Fire Table Chairs: Take Two

October 18, 2025

Every defect gets respect

Every project is a learning experience, some lessons are taught while you’re building the project and some lessons come after you’ve completed the project. Back in 2023 I built a set of outdoor chairs to go with the Fire Table that I had also built. You can see my write-up of the project here.

I was very happy with how the chairs came out and we used them frequently over the next couple of years. However, as we approached the two year mark a problem emerged. The joints where the side rails of the chairs met the front leg with a through tenon joint were twisting and breaking. I immediately engaged in a root cause analysis process to understand the defect, like any engineer would.

The fundamental root cause was my inexperience at the time that I built the chairs, but the details were also instructional and informed the design for this project.

The first problem was the choice of material for the chairs. I had focused on the property of being weather, bug, and rot resistant without applying a finish and this led me to choose Western Red Cedar as the wood. I had ignored a couple of other important functional requirements, strength and hardness. Western Red Cedar is a very soft, relatively weak, light weight wood. The chairs that I was copying had been made out of Teak which is the opposite. I probably could have gotten away with it if I had increased the dimensions of all of the parts of the chair but I didn’t.

The joints that failed had a through tenon meaning that the mortise went completely through the leg. I had also foolishly made the tenon square and 1” x 1” because the side rail was 1 1/4” x 1 3/4” so I could. This meant that this tenon was surrounded by only 3/8” of material on each side of the 1 3/4” leg and only 1/4” of material above it. The softness of the Cedar also made it very difficult to cut a clean mortise without tearing out surrounding material meaning that several of my mortises didn’t fit great.

The chairs have sling seats that are suspended from the side rails of the chair by clamping bars bolted through the top of the side rail. I didn’t think about what this meant for the nature of the force exerted when someone sits on the chair. In addition to pulling down on the side rail it also exerts a rotational force inwards. This caused the through tenons in the poorly fitted mortises to rotate and put a lot of force on the meager 3/8” of material next to them and split it.

Finally I also went and looked closely at the original manufactured chairs I had copied and I was reminded that they had screws which had been countersunk and plugged which went through the front and the side of the leg into the rail and the stretcher. I had just ignored them thinking they were unnecessary if I used “real joinery” when in reality they were there to help the joinery resist the twisting force of the sling seat.

New (L) Manufactured (R)

The new design

Two of the chairs had developed this problem, the other two were hanging in there because I had gotten better at making the mortises when I made them. But, I figured it was only a matter of time before they failed as well so I decided to remake all of the chairs.

I would be able to unbolt and reuse all of the hardware and the fabric parts of the original chairs. I planned to eliminate all of the causes of failure from the first set of chairs in the new design.

I decided to make the new set out of Sapele which is an African hardwood with beautiful grain and color. Sapele has a Janka (hardness) rating of between 1410 and 1510 which is harder than Teak which is between 1070 and 1155 and about three times harder than Western Red Cedar which is 350. Sapele is also very weather resistant and it is cheaper than Teak and has less silica in it so it doesn’t dull your cutting tools as bad. It is also cheaper than White Oak which was the second runner up.

I eliminated the through tenons and made all of them rectangular 1/2” wide by either 1 1/4” or 2 1/4” by 1/2” deep which in the 1” thick legs left a lot of material on all sides of them. Also I added a countersunk 2 1/2” #10 stainless steel screw into the end of each of the rails front and back and from the sides. I plugged all the holes including the hardware holes which I didn’t do on the other chair.

Another controversial choice I made on the originals was trying to copy the manufactured chair’s joinery for the back leg and chair back rake. They had used a custom finger joint to create the angle between the back and leg and I had used an angled box joint. None of these joints had failed and the only issue I had with them was cosmetic. But, I had been given some feedback from a more experienced member of my woodworking guild that I should have done a glue laminated leg instead. I decided that I would make that the thing that I learned how to do on this project to have a more seamless and also potentially stronger leg.

The manufactured chairs that I was copying have an aluminum bar which curves out from near the top of the back and joins the two back rest frame members together. I had tried to fabricate these out of wood on the original and because of the grain direction they turned out to be fragile if the chair tipped over. I decided to replace these with my own aluminum version of the bar, not bent because I don’t have the tools to bend 6061 aluminum but out of multiple parts bolted together. This bar is important so that when you sit in the chair the sling back has spring to it and the chair back rest frame doesn’t get pulled inward.

I also decided to put a finish on these chairs even though technically the Sapele would also be fine outdoors with no finish. I chose to use Total Boat Lust Spar Varnish, this is a marine varnish which is formulated to allow rapid coat buildup without sanding and long curing times. It is typically used on the decks and other exposed wood on boats in a hostile environment on the ocean.

