Wine Rack Pt. 4

I spent very little time in the shop over the last week, because it was the hurry up and wait time of the project. Since my shop is a garage with no real climate control, I have to take my time milling up lumber. My routine is strait forward, and starts by flattening a face, and then letting the boards rest for 24 hours.  The next step is to thickness plane the boards, I don’t take them down to final thickness, just down enough to make them uniform across the entire board. I then let the boards rest for 24 hours. I then repeat this the process on the edges. I run through the entire process one more time to bring the boards to finished thickness & width before I start cutting joinery. It takes a long time, but it guarantees my boards stay strait and true.

Since I spent most of the week doing nothing, I was itching to get into the shop over the weekend and start doing something. As I stated in an earlier post, this is my first project I’ve made that used mortise and tenon joinery, so I took my time and set up the router table to rout out the waste. One thing I have to admit, is buying the spiral up bits was one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. Once I got the waste removed i set to work squaring up the ends using my chisels. I think for a first attempt, I did pretty well. The following photo is inspired by Chris schwarz, and all the black & white photos he posts on his blog.

Raised dog dishes Pt. 6

The bad mojo is gone, and I’m back on track now. Last night, I wrapped up construction of the top, in spite of it being 50 degrees in the shop. I know I know I’m a big sissy; but I like to be warm, when I’m working in the shop. It’s kind of hard to focus on the task and hand, when you keep pondering what temperature frostbite start to become a concern.

The first thing I did, and forgot to take a picture of, was crosscut the tops to length. Routing holes for the dishes, was the second and most time consuming step of the evening. While it’s time consuming, it’s simple with a router circle jig. Step one is to locate and drill the hole for the centering pin. Step two is to pick the appropriate radius, and the final step is to start making saw dust.

Continue Reading…

Raised dog dishes Pt. 4

Day for went a little slower than day 3, but I still made A great deal of progress. I started off by finishing the apron pieces, all I had left to do was rout the button grove. The groves are 5/16″ of an inch deep by 1/4″ wide. That’s to much material to remove in one pass, so I took 5  1/16″ deep passes. The groves came out Ok, but if I feed to fast, they router bit complained.

What really consumed a lot of time was the next step, tapering the legs. This is the first project I’ve incorporated tapers into. It took a lot longer than I though it would, to get the jig set up correctly. Eventually, I got everything dialed in and was able to batch out the legs fairly quickly. One thing I need to remember for next time, is to not use an 80 tooth cross cutting blade. While it left an excellent finish, my little contractor saw was working really hard to make the cut.

Continue Reading…

Raised dog dishes Pt. 3

I got a lot more done on day three of this project, than I have in any previous project. I attribute the increased efficiency, to my new router table. Since the pieces for this project are small, it’s safer and faster to rout them on the table, than by hand. Day three started at the table, by making the stopped sliding dovetails in the legs. One thing worth noting, is that the dovetails, are 1/2″ wide, but I used a 3/8″ bit to make them. This requires 3 passes, One down the middle to remove the bulk of the material, and then one down each side, to bring the tail to the final width.  It takes longer than using a bit of exact width needed, but in my opinion it produces a superior joint. Passes two and three, remove very little material, and are thus less likely to produce chatter, & inaccuracies.

Next I cut the mating dovetails in the apron ends. Again, multiple passes are better than one. In this case I used two passes, One that just nicked the surface to prevented tear out, and one that brought the tail to final width. To support the boards while routing, I used my favorite jig. Ok, not really I bug through the scrap bin till I found a decent sized piece of MDF, and then I straitened & squared two of it’s edges.

With the dovetails done, it was on to the table saw to cut the haunches. Yes I said haunches, square blocks don’t fit in round holes. The bottom of the leg tails are round (a side effect of using a router), and the apron tails are square so something has to give. Now I could round over the apron tails with a file, or square the leg tails with a chisel, but that’s to much like work. After they’re glued up no one will know what method I chose anyway. As you can see in the following photos, I morphed into David Marks, and used my cross cut sled just because I could. Continue Reading…

Router Table (wrap-up)

It’s finally done…

When I first started this project, I thought I would be done in a month.  Now 6 months later, I don’t know where all the time went. I lost a week to a neck injury, but other than that I’ve worked on this project 10 to 15 hours every week. Either I work a lot slower than I think I do, or Norm has some magic tool to warp time.

All kidding aside, I’m really pleased with the results. I’ve gained additional storage space (always a plus in a small shop), and a valuable tool that I’m sure will be make many of my future projects much easier and pleasurable. And now it’s time for the obligatory final photos.