back and base are at 90° to each other, they are both reclined slightly to hold the bottle at a slight back tilt.

The Basic L.

Once the “L” was cut out of the inside face, I got ready to sculpt the concave face of the back. Having picked up an ArborTech Turbo Plane and a Saburrtooth Extra Coarse donut wheel since my last power sculpted project, I began the sculpting on a practice piece. When I was done I had tried the Turbo Plane, Saburrtooth wheel, my Festool RAS 115 and my medium grit Kutzall wheel. While the Turbo Plane and Saburrtooth have some potential and the RAS 115 is a great tool for finer shaping, I ended up preferring the moderate material removal rate, controllability and smooth resulting finish of the Kutzall. To paraphrase Paul Lemiski, the Kutzall is awesome.

The Saburrtooth Extra Coarse Proved Too Aggressive.

With the sculpting tool decided on, I took a scrap piece of 1x3 and screwed a very small piece of OSB to the end. Then I took the wine rack and placed it on the OSB. I secured it by screwing up through the OSB into the bottom of the wine rack. This firmly attached the 1x3 and allowed me to easily hold the rack in position with my bench vise.

Catch all the Wine Rack Posts Here.

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Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Shop Tour M Scott Morton Part II

Pickup up where we left (Part I) off in Mortons shop at the sliding compound miter saw corner, if you then turn left, and run along the wall opposite the door, you’ll find his SawStop Cabinet Saw and his dust collector. While the saw stays set there against the wall, the dust collector does occasionally move, as it’s not permanently connected to most of the stationary equipment.

The router table, OSS, storage cabinet and bench lumber.

Moving passed the saw, the next corner is occupied by Morton’s Ridgid oscillating spindle sander (OSS) and Bench Dog router table. A storage cabinet of small draws rests next to the OSS and the lumber for Morton’s future bench lays next to the router table. On the walls above, a very small window frame and adjacent former window frame serve as cubbies to store toolboxes and other small items.

Notice how Morton takes advantage of the recess in the wall to
achieve a great deal of storage with no floor footprint.

Rounding the OSS and router table corner brings us along Morton’s storage wall. He took advantage of a recess in the the middle of this wall section to build a storage rack for his Festool collection (bigger than mine, I’m pretty sure) and clamp racks. Because of the the recess in the wall, none of these racks steal valuable floor space.

Storage on the back of the shelves in the "dead end" section of the shop.

If we stay along this wall and follow it to the end opposite the OSS, we’ll find a dead end created with the installation of shelves between a column and the wall between the shop and family room. Both sides of this “dead end” are used for storage. Some of it (like his utility and sharping bench) is kind-of organized. Some of it is not.

As we all do, Morton has shelves in his shop that hold a bit of everything.

The kind-of organization also extends to the opposite side of the shelves. They house old tools, light fixtures, wine and all sorts of others, miscellaneous stuff. Moving passed the shelves brings us back to the shop entry door and through it, the family room.

As I mentioned above, Morton has the lumber for his new bench acclimating in his shop now. Like many of us, he’s caught the winter 2011/2012 workbench building bug. For now, he makes his torsion box assembly table serve double duty as a bench. It’s a fairly function bench, with a typical metal face vise and plenty of storage beneath that dead flat work surface.

The existing, torsion box bench.

Between his lumber storage, equipment, assembly table and future bench, Morton’s shop is a high functioning woodwork space that’s proofing perfect for producing his high quality custom furniture.

p.s. - since my visit in November, Morton has added a small child’s bench area to the shop for his kids. You can check out his post about it here.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Dads Benchtop Bench Part I

A few weeks ago, I wrote of how cool some Benchtop Benches are. After contemplating buying the Sjoberg Smart Vise for him, I instead opted to build a Jeff Miller style Benchtop Bench for my Dad for Fathers day.

Jeff Millers Benchtop Bench from FineWoodworking.com

As might be expected of me, I began by milling the legs out of Timerstrand. One of the nice things about Timberstrand is that they come almost perfectly flat. They’re also easy to mill. A few passes over the jointer and through the planer left them ready for joinery.

Timberstrand mills just fine.

Rather than use the traditional tenons that Miller used on his original, I used Dominos (no suprise to a regular reader. I glued the tops and bottoms to the legs. It was my intention to bolt the front and back stretchers as Miller did, using unglued Dominos rather than his staunch tenons. I say it was intention, because as with many good intentions, this fell to the wayside once I had the Domino and glue in hand. The stretchers are not permanently glued to the legs.

Miller centered his stretchers on his legs, resulting in their being set back slightly from the face of the legs. As it was easier, I simply jointed my stretchers flush with the face of the legs.

The leg assemblies.

I glued the leg assembly in two (2) steps. First I glued the top and bottoms to the legs. Then I glued the leg assemblies to the stretchers. As soon as they were glued up, I put the whole thing on my table saw as a flat reference surface. There was some twist to bench base, so while the glue was still wet I added an extra clamp diagonally across them to try to pull the twist out.

The stretchers glues in and the diagonal clamp to minimize racking.

Once the leg assembly was in clamps, I began on the top and vise.

The top is made of the finger jointed mystery wood panels you can get from the home centers. I laminated four of the panels together (3/4” each to make a 3” slab) about a year ago as an experimental benchtop. The whole thing was about 6’ long and had an awful twist to it.

To make the benchtop bench top, I cut a 24” length off the end of the home center panel experiment. With a few passes through the planer, this smaller length flattened out quickly and ended up just under 3” thick.

The benchtop on the legs.