Anybody interested in woodworking? part 2

[JRA]

Ok Carlos, you're probably gonna be sorry, but you asked me to do this. :grin: Hopefully it will be helpful though.

Disclaimer: I would never claim to be any kind of authority on woodworking. As with any type of building there are many different ways to do things. What works well for one person might not work at all for another. I have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, but I'm self taught and all of the Norm Abrams' of the world might not agree with how I do things. I will say my methods have served me well and have given me great results.

The night stands I built are a copy of a Bob Timberlake design. My wife and I already have some matching bedroom furniture and Lesley was wanting these nightstands for the bedroom. Already having the material to build them from and enjoying a new challenge, I told her I would just build them. We went to a furniture store in Blowing Rock, NC and looked at them and I did some mental measuring. I then went home and made a scale drawing. I use this simple drawing as a reference and to make sure everything looks right. I don't bother with a lot of detail. As I build the project, I'm always thinking a couple of steps ahead as to how I think I want to do things. Notice I said "think". I often change my ideas as I go along. Kind of flying by the seat of my pants. I will say I can't ever recall making any kind of major mistake that screwed things up badly. In fact, I'd say that not having a definite plan has enabled me to build better projects, because I can often see better how to do things as the project takes shape.

Bob Timberlake ad (with nighstand in photo)

Side view

Front view

I always buy rough sawn lumber (in this case cherry, but I already had it) and surface it myself. I do this because I will do a much better job at it than the lumber supplier will. I carefully sort my boards into piles by length, and straightness of each piece (meaning if the board is crowned or bowed in some way). Boards that are straight are put into one pile. If a board is partially straight and partially bowed, I cut the straight piece out and put it in the straight pile. The bowed piece is put into the bowed pile. The bowed wood gets special attention. A piece that looks really twisted can have the twist planed out of it and be a very usable and beautiful piece. I do this by simply screwing rails to the sides of the board. These rails simulate a flat bottom for the board. I run it through the planer, lowering the cutter head each time, untill I have one flat side. I then put it in the pile to be run through with the straight boards. Some times this results in a board that ends up thinner than the 13/16's that I usually plane to. I use these boards for drawer sides, thinner panels, or anywhere I don't need a full thickness board. In the pic I have only put two screws in each side just for this picture, but I normally put them about every six inches.

The holes left by the screws are ripped off when I run the boards through the table saw to put a straight edge on them. This is time consuming, but the results are worth it. I end up with 95% of my boards being as straight and true as you can possibly get. Of course some pieces are hopeless and I don't bother with them. Once all of the crooked boards have been planed flat on one side, I run all of the boards through togther untill I get the desired thickness, in most cases 13/16's. I do this because it allows me to glue up large panels out of multiple boards and still have an 11/16's thickness after sanding. I try to make the last pass on each side as shallow as possible in order to get the smoothest finish and I usually put a fresh set of blades on the planer for this. As you can see from the very last pic, I'm just using a portable Dewalt planer. This has been a good tool and has planed several thousand board feet of lumber with no problems. In the future I plan to upgrade to a bigger planer, although one that is still portable.

Once all of the lumber is planed, it's time to start building.

Just a little more about tools:

The most important tool you can learn how to use is a router. The number of things it can do is amazing, and you (at least I can't) really can't do good work without one. The very first time you make a cool profile or shape with this tool you'll be hooked. I use them for all kinds of things, and they are the one tool I use more than any other doing this kind of work.

Here are the routers I currently use along with some of the bits (with an orbital sander in the background).

And the table in which some of them mount. Three of them I only use in the table, and the other two I use for free hand work.

If anybody is still interseted after all of this, tomorrow I'll post some more pics about the tools I use and how I actually built these nightstands.

If this is just way too much detail :shock: let me know and I'll tone it down a few notches.

[SwampNut]

Wow, thanks for all the time & detail. Your planer idea is like a lightning strike to me. I guess I no longer need a jointer with that idea. I've talked to a lot of woodworkers--nobody has ever had an idea like that, and all tell me I should have bought a jointer/open planer before my thickness planer. Can you snap a pic next time you do this? Just to get a clearer idea? And when you say "rails" do you mean thin pieces of wood, or ???

Post all you have time for, I don't know about anybody else, but I'm getting a lot out of it.

[JRA]

What I use for rails are just 3/4" pieces of MDF ripped to about two inches wide. I have them in lengths of 2', 4', 6', and 8', for board lengths that fall into those ranges. I've found that boards over 8' in length either need to be cut into shorter pieces, or the bow is too slight to be a problem. The longer the board the slighter the twist or bow has to be, otherwise you end up removing too much material by the time you have planed one side flat. I always look carefully at the board and then decide how I can get the best use out of it. If a board is really twisted or bowed, I might cut the whole thing into 2' lengths, then plane it using the method I described. This way at least I end up with several really good 2' pieces. Some boards might have a good straight piece in it and then it becomes twisted towards one end. I cut out the straight piece and put it in the good stack, and plane the twisted peice. I try my best to keep the boards as long as possible though. Again, this is time consuming, but it yields great results, much better than running it across a jointer. Plus, you can do really wide boards, up to 11" if your thickness planer is a 12 1/2" wide.