The project before the project

The first step in fabricating the new chairs was creating the fixture to glue up the laminated back legs. The legs are made up of 8 slices of 1/8” Sapele 2” wide and 36 inches long. I traced the outline of one of the manufactured chair’s back leg onto a large piece of brown paper. I also noted all the transitions and mortices on the tracing in the correct places.

I spray mounted the drawing onto a piece of 3/4” natural birch plywood that was wide enough so that there would be substantial material on either side of the leg when I cut it out.

I carefully cut each side of the leg on the band saw, it is important that the space between the two halves of the clamping fixture is the right width for the entire leg. I carefully cleaned up the edge with the sanding station being careful to come just to the line and keep the edge square.

I then glued these two pieces of the fixture to a matching stack of plywood with another 3/4” layer and a 1/2” layer to make the total height 2”.

Once the glue was completely cured, I cut the two sides apart following the top layer pattern and staying carefully on the waste side so as not to mess up the top pattern layer. Then I took each side to the router table with a 2” flush trimming bit with the bearing on the bottom ( top in this case in the router table) and cut the two new layers flush with the pattern at the top.

I then sanded the face of the fixture smooth and covered all the glue-up facing surfaces with packing tape. I screwed alternating wood spacer blocks to the bottom of the fixture so that they would support the contents of the fixture, slide past each other and allow the glue to mostly pass through. These were also covered in packing tape. A key tip on packing tape, the direction of the tape should be the direction that the fixture is going to move when clamping, not perpendicular. Also avoid any wrinkles.

Later I added some tape covered spacer blocks on top to keep the slippery glued up strips from rising up out of the mold.

The process to create the legs was to slice up two 1 1/16” x 2” x 36” pieces of Sapele into 1/8” strips on the table saw. I didn’t use a thin cutting fixture, I just pressed them against the fence and cut the 1/8” off the outside. There was some small variation in the strips but it had no effect on the lamination. I also didn’t try to additionally sand or flatten the strips I used them right off the saw. I did try to keep them in order as they were cut from the blank. It made the side pattern on the lamination quite nice.

I used a glue roller bottle from Rockler to spread glue on one side of each strip and stack them together. Once I had the eight layers stacked I just slid it into the fixture and matched the ends up with the marks I had made on the pattern on the top. I tried to keep them from sliding out too much at the ends, I had allowed about 1/2” of extra length. The target width for the legs was 1 3/4” so I had 1/4” to clean up the sides of the lamination.

I carefully aligned the sides of the fixture and closed the outside clamps first and each time I had to reset them I just tightened down the center clamp to keep things in place. Once I had the outside clamps fully in place and the center clamp tight I added two additional clamps mid-way in between. I left each leg in the clamp overnight. I would clamp up the next leg in the morning and then work on the rest of the parts for the chair while I waited for it to be done.

When a leg came out of the fixture I would clean up one side on my jointer and then cut the other side with the table saw to 1/16” over the final 1 3/4” width and then I would use the jointer to clean up the saw marks on down to the final size.

I would then mark the top and the foot by laying the leg on the chair I was copying or the other leg if it was already made and mark them and cut them on the chop saw.

Building the chairs

I’m not going to go into all the details of making the other parts of the chairs if you’re interested you can take a look at the linked post in the first paragraph. It was basically the same except in Sapele instead of Western Red Cedar and the design changes noted above.

I also have a mortising machine so that made doing the mortises much easier.

The “plugging” process was two phases. After the glue-up I then did any clean up sanding, tacked everything and cleaned it with alcohol and then masked every counter-sink hole. I then put on a coat of Total Boat Wood Sealer and let that dry over night. The next day I put a coat of Total Boat Lust Spar Varnish on every 1 1/2 hour making sure to get all the end grain, three coats in total (Total Boat says 6-8 but I think they just want to sell varnish and I’m not taking these out on the ocean). The next day I washed all the seat fabric for that chair and then I put all the hardware and fabric on the chair.

The back bar of the chair was made from two 1” standoffs made from 1” diameter 6061 round bar center drilled with a clearance for a 5mm x 60 mm bolt and a bar of 6061 1” x 1/2” that was about 18 1/2” inches long and marked and drilled for two holes centered on the back rest frame three inches from the top. I drilled the holes in the bar stock at the tap size for M5 standard threads. I tapped the holes. I sanded all the parts to 320 grit and coated everything in clear spray lacquer. Then they were bolted through the chair frame into the bar making the cross bar structure.

