Waiting for the train in New Haven
Author: Chuck
Sunday in the workshop (kitchen island progress and a new jig)
I was finally able to get time in the workshop today. I have been a bit sidetracked with renovations to Will’s room over the past two weeks. One thing that has helped is trying to do two hours of work a day on the room. On the week nights, that gets progress done on the room. On the weekend, that allows me to find time to do other things without feeling guilty.
I was able to complete my two hours on the room by lunch today and take some time in the afternoon to head out to the shop. The weather has been crazy – it is mid-January and 50 degrees out.
I am making progress on the kitchen island. I have all the mortises done, and half of the tenons cut. Today I decided to build a planing stop. One of the frustrations with the workbench I have is holding the work while I hand plane. In the past I have put a board across the bench and clamped it on. That works fine if I am planing only in the direction of the grain. If I try to plane cross-grain, I need to fully clamp the work in the bench. It is a pain in the butt to always clamp and unclamp the work.
That leads me to the planning stop/bench hook I built today. I’m not sure if it is traditional, and time will tell how well it works. I took a 48-inch long 1×12 piece of pine and attached a board to the front (so it will register on the front of the workbench). I then took some thin stock (or rather made thin stock – about 1/2-inch thick) and attached it to the back and left side of the top of the board.
So far it seems to be working as planned. It makes cleaning up the long pieces of wood for the kitchen island much easier. It also gives me a nice board to chisel on and not worry about chopping up the top of the workbench. I suppose if I need to work on any pieces longer than about 44-inches I’ll need to build a new stop.
Day trip to New Bedford, MA
Yesterday, Susanna and I took a road trip to New Bedford, MA. We planned to visit the New England Demolition and Salvage company. The plan was to look at possibly getting a new door for the kitchen. In hindsight, I should have measured for a new bedroom door. Our bedroom door is the only really crappy replacement door in the house (hollow core, flat panel). There are tons of doors that match the style of our house, most for $50-$60. Exterior doors are closer to $150-$200.
We wound up not buying anything at the salvage store – but it is a great place to get ideas. They have an acre of claw-foot tubs. Thousands of doors and windows. And countless other treasures.
We made it a day trip, with lunch after the salvage store, and a visit to some more antique stores (and a flea market in Fall River that wasn’t worth stopping at). We aren’t really in the market for anything specific for the house, but it is nice to get out and explore. We were home in time for dinner and a movie.
Sharpening a vintage chisel
This morning the boys and I visited the local flea market. The boys were on a search for a new toy. I wasn’t looking for anything particular, but of course stopped by the tool vendors to see if anything caught my eye. For $5 I picked up a vintage 1/2-inch socket chisel. The blade was in very good shape, and the price was right. Tonight I decided to sharpen it. I figured I would document how I took an old flea market find and turned it into a sharp chisel. Not that I’m trying to tell anyone else how to do it, but I figured it would be interesting to look back in a few years and see if what I did still makes sense. But maybe by then I’ll only purchase new chisels. Just not from the box store. $5 (if one doesn’t count the cost of the sharpening stones) and 15 minutes on the water stones and I have a much better chisel than any crap one can pick up at a box store.
First thing I did was take a close look at the blade to see how much metal I needed to take off. In this case the blade was in good shape (no pitting or nicks):
Next I get the waterstones ready. It is too cold to work out in the workshop this time of year, so I take over the kitchen:
Next I flatten the back starting with the 220-grit and working my way to the 8000-grit stone. I use a thin ruler on the edge of the stone so I only have to flatten the back near the tip (it saves a lot of time flattening):
Next I put the chisel in my Veritas honing guide and work my way from the coarse to 8000 grit. I will periodically turn the chisel and flatten the back as I work (to get rid of the wire that forms when aggressively removing metal). For this chisel, the process took only 5 minutes to sharpen the bevel. I sharpened this with a 30-degree bevel angle:
When I get to the 8000 grit stone, I set the sharpening jig up to add a micro-bevel. On this chisel, I alternated with polishing the micro-bevel and the back (with the chisel in the jig) a couple of times on the 8000 grit stone. I did this until I was satisfied that the entire edge was sharp.
