This past weekend was productive. I got the arm brackets completed and sanded.
Once I got the brackets finished I cut the center and side back slats to rough dimensions on the bandsaw and sanded one of each to be the masters to use to template route the others from.
The two masters were used to make the other slats so they would all come out the same.
The seat slats were a simple matter of cutting to final dimensions. At this point all the pieces of the chair are done and just need sanding and prep for finishing. I do still need to cut out a bunch of ebony plugs and use the punch to create the square holes for the plugs.
I did manage to get all this done before the Texans football game (we won so even more good news for my weekend). Of course I needed to see how it was all looking and did a quick test fit of the chairs.
Saw Kerf
Jim "Wood Warden" Woodward
~ A Woodworker's Journey ~
~ A Woodworker's Journey ~
- Jim "Wood Warden" Woodward
- Just having fun with my hobby. Always striving to learn my craft and improve my abilities. I enjoy making nice furniture for the house and other small things like decorative boxes, bowls/trays and other fun items. Also will often be building a lot of things to outfit my garage workshop.
20 September 2011
29 August 2011
Adirondack Chair - Arm assembly & routing arm details
Well this past Saturday was productive. I got the upper back brace completed. I went the quick and easy route on the upper back brace. Marc showed us how to handle making the angle cuts and then do the bevel angle with a block plane, rasps and a little bit of paring chisel work. However I went and did both the angles and the bevel on the band saw similar to how he showed us to do the bevel angle on the lower back brace.
Once the upper back brace was completed, it was time to glue up the arm and back brace assembly. The glue up came at a perfect time to head off to lunch and let the glue dry up in the clamps enough that I could continue working latter in the day.
The next part was to cut a 1" radius curve in the back of the arm and upper back brace and sand that smooth. Now we are finally getting to the part I was looking forward to - routing the 1/4" x 1/4" rabbet detail all around the outside edge of the arms and upper back brace.
Once I had the rabbet cut I changed the router bit out from a rabbeting bit to a 1/2" straight bit. Marc's cool trick he showed us for using a couple of layers of paper to help set the bit final cut depth. Essentially you take a couple of layers of paper and put it between the bottom of the rabbet and lower the bit until it just touches the paper. This prevents the burrs of the bit from digging into the wood so that when you turn the router on and start cutting the burrs will not cut slightly deeper then the bottom of the rabbet. Another thing Marc has always encouraged with hand routing is that some routing maneuvers are easier if you just free hand it and very carefully approach your pencil line mark. I'm only now getting to the point that I feel confident of my control while free hand routing to route real close to the line. The picture at left was my first special indented cloud lift rabbet effect and it came out rather good and if you look close you can just barely see the edge of the pencil mark left on the wood. I managed to have enough control to go right up to the edge of the pencil mark and make a rather straight smooth cut that will need very little sanding to smooth out. My other 7 cuts of the same detail came out similarly - some were a tad better and some a tad worse but all were close enough that the sanding effort will be slight.
At the end of my day I got the satisfaction of doing a dry assembly of the chair. I know what my after dinner evening activity will be the rest of this week. I'll be hand sanding and gently rounding all the sharp edges of the rabbet details on the arm and softening all the other edges - kind of sounds like a nice way to let go of my stress from work and relax before going to bed.
Once the upper back brace was completed, it was time to glue up the arm and back brace assembly. The glue up came at a perfect time to head off to lunch and let the glue dry up in the clamps enough that I could continue working latter in the day.
The next part was to cut a 1" radius curve in the back of the arm and upper back brace and sand that smooth. Now we are finally getting to the part I was looking forward to - routing the 1/4" x 1/4" rabbet detail all around the outside edge of the arms and upper back brace.
Once I had the rabbet cut I changed the router bit out from a rabbeting bit to a 1/2" straight bit. Marc's cool trick he showed us for using a couple of layers of paper to help set the bit final cut depth. Essentially you take a couple of layers of paper and put it between the bottom of the rabbet and lower the bit until it just touches the paper. This prevents the burrs of the bit from digging into the wood so that when you turn the router on and start cutting the burrs will not cut slightly deeper then the bottom of the rabbet. Another thing Marc has always encouraged with hand routing is that some routing maneuvers are easier if you just free hand it and very carefully approach your pencil line mark. I'm only now getting to the point that I feel confident of my control while free hand routing to route real close to the line. The picture at left was my first special indented cloud lift rabbet effect and it came out rather good and if you look close you can just barely see the edge of the pencil mark left on the wood. I managed to have enough control to go right up to the edge of the pencil mark and make a rather straight smooth cut that will need very little sanding to smooth out. My other 7 cuts of the same detail came out similarly - some were a tad better and some a tad worse but all were close enough that the sanding effort will be slight.
At the end of my day I got the satisfaction of doing a dry assembly of the chair. I know what my after dinner evening activity will be the rest of this week. I'll be hand sanding and gently rounding all the sharp edges of the rabbet details on the arm and softening all the other edges - kind of sounds like a nice way to let go of my stress from work and relax before going to bed.