Second phase of plugging was to make all the 1/2” plugs required, sanding them so they would fit easily and then gluing and tapping them into place. After they were dry I would mask off the area around them and saw them flush with a flush cut saw. I then sanded each plug flush with surface and up to 320 grit and then went through the sequence of wood sealer and spar varnish on each of the spots that needed covering.

The plugs came out very pretty, their chatoyance was in a different angle than the surrounding wood so they gleam and show up also they are frequently a different color than the surrounding wood and stand out for that reason.

The spar varnish is so clear and thick it really highlights and magnifies the natural figure in the Sapele, it really shimmers beautifully. I am a crappy painter so there are runs and drips, you’ll have to find it in your heart to forgive me.

On these chairs I put screw in rubber feet on the bottoms of the legs so they wouldn’t be sitting directly on wet surfaces.

I’m really happy with these replacements, they are a big improvement on my original effort and they salvaged a lot of work I did on the first ones as well.

Dog ramp

August 9, 2025

My neighbor has a Miniature Dachshund that has been having trouble getting on and off of one of the beds in their home. I offered to build a ramp to help the dog get on and off of things. They sent me a picture of a commercial dog ramp that they thought was good and I deduced the angle and size of ramp from the clues in the picture.

I made the height/angle adjustable by having several possible holes for the strut to come down and brace the leg. I used 1/4” x 20 bolts and lock nuts on most of the pivots but used some 1/4” x 20 knobs on the adjustable position so it could be tightened and loosened without tools.

I built a perimeter frame out of 2” x 3/4” maple for the deck of the ramp that was 48” x 18” and put a 1/2” by 1/4” deep rabbet on the edge to receive a 1/4” natural birch plywood deck panel.

I made two frames for the strut and the leg out of 1 1/2” x 3/4” maple joined with lap joints. I rounded the ends so that they would contact the floor well and clear the deck when they pivoted.

I put a Natural Danish Oil finish on all the maple surfaces after sanding them to 320 grit.

My neighbor provided a rug which we cut to size to cover the plywood deck and my beautiful and talented wife sewed an edging on the cut sides to prevent unraveling. I glued the rug to the deck with 3M Super 77 spray adhesive.

As far as I know from watching the initial test with the young dog, he is not afraid of it and he ran up it without a lot of trouble.

Stacked Laundry/Half-bath Cabinets

August 4, 2025

This is another “after twenty plus years of putting it off” sort of project. Since we remodeled the kitchen and moved the laundry into this half-bath off the kitchen there has been a narrow shelf and cabinet unit from Target next to the washer and dryer. It was not a good cabinet, and one of it’s many problems was that the top shelves were open and the vibration of the washer and dryer would walk things off the shelves onto the floor or into the sink. This was sub-optimal, but we lived with it for more than twenty years. Well, no more, I have replaced these cabinets with the ones above.

Because we need to be able to get a plumber/appliance repair-person behind the washer and dryer the cabinet needs to be easily removable. I therefore designed it as three stacking cabinets. Also, because of the close quarters with the sink, the middle cabinet needs two shorter doors instead of one door like the top and bottom. I decided to use frameless cabinet construction out of 1/2” natural birch plywood with one internal fixed shelf dadoed into the sides and the top and bottom rabbeted to accept the sides. Each cabinet is 24 inches tall and 12 inches deep so that I could get all of the parts out of one half sheet of plywood. To make the stack the same height as the washer and dryer and to hide the cleat that keeps them from slipping off when stacked I added a 2 inch tall perimeter base that interlocks with a 3/4” cleat on the top of two of the cabinets. They have a 1/4” birch plywood back.

The doors are mortise and tenon 3/4” maple with 1/4” birch plywood panels.

I used concealed full overlay hinges.

I had sanded everything before assembly to 220 grit and then cleaned up any assembly issues with some spot sanding. I primed everything with Zinzer BINS Shellac Based Primer and then put on a coat of Benjamin Moore Acrylic Eggshell paint in Atrium White ( which we had from a previous home improvement ).

After unloading and disposing of the old cabinet, I installed the new ones and reloaded them. There is now more storage space and it all looks much nicer in the room.

A series of small projects...

July 22, 2025

As it sometimes goes the last couple of weeks in the shop have been focused on a series of small projects.

