Dan's Hobbies » MDF

Wine Rack Pt. 5

Dan — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 19:54:39 +0000

It’s time to make some tenons and try out my new flush trim bit. I’ve go On of the big purpose built table saw accessories for making tenons, but I’ve found that my crosscut sled a ripping blade and scrap wood does a better job. All you need to do is clap or tape some crap wood to the base and back of the sled. This provides a perfect “zero clearance” surface that will prevent chip-out. Then all you need to do is set the blade height and go to town.

I’ve been looking forward to the pattern routing part of this project, since it started. I’ve been excited about taking my work to the next level, but also a little nervous, because I didn’t start small. Every singe board in this project has at least one curve on it. Aa the old saying goes, “go big or go home”. It turns out I didn’t need to be nervous, because the compression bit left a surface that will only require light sanding, plus one for modern technology.

Wine Rack Pt. 3

Dan — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 04:40:36 +0000

So what can you do when you spend 16 hours over two days in the shop? Well you can do several things, one is rough mill some stock to width, second you can drink more Gatorade than you thought humanly possible, and three you can make a really unimpressive MDF template. How impressive it is, probably depends on who you ask. The general public would probably say it’s just a board with some curves on it. I’d like to think that a skilled woodworker can look at it see how much work went into making it. This little template required two jigs to produce, and it’s only 90% done. In my opinion that’s an awful lot of work, for something that won’t even end up in the finish piece, but that’s the price of taking your work to the next level.

Wine Rack Pt. 2

Dan — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:21:56 +0000

I have been channeling my inner David Marks recently, by making routing templates from MDF. They aren’t anything special, just 1/2″ MDF that I rough cut with the jig saw, and then sanded fare with flexible sanding sticks. I have one template left to make, and that’s the one for the “racks”, and it’s going to be the hardest, because it doesn’t have a single strait surface on it. Check in next time to see how i did.

A bench hook for planing

Dan — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:14:07 +0000

I haven’t gotten much done in the shop recently, because it’s been unseasonably cold the last week. Even though it was uncomfortable in the shop, I was able to make a bench appliance I’ve been putting off for months. I’ve been using my hand planes with greater frequency lately, and since I don’t have a proper woodworking bench, It’s a real pain to secure lumber for planing. Thus I made what I’m going to call a planing stop bench hook. The only thing exciting about it, is that I used pegs to attach the hook the the base. It roughly 10″ wide by 20″ long and made from 3/4″ MDF, scrap red oak, and 3/8″ Birch dowel.

Router Table (Pt. 12)

Dan — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 04:50:54 +0000

Last time, I demonstrated how to make templates for routing the recess for a lift plate. In this post, I’ll demonstrate how to use those templates to rout the recess.

Step one – Align the through hole template, and drill a starter hole all the way through the top. To ensure good alignment, I clamped a jointed 2×4 perpendicular to the front of the top, this gave me two good edges to reference the templates off of.

Step two – Use a pattern bit, to trace out the through hole. In order to get a clean cut, I’d recommend taking several passes, lowering the bit an 1/8″ – 1/4″ after each pass. Depending on the length of your bit, you can remove the template after a few passes, and reference off the side of the slot you just routed.

Step three – After routing as deep as you can with the pattern bit, secure the recess template to the top and rout out the recess.

Step four - Depending on how thick your top is, you might be able to skip this step. My top is 2-1/4″ thick, so in order to completely rout out the through hole, I had to flip the top, and use a flush trim bit, to remove the last little bit of material.

Step five – Grab a broom, and start cleaning up all the MDF dust.