23 August 2011
Adirondack Chair - Long Overdue Update
Well it's been a bit since I updated on the build progress on my efforts to make two Greene & Greene Inspired Adirondack Chairs as I participate in The Wood Whisperer Guild Build. I have quite a bit to blog on since some time has passed and a lot of progress has been made - still not quite to the finish line, but I am getting closer every week.
Since I last blogged there has been some struggle at getting quality shop time in - some of it has been due to other fun activities on my weekends and some has been just a need for general relaxation on my weekends. Some might call it laziness - LOL, but some of my work weeks have left me with a need for some relaxation and down time - ok I admit it I got hooked on video games and let the time slip by more then it should have.
Well where to begin - I guess I should begin where the last blog post ended. I had finished the front and side legs a bit more then a month ago. So next I moved onto the front apron. The challenge with the front apron is the two slots in it that were inspired from the G&G Gamble house dining table. (Picture of the actual Greene & Green designed Gamble house dining room table.)
Marc "The WoodWhisperer" Spagnuolo presented two methods to accomplish the slots with the ramps on the ends of the slots. One was a slice on the band saw and use the miter gauge to cut the ramps - the other was a cut the slots with a router and then use a chisel to create the ramp feature. I chose to do the route the slots and chisel method as it allowed me to gain some much needed hand tool experience - I have had an interest in getting more into woodworking with hand tools more then with tools needing electrons.
The router part of the work was pretty straight forward and went fairly well - the key is the use of good edge guide and making 1/8" shallow cuts a little at a time and stopping before the mark at the end of the slots (no need to route right to the end of the slots since the end will get chopped by hand anyway). So once the routing was done it was on to the workbench and some quiet time listening to some good blues music and finding my chiseling zen. There were 8 ramps total to do so plenty of time to get chisel practice. It may have been a slower method then the band saw slicing method and then gluing the pieces back together, but it definitely had that being connected with the wood feel and it was nice with the music and no machining noises.
I do need to thank fellow Wood Whisperer Guildie, Tom Crawford, for the ramp jig idea he posted on his blog. He also makes me feel like a less then adequate blogger - he has done a much better job of documenting his build, well at least his discipline of photographing more of his steps and the picture quality is so much better then mine. Check it out at Tom's Wood Musing's. And he beat me by finishing his chair first (oh yeah its not supposed to be a race its supposed to be for my own enjoyment - good thing I am enjoying the hell out of this build!!). The little ramp jig chisel guide thingie Tom came up with helped me a lot considering I am a hand tool woodworking novice and my confidence level of getting good results went up by the end of the first ramp detail I chiseled. There was a good deal of hand sanding the chisel marks out and just sanding a round over into the edges of the slot.
Next piece to get made was the lower back brace. Not anything too complicated here just a cloud lift profile detail to put into it. Probably the most complicated was cutting the angles and bevel into the front edge of the back brace where the bottom of the back slats attach. Finally a test fit of all the chair base pieces, and I felt things were looking pretty good at this point.
Well now I get to one of the main visual features of the chair and something people will notice. The arm rests and there is some details to handle and deal with here. Not necessarily difficult to do just things you need to take your time with and step through. However even the not so difficult can be fraught with pitfalls as I was about to soon find out.
First you band saw out the rough pattern on one of the arms and get the pattern all sanded smooth and looking real pretty. This will become the "golden arm" and the one used as a template to route the other arms from so all the arms have the same shape and curve profiles. Sounds fairly easy right, any one who has spent much time woodworking has likely done template routing before. Well things can go bad and do damage to your work piece damn fast when you have a bit spinning at 30,000 rpm. The culprit was tear out, but not just any old mild tear out that can be easily sanded smooth. No this was something more, something right out of a woodworker's nightmares. Can we say BLOWOUT!!!! I really wish I got a picture of the splintered out still attached chunks so you can really see what I was looking at while a whole long string of expletives and F-bombs were filling my garage. I think the wood of my router cabinet might have a slight dent from where I kicked it. I did calm down enough to go ahead and decide to route the arm out the rest of the way and see how well it cleaned up - as you can see it did not clean up very well and the damage runs almost four inches along the edge of the cloud lift detail with a nice split still remaining and everything. This was the first arm I tried to template route and was the arm that would go on the same chair as the golden arm.
I pretty much snapped to how I could have prevented this once I calmed down enough. It didn't help matters that I had selected a board with very nice straight grain running the length of the arm. Given that I was feeding the work piece into the router bit in the safe proper direction that allows you to have good control, then the bit is travelling from the inside part of the cloudlift up and around the outside part of the curve. For my non-woodworking readers, this means the cutters on the router bit are turning against the wood in the proper direction to grab that end grain in the curve and tear it out. Had I fed the stock in the other direction - otherwise known as climb cutting the blow-out would not have occurred. Generally climb cutting is discouraged except in these sorts of circumstances since it means the bit wants to try and rip the work piece out of your hands and shoot it across the room - it requires a firm grip on the piece and to anticipate that the bit will do that so your not surprised by it. It's great having the knowledge of what would have prevented it - I just wish I had snapped before hand that the grain direction and the feed direction were such that I was in danger of having this happen before i made the first cut of the first arm to go through the router. I did finish the night out in the shop getting the other two arms template routed and they came out fine.
