More Progress

I finally got around to building a jig for making accurate miter cuts: a miter sled. It's basically a piece of plywood with wood framing attached at a perfect 45 degree angle to the saw blade. Under the sled, there are "miter sliders": aluminum bars which fit tightly into the miter slots on the table saw surface. These sliders are specially designed so that they can be adjusted to tightly fit into the miter slots. This is critical in getting accurate and repeatable cuts.


I used a piece of our old kitchen countertop for the sled base. It worked well, it was a 3/4" piece of particleboard with formica laminated to the surface. Way better than just sending it to the landfill. The red aluminum strips in the photo are pieces of "T-track". Handy stuff, you can mount it to the sled, then use a 10-24 bolt to fasten all kinds of helpers to the jig. In the picture you can see I have hold downs placed in the T-track, to keep the wood from moving when the cut is being made.




After cutting the 4 pieces for the Occassional Table top, I used the biscuit joiner to make cuts into each joint. I am using picture frame clamps to keep things squeezed tightly together, and square, while the glue dries:



A close up of the clamps and one corner of the table top:



After routing the edge and an initial sanding, the top is looking good!

End Tables Coming Together

The end tables are finally coming together. I got the drawer slides put into the tables, then built the tops and glued them onto the frames.






From here they will get their very last sanding before the finish is applied. After sanding, but before the finish, I'll wipe a little alcohol on the wood. This will make any scratches show and I'l be able to sand them out before the finish goes on.

Getting back to Jr's coffee table project

Finally, I am getting back to Gary Jr's furniture project(s). I had the legs rough cut before Christmas, then had to stop and get some gifts made. So I started with getting all of the machining marks out of the legs, starting with 60 grit sandpaper (and files) and taking them through 220 grit sandpaper. Next, I made the stretchers, the pieces of wood which hold the legs together. Then I glued them all together:



The two coffee tables will have a drawer, so you will notice the stretcher at the front of the table has a space for a drawer. The "occassional" table, the square one, will have a wood frame top with an inset piece of glass and no drawer.

The next step was to make the drawers. I have a router table I made, which is permanently setup to make the cuts for dovetail joints. One router cuts the holes for the dovetail pins, and the other router is setup to cut the dovetail pins. The next picture shows the cutter used to make the tapered holes the pins are inserted into:


The side shown below is the one used to cut the holes for the pins. The apparatus behind the router bit is used to collect the wood chips and dust as the cuts are made:


I use a template which is mounted on a block of wood. The drawer sides are clamped to the dovetail jig. For this operation, I can clamp both drawer sides and route them together. When the routing on one side is done, the sides are unclamped, rotated 180 degrees, and the other end of the side is routed.


When all four pieces are routed, I dry-fit the parts together to make sure everything looks OK. Dovetail jigs can be finicky, and it's best to check before cutting a lot of drawer parts, only to discover the parts do not line up as planned. These joints looks pretty nice:


After the dry-fit, I take the drawer apart and set it aside. Next I made the drawer bottoms. For this project I decided to make the entire drawer out of walnut. So I took a 1" thick piece of walnut and re-sawed it with my band saw to a thickness of 5/16". Then I put the pieces through the planer to machine them to 1/4". I have a special router bit I use to route a 1/4" by 1/4" slot all the way around the interior of the drawer box. That's where the drawer bottom will go, as the drawer box is assembled.

I use polyurethane glue on the dovetail joints. I found this glue to be very strong, and it fills in any minor gaps in the joints. It also doesn't tend to stain the wood. But just to be sure, I put blue painter's tape around the joints so any excess wouldn't get into the walnut. Once glued and assembled, I check for squareness, then put a few clamps on them til they are dried:




Next entry: drawer box sanding and installing drawer guides on the tables.

Bottle Cutting

I gave some hints to my wife that I wanted a bottle cutter for Christmas... and so there was one under the tree this year! We normally recycle all of glass bottles and jars in the weekly recycling done by our refuse company. I've always thought it would be great if something useful could be done with the empties, besides the obvious winemaking and refilling! So with this bottle cutter I figured I could make some glasses or maybe a vase with the taller bottles. Here's what the bottle cutter looks like:


It's really nothing fancy. Just a set of rollers and a brace which holds the base of the wine bottle a set distance from the cutting wheel (lower right hand corner of unit).

The last time I remember these things being popular was back in the early seventies, when ecology and recycling was big. Yeah, they teach this stuff to kids today, but have you ever seen what a teenager throws away? Uhuh, EVERYTHING (laziness seeks the easiest way to do things. Note: this logic does not apply to cell phone use; in that case, talking is more efficient, therefore the lazy approach, than texting. But for some reason, texting seems to be the lazy way to communicate between teenagers).

More Stained Glass Lanterns

I made a few of the Christmas-themed lanterns for presents this year, and I also made my music-major daughter a musically-themed lantern:



The college she attends has purple and gold as the school colors, so that's why the colors are like they are for this project. She also likes stars, so that's why they are there... nothing musical about stars, as far as I know:








A friend suggested I use some sort of white light "diffuser" behind the glass, to even the amount of light flow. So I bought this paper designed for this purpose from a lamp store. Works great!

Stained Glass Lantern Project

I took a stained glass class at a local school district's community education programs. It was well worth the inexpensive tuition to get instruction from someone who has done stained glass for 30 years!

My first project was a suncatcher, it came out OK:


Next I got the idea to make a lantern, with a Christmas theme. Here are the three panels, having just cut the glass:



Here's what the lantern looked like, once the three panels were soldered separately, then soldered together in a triangular form:



These pictures were taken in the living room, with the room lights off. I like the way it looks:




My personal favorite is the side with the candle on it.

Making 12 More Legs!

I started making the 12 legs for the 3 end tables. These are basically the same as the ones I made for the coffee table, but they are a little longer in overall length. Part of the additional length is due to the fact that the post of the leg is 5" (instead of 3" on the coffee table legs) to accommodate a drawer.

Here is a picture of the leg blanks, milled to 3" by 3", but not yet cut to length:


Once they were all cut to length, I used a cardboard template of the leg, and transferred it to two adjacent sides of a leg blank. If there is a knot or deviation you want to avoid, many times that can be accomplished by laying out the template correctly. Next step is to cut the mortises into two sides:



A mortise chisel is used to cut a 1/4" square hole. The first cut is made, then the leg is advanced about 3/16", then another cut is made, and so on til the mortise is finished. Here's a cleared picture, with the wood chips brushed away:



What do you do with 12 roughed out legs? Get out the rasp, get out the files, the hard work begins now!



A closeup of the roughed out legs: