Hallway Table Build
#21
(07-24-2022, 03:36 PM)Petertaylor Wrote: Thanks for sharing the project.  Since the table was to be grey, why use your white oak? Wouldn’t any cheaper species have been okay?

I used rift sawn white oak to match the other furniture in her house, including some other pieces I've made for her.  All are colored, some gray similar to this, others almost black.  You actually can see the grain at some angles and up close.  I'll have to take a photo next time I'm at her house.  Cost was never a consideration.  

John
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#22
(06-22-2022, 09:49 AM)jteneyck Wrote: After the glue was dry, I installed the drawer unit in the table, using glue and pocket screws.  I'm not a purist.  

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With the body of the table complete, I set about to make the drawers.  I used some of my precious remaining stock of Baltic birch.  With BB ply I like to use 1/2" finger joints and I cut them on my router table using an original Incra jig.  What I like most about it is you can gang a bunch of parts together and cut them all at once.  I use a backer board on the front and back to reduce tearout.  

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With only two drawers to make it went quickly.  I used a piece of 1/4" plywood for the bottoms, set in a dado according to the instructions for the soft close slides I'm using.  Then I glued them up.  

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There is the typical cutout and locator hole for soft closer slides on the back of the drawer.  I cut them on my TS.  

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The slides are screwed into the drawer box and then the drawers just slide in place.  Pretty simple stuff, as long as you make the drawer box the correct size.  These are KV slides, since they were the only 9" ones I could find in undermount, soft close, and the directions were very easy to follow although a couple of dimensions you still had to ferret out.  

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The only thing left now is the top and drawer fronts.  After I cut the top to width, I cleaned up the sawn edge with a hand plane.  I don't know about you, but I can't maintain a 90 deg angle with a hand plane, so I made a fence guide for my #6 to make it easy to do. 

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It's just two pieces of 1/2" UHMW plastic screwed together and held to the plane with screws into holes I drilled and tapped in it.  

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I used my TS to cut the bevel on the underside of the table top.  I wanted the bevel to be about 1-1/8" and that turned out to be a 20 deg angle.  I put a taller fence on the rip fence to help steady the top, and a feather board at the bottom to hold it in place.  

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It was a little hairy holding the top up on the ends, but not as bad as I thought it might be.  Any longer, however, and it wouldn't have fit under the floor joists.  We cellar dwellers have limitations others don't.  There were a few burn marks on the ends.  

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But they cleaned up really easily with a #4-1/2 low angle LV plane my friend gave me.  

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Nearly done.  Thanks for following along.  

John
Bill Tindall
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#23
I too struggled with planing edges and keeping them orthogonal to the sides of the piece.  I was helped by David Weaver who posts elsewhere and now I find it easy.  It came down to having the blade sharp enough.  Most hand tool problems come down to having the edge sharp enough.  

 If the blade is sharp it will effortlessly engage the wood and begin to take a shaving.  In doing so the blade will pull the plane sole against the edge registering it perfectly and keeping it in registration as the plane is pushed the length of the edge.  If keeping the plane registered on the edge is a struggle, the blade is dull and it is not pulling the sole to the edge.  In this context dull is what has become a loss of clearance between the bottom edge of the plane blade and the board.  This bottom edge has worn rounded and is no longer a point that can easily stick into the wood. The rounded edge is now pushing the sole away from the wood surface.    The person planing is now having to push the plane against the wood surface instead of the blade tip doing this job.  

A struggle to plane an edge has become my indication it is time to sharpen, even when other planing operations seem to be going acceptably.  

Of course, the blade must be adjusted to take a uniform shaving from edge to edge.  

I was surprised at your use of hardware to mount these small drawers.  The case was set up to accommodate just a wood drawer in a wood case.  

An alternative to Baltic Birch plywood is an equivalent product made by Columbia out of North Carolina.  Their products can be ordered through Home Depot at the contractor desk.  I have used their 1/2 and 3/4" BB "equivalent" plywood.  It looks to me like it has a maple core.  Heavy!  Some of their other products use poplar cores.  Truck loads of poplar "peeler" logs from our forests head to their NC mill.
Bill Tindall
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#24
That's beautiful. Gray is not my style, but the client gets what the client wants.

Trying to make bevels like that on a table top would be a guaranteed exercise in frustration. I'm not sure I would even want to try. But I'll be damned if they didn't come out perfect.
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#25
(07-26-2022, 09:20 AM)Bill Tindall Wrote: I too struggled with planing edges and keeping them orthogonal to the sides of the piece.  I was helped by David Weaver who posts elsewhere and now I find it easy.  It came down to having the blade sharp enough.  Most hand tool problems come down to having the edge sharp enough.  

 If the blade is sharp it will effortlessly engage the wood and begin to take a shaving.  In doing so the blade will pull the plane sole against the edge registering it perfectly and keeping it in registration as the plane is pushed the length of the edge.  If keeping the plane registered on the edge is a struggle, the blade is dull and it is not pulling the sole to the edge.  In this context dull is what has become a loss of clearance between the bottom edge of the plane blade and the board.  This bottom edge has worn rounded and is no longer a point that can easily stick into the wood. The rounded edge is now pushing the sole away from the wood surface.    The person planing is now having to push the plane against the wood surface instead of the blade tip doing this job.  

A struggle to plane an edge has become my indication it is time to sharpen, even when other planing operations seem to be going acceptably.  

Of course, the blade must be adjusted to take a uniform shaving from edge to edge.  

I was surprised at your use of hardware to mount these small drawers.  The case was set up to accommodate just a wood drawer in a wood case.  

An alternative to Baltic Birch plywood is an equivalent product made by Columbia out of North Carolina.  Their products can be ordered through Home Depot at the contractor desk.  I have used their 1/2 and 3/4" BB "equivalent" plywood.  It looks to me like it has a maple core.  Heavy!  Some of their other products use poplar cores.  Truck loads of poplar "peeler" logs from our forests head to their NC mill.

With all due respect, Bill, horse puckies about a dull plane blade being the reason for not being able to hand plane an edge square.  This is the same plane I use on my shooting board.  The blade has to be able to shave hair in order to work well cutting end grain on the shooting board, and it is.  I bought a Hock blade and chip breaker specifically for use with that plane and the shooting board.  It gets sharpened up to 8000 grit and then stropped with green compound on a piece of leather.  It is beyond scary sharp.  The blade gets tuned on the shooting board so that it cuts a 90 deg angle.  The problem is me, not the plane.  Just to be a contrarian, if the plane naturally follows the surface of the wood, how would you adjust the angle on the edge of a board that came off the table saw at 88 deg instead of 90?  

Yes, the table would be a perfect choice for wooden drawer slides, except the owner would hate them if they were to stick or rack even once in a thousand uses.  This lady is picky, except with the unlevel floors apparently.  I have used soft close metal slides on every piece of furniture I've made for her.  No complaints yet.  

Thanks for the info. on the BB alternative at HD.  I'll have to look into it.  

John
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#26
(07-26-2022, 09:20 AM)Bill Tindall Wrote: I too struggled with planing edges and keeping them orthogonal to the sides of the piece.  I was helped by David Weaver who posts elsewhere and now I find it easy.  It came down to having the blade sharp enough.  Most hand tool problems come down to having the edge sharp enough.  

 If the blade is sharp it will effortlessly engage the wood and begin to take a shaving.  In doing so the blade will pull the plane sole against the edge registering it perfectly and keeping it in registration as the plane is pushed the length of the edge.  If keeping the plane registered on the edge is a struggle, the blade is dull and it is not pulling the sole to the edge.  In this context dull is what has become a loss of clearance between the bottom edge of the plane blade and the board.  This bottom edge has worn rounded and is no longer a point that can easily stick into the wood. The rounded edge is now pushing the sole away from the wood surface.    The person planing is now having to push the plane against the wood surface instead of the blade tip doing this job.  

A struggle to plane an edge has become my indication it is time to sharpen, even when other planing operations seem to be going acceptably.  

Of course, the blade must be adjusted to take a uniform shaving from edge to edge.  

While a very sharp blade can solve a lot of hand planing issues, it is not the solution to every problem.  A sharp blade won't magically help you plane square to an edge.  It just won't.  If you're jointing an edge that's not square, a sharp blade will only take a shaving without leaving the edge square.  Without a fence, it's operator skill that's required to hold the plane square to the edge. Take a look at some of David Charlesworth's videos.  He uses a cambered blade when jointing edges.  A sharp, cambered blade won't necessarily result in a square cut.  The purpose of the camber is to adjust the plane position to take off more on one side of the edge than the other.  It takes a skilled craftsman to use a cambered edge for jointing. 

The blade can also be super sharp and hard to push if you're planing at higher angles, e.g. 60 deg. when planing figured woods or interlocking grain.  

The lateral adjustment lever is not just to ensure the blade is square to the plane mouth.  It can also be use to intentionally skew a blade so that you are taking a thicker shaving one one side vs the other.  This is useful when jointing an edge because it allows you to take more off the high side than the low side.
Still Learning,

Allan Hill
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#27
This discussion might better be continued on the hand tool Forum.  The response to my comment on planing edges drifted afar from the topic I delt with- keeping an edge orthogonal to the face of the board (or more globally keeping it as it began).  I did not describe changing the angle, a task that takes different technique and more practice.   

The problem posed was cleaning up an edge off the table saw and that was the issue I was addressing.  This edge is orthogonal to begin with.  The task is to smooth it and keep it orthogonal.  It is simply a fact that a properly sharpened plane will easily pick up a shaving and once engaged the forces on the plane pull it against the surface being planed.   No outside force is required to keep the plane flat and in the cut.  The only effort required is pushing the plane forward.  Any other effort will pull the plane sole out of registration.  Practice involves not fighting what the plane wants to do.  

If the plane blade lacks sufficient clearance it will not pull into the surface. It will not effortlessly pick up a shaving.  

Hair shaving is an inadequate metric for hand plane sharpness.  This test does not reflect the geometry at the tip of the blade.  It is this geometry that provides clearance to enable the tip to enter and pull into the cut, or not.  Wear at the tip creates a new bevel geometry which results in loss of clearance.  The tip may continue to appear sharp as measured by the ability to simply cut a string.  Forces on the blade then reverse from pulling the blade into the surface to pushing it away.  The operator then compensates by pushing down on the plane making control more difficult

 The best measure of whether a blade is sharp is to push the plane down an edge with no down force provided.  If sharp the plane will pick up a shaving and stay on course with little effort.  

As an aside, studies reported on another Forum showed that end grain planing causes the tip to wear much faster than for surface planing and the details of the end graining technique have a large effect on how rapid this wear occurs.
Bill Tindall
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#28
John, I'm one who appreciates your knowledge and skill.

Now that you're buttered on all sides, I'd be really interested on how you get jobs and how you got your ww'ing business going.
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#29
(07-27-2022, 09:59 AM)rwe2156 Wrote: John, I'm one who appreciates your knowledge and skill.

Now that you're buttered on all sides, I'd be really interested on how you get jobs and how you got your ww'ing business going.

Thanks.  I might need a larger cap now, hopefully not though.  

I don't have a true woodworking business in that I don't do it full time, nor would I want to.  I have nothing but respect for folks who manage to make a living working wood; I would have starved had I tried, of that I'm quite certain.  Not having to eat from what I make allows me take only those projects I want to and to devote as much time as it takes to do them to the best of my ability.  Sometimes I make good money on a project, other times not.  

