Chiefwoodworker's Blog

I discovered the Heartwood School while attending the recent NWA Saratoga Woodworkers Showcase and wrote about it in my April 3, 2011 Chiefwoodworker’s Newsletter. All I knew about the school at that time is what I had seen at the show and read on its website. I sent the owner, Will Beemer, a copy of my newsletter and he wrote back inviting me to an active class. I took Will up on his invitation and visited Heartwood School on June 23, a damp and rainy Thursday.

Background

Located in Washington, MA in the Berkshire mountains, Heartwood is run by Will and Michele Beemer. For the past 34 years Heartwood has been teaching students to design and build their own homes, mostly in timber frame construction.

Will has an extensive background in home design and construction, as well as teaching design and construction. He has taught at Cornell, Palomar College in San Diego and Colorado State University. He has written for Fine Homebuilding, Joiner’s Quarterly, Wood Design & Building, and Timber Framing. Michele is office manager, provides lunches for the students, is an on-site instructor and an author.

Heartwood has a full range of courses in design and construction that run from April through October. Courses include energy efficiency techniques, fundamentals of woodworking, traditional cabinetmaking, building a workbench for woodworking, converting trees to timber and much more. They even teach SketchUp for timber frame designs.

My Visit

Using my GPS I managed to find a small sign on a wooded road in Washington, MA. It said simply – Heartwood. I turned onto a paved and winding drive, which turned to a dirt drive that broke out into a clearing. The view reminded me of a childhood campground. Nestled in the woods to my left was a timber frame building with a sign over the door, once again announcing I had arrived at Heartwood. To my right were two long tents, open on all sides, like the tents used for a country fair. Under the tents, and protected from the rain, were eighteen students, an instructor and owner Will Beemer; all busily working away on 7” x 7” timber frame beams.

Trucks and cars were scattered everywhere, randomly parked under trees and I saw no defined parking area. As I sat there looking for a place to park my truck Will approached, introduced himself and welcomed me to Heartwood. He gave me a quick orientation introducing me to students, staff and showed me the shop, classrooms, library and kitchen. The latter rooms all resided in the timber frame building, which was the first building the students constructed when the school was opened in 1978. Will and Michele were not the owners at the time, though Will was an instructor. In 1985 they purchased Heartwood and have owned and operated it since.

Heartwood’s business model is simple and elegant. It brings together property owners who desire a timber frame home, barn, shop or other structure with students who wish to learn timber framing. Sometimes the owner and student are one in the same.

The first half of the business model is an owner who contracts with Heartwood to design, mill and erect a timber frame for about $30 a square foot. This includes frame only; finish materials, pre and post construction are the responsibility of the owner. If the owner’s site is more than 1.5 hours from Heartwood, trucking and other costs may be extra. Timber frame materials are rough cut Eastern White Pine, un-planed. Since Heartwood is a school for woodworkers and all work is done by the students, the owner must accept occasional constructions flaws, though Heartwood does its best to hide such mistakes. From my observation I doubt this is ever a real problem. The work I saw was top notch.

The second half of the business model is students. They come from all sorts of backgrounds and experience levels. Some have never held a woodworking tool before or never made a wood joint. Some are experienced woodworkers but who have no experience in timber framing. Many are hobbyists who want to build their own timber frame and attend the school to learn how. Still other are professional woodworkers or construction professionals who want to expand theirs skills and trade. I counted two women wielding chisel and mallet in this class of eighteen students.

Sometimes a class is held without a contracted owner. In that case a modest sized timber frame is crafted on speculation, though finding a buyer never seems to be a problem. The class I visited was building a studio for a contracted owner. Raising day was Friday, June 24^th, the day after my visit. But there didn’t seem to be any schedule pressures, nervousness or frenzied activity. All seemed to be in control. There was a large stack of completed beams and the work-in-progress seemed near completion.

My brother-in-law designed and built his own timber frame home and barn from hand hewn timbers. So I am familiar with the excitement of raising that these students had to look forward to. As I am writing this article on the 24^th I am looking out the window at the rain coming down. Par for the course in the trades and a good lesson for the students.

My primary interest in woodworking is furniture crafting. The interest I share with these students, however, is hand tools and joinery. The dovetails, mortise and tenons I use in my joinery are not all that different from those used in timber framing with the exception of size (I will post a follow-on article on one unique and interesting joint used by these students). Most of the joinery these students use are cut by hand with a combination of handsaw, chisel, mallet, spokeshave and drawknife. To be sure, those joints are larger than one would use in a furniture shop, but they are used in very similar ways.