The first one was two more pocket knives that I wanted to put wooden scales onto. One of the knives was from a box of small knife bodies and other leather hardware that came from Noymer Leather back when my father was alive and worked there. Probably 30 years or more ago, it is the small rectangular one. It didn’t have any scales and was probably going to be covered in leather at the factory. The other was an old Swiss Army knife which I just popped the scales off of and used the originals as a template to cut out the veneers. I cut the scales on my scroll saw and did the fine shaping on my sanding station. The finish was just natural danish oil and then paste wax. I attached them to the knife bodies with J.B. Weld epoxy that I carefully brushed on in a distribution so that it wouldn’t squeeze out very much.

The second project was a cart for my beautiful and talented wife’s new shop tool, an electric drum carder. A drum carder is used to process fibers from sheep, plants, and other animals into clean organized rolls of fiber that can be spun into yarn. I built the cart for her “shop” the same way as I do for my shop, screwed together out of 3/4” natural birch plywood with a single fixed shelf inside for rigidity and a 1/4” natural birch plywood back. It is on locking heavy duty casters.

I went ahead and sanded the edges and corners so they wouldn’t snag the fiber and I put some handles on each end made from some ash scrapwood that I had from another project.

The third project was a small Niddy Noddy which is a tool for winding yard after you have spun it. It both organizes the yarn and because each winding around the device is a specific length allows you to figure out how many yards of yarn you’ve spun. This one is a 1 yard Niddy Noddy. It is designed to disassemble into three pieces so that it can be packed in a carrying sack for bringing to spinning and weaving classes. I dubbed it the “Mini Noddy.” I sanded everything to 320 grit and applied a couple of coats of paste wax.

The final project was a Lazy Kate which is a series of spindles on a platform that bobbins with yarn can be placed on while plying. Plying is the activity of taking one or more single ply yarns and combining them by winding them together into a new multi-ply yarn. This particular one is made to fold up for portability to weaving and spinning classes.

The platform is a glue up of Sappele and Rock Maple and I was able to use my new Jointer/Planer on this and it put a wonderful surface on it as well as making the glue-up near perfect. The pivot points are 1/2” dowels and I got a special drill bit to drill the holes 1/64” oversize to allow clearance for the dowels to pivot. I put 1/4” - 20 threads onto brass rods for the spindles and threaded 1/4” - 20 thread size holes in the dowels to screw them into. It took many tries to use the tapping die to cut the threads on the brass rods straight but I got it. I didn’t want to just glue them into the dowels because I feared in the process of gluing them the squeeze out would also glue the dowel to the hole. We’ll see how this all holds up in use. I cut the channels for the rods to lay down in with my router with the side fence on it.

I just sanded everything to 320 grit and then put a couple of coats of paste wax on it which I find works good with weaving tools.

That’s the update for now…

Three shop improvements

July 4, 2025

In between furniture projects I like to knock off some improvements to the shop that I’ve been thinking of for anywhere from days to years. These are three that I just completed.

The first one was to correct something about my main work island that had been bugging me almost since I built it a year or so ago. I had made the top of it out of crappy sheathing grade 3/4” plywood and a layer of 1/8” hardboard. It was a fine surface to get dirty and potentially damage but it was never actually flat. Because the plywood was pretty misshapen when I received it, if I was doing assembly on it square things would get out of true because they weren’t properly supported. I had taken to doing assembly on the cast iron surface of my table saw, this bothered me.

I decided to make a flat, rigid, top for the island and also add an overhang to make clamping along the edge better. I went with 2 x 6 red oak for cost reasons and I glued up a nice top that was oversize. It came out of the clamps pretty flat and I planed and sanded both sides checking them with a straight edge to make them both flat.

I removed the old top and the top frame from the island, I only screw together things for the shop so that I can easily modify or recycle them by just unscrewing them later. I reused the old 3/4” plywood top as the top skin of the island and screwed it to all the uprights and the center divider. I then attached the new top to the island using screws from the underside. I only put screws in where it was touching the plywood directly or where I could put in a shim. I was careful not to try to pull the top down to the plywood and deform it.

I cut the overhang to final size of 3” using my track saw and then I beveled the edges with a plane and did some cleanup sanding.

I put a finish of Tung oil on the surface since this type of finish was recommended for work surfaces. It is now nice and flat and very handy for clamping. And should I ever need to make it level, the leveling foot casters on the island make that possible.

The second improvement was to build a set of drawers for additional storage in a shelf unit that I built five years ago. When I built it I just made several deep tall shelves but I quickly found that to be cumbersome because organizing things was impossible, things at the back were hard to see and reach etc… I have been adding drawers into this unit to solve these issues for a while. This is the last set.

