Fringe Benefits

One of the benefits of working at a church...

... free leftover poinsettias after Christmas!

Christmas 2015 Recap

It's hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone. Here's what ours looked like.

We attended a lovely candlelight Christmas Eve service of lessons and carols.

Allie was anxiously awaiting Santa Paws on Christmas Eve.

Her waiting paid off! Santa Paws brought a new chew toy, a bag of treats, and a box of Greenies!

After opening our stockings and having cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning, we headed to the gym. It was surprisingly crowded, but we logged a combined 10 miles on the treadmills.

The rest of our Christmas was spent with framily (friends who are family to us), including a delicious turkey with stuffing.

Merry Christmas!

Shop things

From J:

New clamp storage is finished. French cleats made with 2x4s with custom holders for my different clamps. It works beautifully compared to my old system.

The holders are all movable and I can easily replace them if I get more clamps.

I also got my new dust separator hooked up. It cyclones out the heavier sawdust (99% of what's generated) and only the super fine particulates go to the shop vac itself. This will easily pay for itself over time now that I won't be filling up my expensive German shop vacuum filter bags. It works great until you discover that your expensive German shop vac is too powerful and it collapses the 5 gallon bucket you had it mounted to. Back to the drawing board...

I've now ruined two buckets this way.

In more major shop renovation news, I'm rebuilding my workbenches this winter. I've realized that having one large workbench/saw stand/assembly bench isn't ideal. It tends to get cluttered, it's cumbersome to move around the shop to make cuts on large pieces (like breaking down plywood), and though it's 6 feet long, in practice it functions as a much smaller bench. Time for a change!

New workbench #1: use the big torsion box base of my current workbench as a top for the new workbench. This will be flat and very stable, a great work surface. For the new base, I'm using construction lumber - 2x4s and 2x6s. I milled the lumber up to its final dimensions using my new planer and the table saw, then cut out "mortises" to accept the "tenoned" rails. The legs are actually laminated pieces that are glued around another piece that forms the rail. Not a typical mortise and tenon joint, but it seems pretty strong. Due to my new clamp acquisitions, I was able to glue up both sets of legs at once. 24 clamps in use in this photo. Justification for my insatiable desire for clamps.

I buy glue by the gallon now, by the way.

Something something more clamps something something.

The back stretchers are also cut down construction lumber. I half-lapped the ends and put in a mating dado along the back legs, then it's just glue and clamp. I also added some dowel pins through the leg tenons for extra support against pull-out. The awesome thing about this entire method of assembly is that everything ends up square. Very little room for error when every cut is just repeated on each leg.

These new clamps are sweet. Note the dowel pins at each joint.

Total cost for the new base was about $15, but it took $700 worth of tools to get the $15 of lumber into usable shape. C'est la vie. I still need to unmount the torsion box from the old bench and attach it to this one, but 95% of the work is done. I'll definitely be using this method of assembly again in the future.

A far easier project was to move the table saw to its own stand for maximum mobility. I made a new torsion box for the base out of 3/4" plywood and filled it with 50 pounds of gravel to give it additional mass for stability. I added wheels and then unscrewed the middle "box" of my current workbench, slid it onto the new base, and screwed it in. Voila! If only everything could be so simple.

"Hey, A, come in here and take a photo of me pouring rocks on my project."

I might add some foldaway wings for extra work surface when I want it. Just have to figure out how...

Up next: mobile sharpening station, planer cart, router table, and a drill press stand.

Update 12/22/2015: Torsion box workbench is complete! Mmmm, that glorious, glorious work surface.

Christmas Decorations

Now that the house is decorated, we're ready for Christmas!

By running splitters to more splitters, we were able to add outdoor lights
even though we're only working with one outlet on our front porch. All of
the lights on the bushes are multi-colored even though the ones on the left
side photograph as more of an orange/red.

I made this tree over the weekend at a church workshop. It's holly
trimmings stuck into a foam form, plus some pine cone and
berry embellishments. By keeping the foam moist, it should last
well into the new year (last year's was still around into Feb/March).

Allie is ready for Santa Paws to come visit her!

It happened. We created a Schnauzer tree.
We are nuts.

Black Friday, Woodworking Edition

From J:

Big shop upgrades for me this Black Friday! First up: clamps. Jet has a huge parallel clamp sale, 50% off, every Black Friday. It's a mad scramble. I got up at 5:00 on Friday and found one website that still had them in stock. Four 24", two 31", and two 40". Clamps: check!

Allie approves.