In my shop I use a power mortiser and I was surprised to see the timber framer’s equivalent sometimes used by the students. It is driven by electric motor and plunges in to the timber much like a plunge router would. However, instead of a square chisel and drill bit, the cutting blade is three – stacked side by side – chain saws. The beams used are 7” x 7” and the tenons are 1 ½” thick. So I suspect the chains are designed to be 1 ½” in width when stacked, and long tenons are formed with repeated plunges, though I failed to ask about this. A fence can be adjusted to place the tenon the appropriate distance in from the edge of the timber. It appeared to me that the “blade” could be plunged a little more than eight inches for a through mortise, or adjusted less deep for a stopped mortise.

Most of the mortises I saw were hand cut with a mallet and chisel. A couple of students were being instructed in the use of the power mortiser. So this may have been the one signal that the scheduled raising was requiring the use of more rapid methods, though once again I failed to enquire about this.

I was struck by the accuracy and smoothness of finish of the hand cut joints. Obviously not the kind of finish you would find in hand crafted furniture, but still I found myself needing to wipe my hand across the joints and marvel at the smoothness. I picked up a few tools and checked out the sharpness and found myself approving what my hand felt. As I studied the joinery I could see the light pencil lines that provided guidance for hand cuts. All in all I could relate to the work of the students and I even had a feeling of wanting to join in. That’s when Will came out of the timber frame building and yelled “Lunch”.

Lunchtime at Heartwood

When Will invited me to visit he said I should plan to arrive at noon and join he and the students for lunch. I had read about Michele’s fine cooking on the Heartwood website and I was eager to sample the food. My eagerness was aided by the fact that I was just plain hungry. Hunger is a feeling I get if I spend too much time watching others hard at work. So I joined the rush to the dining room.

Dining at Heartwood is cafeteria style and all the food is home cooked. I had a soup, sandwich and crab salad. If you are a New Englander there are three chowders of choice: clam, seafood and corn. I love all three and I thoroughly enjoyed Michele’s corn chowder and crab salad.

Over lunch I talked to several students I sat near. One was from a town not far from where I was born and raised and we shared news of that area. I learned that students stayed in B & Bs, hotels, friends homes or even commuted to Heartwood. Those I talked to came from all over New England and New York, though I suspect Heartwood draws from a much wider area as well.

After lunch I took more pictures, including the shop, library and classroom. The library has a wonderful collection of books on timber framing, general construction techniques, drawing, energy efficiency and many other home building related topics. If I go back to Heartwood I would like to spend some time in this library and get some titles for my own collection.

I said my goodbyes and thanked Will and Michele for the visit and lunch. I left feeling I had visited a woodworking school I could really enjoy and learn from. And I left with more questions than I had answers. So one day I hope to go back and talk with Will in more depth – and of course have another lunch.

Heartwood Update

I spoke to Michele on Friday late. She and the class had just returned from the raising. All went well and the class finished the raising early afternoon. Though it rained in my area the rain held off at the building site. The raising marked the end of the class. Eighteen students were going home newly proficient in timber framing. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Picking up from where I left off in Trundle Bed Crafting – Part 1, I finished all five panels. Three panels will be framed in the headboard and two in the footboard. Just like panels in frame-and-panel construction you must add a few coats of finish to the panels before encasing them in their frame. If this step is skipped unsightly unfinished edges are visible as the panel expands/contracts through seasonal changes.

The next step in Trundle Bed Crafting is to tackle the swan necks that top the headboard. I began by printing out a full scale SketchUp drawing of one swan neck. They are mirror images of each other so all I need is one paper template. However, the swan necks are constructed with two layers glued together and the result is a 3 1/4” piece of stock. Since I need to shape four pieces, all with the same top curve, two of them share the same bottom curve, and two have a bottom curve that is 3/4” away from and smaller than the other two, I decided to make one hardwood template. Using the paper template I traced it onto 3/4” thick cherry stock being careful to arrange the grain for best strength. I rough cut the template on the band saw and completed the shaping on the edge sander.

The completed cherry template, shown left, will be used in a series of steps with template router bits. The Swan Neck presents a number of interesting challenges for the woodworker. The first one is its thickness. The Swan Neck is 3 1/4” total thickness made of a sandwich of a 2 1/4” back and 1” front. I designed it as a sandwich to make shaping easier and doable with my current collection of shaper and router bits. But even the back is wider than my longest 2” template bit.

Fortunately I have two 2” template bits; one with a bottom bearing and one with a top bearing. So I used a three step procedure to shape the Swan Neck backs. I traced the cherry template on 2 1/4” stock. I needed two of them and they need to be mirror images which was simply a matter of flipping the cherry template.

The first step in this three step procedure is to rough cut the thick Swan Neck back on the band saw. My band saw had a 1 1/4” re-saw blade mounted in it and I should have replaced it with one much narrower allowing me to follow the curves smoothly. But being lazy I simply hacked away at the stock with the re-saw blade. You can see the resulting burn marks created by a 1 1/4” blade struggling to follow comparatively sharp curves. But with no damage to the blade I was able to cut to within 1/8” of the outline making the job for the template router bit minimal. When I was done I had Side A and Side B of the Swan Neck back and the template.

The second step in this three step process it to attach the template to the appropriate side of the one of the Swan Neck backs. Appropriate side means keeping the side labels matched, for example Side A facing up on both, but with the template on the bottom. I attached the cherry template to the Swan Neck back using double sided sticky tape (carpet tape). In this step I use the bottom bearing template bit and with the template as a guide and shape all but about 3/4” of the Swan Neck as shown at right.

In the third step of this process I replace the bottom bearing template bit with a top bearing template bit, remove the cherry template, turn the Swan Neck over and use its partially shaped surface as a template. See the picture at left. I have to use this three step process on both Swan Neck backs. But I am not done; I still need to shape the Swan Neck fronts. However, they are only 1” thick and only require rough cutting and one template bit. But there are still some tricks that need to be employed to complete the Swan Necks as you will see in Trundle Bed Crafting – Part 3.

Well, I have finally started crafting the trundle bed I wrote about in the Trundle Bed Design series. Many family and unrelated projects got in the way of this project for some time. But no more excuses. The show must go on.

I decided to begin with building the panels for the headboard and footboard. The headboard requires a panel 22 57/64” tall by 40 1/2” wide and two panels 8 3/4” tall by 40 1/2” wide. The footboard requires two panels 8 3/4” tall by 40 1/2” wide.

The final thickness of the panels is 5/8”, but I prepare my stock for 3/4” and bring it to final thickness on the drum sander after glue up has been completed. This will allow me to take out any slight mismatches in the glue up joints which are unavoidable. In addition the drum sander can bring the finish panel to precisely 5/8” with 220 grit paper. That way, after shaping the edges, I can immediately apply several coats of finish, which I always do before affixing panels in their frames (The headboard and footboard are essentially a frame and panel construction.). Subsequent shrinkage of the panels will not reveal unsightly voids of finish.

Preparing stock for glue up requires the standard jointer, planner, jointer and table saw sequence to face and edge the boards. But the final step for me is always preparing the edges by hand with a hand plane. This accomplishes several things. First it removes any oils on the edge that exist from handling or are naturally secreted by the wood. This is especially important if the time from wood preparation to glue up is hours or days. Second the edge is given a glass smooth surface void of machine marks and scratches. Third I get a better edge, i.e. perfectly straight and square.

All these add up to a better looking and stronger glue joint. One of the tests I use for a properly finished edge is that I can get  a continuous, very thin shaving, of equal width all the way to the end, and the length of the shaving is the full length of the board. Notice the shaving above right. A Lie-Nielsen smooth plane is the one I use for the final cuts. But I will start with a jointer plane if the edge is close to straight, or a block plane if I have to cut short local areas to correct for a bow for example.

When I have finished preparing the edges with a hand plane I immediately glue up. If I have a number of panels to do, as in this case where I have five panels, I’ll prepare all the stock on the power tools. But only the edges for one panel at a time is prepared on the hand plane so that the time from edge preparation to glue up is short, keeping the edges from getting soiled or dinged.

I have tested glued edge joints numerous times and always found that a properly prepared and executed  joint will always be stronger than the wood itself. How long a joint will last I will never know because I won’t live long enough to see its failure. But the accelerated life tests manufacturers perform indicate these joints will still be going strong hundreds of years from now (barring abuse such as prolonged exposure to water, high heat or direct sunlight).

One other idiosyncrasy I have is that I always leave joints clamped overnight. True, the manufacture says you can work the wood after only one hour of clamping provided there are no undue stresses placed on the joint. But I am not sure what an undue stress is. This is an analog world we live in. Stresses don’t magically become undue at 10 lbs of force but not 9.9 lbs. So I am conservative but feel much more secure this way.

After curing for an evening the panel is ready for final thicknessing. I do this on my Performax Pro 22-44 drum sander. To gauge when a side has been entirely sanded and flat I mark the panel with red carpenter’s crayon in wide horizontal lines. When the marks are completely gone I have succeeded in flattening the side. See the picture at right. I use 220 grit paper for this final step. I will sand it one more time just before applying finish with 320 grit and an oscillating rotary sander.