I was still frustrated and not certain how I wanted to go about fixing the blow out. Do I mill some new stock for that arm and start over - which likely meant milling enough for two arms since I had taken the two arms for the same chair from the same board and grain matched/color matched them as best I could? That didn't seem like a good idea to me. A frantic chain of e-mails and a calmer replies from Marc at the guild's 911 e-mail address had me calmed down and thinking clearly (BTW, this is just one of the many perks to being a guild member - if your not a guild member and your serious about learning the craft of woodworking I highly recommend you consider joining check out the details at The Wood Whisperer Guild). Truthfully it was a lot more me venting and talking through some of my options and Marc making me realize I needed to quite having paralysis by analysis and just go do it. As Marc said:
"So don't dwell on it too long and just move on.
And I agree that sometimes its best to can it and just mill some new boards. But in this case, I believe it is fully recoverable.
And believe me Jim, I've been there before. Screwing up a detail at the worst possible time when you're just ready to move on to the final stages. But that's how we learn right? We make a spectacular error that teaches us a valuable lesson. And hopefully we are smart enough not to repeat it. :)"
Well if you have followed along in this somewhat lengthy blog post to this point your probably asking yourself what did I consider as options and how did I proceed. The first idea that came to me was to move the back curve detail of the cloud lift forward on the arm edge. I placed the cloud lift pattern template on the bad arm and moved it forward four inches as you can see in the picture below (notice the pencil marks on the edge of the arm - the one on the right is the original center of the cloud lift position and the mark to the left is the one lined up on the center scribe line of the pattern template).
That picture is pretty much exactly how I left things placed as I went to bed that night. My thoughts and concerns at this point was that it would move the back end of the cloud lift detail too far forward on the arm and cause the cloud lift to feel off center. Marc felt it would be fine and said, "Honestly I think your solution is a good one and I don't think the arm will look bad at all. In fact, I say go for it. It does give the arm a bit more of a narrow look, but with such a wide/fat arm to begin with, I think it can afford to lose a bit of material and not look completely odd. As long as you add the same rabbet details, I think its going to look great. And you can consider it your own "personal touch". :) " His reply helped and made me realize not to sweat it too much, its not like the edge of this arm joins up with anything or has to have an exact fit in that area with another piece.
I did sleep on it and went to bed still feeling that the cloudlift pushed that forward would be an unbalanced look. When I woke up the next day and was in that sort of twilight waking up state but not quite wanting to crawl out of bed Sunday morning it hit me that I was trying too hard to keep the half lap joint where the back of the arm joined with the upper back brace as a 3 5/8" square joint as the plans called for. Nothing about how the chair is built requires the arm to back brace half lap joint to stay a square and if I just removed a 1/4" along the whole outside edge of the chair arm I could make it work and no one would be the wiser and to me as sipped my coffee Sunday morning looking at the pattern template laying on the arm this looked like a better option to me.
Ok now on to fixing it - so I pencil in this new edge profile and head to the band saw. This arm will become the new golden arm and I am thinking I will route the other side chair arm to match this one and while this chairs arms will be slightly skinnier then the other chair it won't be all that noticeable (and I was thinking once I had it cut I would consider cutting the other chair arms to match as well). So I draw a new pencil line into the arm on top of other pencil lines I had made to mark where some of the rabbeted indented cloud lift profile will go thinking no problem I can keep which pencil line is my cut line just fine at the band saw.
You can see some of the pencil marks that already existed in the board above as I was considering moving the back curve of the cloud lift forward four inches. I left those there when I drew the cut line for just making the whole arm a 1/4" narrower instead of moving the cloud lift back portion forward on the arm. Well another lesson learned - erase any pencil lines that have nothing to do with the cut your making. I cut in early where I had drawn the kind of neat rabbet routing detail that pushed the cloudlift ends in about a 1.5" or so in that neat detail that Marc and Aaron came up with while designing the arms. You can see what happened if you look at the pair of the arms on the right that are mis-cut and now narrower compared to the pair of the arms on the left that are cut to the plan.
The arms are not only narrower but now the front part curve of the cloudlift is pushed back towards the back of the chair compared to the other chair. I also notice the when I compare the two arms that the pair on the right is very noticeably narrowerer then the pair on the left. I am sure having the front curve detail of the cloudlift pushed back about 1 1/2 inches due to my band saw mis-cut did not help hide the 1/4" narrowness of the pair on the right. So that's where the arm boards are sitting in my shop right now. I was seriously considering not re-template routing the pair on the left to match the pair on the right until I made the band saw mis-cut. I don't think having the cloud lift pushed back from the front of the arm is all that significant , but i do think the arms of two chairs sitting next to each other on the deck having this big of a difference is the more noticeable. After all the only people who see the chairs in pictures are real life that would even maybe notice they deviate from the plan would be fellow Guild members. It's just frustrating that in my rush to fix the mistake that I didn't grab an eraser out of the drawer and erase the pre-existing lines on the board first. The router blowout I felt was less a mistake on my part and just a bit of the nature of how fast things can go wrong on a router, but this band saw cutting to the wrong line mistake was kind of bone-headed and so easily avoidable.