Next, I was browsing ads online. Turns out that Harbor Freight had one of the gems of their collection on sale, a benchtop drill press, for $50. One 20% off coupon later, I'm walking out with a $40 drill press. Crazy.

$40. I know it's not the best one on the market or anything, but come on. $40.

Now, even crazier: I've wanted to get a planer for some time now, as it will let me buy rough stock and dimension it up myself when I need it rather than paying to have it done all at once. I can also do some neat things with glueups for cutting boards and other projects now that I can easily flatten things. The unit that looks like the best combination of price, performance, and size was a Ridgid benchtop unit at Home Depot. They theoretically match competitors' coupons, so I wanted to see what they would do with a 20% Harbor Freight coupon. Not exactly a competitor for an item like this...but they took it. The cashier was shocked. The manager had to come over and authorize it since the discount was so large. I paid and felt like I'd gotten away with something.

Welcome to the tool family.

Merry Christmas, J. I'll be working the next few months on redoing my shop. I've got plans for two new workbenches, a smaller table saw stand, a planer cart, a drill press stand, a new router table, and new clamp storage. Phew!

Prediction Analysis

The Dancing with the Stars finale was last night. Now that the season is over, let's see how well I did with my predictions after the first show of the season...

The new season of Dancing with the Stars premiered last night, so it's time for my predictions. It seems like this season has a lot of really good dancers and a lot of really bad dancers. No heartbreak will occur for about the first five people kicked off (Gary Busey, Paula Deen, Chaka Khan, Victor Espinoza, and Kim Zolciak Biermann). After that, things will get real as the good dancers battle it out. 

Yep. Busey, Deen, Khan, Espinoza, and Biermann were all bad dancers - and were the first 5 to be eliminated (or to withdraw in the case of Biermann who would have been eliminated had she not withdrawn).

Here's what I predict:

1. Chaka Khan danced to "I Feel For You" on the first show, so next week she'll dance to "I'm Every Woman." Then if she gets kicked off there's no loss since she already danced to her only two songs people would recognize. (side note: Chaka Khan's real name is Yvette Marie Stevens - doesn't exactly have the same ring to it) Chaka Khan isn't too good, but at least she's better than the trainwreck that was Lolo Jones. She didn't dance to "I'm Every Woman," but she sang it during the finale. Singing > Dancing for her anyway.
2. Andy Grammer will dance to "Keep Your Head Up" this season since Derek & Nastia Liukin already used "Honey, I'm Good" for their Charleston last season (while Andy performed the song). Nope. He danced to "Good to Be Alive" instead.
3. Anna has contracted multiple diseases from just having to touch Gary Busey. I hope she showers immediately after rehearsals and shows. Probably.
4. Tamar is a good dancer, but she's way too outspoken. Her mouth will get her kicked off eventually when she says something that makes people stop voting for her. Sort of. The show had started to spin Tamar in a negative way, but then her illness took her out of the competition.
5. Alek and Lindsay start dating. Just change Lindsay to Emma and this is correct. As it turns out, Lindsay got married earlier this year.
6. Emma goes back to old partners next season after putting up with a 15-year-old this season. Emma sure seemed happy with Alek during the switch-up. Maybe the producers will take pity on her next season and give her someone her own age.
7. Credit to J for this prediction: Bindi Irwin will dance with a snake at some point during the season (by the way, J only watches DWTS to see Emma, who he finds highly attractive). Surprisingly, Alexa danced with a snake for her Britney Spears dance, not Bindi.

Board Beginnings

J has been busy making cutting boards, especially now that the holiday season is upon us. We took a trip to the hardwoods store yesterday to get more supplies.

If you've wondered where the boards begin, this is where. The hardwoods store is a huge warehouse full of just about every type of wood you've ever heard of (and many more you've never heard of). We sort through the stacks of maple, rustic walnut, and American cherry to find somewhat-equal amounts of each that are the right dimensions for dicing up blocks with as little waste as possible.

Rough wood.

Once we choose the pieces, they are milled in the back area of the warehouse by staff. Each is sent through the planer to flatten it, jointer to make the edges straight, and a giant sander to smooth it out. Once it's finished, it looks like this.

Milled wood.

From here, it gets taken home to J's workshop where he starts the cutting board making process. Eventually, he ends up with finished boards like this!

Potatoes and Cabbage

This week, I had the privilege to attend a flower arranging program with Laura Dowling, the former White House Chief Floral Designer. Her program consisted of tips and tricks for making wreaths and arrangements, as well as an extended question & answer session while she created several bouquets.