I had three sets of 18” full extension heavy duty drawer slides from a batch of cheap Chinese manufacture drawer slides I got a while ago from Amazon. So the drawers would be 18” deep, the case would be 19” deep for some clearance at the back.

I’ve been building these units as a free standing box with the drawers inside it because it protects the drawers from dust and moisture ( I paint them with mold/moisture resistant primer inside and out now as well…) It also makes them modular in case I rearrange the shop and want to put the drawer unit somewhere else.

The case and the drawers are all built out of 3/4” natural birch plywood, pretty good stuff, low voids, not incredibly heavy but strong. The drawer bottoms are 1/4” natural birch plywood. I ran out of the drawer pulls I was using in the shop so I used some shaker drawer pulls that I got a whole bag of at a guild auction.

This came together in a day including painting and it was dry and ready to assemble and install the next day. It has cleaned up that area and I now have some extra storage that is very usable.

The final shop improvement was a cart for a new tool. I have finally reached the point where I want/need a jointer/planer I got a combination unit that can operate on 8” wide material. This is perfect for the kind of work that I do and for the limited space in my shop. I donated my old table saw to the guild auction and that cleared up a space under the stairs to the basement of the perfect size.

I wanted to build a cart for this tool since I don’t want to be lifting it onto a bench every time I use it and I want it to be easy to move back to storage when it is not in use. I figured out the size of the cart to support it and prevent it from tipping and be at a good height for feeding material through the planer/jointer. I built the cart as a box with a center support inside and fixed shelves to provide internal stability. I used the same 3/4” natural birch plywood. I put a 1/4” plywood covering on one side.

I used 4” tall heavy duty casters with locking wheels for the wheels. I was able to screw the planer/jointer directly to the top so it is very secure. All of the manuals, accessories, tools, etc… that go with the tool fit in the shelves in the cart. It rolls easily around the shop and up and down the ramp to the garage with no problems.

The planer/jointer was easy to set up and the test cuts were excellent, this tool with help offset my relatively poor hand planing skills.

So that’s it for shop improvements for now and I’m taking a short break to do some non-workshop projects.

Footstool for Modern Wing-back Chair

July 4, 2025

After deploying the Modern Wing-back Chair that I built, my beautiful and talented wife suggested that a footstool that could hide underneath it would be a nice addition. I had left over cherry wood in the right dimensions to do it so I did a quick project to make one.

After determining the right dimensions, I rough cut all of the material for the top frame and the legs. I connected the frame parts using mortise and tenon joints, the legs I cut an offset 1” x 1” tenon on the top of each leg so the frame could sit on the shoulder. I then tapered each leg on the back and inside and then using the router table I applied a 3/8” round over detail to all of the visible edges of the legs and the frame to match the detail of the chair. The tenons on the tops of the legs also got drilled for a diagonal screw to pull them into the corner of the frame. The tenon stops 1/2” below the top of the frame to create four support points for the 3/8” plywood base of the cushion.

After sanding from 60 grit to 320 grit ( and cleaning up the tapers and transitions of the rounding over process) I glued up the frame and installed the screws holding the legs in along with glue.

I cut a 3/8” thick plywood base with a 1/8” clearance around it for the base of the cushion. I glued 1 1/2” deluxe foam that had been shaped to have curved edges on four sides and 1” of polyester batting onto the plywood. I then covered it in the same fabric as the chair making sure to align the pattern so that it pointed in the same direction as the chair. I stapled the fabric on the back of the plywood panel and trimmed off any excess. I just friction fit it into the footstool so it is technically removeable.

I put a coat of General Finishes Hard Wax Oil finish on the cherry and let it cure and then I was able to install the cushion and deploy the footstool. I think it complements the chair nicely and it does add to the comfort of using the chair.

Sewing storage wall cabinet

June 15, 2025

My beautiful and talented wife was complaining that her sewing materials, needles, zippers, pins, thread, etc… were stored in a myriad of work boxes and every time she needed anything she had to search five places. I suggested that I could make a wall cabinet to go above her sewing table, in the same style, that would provide storage for all of those things and more. She loved that idea and so I designed the cabinet and after approved drawings I got to work on it.

I decided to make it out of maple to match her sewing table which would be right below it. I wanted to add some interesting details to dress it up so I decided to do a marquetry pattern on the door fronts, a herringbone pattern of 1 1/2” wide slices of the same maple as the case. It would provide an interesting texture and pattern without contrasting too much.

I also decided to use dovetail joints for the cabinet to give the side view some features as well. I made a practice project from some scrap to practice making dovetails since I’d never used them before.