Another little trick I forgot to mention is that I have made up "sleds" to use to rip a straight edge on the boards after they are planed. I made them in 4', 8', and 12' lengths. Basically they are a flat board that I screwed a stop to at one end. Through this stop I ran a bunch of little screws and let the tip protrude only about 1/8".

On the bottom side I screwed aluminum strips that are the same width as the grove that the crosscut guide rides in on my table saw. These have to be attached in a perfectly straight line.

I place the board on this sled with the crooked edge hanging over the edge of the sled, and jam the front edge of the board into the screws. This holds the front of the board in place. I hold the back of the board with my hand and push the sled through the groove on my table saw. The sled runs through the groove parallel to the blade with the edge of the sled just about 1/8" shy of actually touching the blade. I let the board hang over the edge of the sled enough so that the saw will cut a straight edge along the whole length of the board. Depending on the board, you might be cutting just a little off of the front and the back of it, but quite a lot out of the middle. It's my experience that rough sawn boards always have at least a little bow to the right or the left. Most have a lot. I only take the time to put one straight edge on each board. The other edge can be straightened by just using the fence on the table saw when you are actually ready to use the board.

I also use my roller stands as infeed and outfeed support. I tacked a little piece of rubber hose I had laying around as a handle on the back of the sled so that once I had completed the pass with the board, it was easy to pull back towards me. After making a lot of passes with the sled cutting dozens of boards, it gets old pulling it towards you and this little handle makes it easier. You can see it in the bottom left hand corner of the pic.

Carlos, you mentioned a jointer. The only thing I really use one for is putting a smooth, square edge on a board. The table saw, even with a really good blade, leaves an undesirable edge and the jointer really dresses this up nicely. This is important for face frames, but especially for glued up panels. The only way to make panels where the individual boards turn out invisible is to have perfect glue joints, and this is only possible if the edges are square, smooth, and straight.

Here's a pic of my little jointer. It looks like a POS, but it really works quite well. If I need to joint long pieces, say over about 4', I set up infeed and outfeed stands for that. For really long pieces, I take them over to my dad's home shop and use his jointer.

I'll post a little more after dinner.

[Guest]

John, are you sure you are not Norm Abrams' long lost brother???

[jcrich]

Oh, crap I thought I was logged in when I posted above. Doh!!!

[JRA]

John, are you sure you are not Norm Abrams' long lost brother???  

I hope not, he gets on my nerves.

[JRA]

One other thing I forgot to mention is the four wheel dolly's I use when planing a large quantity of boards. I set one up on the infeed side and one up on the outfeed side. As the board comes out of the planer I stack it on the dolly. When I have run all of the boards through, I just push it back to the infeed side and then push the now empty dolly to the outfeed side. I built them about 3'x4'. BTW, that's a CBR1100 XX under the red bike cover in the right side of the pic. :grin:

Ok, so as I'm ripping the straight edges on my freshly planed boards, I'm making mental notes as to which boards would be good for certain things. If I have a lot of boards, I usually go ahead and seperate them into stacks. One stack might be for boards that will be good for glued up panels, one stack for face frames, one stack for drawer fronts, etc.

The first thing I built on these nightstands was the base. The four corners were 2"x2" squares. I made these by ripping three boards to about 2-1/4" and gluing them together. I then ripped them on the table saw to about 2-1/16" and finished the dimensioning on the jointer so I ended up with nice and smooth 2"x2" pieces. I then cut it to length and used a 1/8" round over bit to ease the bottom edges all the way around.

The next step was to make the decorative rails that connect the four corners together. I did this by first drawing the shape I wanted on a piece of 1/2" plywood. I then carefully cut it out using a jigsaw and then sanded the shape untill I felt it was perfect. I made one for the front, and one for the sides.

Once I had the patterns made I traced the pattern on to the pieces of cherry I had chosen for the rails. I then cut them out fairly closely to the traced lines but made sure to leave about 1/16" to 1/8" of material beyond the line. I then temporarily stick the pattern to the rail with some spray adhesive and finish the cut with my router using a flush cutting bit with a pilot bearing.

After I finish the cut with the router, I remove the pattern and clean up any residue with mineral spirits. After they were all cut out, I sanded them till I was happy with everything, and then attached them to the corner pieces using pocket screws and glue.

Notice the pockets for the screws. This is the ulitmate way to make a connection. It's fast and very strong. The pockets are hidden on the back side of the rails out of sight. As an aside, once the glue dries, it's possible to take the screws back out if you wanted to. The glue is much stronger than even the wood itself. I usually only take them back out if I'm gonna have reason to cut through a joint I made using screws at some point later on.

[JRA]

After I made the base I made the sides. For the panels I re-sawed some boards (picking boards that matched in color) into 3/8" thick peices on the bandsaw. I then glued them up into a panel and sanded them on the drum sander. I made the rails and stiles by just routing a groove in them the same width as the panel thickness using the router table, and made tenons on the end of the rails that would fit snugly in the grooves. I then cut the panels to size and glued the whole thing up making sure to let the panels "float inside of the frames. Then I sanded all four side pieces.

I made the fronts by just cutting all of the pieces to size and connecting everything together using pocket screws and glue.

I made the trim on the front and sides on the router table using a half round bit and a 45 degree chamfer bit.

Finished and in the bedroom.