It was interesting to hear some of the "behind the scenes" stories about decorating the White House, especially at Christmas. For example, this Bo form is made out of 40,000 pipe cleaners that were hand-braided by volunteers for weeks prior to assembly.

Front row: Real Bo. Back row: Faux Bo.

Fun side note: Did you know that the White House has Bo and Sunny "houndstooth" wrapping paper that you can download and print?

Laura also talked about one of the Christmas trees that was way too big to fit through the White House doors. It ended up needing to be trimmed on the bottom, tied as tight as possible, and basically shoved through the door like a battering ram.

It was especially interesting to hear her story of competing to become the Chief Floral Designer since her graduate education is the same as mine. Before making a career change about 15 years ago, she had previously worked in public policy which she studied in college. She also holds a masters degree in management which she said was a huge help during the White House interview process. It turns out that interviewers were initially more interested in her experience with budgeting and project management than her design philosophy.

At the end of the evening, the arrangements she had created were raffled off to attendees. One of the bouquets included both cabbage and potatoes and my guest for the event had leaned over to me and said, "if I put potatoes in my floral arrangements, my family would think that I was nuts!" Well, guess who ended winning that bouquet!

That's an edible arrangement if I've ever seen one!

Clothes Rack

From J:

A's long nightmare is over. I finally completed a clothes rack for the bedroom. My first time using splined miters and pegs - this was a fun build.

Basic idea: make a mitered picture frame out of hard maple, then make an inset for that frame out of some tiger maple that you scored a super sweet deal on because it was in the regular hard maple pile at the lumber yard. I resawed the tiger maple to recess it in the frame and give the piece some dimension. The tiger maple is captured in the frame by some 1/4" dado slots. No glue on the inset, only around the miters, to let the tiger maple float and expand/contract with the seasons without busting up the frame. I added some v-grooves to the tiger maple at the router table for visual interest.

Plenty of clamps for this glueup.

Now for the fun part: splines. Splines are thin pieces of wood that bridge the two halves of a miter joint to add strength. Miter joints are just end grain glued to end grain, which is inherently weak. A spline adds a continuous long grain-long grain glue joint across the gap - much stronger. To cut my splines, I made a little jig that fits on my crosscut sled. It holds the piece at a 45 degree angle to the saw blade. You slide just the corner of the piece across the blade to make a slot that's 1/8" wide (the width of the blade) and a 1/2" or so deep. Repeat on all four corners.

It might not look very safe, but trust me: it is.

 Now, add the splines. I used the leftover thin pieces of tiger maple from resawing cut roughly to size. Glue liberally and slide into place. After the glue sets, use a flush trim saw to cut off the excess, then plane everything flat.

I found some maple shaker pegs at my local lumber supplier. Drill some holes, add glue, coerce them into place with a mallet. Drill two holes for mounting to the wall. Sand everything to 220 and finish with Arm-R-Seal semi gloss. The screw holes are covered with some maple buttons that were also finished with Arm-R-Seal. They're just tapped into place and can be removed if necessary for remounting.

Mmm, those stripes on the tiger maple. Delicious.

Project cost: around $10. Not much wood in this one!

Project thoughts: splines went well and building the jig was fun. My miters were pretty good, but not perfect - I'll need to be better about this in the future. Finish turned out well. Overall very pleased, and this was a long overdue project.

Up next: cutting boards and Christmas gifts.

Leaves!

I give you... Leaf Extravaganza 2015!

Good thing we got XL lawn bags... these grey leaves are huge!

Mani Margi Pedi Party

The "witch nails" that I grew out made it through Halloween! I lost nearly all manual dexterity (ever tried performing daily tasks with nails this long?), but at least my nails were festive!

Speaking of festive nails, I gave myself a harvest pedicure over the weekend. If you can't tell, those are little fall leaves.

Now that Halloween is over, the stores are in full Christmas mode. Apparently Schnauzers are hot this year, although we think they're hot every year. We saw this inflatable Christmas decoration on our latest trip to Home Depot.

Tis the season for Schnauzers!

Clamps

From J:

Sometimes the stars align, the Heavens smile upon you, and you have the perfect clamp experience. Little victories.

Howl-o-ween

Happy Halloween from Allie Gator!

Kiddo Boxes

From J:

Next project: keepsake boxes for my nephews. One is old enough to be in the "save things" stage. The other one is still too young for this, but why make one box when it's just as easy to make two? Also, as a younger brother myself, I don't want to leave him out of big brother's fun. Two boxes it is! One box is walnut, one is cherry. The cherry board is a leftover from my entryway tower; the walnut is leftover from my vanity cabinet. There's also a little bit of plywood in each box, again from their respective projects.