The overall size of the cabinet was 36” x 24” and 9” deep including the doors. I chose to make the doors bi-folding because 18” doors would be cumbersome next to the wall on the left and the door opening on the right. Also, the sewing table has bi-folding doors and I wanted to repeat that feature.

I put a divider up the center of the cabinet so that there would be six independently adjustable shelves inside.

After acquiring all the maple that I needed for the project I cut the blanks for the sides and laid out the dovetail tails on the sides so that the bottom and top would have the pins. I cut the tails manually using my gents saw and then traced them onto the corresponding ends and cut the pins. I removed the waste using a coping saw, chisel, and rasp. After fine tuning the fit, I cut grooves in the panels to receive the back and a top batten and bottom batten to give me something to attach the wall mounting hardware to.

I built the frame of the doors as one big panel with the vertical frame parts for the doors centered at 9” intervals. I made split tenons on the three vertical frame parts that went into double mortices with a 1/2” space between them. This was so when the frame was assembled I could cut it into 9” ( or so ) panels and not show the mortices in the side frame. I assembled the frame and glued it up.

I routed a 1/2” W x 5/8” D rabbet around the inside edge of the back of the frames to hold the marquetry panels. I found that my Milwaukee trim saw was great for quickly cutting the waste out of the corners.

I cut 1/4” panels to fit and to be the backing for the marquetry. I laid out the marquetry and then traced the panel onto the slices of veneer and then numbered them and cut them to final shape on my scroll saw. After sanding the edges of each marquetry piece I coated one side of each panel with glue spread with a silicone grooved spreader to an even depth. I then assembled the marquetry on the glue and taped the pieces together with blue painters tape. I built a caul out of two pieces of 3/4” pine, one side I put 2” high legs in the corners and the top piece was just cut to size. I put blue tape on the inner faces. I put the panel on the lower section and taped it down to the caul so it wouldn’t drift around during clamping. Then I put the top of the caul on, and then a curved caul down the center to distribute pressure from the top to the bottom. I clamped all around the edges at even intervals. This made the marquetry come out really nicely.

I smoothed each panel starting with a 60 grit diagonal pass to level everything and then going through the grits to 320 then spraying each with water and letting it dry and sanding it again at 320 to get a really nice smooth surface.

I then trimmed the edges of the panels so they fit nicely in the recesses in the back of the doors. I then mounted the piano hinges on the door sides with them all spaced out using plastic 1/8” spacers to give an even gap and to make them span exactly the 36” cabinet.

Then using my adjustable shelf hole drilling jig I drilled all the shelf pin holes on the inside of the cabinet and both sides of the divider. With that done I sanded all the parts to 320 grit and then assembled and glued up the cabinet.

The first part of the finish was natural danish oil. Then after 72 hours two coats of wipe on polyurethane. This matches the finish on the sewing table.

After that had dried for 24 hours I reassembled everything and I secured the marquetry panels in the doors using framing points ( so if I wanted to change them out in the future that would be possible.)

My talented and beautiful wife helped me mount the case on the wall, remount the doors, install the knobs, install the magnetic catches, shelf pins, and shelves. She then had a great time putting things into the cabinet using the containers from ULINE that I had based the dimensions of the cabinet on.

I really like how this cabinet came out. I like how the marquetry and the dovetail details look on the cabinet. And it is an excellent storage solution for lots of sewing materials.

Dovetail practice box

June 15, 2025

I had a plan to build a wall cabinet for my beautiful and talented wife to store her sewing materials in. I was going to make it out of maple to match the sewing table I built for her. I wanted to use dovetail joints to add a nice detail to the cabinet. I have never done dovetail joints so I decided to practice on some scrap wood. I had some western red cedar that was the same width as the sides of the cabinet I was planning to build so I cut it up into equal size lengths to give me four joints to practice on.

I laid out the tails using 1 in 7 angle on the dovetails and equally spacing them for the width. I cut them freehand with my 8” Lynx Gents Saw being careful to always cut on the waste side. Getting the angle right each time took the most practice and once the very rigid saw was headed in the wrong direction it was hard/impossible to correct.

I tried a number of different methods for clearing the waste, in the soft cedar using a chisel was actually quite difficult and there was a lot of crushing/tearing of the wood at the edges, so I ended up using a coping saw to remove as much waste as possible and then I used a rasp and some chiseling to refine the fit.

I then traced the tails onto the opposite side of the joint being careful to note which side was the outside of the box. The tails were easier since the saw was vertical for all of the cuts. I then used chisel and rasp to fine tune them until they fit.