I am careful during glue up to put the good side of the panel up, i.e. away from the clamp’s bars. This allows me to clean the entire surface unimpeded by the bars of the the clamps. See picture above left. I clean the other side too, but the bars always obscure some glue. When dried the backside will have little glue hills which I level with a putty knife. Still, there is remaining glue to be removed. So the backside is the one I drum sand first. Then I turn it over, mark the good side and continue drum sanding until I reach final thickness.

On a panel this wide each pass actually requires two passes. As you can see in the picture above right, the panel is wider than my drum sander. The 22-44 in the name implies you can sand a 22” wide panel in one pass, or one as wide as 44” in two passes. One note of caution about drum sanders; you must not let the work piece stop while going through the drum sander. If you do the sander will sand a horizontal valley into your piece deep enough that you may not have enough thickness left to remove it.

Once the panel is thicknessed I use a hand plane to create a square and straight reference edge. I then use that edge in my large panel cutter to square the panel to finished length. This panel cutter has been a life saver and workhorse for me. If you don’t have one I strongly suggest you make one soon. With it I can cut large panels (wider than a kitchen cabinet end panel) perfectly square every time, and with ease. The panel shown is 24” wide and 40 1/2” long. This panel cutter uses both table saw slots, has a high fence to keep your hands away from the blade and has a block that completely covers the saw blade as the fence passes it.

When the panel is cut to size I wet it down with mineral spirits to inspect for any remaining glue spots. Hopefully there are none. This step also gives you an idea of what the panel will look like when finish is applied.

Of course, this being cherry, it will darken considerably with sunlight and age. Most of the darkening takes place in the first few months of exposure to strong light, but it continues for a long time. In the picture at right the wood came from two piles, one which had not been subjected to light and one which had (it was on top of the drying stack). These pieces will darken to the same color in a few weeks time.

However, you will notice some sapwood in this panel. Purists argue that you should remove all sapwood when crafting fine furniture. I respectfully disagree. I have always felt that nature does a better job of designing wood than we do. I like to expose all “imperfections” in the wood, including dark pitch pockets in cherry, or cats paw markings. I feel they add to the piece. I am sure that the Shakers didn’t throw out pieces with these imperfections, and if its good enough for the Shakers, it’s good enough for me.

One of the really neat features of SketchUp is that you can print drawings to scale. I printed out the headboard to full scale (1:1). It took about 23 sheets of 8 1/2” by 11” paper, though most of them were blank and I put them right back in the paper stack. I taped one side of the swan neck together and then encapsulated it with self sticking clear plastic and made a template, which I then traced on the panel. Only one side is needed for a template because the curves are mirror images and you can flip the template.

After rough cutting the swan neck curves, I used my Delta BOSS with course paper to sand away the machine marks left by the jig saw. I usually use my band saw to cut shapes like this, but a 1 1/4” re-saw blade was mounted on it and I didn’t want to take the time to change to a smaller blade. The BOSS oscillating sander does a good job, however, in the end I had to finish the job with lots of hand sanding.

This panel is rather large for the BOSS table so I used adjustable roller supports to carry most of the weight while still making it possible to easily manipulate the panel. Note that the circle in the top middle of the panel is not cut out at this point. If I would have cut it out at this point, the shaper, which will be used to shape the edges, would likely destroy the delicate points that are formed by the circle (see the first picture).

The next task was to shape the edges. During design of the bed I chose to do this on a shaper because I could get a cutter that would form a wider shape than possible on the router. But the cutter has a rather large 5 1/2” outer diameter. Plus the shape of the swan neck is such that I had to expose most of the cutter to be able to manipulate the panel during shaping. This makes for a somewhat risky and dangerous cut. In situations like this I am always super alert, especially during the start of a cut when the shaper can grab the piece and throw it, or throw sharp pieces at you. Also, I am conscience of where my hands are at all times.

Finally I cut the circle with the jig saw and repeat the BOSS and hand sanding process. When cutting pieces like this where the panel has to hang over the edge of the table, I make the cut in sections, and support the cut-off by clamping it to the panel. That way it will not unexpectedly fall an split a piece out ruining the panel. These little extra steps can save a lot of work and material and pay for themselves many times over.

When the panel is completed I wet it down with mineral spirits again. This time I am looking for scratches or dings. This sometimes happens due to the hard surface of the shaper and BOSS tables. If I find a mark I remove it now. If I were to skip this step the imperfection would surely show up after finish is applied and would be much more difficult to repair at that point.

This concludes Part 1 of Trundle Bed Crafting. In Part 2 I will make the swan neck frames the will encapsulate the panel. Stay tuned.

Well Santa and Mrs. Claus have finished their list and have checked it twice. And now the nice little boys and girls in their family will each receive one of these reproduction mirrors for Christmas. I described the origin of the original, from which these are reproduction copies, in “An American Chippendale Mirror Makes A Great Gift”.