The chair is coming together though and I am approaching the home stretch once these arms and the upper back brace are done and now its just a matter of pushing forward and not letting myself be discouraged or ignore my shop while I pout about my mistakes. Truthfully I am not all that stressed or frustrated about the mistakes anymore. Marc's right that the profile of these arms is pretty open ended and can be any shape that works and the new narrower shape with the cloud lift position slightly different does still look good and will still have a stunning G&G element on the chairs.
Since I last blogged there has been some struggle at getting quality shop time in - some of it has been due to other fun activities on my weekends and some has been just a need for general relaxation on my weekends. Some might call it laziness - LOL, but some of my work weeks have left me with a need for some relaxation and down time - ok I admit it I got hooked on video games and let the time slip by more then it should have.
Well where to begin - I guess I should begin where the last blog post ended. I had finished the front and side legs a bit more then a month ago. So next I moved onto the front apron. The challenge with the front apron is the two slots in it that were inspired from the G&G Gamble house dining table. (Picture of the actual Greene & Green designed Gamble house dining room table.)
Marc "The WoodWhisperer" Spagnuolo presented two methods to accomplish the slots with the ramps on the ends of the slots. One was a slice on the band saw and use the miter gauge to cut the ramps - the other was a cut the slots with a router and then use a chisel to create the ramp feature. I chose to do the route the slots and chisel method as it allowed me to gain some much needed hand tool experience - I have had an interest in getting more into woodworking with hand tools more then with tools needing electrons.
The router part of the work was pretty straight forward and went fairly well - the key is the use of good edge guide and making 1/8" shallow cuts a little at a time and stopping before the mark at the end of the slots (no need to route right to the end of the slots since the end will get chopped by hand anyway). So once the routing was done it was on to the workbench and some quiet time listening to some good blues music and finding my chiseling zen. There were 8 ramps total to do so plenty of time to get chisel practice. It may have been a slower method then the band saw slicing method and then gluing the pieces back together, but it definitely had that being connected with the wood feel and it was nice with the music and no machining noises.
I do need to thank fellow Wood Whisperer Guildie, Tom Crawford, for the ramp jig idea he posted on his blog. He also makes me feel like a less then adequate blogger - he has done a much better job of documenting his build, well at least his discipline of photographing more of his steps and the picture quality is so much better then mine. Check it out at Tom's Wood Musing's. And he beat me by finishing his chair first (oh yeah its not supposed to be a race its supposed to be for my own enjoyment - good thing I am enjoying the hell out of this build!!). The little ramp jig chisel guide thingie Tom came up with helped me a lot considering I am a hand tool woodworking novice and my confidence level of getting good results went up by the end of the first ramp detail I chiseled. There was a good deal of hand sanding the chisel marks out and just sanding a round over into the edges of the slot.
Next piece to get made was the lower back brace. Not anything too complicated here just a cloud lift profile detail to put into it. Probably the most complicated was cutting the angles and bevel into the front edge of the back brace where the bottom of the back slats attach. Finally a test fit of all the chair base pieces, and I felt things were looking pretty good at this point.
Well now I get to one of the main visual features of the chair and something people will notice. The arm rests and there is some details to handle and deal with here. Not necessarily difficult to do just things you need to take your time with and step through. However even the not so difficult can be fraught with pitfalls as I was about to soon find out.
First you band saw out the rough pattern on one of the arms and get the pattern all sanded smooth and looking real pretty. This will become the "golden arm" and the one used as a template to route the other arms from so all the arms have the same shape and curve profiles. Sounds fairly easy right, any one who has spent much time woodworking has likely done template routing before. Well things can go bad and do damage to your work piece damn fast when you have a bit spinning at 30,000 rpm. The culprit was tear out, but not just any old mild tear out that can be easily sanded smooth. No this was something more, something right out of a woodworker's nightmares. Can we say BLOWOUT!!!! I really wish I got a picture of the splintered out still attached chunks so you can really see what I was looking at while a whole long string of expletives and F-bombs were filling my garage. I think the wood of my router cabinet might have a slight dent from where I kicked it. I did calm down enough to go ahead and decide to route the arm out the rest of the way and see how well it cleaned up - as you can see it did not clean up very well and the damage runs almost four inches along the edge of the cloud lift detail with a nice split still remaining and everything. This was the first arm I tried to template route and was the arm that would go on the same chair as the golden arm.