I got progressively better at each joint with less mistakes and better fit sooner. I realized that I had made a box when I put all the joints together. I decided I would finish the box. I cut grooves in the inside for a top and a bottom made out of 1/4” plywood. I sanded all the surfaces up to 320 grit and then I glued up the box. After the glue had cured, I did some touch up sanding and I carefully filled all of the worst gaps in my early dovetails.

I then cut the top of the box off on the table saw. I then put two coats of hard wax oil on the outside. Once that had dried I put on the hinges and a hasp for a small lock.

I didn’t really have a purpose for the box so I gave it away to a friend. It was an excellent small project to get some experience doing dovetails before I committed to doing them on expensive material.

One day builds...

April 2, 2025

I was just thinking about how pleasurable it is to have a shop, tools, materials, and hardware and be able to have an idea for a solution to a problem and be able to implement it in a day or less.

The shoe rack above was inspired by needing to keep our shoes with laces organized in our foyer which has a door that closes on the inside. This is critical because one of our cats, who we’ll call “the nibbler,” has taken to snipping shoe laces by nibbling them when you least expect it. I can’t emphasize how much fun it is to be about to go somewhere, pull on your shoes, and have the laces come away in your hands. I’m sure it amuses the cat.

I built it in an hour or so out of off-cuts from previous projects and using only hardware I had in the shop already.

Sometimes you just see materials around the shop and an idea will enter your mind and you can have a short side quest following that inspiration. This pocket knife was like that. I was cleaning up the shop and I moved a box that had a bunch of small knives with no scales on them that I inherited when we cleaned out my father’s shop years ago. My father was a mechanic who maintained industrial sewing machines at a leather goods factory in what is now called the Seaport District in Boston. He brought these home from work, I guess they were supposed to be covered in leather.

I had some beautiful veneers made out of wenge wood and curly maple left over from my recent clock project and I realized that they would make cool scales for one of these knives.

A little bit of gluing, cutting, sanding, finishing and I had created a pocket knife that I carry now.

It can also be motivated by finally overcoming inertia and fixing a problem that has been lingering for years. Like the sand paper organizer above. I’ve been stuffing sand paper containers into a jumbled drawer and having them pop open and jam the drawer or spill their contents forcing me to re-sort them by grit when they all mix together. This has always irritated me, but I put off doing “the right thing” for a very long time. Recently, I recovered a bunch of 1/2” plywood from a wine storage case that we no longer use ( turns out we are wine drinkers, not collectors ). I saw this blank space on the back of this bench, and had just experienced the frustration again and in a couple of hours I had fabricated this organizer.

Or someone else has an idea and I can help them execute the idea. My neighbor had the piece of wood with a hole cut in it ( was left over from a kitchen remodel ) and wanted to use it as the lid for a cold frame to start plants outside.

We were talking about it and I volunteered to build the cold frame and also use up some scrap wood and other materials that I had around the shop. Even the primer was from a prior project.

It took less than a day if you don’t count paint drying time….

And finally you might be married to a beautiful and talented woman who does spinning and weaving. In this case there are many “tools of the trade” like the “temple” above which is an expandable bar that can be used to keep the width of a weaving project consistent by gripping the edges in this case with spiky teeth and applying outward tension.

It is fun making functional items and seeing them used to make beautiful things. Also many of these tools have a history that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years.

I love having a shop and being able to do these kinds of projects, they may not be elaborate or difficult, but they deliver a solution and a great deal of satisfaction.

Modern Wing-back Chair

March 31, 2025

When I replaced our bed last year, I ended up salvaging the old bed frame which was solid cherry. I cut up the usable parts and a friend from the woodworker’s guild I belong to helped me use his drum sander to remove the finish. I ended up with a respectable amount of usable material. What to make with it?

I’ve always liked wing-back chairs and I’ve always wanted a chair for our bedroom, so this turned out to be a good chance to make a wing-back chair for the bedroom. I didn’t want to make a fully upholstered wing-back chair like so many traditional ones are. I had an inspiration for a modern one that had minimal upholstery and a modern frame that would be exposed to show off the joinery.

I also wanted something with simplified lines that delivered the feel of a wing-back without the extra curves and embellishments of a traditional one. I drew up some sketches, see below:

I stole some critical dimensions from a set of dining room chairs that we own that are very comfortable. So the seat dimensions, leg lengths, back rake angle etc… I’d never built a chair like this before so I realized that I should probably prototype as many of the features as I could using some cheap material before I committed to the cherry.

