It’s finally done. Check out the whole thread here. Lots of pics in the full gallery here. You might want to start at the end. It was a fun project and I’m definitely glad my wife pushed me into doing something for the house. I now know I definitely want to do this some more. I’ve got a ton of things I’d like to do and I definitely learned a ton of things. Now, what’s next on the woodwork agenda.
I spend the other night sanding down the table top. I ran the ROS at 120 and then 220. The sides I did by hand with a sanding block the same way. Smooth as butta after the sanding. Then I took it inside and did the dye. Eight drops of transtint vintage maple into a dixie cup of Zinser wax free shellac. I layered it on a bit thick since I knew I was going to be taking a sanding to it anyway. If it dried with some runs it would just come out.
Tonight I went to work sanding it down. I started out with just 220 grit, but it wasn’t doing the job. I moved back down to 120 and then repeated with 220. It sanded out pretty quickly and you could really tell how the end grain had soaked up the color. The maple really seems to sand down to such a glass smooth surface where the walnut always had a little grainy feel to it. I guess this is just part of the learning to work with the woods.
Of course with some good comes some bad. I noticed this with the walnut base. I find somehow during sanding/finishing I’m putting indentations into the wood. Small little divets. I also then found a couple of tearout places that didn’t come out. I don’t know how I missed it all the way up to now. I’m not sure what to do about it. I’ve already had the top thinner than I wanted. I think I’m going to just go with it. It’s very hard to see unless you’re all over it like I am sanding/finishing it. The finish actually helps hide it as it darkens the wood and with all that end grain doing funny effects. I’m just worried about how much sanding it would take to clean it all out and I don’t want to go back to the mill for have it run through the sander again.
So the first coat of Seal-A-Cell went on. It looks really good and I’m beyond psyched. I can’t wait to get more coats on there and get to the Arm-R-Seal. I am worried about the sanding between coats, but this what learning is for.
Here are links to the before/after the dye stage.
I spent this weekend trying to get to work on my hall table. The top has no officially been started. Before milling the boards I changed out the planer and jointer knives so they’d be as sharp as possible with the curly maple I’m using for the top. The boards are fantastically figured, but that just means a new guy like me is going to be spending a lot of time with tear out issues. Hopefully, my trip to the milling place today will get me a nice finished top I can cut to size and start prepping for finish.
I also started planning out what I want to work on next once this table is done. My wife’s going to kill me, but I want to put together a really nice chisel cabinet. Something that I can keep chisels in the main body and in the door I’ll make it a little deep to put things like marking guages, squares, etc. I changed a sketchup model of a chisel to match the dimensions of my octoganal sorby’s and got the rough dimensions for a case that holds two rows of 5 chisels. I’m still working out things like the joinery and such, but I think I’m going to use some of the cherry I’ve got sitting in the garage on it. Only a few wood types left in the garage that I’ve not used now.
Nothing gets your mind going though like trying to design something. I had a hard time sleeping thinking of all the ways to put this together. Should the racks the chisels sit on be a sliding dovetail, just a rabbet. Could I get away with using some cheap 1/4 ply for the back. What if I covered the cheap ply back with some nice velvet to provide a dark backdrop on gleaming sharp chisels? How to do the door and have room for the extra tools in there? It’s crazy for sure.
One of the things that I have enjoyed about SEMIWW is the varied stages of woodworking evolution of the different members. I see others going through the same stages and interests that I have been through. First I was smitten by the bug to make something of wood. It quickly dawned on me that I needed to acquire tools. I chose the handtool path because it met many of my needs, lack of shop space, quiet, not too dusty, and cheap. After years and years of this stage, reams of sandpaper and gallons of WD-40 and time spent cleaning up rusty tools, I started doing what I had originally wanted to do, build some stuff.
Of course this stage requires research and practice. First you have to learn about joinery, design and techniques then you have to practice. Shop projects that no one else will see and small items that can be easily burned are good for this stage. I would also recommend taking classes, besides the learning, you meet other woodworkers and get to share experiences, gloats and tall tales. I have usually made friends with a few of the other students, found some to be really annoying, there is always someone that you can feel superior to and at least one that is so skillful that they are really intimidating. It’s also a great way to meet the celebrity woodworkers that write books, articles for magazines and are cited as experts on the net.
So lastly, you reach the stage where you are fairly competent, at least the projects look similar to what you had in mind, and you have learned to hide or recover from your mistakes. This is where I find myself and now I have two new problems. First, I have way to many tools filling up the shop, and second what do you do with all of the stuff that you make. My house is only so big and if I kept everything I make, my house would look like my shop. This is where family and friends come in, you can give most of the things you make away. I see this as having several benefits, you don’t have to look at your mistakes, everyone has different tastes so you can research many different type and styles of furniture, schedules are open ended, and if there are problems down the road you can always say, “Hey, what did you expect, it was free.”
I suppose that was the long way around to my point. SEMIWW is going through a little upheaval at the moment, but let’s stick with it. Thanks to a big effort by our computer savvy members, the website is working well. The new board is slaving away on a back channel to improve meeting content and bring the fun back into our interactions. The club is evolving and we all have to let our leaders know what interests each of us and lastly we all need to contribute our efforts to strengthen the SEMIWW. I have enjoyed being associated with everyone in the group and I really would like to see it continue. Woodworking is inherently a solitary activity and for me SEMIWW is an outlet that allows me to socialize with others that share the same interests and to gain and share knowledge about woodworking.
Test post, now isnt this all cool?