I pretty much snapped to how I could have prevented this once I calmed down enough. It didn't help matters that I had selected a board with very nice straight grain running the length of the arm. Given that I was feeding the work piece into the router bit in the safe proper direction that allows you to have good control, then the bit is travelling from the inside part of the cloudlift up and around the outside part of the curve. For my non-woodworking readers, this means the cutters on the router bit are turning against the wood in the proper direction to grab that end grain in the curve and tear it out. Had I fed the stock in the other direction - otherwise known as climb cutting the blow-out would not have occurred. Generally climb cutting is discouraged except in these sorts of circumstances since it means the bit wants to try and rip the work piece out of your hands and shoot it across the room - it requires a firm grip on the piece and to anticipate that the bit will do that so your not surprised by it. It's great having the knowledge of what would have prevented it - I just wish I had snapped before hand that the grain direction and the feed direction were such that I was in danger of having this happen before i made the first cut of the first arm to go through the router. I did finish the night out in the shop getting the other two arms template routed and they came out fine.
I was still frustrated and not certain how I wanted to go about fixing the blow out. Do I mill some new stock for that arm and start over - which likely meant milling enough for two arms since I had taken the two arms for the same chair from the same board and grain matched/color matched them as best I could? That didn't seem like a good idea to me. A frantic chain of e-mails and a calmer replies from Marc at the guild's 911 e-mail address had me calmed down and thinking clearly (BTW, this is just one of the many perks to being a guild member - if your not a guild member and your serious about learning the craft of woodworking I highly recommend you consider joining check out the details at The Wood Whisperer Guild). Truthfully it was a lot more me venting and talking through some of my options and Marc making me realize I needed to quite having paralysis by analysis and just go do it. As Marc said:
"So don't dwell on it too long and just move on.
And I agree that sometimes its best to can it and just mill some new boards. But in this case, I believe it is fully recoverable.
And believe me Jim, I've been there before. Screwing up a detail at the worst possible time when you're just ready to move on to the final stages. But that's how we learn right? We make a spectacular error that teaches us a valuable lesson. And hopefully we are smart enough not to repeat it. :)"
Well if you have followed along in this somewhat lengthy blog post to this point your probably asking yourself what did I consider as options and how did I proceed. The first idea that came to me was to move the back curve detail of the cloud lift forward on the arm edge. I placed the cloud lift pattern template on the bad arm and moved it forward four inches as you can see in the picture below (notice the pencil marks on the edge of the arm - the one on the right is the original center of the cloud lift position and the mark to the left is the one lined up on the center scribe line of the pattern template).
That picture is pretty much exactly how I left things placed as I went to bed that night. My thoughts and concerns at this point was that it would move the back end of the cloud lift detail too far forward on the arm and cause the cloud lift to feel off center. Marc felt it would be fine and said, "Honestly I think your solution is a good one and I don't think the arm will look bad at all. In fact, I say go for it. It does give the arm a bit more of a narrow look, but with such a wide/fat arm to begin with, I think it can afford to lose a bit of material and not look completely odd. As long as you add the same rabbet details, I think its going to look great. And you can consider it your own "personal touch". :) " His reply helped and made me realize not to sweat it too much, its not like the edge of this arm joins up with anything or has to have an exact fit in that area with another piece.
I did sleep on it and went to bed still feeling that the cloudlift pushed that forward would be an unbalanced look. When I woke up the next day and was in that sort of twilight waking up state but not quite wanting to crawl out of bed Sunday morning it hit me that I was trying too hard to keep the half lap joint where the back of the arm joined with the upper back brace as a 3 5/8" square joint as the plans called for. Nothing about how the chair is built requires the arm to back brace half lap joint to stay a square and if I just removed a 1/4" along the whole outside edge of the chair arm I could make it work and no one would be the wiser and to me as sipped my coffee Sunday morning looking at the pattern template laying on the arm this looked like a better option to me.
Ok now on to fixing it - so I pencil in this new edge profile and head to the band saw. This arm will become the new golden arm and I am thinking I will route the other side chair arm to match this one and while this chairs arms will be slightly skinnier then the other chair it won't be all that noticeable (and I was thinking once I had it cut I would consider cutting the other chair arms to match as well). So I draw a new pencil line into the arm on top of other pencil lines I had made to mark where some of the rabbeted indented cloud lift profile will go thinking no problem I can keep which pencil line is my cut line just fine at the band saw.
You can see some of the pencil marks that already existed in the board above as I was considering moving the back curve of the cloud lift forward four inches. I left those there when I drew the cut line for just making the whole arm a 1/4" narrower instead of moving the cloud lift back portion forward on the arm. Well another lesson learned - erase any pencil lines that have nothing to do with the cut your making. I cut in early where I had drawn the kind of neat rabbet routing detail that pushed the cloudlift ends in about a 1.5" or so in that neat detail that Marc and Aaron came up with while designing the arms. You can see what happened if you look at the pair of the arms on the right that are mis-cut and now narrower compared to the pair of the arms on the left that are cut to the plan.