Willow and I made six mirrors in all. Five are tiger maple and one is a combination tiger maple and cherry (I have a fetish for mixing woods). Four of the tiger maple mirrors were stained with Moser’s 1490 Golden Amber water-based aniline dye followed by 4 coats of hand rubbed Minwax Wipe-On Satin Polyurethane. This was followed by one coat of hand rubbed J. E. Moser’s Premium Quality Paste Wax.

The remaining two mirrors have a clear finish; 4 coats of hand rubbed Minwax Wipe-On Satin Polyurethane followed by one coat of hand rubbed J. E. Moser’s Premium Quality Paste Wax. The cherry frame, below left, will darken substantially over time as it is exposed to light. This will provide a nice contrast to the blonde finish of the tiger maple.

The tiger stripes are striking in all three mirrors. I am partial to natural (clear) finishes. However, the Golden Amber stain is a more traditional finish for tiger maple pieces. It’s simply a matter of taste and that is a very individual thing. Fortunately, the recipients chose their desired finish. Yes, Santa let them peak using the “anyone over 26 years of age can peak rule”. I think they will enjoy them for years to come and hopefully they will be passed down for many generations in our family.

I must admit, when Willow told me we were going to make these for the kids as Christmas gifts, I was feeling a lot of “Oh Humbug” – read “Pressure”. But now I am Ho, Ho, Ho Jolly. Merry Christmas to all and to all a Happy New Year from Chiefwoodworker.

The title of this blog should be “Progress In Crafting American Chippendale Mirrors”, or some such thing. But as often happens to me while working on a project, a thought catches my attention and I can’t get rid of it. Over the last few days, while working on this project, it happened that I had to use a commercial fixture and build another fixture; or was it a jig? Woodworkers often confuse the two and use these terms incorrectly, as I have done here – and many times in the past. So I was compelled to do a little research.

It turns out there are many mechanical engineering and fabrication books written that give the definition of, and explains the use of, fixtures and jigs. They are perhaps the most useful source in answering this question. I have a number of woodworking books in my library that also give us some guidance. There is also the dictionary. After reading a number of these sources the difference is still not clear.

However, taking the common elements you can boil the definitions down to the following:

1. A jig holds and guides the work piece
2. The fixture holds the piece while it is worked on

OK, so what is a tenoning jig? Does it hold the piece while it is worked on? Or does it hold and guide the piece. It is universally called a jig, but it does no more guiding a tenon than it guides a piece I cross cut without its use. I am doing the guiding, or perhaps you can argue it is the table top miter slot that is doing the guiding. But the tenoning jig certainly isn’t. So perhaps the definition should be:

1. A jig holds a piece and is movable while working the piece
2. A fixture holds a piece and is fixed in place while working the piece

With this definition I can actually determine what I am working with. Now I can clearly say a tenoning jig is indeed a jig, and the Supreme Drill Press Table I wrote about a few weeks back is clearly a fixture. More importantly, I can say the two helpful tools I use in this blog are clearly jigs.

OK, having wasted a lot of time, energy and blog space on that overdone thought I can write about “Progress In Crafting American Chippendale Mirrors”. The picture frames thus far are joined with end grain to end grain joinery; a joint which is notoriously weak and needs reinforcement. There are traditional ways of doing this, one of which is to cut corner slots and use splines. For reasons to be explained later I used a modified version of this joint. To assist me I turned to one of my favorite and most used jigs, the Dubby from In-Line Industries. In the first picture above you can see Left and Right Dubbys set to 45 degrees. I am using them to cut horizontal slices in the corners of the frame. Two opposite slices are cut with each of the two Dubbys producing the slices you see in the picture ant right above. These are the first of two cuts needed to remove triangular shaped pieces.

To make the second cut I needed to build a simple jig. Shown in the picture above left is a vertical board with support stock glued 45 degrees to an edge. The picture frame sits in these supports allowing a properly set fence and blade to cut the corner pieces out. These corner pieces will be replaced with similar roughed out corner pieces  with the grain arranged such that there is long grain to long grain joinery. I trace multiples of these corner pieces on a rectangular piece and rough them out using the band saw, leaving just enough along the edges to assure complete coverage. After they are glued in place I use a patterning bit in the table router to trim the edges flat.

In the picture at left you can see the results. From this picture it should obvious the improvement in joinery strength. Imagine picking up the end grain to end grain piece and snapping it with your fingers. No problemo! Now imagine picking up the replacement piece and trying to snap it. Good luck!