Will’s room progress…
The boys are here all weekend, so I didn’t entirely focus on working on the room. Susanna and I have agreed to each spend two hours on the room every day before we allow ourselves to sit down and watch TV. That should be incentive to make progress.
Yesterday we got most of the lath removed from the section of wall we are replacing. I also removed the trim from one side of the window and sealed and insulated the counter-weight cavity.
Today Susanna helped Will get settled into his new (temporary) bedroom. I made the trip to Home Depot to get insulation and drywall. I ran wires up to the attic to add outlets to the room. The trick will be to get a second 20 amp circuit to the attic so not all the bedrooms will share the same circuit. I installed the rigid insulation into the sloped part of the wall. Tomorrow the plan is to install the outlet boxes and add start installing drywall.
Looking ahead to 2013
So, I didn’t meet all my goals for 2012. Let’s see how I do for 2013. I think I should print these out somewhere I can look at them regularly and remind myself of my goals. So here they are (in no particular order):
- Get the sailboat in the water and go sailing
- Build an island for the kitchen
- Build two larger woodworking projects
- Get garage ready for the wedding this summer
- Ride bike into work more often than last year
- Finish painting the outside of the house
- Continue organizing the workshop
- Build a wooden hand plane
- Go camping with the boys
- (added very recently) – finish repairs to Will’s room
- and of course… get married to Susanna
Of course (most of) that list is subject to change. In general my overall goal is to still work on finishing projects that I start.
Kitchen Island (finally progress)
I do kind of feel a bit silly bragging about progress on one of my woodworking projects right after a post about a house project that will keep me from the workshop for a week or so. But I’ve never really worried too much about looking silly. Or feeling silly.
I was able to get time in the workshop over the holiday break. I had parts for the kitchen island milled sitting in the workshop for a couple of months, so it seemed time to finally start working on that project. At least before I started another project (yeah, okay, Will’s room got me there).
The island will be a pretty simple. Four legs. Four aprons. And four stretchers near the bottom supporting a shelf. That means there will be four joints on each leg, each requiring a mortise.
I marked out each mortise with a marking gauge, and drilling out the waste on the drill press. The mortises were cleaned out using a chisel. Each mortise didn’t take too long to make once I got in the swing of things. I could finish one of the smaller ones in about 7 minutes, and one of the larger ones in less than 15 minutes. I’m sure that will get faster as I do more of them.
I have a couple of lessons learned:
1. If the stock has been sitting around a while, re-mill each piece to ensure it didn’t change shape over time.
2. Cut all the mortises first. Sketch out all the locations of the mortises with a pencil before marking with the gauge. I wound up starting to drill out a mortise in the wrong spot.
3. Regarding #2, patching a mortise in the wrong spot takes some skill to get so it isn’t obvious. Skill that I don’t have. So, it is sometimes better to be lucky than good (okay, probably not in this case), but at least I was lucky and the patch is in an area that shouldn’t be obvious.
4. I don’t really like my marking gauge. I think that a better marking gauge is in the future. The marking gauge I have is difficult to set up for a specific mortise thickness (at a given distance from a face of the panel. I think a better method is to use a single marking gauge (vice a double one) and a spacer block to get the correct mortise (and tenon) thickness.
5. Do the mortises first. I don’t know what I was thinking cutting a couple of the tenons before I finished the mortises. Must be the ADHD. This is what you get if you do that:
I could definitely spend more time marking out the joinery before cutting it. I have Robert Wearing’s book, “The Essential Woodworker.” He gives what looks like a pretty good method for marking out the joinery – I think I’ll do some review before my next project.
First house project (of necessity) for 2013
Susanna and I were hanging out in the living room last weekend when we hear a crash from the other room. We didn’t see anything in the kitchen, so assumed it was a cat knocking something over in the basement. Of course, by the next day we had forgotten all about it.
The boys came home yesterday, and Will brought up his stuff to his room. As soon as he opened the door, he yelled, “hey, what happened in here.” Apparently the crash wasn’t the cats in the basement. A section of the old plaster in the ceiling had fallen down creating a mess on his bedroom floor. Maybe aided by too much door slamming… but who knows.
This morning, Susanna spent some time pulling down the plaster on that section of wall. Tomorrow I’ll remove the lath, add an outlet or two and insulation. With help from Susanna, I’m hopeful that we can have that section of wall finished by the end of next week.