I get jobs the old fashioned way, by word of mouth.  The only advertising I have done are the posts I placed here and SMC for my Horizontal Router Mortiser and Shooting Boards.  About the time I retired from my engineering career I started helping a small-time contractor doing special projects that others wouldn't/couldn't, things like adding a custom cabinet to a run of kitchen cabinets, replacing a single stair tread in the middle of a flight, etc.  Pretty soon people asked if I would build them a vanity, a cabinet, etc.  In every case it was because stock cabinets wouldn't fit or they needed the finish to match something they already had, things that made it difficult for even small custom shops to do the work and make any money at it.  Those jobs taught me a lot about matching finishes and I got pretty good at it.  Some of those customers then asked about making them a custom table, dressers, etc.  Those projects had something unique about them, too, that gave me an advantage over other shops.  It also didn't hurt that I am punctual, respectful, neat, honest, listen reasonably well, and speak in whole sentences.  Some of those people referred me to their friends who needed something done.  The lady I built this table for was someone I knew from work who hired me to build her some pretty high-end dressers.  When I delivered them, she asked if I did stair work.  I said yes and she took me next door to meet her neighbors who needed an entire balustrade after someone had botched a remodeling.  Lots of other referrals came similarly.   

If you are thinking of starting a woodworking business this would not be a good way to go about it.  Not a bad approach for taking on projects here and there though.  My one rule that has served me well is to never build something on speculation, in hopes of finding a buyer.  I only build things after an approved drawing, quote, and down payment.  

John
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#30
(07-27-2022, 01:09 PM)jteneyck Wrote: Thanks.  I might need a larger cap now, hopefully not though.  

I don't have a true woodworking business in that I don't do it full time, nor would I want to.  I have nothing but respect for folks who manage to make a living working wood; I would have starved had I tried, of that I'm quite certain.  Not having to eat from what I make allows me take only those projects I want to and to devote as much time as it takes to do them to the best of my ability.  Sometimes I make good money on a project, other times not.  

I get jobs the old fashioned way, by word of mouth.  The only advertising I have done are the posts I placed here and SMC for my Horizontal Router Mortiser and Shooting Boards.  About the time I retired from my engineering career I started helping a small-time contractor doing special projects that others wouldn't/couldn't, things like adding a custom cabinet to a run of kitchen cabinets, replacing a single stair tread in the middle of a flight, etc.  Pretty soon people asked if I would build them a vanity, a cabinet, etc.  In every case it was because stock cabinets wouldn't fit or they needed the finish to match something they already had, things that made it difficult for even small custom shops to do the work and make any money at it.  Those jobs taught me a lot about matching finishes and I got pretty good at it.  Some of those customers then asked about making them a custom table, dressers, etc.  Those projects had something unique about them, too, that gave me an advantage over other shops.  It also didn't hurt that I am punctual, respectful, neat, honest, listen reasonably well, and speak in whole sentences.  Some of those people referred me to their friends who needed something done.  The lady I built this table for was someone I knew from work who hired me to build her some pretty high-end dressers.  When I delivered them, she asked if I did stair work.  I said yes and she took me next door to meet her neighbors who needed an entire balustrade after someone had botched a remodeling.  Lots of other referrals came similarly.   

If you are thinking of starting a woodworking business this would not be a good way to go about it.  Not a bad approach for taking on projects here and there though.  My one rule that has served me well is to never build something on speculation, in hopes of finding a buyer.  I only build things after an approved drawing, quote, and down payment.  

John
Appreciate that.

Retirement (whatever that is) is approaching or at least on the horizon for me.

I am a person who needs a purpose in life - a reason to wake up, if you will. And as long as my health is good, I will pursue something.

You can only build so much furniture for yourself!

I've got very good capabilities, shop wise, and I feel a reasonably advanced degree of talent, and I can do things like custom built ins, slap tops, etc.

Plus, I need to justify the new shop I want to build.
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