Another thing to remember is that a properly glued long grain to long grain joint is stronger than the wood itself. This has been demonstrated in numerous studies and wood working articles. You can demonstrate this in your own shop easily. Glue two pieces edge to edge (1/4” to 3/4” thick). Let the joint cure for 24 hours. Place it in a vice with the joint near the jaws of the vice and hit the protruding piece with a hammer or mallet. You will notice (provided the joint was glued correctly) that the board will split in the grain of the wood, not at the glue line.

So why did I use this modified spline instead of the traditional joint? Because I need to cut 1/4” by 1/4” groves along the top, bottom and sides to accept the scroll work. Doing so would remove a substantial amount of the spline. Further, the resulting joinery when the scroll work is glued in place would be long grain to end grain. Stronger than end grain to end grain but not as strong as long grain to long grain. Does this make a difference? Yes a little, especially if you are expecting your work to last for hundreds of years it does. That said, it’s six of one, half dozen of the other.

In the picture at right is the finished glued up mirrors ready for stain and finish. The strange uneven coloring is a result of using mineral spirits to search for unwanted glue spots before completing the sanding. It will disappear after drying. The mineral spirits also give you a good preview of what the tiger maple will look like when finished. You can see it is quite spectacular. The frame at right in the picture has a cherry picture frame and tiger maple scroll work. The one at left  is entirely tiger maple. I love mixing wood types. The cherry will darken over time and the tiger maple will lighten slightly making the contrast even more noticeable.

My wife and I are excited about finishing these mirrors and giving them to our kids for Christmas. A few hundred years from now I hope a descendant will write a blog like An American Chippendale Mirror Makes A Great Gift explaining their origin.

In An American Chippendale Mirror Makes A Great Gift I wrote about my wife’s (Willow’s) mission to craft mirrors for Christmas gifting. I call this a mission because once Willow decided this is what she wanted to give our family for Christmas there was no stopping her. I got my instructions – create the plans, mill the material, set up the machines and then get out of the way. I turned my shop over to a tornado. She blew through my bandsaw, Delta BOSS, sanding station, drill press, work bench, rasps and files leaving chips and dust in her wake. She left no doubt this was the first project to pass through Swamp Road Wood Works that would be completed on time. The results were every bit as stunning as the pace was fast.

The first stop was the bandsaw. Not having a scroll saw I mounted a 1/8” blade. The design called for 1/4” tiger maple, so a 3 HP 18” bandsaw was a little overkill, but none the less made for quick and easy cutting. I printed 1:1 drawings on card stock to produce templates. Willow traced the templates onto the material and cut out the scroll work pieces, leaving the pencil marks. The edge finish was rougher than a scroll saw would produce. It was obvious there was a lot of sanding in Willow’s future. You can see from the picture below that she took to the task with a smile.

Many of the scroll work curves had radii smaller than the Delta BOSS or drill press would accommodate, so Willow used a combination of rasps and files followed by hand sanding. In the picture at left you can see an assortment of rasps and files behind her. All told the bandsaw work and edge cleaning took two and a half days. Fortunately the shop is cozy, brightly lit. With the radio alternately tuned to NPR and sports talk for listening pleasure what more can you ask for?

After all pieces were sanded and the picture frame molding milled, sets were chosen by matching wood grain and color. You can see one set in the picture at right. The scroll work will be inserted and glued into a 1/4” deep x 1/4” wide slot in the sides, top and bottom. The recipients will choose the finish. One very popular finish is Moser’s 1490 Golden Amber water-based aniline dye stain followed by Waterlox Original Tung Oil. This enhances the tiger stripes, making them jump out. Another finish I like is simply MinWax Wipe-On Polyurethane. I have made tiger maple tables using both finishes, a Shaker Drop Leaf Table with the Moser dye and an Office Table with the Wipe-On Poly. Both are shown on my Gallery page and both produce excellent results.

I have to agree with Willow. These will make excellent holiday gifts and will be passed down in our family for many hundreds of years, much like the mirror that inspired these reproductions. Now that’s a gift that keeps giving!

I promised my daughter that upon her graduation from law school I would give her a wall hanging Shaker style clock. She graduated in the spring of 2008. I completed this clock in October of 2009. A little late; but to keep anyone from finding out I printed 2008 on the clock dial. Pretty clever huh?

The clock carcass is cherry and though not visible is constructed with hand cut dovetail joinery. The back of the pendulum compartment is spalted maple which gives this relatively large area some interesting figure for eye appeal. To provide contrast the doors are made of walnut.

In keeping with the Shaker theme the trim is simple bull nose and quarter round. Door pulls are turned "mushrooms" typical of what the Shakers would use.

The clock dial was drawn using Google SketchUp. The four I’s to represent the numeral four is not a mistake. Though four is correctly represented as IV it is traditional in clocks to represent it as IIII.