In the meantime, Will has moved to the guest room… It is good to have an extra bedroom available.
2012 in Review
So, in January I wrote about my goals for 2012. How did I do?
I said I wanted to build 6 pieces of furniture. How did I do:
- I built a bookshelf for the study
- I built a piano bench
- I built saw benches with the boys.
- I helped Mark, Nick and Ben build drunken cutting boards, though never finished my boards (goal for 2013).
- Built a “magic treehouse” style ladder with the boys.
- I made cutting boards with the boys (and for our kitchen).
- I built Jenga blocks and boxes.
- I built a hand-plan storage shelf and tool support shelves in the workshop.’
- I built a coin-holder for a friend at work.
- I built shelves for the kitchen (where the stock cabinets wouldn’t fit).
Another goal was to finish painting the house. That was not completed, but Susanna took over that chore for me, and made good progress on the painting. But it was a busy year with the house and workshop:
- I reorganized and built new stairs to the second floor of the workshop.
- Susanna and I changed the layout of the kitchen and added a laundry room (the laundry room and mud room still need to be renovated, but that wasn’t on the list for this year).
- Susanna and I installed new cabinets in the kitchen.
- Painted part of the house (though that was mostly Susanna, Sofia, Rebecka and Linda).
- Electricity to the garage.
- Installed trim around the garage door.
- Grew a garden (though not a very good one).
- I moved the sailboat out of the garage, but didn’t get it in the water.
I had a pretty busy personal life. Susanna and I got engaged. We had Susanna’s sisters (and Linda) visit us for a month this summer. We did visit Six Flags a bunch of times. The boys and I drove to Pennsylvania for a family vacation with my dad and brother. But, we didn’t get out camping at all this year (I want to change that next year).
Another goal was to ride my bike into work more often. I probably rode more often than the year before, but not enough.
I said that I wanted to do lots of walks with Susanna and the dogs, which we did.
I said I wanted to be better at finishing projects. I have been better at not starting project until I finish old projects. I think that was my big goal for the year (to not have as many unfinished projects hanging out). One of the characteristics of ADHD is that it fun and exciting (and easy to concentrate on) when starting a new project. However, new things get old, and it is difficult to find the energy to focus on and complete longer projects. Ben’s room was the perfect example. It took lots of assistance from my dad and Susanna (and several years) to finish.
As I write this, I feel that I only have a few unfinished projects hanging over my head. I have an uncompleted kitchen island in the workshop – I suspect I won’t be finished with the island by Tuesday. I have small repair projects to complete around the house, but nothing major – they may be finished by the end of the year. The workshop needs work, but I suspect that will be an ongoing project. The kitchen needs a little touch-up paint, but Susanna is working on that, so it isn’t in my list of things to finish. I plan on keeping focus on finishing things for the upcoming year, it is nice to look back on the things that one has finished.
Also, this is my 200th post in this blog – a nice milestone to reach.
Christmas Projects
Merry Christmas! Our family had a great Christmas day. Susanna and I went to Christmas Eve services last night (yes, I don’t know what is wrong with me… but it was nice to get out of the house). The boys arrived this morning and will be here until Sunday. The plan was to let them get settled from transition and then open gifts. The boys decided 15 seconds after arriving that they had settled long enough to open gifts.
We all enjoyed a relaxed Christmas day. Susanna started reading “50 Shades of Grey.” I helped the boys with their Christmas projects. Ben spent most of the day assembling a complicated toy roller-coaster. He doesn’t actually need much help (only a little help at the end getting things running smoothly – it won’t be much longer before he gets to the point where I won’t be of any help).
Will had a lesson on carving wood at the Mystic Seaport in on a field-trip with his school earlier this year. He had enjoyed carving, and had asked for carving chisels for Christmas. Today, I helped him get set up in the workshop, and I milled him some lumber to carve with his new chisels. I think he likes carving because it is something he can show the rest of us how to do.
I first traced some letter so he could carve his name. Then we milled a piece of sapele (actually two) and he carved a sign for his room. We hung it on some sash chain and brass hooks outside of his door. Maybe tomorrow he will make a sign for his brother’s room.