The arms are not only narrower but now the front part curve of the cloudlift is pushed back towards the back of the chair compared to the other chair. I also notice the when I compare the two arms that the pair on the right is very noticeably narrowerer then the pair on the left. I am sure having the front curve detail of the cloudlift pushed back about 1 1/2 inches due to my band saw mis-cut did not help hide the 1/4" narrowness of the pair on the right. So that's where the arm boards are sitting in my shop right now. I was seriously considering not re-template routing the pair on the left to match the pair on the right until I made the band saw mis-cut. I don't think having the cloud lift pushed back from the front of the arm is all that significant , but i do think the arms of two chairs sitting next to each other on the deck having this big of a difference is the more noticeable. After all the only people who see the chairs in pictures are real life that would even maybe notice they deviate from the plan would be fellow Guild members. It's just frustrating that in my rush to fix the mistake that I didn't grab an eraser out of the drawer and erase the pre-existing lines on the board first. The router blowout I felt was less a mistake on my part and just a bit of the nature of how fast things can go wrong on a router, but this band saw cutting to the wrong line mistake was kind of bone-headed and so easily avoidable.
The chair is coming together though and I am approaching the home stretch once these arms and the upper back brace are done and now its just a matter of pushing forward and not letting myself be discouraged or ignore my shop while I pout about my mistakes. Truthfully I am not all that stressed or frustrated about the mistakes anymore. Marc's right that the profile of these arms is pretty open ended and can be any shape that works and the new narrower shape with the cloud lift position slightly different does still look good and will still have a stunning G&G element on the chairs.
15 July 2011
Woodwhisperer Guild Summer 2011 Guild Build Adirondack chair - Finishing the side legs
Posted on 14-July-2011 at:
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
I finished the side legs (minus the sanding and edge round overs that I will do just before assembly).
Last night the mortises got cut on all the legs, the curves on the first leg got cut and lots of sanding out the band saw marks happened last night. Tonight was a short night in the shop of just cutting out most the waste on the other three legs on the band saw then using the flush trim bit on the router to get the other three to match the first leg. I went with Aaron's partial cloud lift bottom edge profile - mainly because that will allow that feature to be in the stools I will build and the stool has very few opportunities to use G&G details.
At this point I am getting close to being caught up with Marc's videos. I've really been enjoying the combination of working with tools needing electrons and with the hand tools - over the past year I have slowly built up enough of a hand tool collection to feel its about time I began to get good at hand tools. Therefore I am thinking I will do the front apron with the router and chisels method and see if I can manage to make nice ramps in the slots with the chisel. I'm still debating on whether to try to do the ramps more freehand or use Tom Crawford's idea and build a ramp guide from a piece of scrap. It'll probably just come down to what mood strikes me at the time.
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
I finished the side legs (minus the sanding and edge round overs that I will do just before assembly).
Last night the mortises got cut on all the legs, the curves on the first leg got cut and lots of sanding out the band saw marks happened last night. Tonight was a short night in the shop of just cutting out most the waste on the other three legs on the band saw then using the flush trim bit on the router to get the other three to match the first leg. I went with Aaron's partial cloud lift bottom edge profile - mainly because that will allow that feature to be in the stools I will build and the stool has very few opportunities to use G&G details.
At this point I am getting close to being caught up with Marc's videos. I've really been enjoying the combination of working with tools needing electrons and with the hand tools - over the past year I have slowly built up enough of a hand tool collection to feel its about time I began to get good at hand tools. Therefore I am thinking I will do the front apron with the router and chisels method and see if I can manage to make nice ramps in the slots with the chisel. I'm still debating on whether to try to do the ramps more freehand or use Tom Crawford's idea and build a ramp guide from a piece of scrap. It'll probably just come down to what mood strikes me at the time.
Woodwhisperer Guild Summer 2011 Guild Build Adirondack chair - Starting on the side legs
Posted on 12-July-2011 at:
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
Well I got some good shop time this past Saturday and this evening. I finished out the front legs by putting the short 1/4" tenon on the top of the leg and sanded out all the indent details Friday evening and Saturday morning. I got the side legs started on Saturday and got all the operations covered in side legs part 1 video. I still need to cut the mortise for the lower back brace into the inside of the side legs and cut all the curved profiles. I'm getting there slowly but surely - hoping I will get some good shop time in this coming weekend to really get some of this knocked out on the chairs.
Woodwhisperer Guild Summer 2011 Guild Build Adirondack chair - Adding the front leg indent detail
Posted on 6-July-2011 at:
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
Well I managed to get the G&G leg indent jig built last night and went to grab my set of porter cable router guide bushings only to discover the sets largest O.D. diameter bushing was 51/64. It was just as the local Woodcraft store was closing I made this discovery. SO tonight after work I picked up a 1" guide bushing and got to work cutting the indent detail on the bottom of four legs before I had to stop to go eat dinner. I just need to do the slight curve on the bottom of the leg edges with a hand plane and sanding and cut the short square tenon at the top of the leg. After that its find my sanding zen frame of mind and work on sanding out all the machining marks on the leg and putting slight round overs in the indent detail. Hopefully I'll have that done before the weekend so I can focus on 2 sets of side legs over the weekend.
