Shed Wood Idea: part

Showing posts with label part. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

An oak window seat Part 4

Ive prefinished the top, scribed it in, and cut out the lid today. Ive also trimmed out the top at the wall with quarter round. Any exposed nail holes will be filled, and tomorrow this whole unit will get a coat of satin polyurethane! A custom cushion is being made by the interior designer - Hilary Hinz of Livv Interior Designs - cant wait to see it all together!

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

The Greenwich Frame Part I Design

Dear reader, if youve been following along, you may remember that last March I headed up to the Northeast Woodworkers Association Showcase in Saratoga Springs, NY. One of the highlights of the trip was the great dinner we had after the show on Saturday night at my Dads barn in Greenwich.

Dinner in the Greenwich barn.

Greenwich, NY is about 20 minutes from Saratoga Springs, just across the Hudson River. Greenwich is where my Dad plans to retire and his barn is the retirement home hes building.

I mention Greenwich and the barn because this past August, while I was in Saratoga Springs with my family, we found an old timey map of Greenwich, NY. Given my Dads affinity for his newly adopted town we bought the map and decided that Id make a frame for it and give it to him for Christmas.

In early November I picked up some Walnut for the frame from Lakeshore Hardwoods while I was at the Long Island Woodworkers Showcase.

Skip ahead to early December, and I was reminded by my wife that I had to make a frame for my Dad for Christmas. After I got over the panic (& frustration of having to put the shop renovation I was in the middle of on hold), I started by considering designs.

The state of my shop in early December.

I knew I wanted the frame to be Greene & Greene inspired, but I didnt want it to be a complete knock off and it had to be quick to build. I looked at the Greene & Greene inspired frames made by Kyle, Marc & Brian Grella. They all gave me ideas, but none were just right for what I had in mind. I did however order Marcs Greene & Greene frame DVD & template kit. I figured that the build techniques covered in the DVD would be somewhat universal and that even if different, I could still use his jigs to save me the time of developing my own cloud lift jig.

Kyles beautiful Greene & Greene inspired frame.

For more design ideas I turned to Darrell Pearts Greene & Greene: Designs for the Workshop and David Mathiass Greene & Greene Furniture: Poems of Wood and Light. Pearts book was enlightening on the construction methods used and on page 79 of Mathiass book I found my inspiration. Not a Greene & Greene frame, but living room gateleg table from the William T. Bolton house in Pasadena. The legs of the table are proud of the bottom stretcher and upper apron (below the drawer). The apron incorporates one simple cloud lift and the combined affect is a beautiful frame (in this case for the empty space below the table). I took that design and began sketching.

My design (this is as detailed as the plans got).

What I settled on was a very similar frame. My Stiles are wider and proud of my rails, and the top rail has a single, simple cloud lift in the center. I added ebony plugs in the stiles to simulate a pegged tenon, as was common in many Greene & Greene pieces.

Next up: The Greenwich Frame, Part II: Construction Begins.

Monday, January 27, 2014

An oak window seat part 3

Here are some pics of the next step in the oak window seat. The first picture is the inside view of the front wall of the seat. The mdf you see is to line the inside storage box...

Now Im building two more sections which will support the lid itself. They both will be capped in oak, flush with the front wall cap.

Now on to the lid...

Sunday, January 26, 2014

An oak window seat Part 4

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Pencil Post Bed Cherry Part 2

Ok, so in Part 1 I went through the process of prepping all the stock for the posts and rails; this was by far the longest part of the whole build process. After that was done, it was time to shape the posts. This part was BY FAR the most nerve wracking part of the process. After having gone through all of the trouble to make the boards nice and flat, and square, one misstep would have ruined the whole post. So, the first thing I needed to do was a build a jig, a long jig. I went to the local "big box" store and found the straightes 2x6 board I could find; I was fortunate to get a good one. Next I had to build a sort of indexing system (this came from the plans I went by to build the bed). Basically, its two sqare disks with holes drilled at vaious points; these points give you the tapers that you need. In the case of this bed, 4 sides were tapered all the way through; the other four side had stopped tapers, more on that later. Basically, how the indexing jig works is, you drill a hole in the center of the bottom of the post; this is how the post will rotate/spin. Next you screw the reference disk to the bottom of the post, aligning the rotation hole. This inner disk has the 8 holes drilled into it for the tapers, each one is numbered so you know what order to make your cuts. The outer disk only had two holes, one for the pivot point in the center, and another indexing pin that matches the 8 other holes that were drilled through the inner disk. Below is a picture of the whole setup.

From PencilPostBed

Once I had the whole thing built, it still took me over an hour to get up the nerve to make the cuts! Once I got started though, it was a piece of cake. Here is a shot, not a great one, looking back down the jig.

From PencilPostBed

And here are all four posts done with the tapers.

From PencilPostBed

Now, remember that 4 sides on each post recieve a stopped taper. This is becuase I chose to include the lambs tounge detail. Using a pattern, I outlined the curve on each side of the posts and used a carving knife, file and sandpaper to do the details; 16 in all (4 each post). This was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I have a picture of the finished product below.

Basically, that was all of the hardest parts. The only other challange was drilling long, straight, holes for the bed bolts for the rails. I simply used a dowel jig to get the hole started and then finished it up. Below are some pictures of the final project.
Lambs Toung detail:

From PencilPostBed

Rails:

From PencilPostBed

Whole bed:

From PencilPostBed

The finish is sort of my own making I suppose. The bed is cherry, so I really just wanted to put some boiled lindseed oil (BLO) on it and some wipe on polyurethane, but my wife wanted a darker, aged look. So, what I typically do now is, I will put a heavy coat of BLO onto the piece and let it soak in good. Then, I use at least 3 coats of Watco, walnut colored, Danish oil. Simply wipe it on with a rag, let it set for a minute, and wipe off any that remains. The key to this is to have the surface as smooth as possible. Then, I simply put on 5 coats of a satin wipe on poly.

Overall, this was one of my most challenging projects, again due to the size, but it was pretty fun looking back on it. Let me know your thoughts...