After drawing the clock dial in SketchUp I applied an antique texture behind the numerals to add a little "age". Next I printed the dial full scale on 13" X 19" premium card stock. To protect the dial I applied seven coats of Spray-On MinWax Satin Polyurethane with the added benefit of still more aging (it dries slightly yellow). Finally the card stock is glued to a plywood backing. – Did he say plywood? Yes, an extremely rare occasion when I use anything but hardwood in my projects.

The mechanical clock movement is a German made Hermle model 241-080. It is an 8-day movement with a gong that strikes once on the half hour and counts out the hours. The serpentine hands are not in keeping with the Shaker style. Mother Ann would definitely not approve, but hey, my daughter likes them. The chains, bob and weights are brass plated. If you look closely at the bob you can tell these pictures were taken in my shop. The bob shows a reflection of me and my 15" planer.

To complete this project I used non-mortising hinges and rare earth magnetic catches. The hinges have an antique brass finish. To keep the clock level in the vertical direction I used two adjusting pins that have sharp points which dig slightly into the wall and can also be adjusted for level in the orthogonal vertical plane. These pins are made especially for this purpose and are a traditional piece of clock hardware. I finished this piece with seven coats of hand rubbed MinWax Wipe-On Polyurethane Satin Finish.

Two days ago I installed all my blast gates and hook ups for my major pieces of equipment. Yesterday morning I sent my dust collection system on its maiden voyage. Using wide cherry boards I thickness planed and finish sanded them on my 15” Jet Thickness Planer and my Performax Pro 22-44 Drum Sander respectively.

Much to my pleasure not a micron of dust or a chip of wood escaped the dust collection system. I still have drops to connect, but they are for much less demanding stations. I gave each of these the hand test; I opened the gate, one at a time, and felt the air flow. Admittedly not a scientific test, but I am convinced they work.

The thickness planer is the most demanding machine in my shop. It is approximately at the end of a 35’ 4” PVC run. A 3’ plastic hose connects the machine and the drop. At the other end of the PVC run a 10’ plastic hose connects the PVC to the Powermatic PM1900 3hp Dust Collector. This hose will be shortened, but I intentionally left it long for this experiment.

My second most demanding machine it the Performax Pro 22-44 Drum Sander. The dust generated from this machine is spread over a drum 24” wide and is funneled by way of a plastic housing to a 4” hose 36” long that connect to the drop. It is easy to inspect the board as it come out of the sander for missed dust: none was visible. I ran the board through positioned far left, center and far right. No problem.

The Powermatic PM1900 3hp Dust Collector specifications read:

Air Flow @ 8” Port – 1891 CFM
Velocity @ 8” Port – 5393.7 FPM
Static Pressure – 12.15” of Water

The 8” port is reduced to three 4” ports. At the moment I am using only two ports. One goes only to my Grizzly 8” Jointer through a very short 6’ plastic hose across the floor. The jointer is right next to the dust collector and there is no foot traffic where the hose lies. The unused port is reserved for my table saw, router and upstairs expansion.

The easiest way to check for reasonable air flow is to observe the cyclone “swirl” in the collection bags. This is subjective and you need to be familiar with the system, but I can tell by the healthy “swirl” that the air flow is strong. The picture at left doesn’t capture this as clearly as I would like, but trust me, it is obvious in real life. Also in the picture at left you can see the 8” port reduction to three 4” ports and the short hose to the jointer. In addition you can make out the types of wood I have been using in my projects: cherry, maple and walnut.

Being an engineer I will complete this testing with actual air flow measurements using calibrated equipment. I need to borrow this equipment from my brother who lives two hours away. So it will take me a week or two to complete. I’ll post the results here on my blog.

A wood shop is not a static object. It has a life of its own and it evolves just like a living organism. Fortunately, though its evolution can be slow, as mine has been, it also tends to change dramatically in one’s lifetime. Mine has taken eight years to evolve from a completed two story empty building to the shop I will discuss today.

This latest evolutionary step is a big one. It was originally planned to be completed before I even moved in; and it’s one I would not have completed even now if it weren’t for the help of my older brother Ron.

Each year my family has a reunion which occurs on the first weekend in August (I am one of twelve siblings). People come from all over the country to attend and often stay for a week to a month; they visit family, old friends and high school classmates. Ron and my sister-in-law Wanda come from Tennessee and usually stay with me for at least a few weeks. Typical of my family we don’t sit around watching TV and chatting. We have to do something. This year Ron and I decided to add dust collection to my shop.