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
Well I managed to get the G&G leg indent jig built last night and went to grab my set of porter cable router guide bushings only to discover the sets largest O.D. diameter bushing was 51/64. It was just as the local Woodcraft store was closing I made this discovery. SO tonight after work I picked up a 1" guide bushing and got to work cutting the indent detail on the bottom of four legs before I had to stop to go eat dinner. I just need to do the slight curve on the bottom of the leg edges with a hand plane and sanding and cut the short square tenon at the top of the leg. After that its find my sanding zen frame of mind and work on sanding out all the machining marks on the leg and putting slight round overs in the indent detail. Hopefully I'll have that done before the weekend so I can focus on 2 sets of side legs over the weekend.
Woodwhisperer Guild Summer 2011 Guild Build Adirondack chair - Yet another table design
Posted on 4-July-2011 at:
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Stool & table designs to go with chair
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
OK version 4 of the table. Simple rectangular bread board ends on both the top and the shelf. Ebony splines for the top and rectangular ebony plugs on the cloud lift stretcher covering two screw heads going through cloud lift stretcher into shelf bread board ends. The table has certainly been the tougher design - it is such a ripe pallet for throwing design ideas at, but it also seems its the easiest to get carried away on.
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Stool & table designs to go with chair
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
OK version 4 of the table. Simple rectangular bread board ends on both the top and the shelf. Ebony splines for the top and rectangular ebony plugs on the cloud lift stretcher covering two screw heads going through cloud lift stretcher into shelf bread board ends. The table has certainly been the tougher design - it is such a ripe pallet for throwing design ideas at, but it also seems its the easiest to get carried away on.
@Marc - notice in the table I tried the smaller 1/4" square plugs covering screw heads into the dowels of the bracket arms - I am not certain if I have the placement where you were thinning or not. I am trying to bring in the common thing the G&G brothers did of not always aligning the square plugs on the center line - there was often a few purposely put out of alignment. Let me know if this is where you were thinking the smaller square plug would go or not - I wasn't positive if you intended it to cover a screw head going into either the end of the dowel or directly into the end of the bracket.
@Aaron - just to see visually how plugs on the side of the chair legs matching the plugs on the side of the stools side legs. Only one of these would be a real plug covering a screw head into the lower back brace, the other would be a "faux" plug for balance and aesthetics (something else the G&G brothers did - not all the plugs were there for covering screw heads, or structural reasons, some where just plain decorative). It shows in the set picture - this was just a quick copy and paste of the plugs - again not sure of the placement and I am leaning towards no plugs on the side leg in either the stool or chair.
What do ya'll think - am I converging on a good clean design solution?
Woodwhisperer Guild Summer 2011 Guild Build Adirondack chair - New table sketchup model
Posted on 4-July-2011 at:
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Stool & table designs to go with chair
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
OK here is a third option for the table top with an edge profile on the "breadboard" ends of the table top that matches the edge profile on the chairs arm rests. Let me know what ya'll think.
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Stool & table designs to go with chair
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
OK here is a third option for the table top with an edge profile on the "breadboard" ends of the table top that matches the edge profile on the chairs arm rests. Let me know what ya'll think.
Woodwhisperer Guild Summer 2011 Guild Build Adirondack chair - Routing the front leg mortises
Posted on 3-July-2011 at:
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
Well today was limited in the amount of shop time I got. Between family stuff (like going to see the new transformers movie with my wife and the girls) and working on Sketchup designs for a small cocktail table and footstools to go with the Adirondack chairs I didn't get as much time in the shop as I had hoped.
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
Well today was limited in the amount of shop time I got. Between family stuff (like going to see the new transformers movie with my wife and the girls) and working on Sketchup designs for a small cocktail table and footstools to go with the Adirondack chairs I didn't get as much time in the shop as I had hoped.
I did manage to get a little bit done this evening and get the front legs cut to length and the mortises routed into them.
Marc, my mimicking you from what you did in the video by putting painters tape on the rear and apron faces saved me from making a mistake during marking of the mortises and when referencing the router fence to the correct face. I wanted to make sure I kept the router fence on either the rear or apron fence to stay consistent on all four legs to remain consistent. I almost extended the start and stop lines from one face to the wrong face during markup, but I noticed the tape wasn't on the face I started to mark and I cam close to clamping the legs down with the wrong reference face out towards the edge of my bench. I came close to not putting the tape on believing I would have no problem keeping things straight, but even with the tape I almost got the faces of my legs confused.
Oh a frustrating thing I discovered about my Milwaukee router. It does not have a center line reference mark on the plunge base so I could not line up with my center mark. I had o use the other method Marc showed us in either the last video or the one before of lining the cutting edge burr of the up cut spiral bit up with the the outside line mark on the leg. Why Milwaukee could not have put a center line reference mark on a couple of sides of the base plate, especially the two sides of it that are parallel to the edge guide fence when it is mounted on the router, is beyond me. I get not putting marks on the base plate itself since it may not have been screwed on centered, but it could have been cast in the base edges itself since the motor is always centered in the base. For the most part I have really liked the Milwaukee combo set, but this is definitely a strike against this model of their router.