Each box is about 9x12x5. I cut the pieces out so that the grain will wrap around the corners of the box, so the cut order goes front, left, back, right when looking down the length of the board. I then resawed each piece from 3/4" thick (a bit beefy for a box of these dimensions) to ~1/2" thick on the (gulp) table saw. Blade height to the max (~3.5"), two passes with each board to take it to 1/2". Normally, a bandsaw is the preferred method for resawing, but as I don't have one, a table saw will do (the "buy J a bandsaw" fund is now accepting donations). This first attempt was only slightly terrifying. I've since purchased a couple of table saw accessories that will make future resawing safer and more accurate.

If you look closely, you can see how the grain flows around the box (especially on the cherry).

Next, I used my box joint jig to add the joinery at the edges of each piece, checking frequently to make sure that they mate up well. I put a 1/4" x 1/4" rabbet around the bottom edge using the router to accept the bottom plywood panel. The plywood panels were cut at the table saw to the proper dimension.

Test fit. Notice the weekend box in the background?

Plywood goes here.

Glueup time: epoxy is the glue of choice, due to its long working time and lubricating properties that help the box joints all go together. Each glueup took eight clamps, so I was limited to doing these one at a time (the "buy J more clamps" fund is also accepting donations). Let the epoxy set for 12 hours. After the epoxy set, I used a flush-trim router bit to take off the protruding joint fingers. Any gaps in the joints were filled with quick-set epoxy, which was then retrimmed to keep the profile flush. Other epoxy squeeze out was removed using a combination of planing, chiseling, and sanding.

Never enough clamps.

While the boxes were gluing, I made the panels for the tops. I took the remnants of each board and cut out two pieces that I joined together to get the necessary width. The panels were made extra large and will be dimensioned to the final size later. I had enough of the right type of clamps for these.

Wait...enough clamps?!?!? Preposterous!

After 12 hours in the clamps, I flattened the panels using the router planing jig I made for working on end grain cutting boards. After a little bit of cleanup around the top lip of each box, the now-flat panels fit without any wobble on top of each box. I rough-trimmed them to the necessary size at the table saw, then ensured that they perfectly matched the dimensions of each box by using the flush-cut trim bit to cut the panel to the exact dimensions of the body. The underside of the front and side edges got a tiny chamfer for visual interest.

Before...

After. Top surface is now flat. Now just repeat for the other side.

The tops were then beveled at the table saw and recesses for the hinges were cut in the box top using the router and a chisel. I sanded over the bevels to soften the edges. Hinge mounting was more difficult than I thought it would be. Very tough to get the lids lined up just right - there was no margin for error due to the previous flush-cutting. I would do things a bit differently if I had a do-over for this step, but despite some frustration they went together fine in the end.

Nice enough for an adult, durable enough for a kid.

Sand everything to 220 grit and apply the finish. Finish is my go-to standard, Arm-R-Seal semigloss. It's extremely durable and should hold up decently to little kid abuse. I love the grain on the cherry box and the color and hints of burl in the walnut box.

Enjoy, kiddos! While these boxes might seem a bit nice for toddlers, I hope that you can use them throughout your lives and think fondly of your uncle J when you do. They're made to last!

Project cost: I only used lumber that I had on hand for these. Each box has $20-30 of wood in it, plus a couple of bucks for the hinges. Maybe $3 of finish - I had to buy a new can. Comparable boxes run around $50 online, so decent savings vs. purchasing are possible for this sort of project. We're not in cutting board territory, but not bad! Total time invested is probably 10 hours over two weeks, with lots of time spent waiting for glue to dry. Making two identical pieces at once was an excellent way to increase my efficiency in the shop - I'll be doing that again for future projects.

Project thoughts: I like making small things that don't contain hundreds of dollars of wood in them! There are also some fun construction techniques involved. There's not much of an opportunity to hide things on a project where the inside and outside are by design completely visible, so the end appearance of everything has to be taken into consideration with each technique used. For example, keeping careful track of grain orientation on the two boards that make up each lid - is the joined edge easily visible, or is it hidden by the natural grain pattern?

I by no means claim to be an expert, but this build felt...straightforward. Outside of the recessed hinges, I'd done each of these steps before and knew more or less what to do. That made it less stressful than almost every other project I've done and I was able to enjoy the process more.

Next up: a couple of small things, then a surprise.