During the eight years I have been planning this project I read every article I could get my hands on concerning dust collection issues. I was appropriately frightened by articles on the potential for static electricity fires if non-conducting piping were used. I read an article written by an MIT professor debunking that myth. I have no less than five books on building your own shop and/or dust collection system in my library. I debated flexible hose, metal piping, plastic piping with grounding wire and PVC. It wasn’t until my oldest brother Clark piped his basement shop with PVC recently that I settled on it as the pipe of choice. I must admit here and now, my extensive research played a minor role in my decision, which was based primarily on my brother’s choice, PVC’s availability, its relative inexpensive cost and the MIT professor’s article (I’m an electrical engineer and it made sense to me).

At this point the project is not complete. I need to add fourteen 4” blast gates, all the manual plastic variety, and flexible hose connecting the shop’s equipment. I also left a 3” drop near the Lie-Nielsen Workbench providing a vacuum system for my Random Orbital Sanders (ROS). The current state of this project is shown below. My Powermatic Dust Collector has three 4” ports. Two of them are used to connect to the two returns shown. Not shown is the third port which will connect directly to my 8” Jointer with hose only, no piping. We also made provisions for a future second floor line. Click on the picture below to enlarge it.

The project used approximately 100’ of 4” PVC and numerous wye’s and 45 degree fittings plus a few 4” to 3” fittings – all schedule 40. In addition I will use 14 4” blast gates. All told it cost me $615.14. I chose to buy the PVC pipe and fittings at a local plumbing supply because they had all the fittings, J hooks and ceiling hooks I needed. Home Depot had all but the ceiling hooks. To my surprise the plumbing supply charged $1.60 per foot of PVC while Home Depot charged $1.13, a difference of $47. The fittings were also less expensive at Home Depot so I spent about $100 more than I should have.

My brother Clark discovered that standard black plastic 4” blast gates used in many shops fit snugly inside schedule 40 PVC. All that is needed to secure them is two sheet metal screws and silicone sealer. I used PVC cement on all the piping and fittings because I am unlikely to make many changes. However, the blast gates may change in the future should I decide to use switching gates or add a wye to the drop for expansion. Removing two sheet metal screws and sealer is easy compared to sawing off cemented pipe.

Note the picture on the left shows a 4” to 3” reducer and drop. This will be used to connect to a vacuum hose with the other end connected to a Random Orbital Sander. I will need to add further reduction to match my two sizes of ROS hoses.

One thing my research convinced me of is  loss due to 90 degree fittings. Ron and I chose to use two 45 degree fittings and a 6” connecting piece in lieu of a long sweep fitting to achieve the same effect (in some places a wye, 45 degree fitting and 6” connecting piece was used). Forty-five’s are more readily available and more flexible – the design changed numerous times during the project and this flexibility was very much welcomed. One significant change was to put most of the piping on one leg, leaving a second for future second floor expansion. The third leg is also lightly loaded; only the router and table saw are on it. I may expand this leg to provide more shop vacuum capability.

Supporting this much PVC required both J Hook’s and Ceiling Hangers shown above right and left respectively. This allowed us to hang the PVC 5” on pipe center to the ceiling everywhere along the run. The piping, done this way, does not interfere with the fluorescent lighting. That is, it blocks no light and casts no shadows. I will complete this post when I have added the blast gates and hookups. Hopefully I will be able to report a positive experience using dust collection. Stay tuned.

The backs of a custom piece serve a number of functions and they are far from simple pieces of wood. The upper back in this piece provides a mechanism for hanging the clock while it also serves to keep dust out of the clock’s works. The upper back is not, however, visible since it is hidden by the clock dial.

The bottom back is visible, just behind the weights and pendulum that drive the clock. It also serves to keep dust out of the case. However, because the swinging pendulum will draw all eyes to itself and the back, it is important that the back not look like a plain piece of wood, but rather adds to the beauty of the clock. For this clock spalted maple serves that purpose. The random black lines of the early fungus and the tan and greenish color of the wood provides the viewer with an artistic drawing that only nature could render.

Backs almost always require special treatment to allow for seasonal expansion and contraction. In large pieces I often use ship lapped boards that are spaced one from the other to allow for seasonal movement. Theses backs are not wide enough to accommodate this approach. Instead, after calculating the expected movement, I cut the backs narrow by 1/4” and fastened them with slotted open holes, washer and screws. I cut them narrow because expansion season has only barely begun, and at its peak, the backs will expand to close the gap. If this were peak expansion season I would have cut them to fit and let them shrink to their minimum size. The washer and screws hold the back flat but also lets it move under the washer. I am careful not to tighten too much. Notice that I center the backs so that the gap for expansion is equal on each side.

The hardware and glass are on order and as soon as they arrive I will attach them. Then it is a simple matter of applying finish. For this clock I am going to use Min-Wax Wipe-On Poly Satin Finish.