BTW in the pic you will see an easy convenient way to clamp the piece down if you do not have the convenience of a good vise on a woodworker's bench. I could have pulled out my Black & Decker workmate as well but the clamps on the edge of my radial arm saw bench just seemed quicker and easier to set up.
Off to shower and rest and relax before bed time. Happy Fourth of July everyone!!!
Woodwhisperer Guild Summer 2011 Guild Build Adirondack chair - Sketchup designs for matching table and footstools
Posted on 3-July-2011 at:
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Stool & table designs to go with chair
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
The first is putting slats in for a table top and for a lower shelf. I did discover in this version that the shelf slats end up slightly above the top of the cloudlift side stretcher - though that could probably be fixed with some tweaking of the dimensions.
Wood Talk Online > The Wood Whisperer Guild > Guild Builds > Adirondack Chair > Stool & table designs to go with chair
The following is a copy of one of many forum posts I made in the Wood Whisperer Guild Build Forum. For summer 2011 Marc "The Wood Whisperer" Spagnuolo selected Greene and Greene inspired Adirondack chairs for the Summer 2011 Guild Build project. I wanted to bring over my forum posts to this blog so family and friends could follow my progress without having to join the Wood Talk (Wood Whisperer) Online forums to see the progress. I'll be copying and pasting all my Wood Whisperer Guild Forum posts over here as well.
Ok I have been spending less time today in the shop, between going to the new Transformers movie with family (it was good but maybe not quite as good as first two) and time on Sketchup working out some design details for a table and stool to go with the Adirondack chair. First I need to really thank Aaron for some help on Sketchup - he knows what hurdle he helped me get over but it really was easy once you knew the trick (kind of like many things in woodworking actually). Here I thought I was pretty good in Sketchup - but like with most things there is always something new to learn. His input and critique on the design itself has also been helpful and I appreciate all his design advice as well.
OK so now I am throwing these out here for ya'lls (yes I am a southerner from Texas so we spell the plural you - ya'll - sure beats youse guys - LOL) input.
First off the simple design issue is the stool - there is very little involed in its design. The only elements you can bring in from the chair design is the front legs, the front apron, the seat slats, and the side legs. Given there is hardly anywhere to incorporate the cloud lift in the stool I choose to use Aaron's 2nd alternative side leg design with a half cloud lift on the bottom edge of the side leg and I will be doing that in my version of the chair as well so that the chair and stool flow together.
Structurally the slats of the stool probably give enough support for the side legs that the second apron down at the low - I suppose that's the front - end of the stool is maybe not needed, but I felt it really helped make the chairs front face apron more of an element in the set. Plus when the stool is up near the chair it hides the front apron on the chair.
The table is giving me more grief in terms of design details and I am not sure I am satisfied with the design ideas I have thus far. One of the features I wanted is a small shelf below the table top so that it would be a convenient place to put a citronella candle without it eating up space on the small table top. They say things are bigger in Texas and damn it!! - its suretainly true of the mosquitoes. Here, let me just throw the different combinations of design ideas I have thus far out there on the table (pun intended).
The first is putting slats in for a table top and for a lower shelf. I did discover in this version that the shelf slats end up slightly above the top of the cloudlift side stretcher - though that could probably be fixed with some tweaking of the dimensions.
The second version is my attempt to bring in another G&G element that is not used in the chair or stool - through tenons that are rounded over. I am a tad concerned its bring in an element that's not needed for the set, but I do think its a much cleaner design then the slats and ebony plugs design.
Lastly a bit of a hybrid of the slats and ebony plugs for the table top mixed with the through tenon design for the lower shelf.
One of the main features of the table is to repeat the arm brackets in a way commonly used by the G&G brothers as brackets between a table apron and table legs. It helps tie that element well between the table and the chairs, but it does mean not using the cloud lift profile on bottom edge of the aprons. As far as I know, and granted I am by no means fully versed in everything G&G, the G&G brothers never mixed those two design elements in the same piece. So the best way I saw to bring in the cloud lift was to do something I have seen done before (either by G&G themselves or in G&G inspired furniture designs that came after them) is to make a table stretcher in a cloud lift profile.
Well that's the design ideas I have thus far on this. I think for the most part it all fits well together as a set - here see what you think of them together in a set:
So please comment and throw ideas out there and feel free to critique to your hearts content on the designs I have proposed. Nothing is set in stone - or maybe more appropriately cut in wood yet. I am not even going to begin building the stools and table until after I have two chairs built so, for me at least, there is still plenty of time to solicit comments and input from my fellow guild mates.
Has anyone else thought through a table or stool design yet? If so care to through the design out here to share with the rest of us? Hell if its paper and pencil design scan it in and through it out here. I am sure we can all come up with some good inspiration from it.
Well I am off and back to the shop to finish my two sets of chair front leg mortises and bottom leg details.
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