The first thing I built a prototype of was the joint I intended to use between the legs and wings and the seat. I wanted a single joint that would lock into a mortise in the seat. The back rib of the chair would flow down into the back leg, the front arm support would flow down to the front leg and the wing would also use the same joint just without a leg below it. I planned to cut the mortises in the seat blank and the leg/wing blanks with a set of router templates.

See the prototype below:

It took two router templates per joint but the concept worked fine and was repeatable. Next I got some relatively straight, unblemished, pine boards from the local big box hardware store ( took some digging.) My plan was to build the whole chair at least to the point where I could explore all of the things I had questions about including an unconventional approach to the upholstery.

You can see the progression below:

Because of the relative angle of the back to the wings it wasn’t possible to put in panels to support the upholstery. So I opted to put in hidden framing that was compound mitered and fitted between the uprights at uniform intervals. I just screwed and glued the framing since every mortise and tenon would have been very difficult and time consuming for something that wasn’t going to be visible in the end result.

I would then cover the framing by stapling on burlap and then I would glue the covered cushions to the burlap using a contact adhesive made for doing upholstery.

See detail of the prototype below:

This approach worked great and I learned a couple of things in the process that would let me improve the final chair. In this cushion I glued the fabric to the front of the cushion as well as the back which caused any wrinkles to be glued in place. I realized that I only needed to glue the fabric that wrapped around the back so that the front could move and flatten as needed.

Having a full scale chair to test I also realized that I had made the joints larger than needed and they were impinging on the seat area. Also in general the seat was a little too small given the thickness of the cushions. So I reduced the size of the joints by 1/2” and I widened the seat by 2” and made it deeper by 1”. I was also able to measure the footprint of the chair in both floor space and air space and then make sure it would fit nicely where I intended to put it. I taped out the area on the floor to make sure.

This is where I made a process error. I remade the templates with the changes based on the prototype. I did not test them on another prototype joint. This was a mistake because in remaking them I had introduced an error which would affect the fit of the joints. I was far enough into making the final chair before I found out that I couldn’t really go back. Fortunately I was able to fabricate shims which when glued in filled the error completely and there was no structural compromise.

I also tested things like cutting tapers on the legs, rounding them over etc… The prototype was a good investment in time. I moved on to building the final chair using cherry.

I didn’t have enough material to make the seat blank out of solid cherry at the thickness that I wanted so I made the center out of 7/8” ash which was salvaged from the slats of the bed frame. I created a rabbit on the center section and a mirrored rabbit on the cherry border pieces so they would be nicely aligned. I used lap joints in the corners of the cherry border because I realized that I was going to be cutting into those joints to mount the legs and mortise and tenon joints would mostly disappear in that process.

See this sequence below:

I also rounded the front corners, cut scallops and tapers in the sides of the seat and rounded over the edges. The difference in the thickness of the center and the frame provides a nice recess for the seat cushion (which is mounted on a piece of 3/8” plywood) to drop into.

Because of the rake of the back support and the leg, I could not cut the back legs out of a single piece of material so I had to make an upper and lower section and glue them together with a lap joint to make the leg blank. Making accurate lap joints is more challenging than it seems and I had to fill them a bit to make up for some error. I used the band saw to cut them out of glued up material so that they would be 1 1/2” square. Because some of the salvaged wood was a little bigger than 3/4” thickness I had to cut those pieces to final thickness on the table saw. Fortunately this worked out OK with the blade set to full height.

After dry fitting everything, shimming all the joints, figuring out the stretchers and their mortises and tenons, trimming the legs to length, tapering the lower legs on the back and the inside, rounding over all the edges, and sanding everything to 320 grit… I was ready for assembly.

See sequence below:

I also fitted the arms and mortised them into the wing support and pinned them to the arm support with a 1/2” maple dowel.

Another process error I had was that I had to fill a bunch of the joints and I wasn’t neat enough in applying the filler. This made for a lot of remedial sanding in the end, I will be much more careful and use some masking and smaller spatulas for filling next time.

I used a combination of 60 grit sandpaper, micro-plane rasp, and Japanese saw-rasp to smooth and shape all of the joints so that they flowed with the legs, supports, and the seat. There was a lot of shaping to get nice transitions all around. I finished all the shaping with sanding up to 320 grit.

Now I had to put finish on the whole piece, two coats of General Finishes Hard Wax Oil which brought out the color and figure of the cherry very nicely.

After the finish was dry, I made paper templates of all of the sections that would be upholstered. I used the templates to cut the burlap to cover the inside and outside of the support framework. I stapled the burlap in place. The back would be covered with just fabric glued to batting, stapled on the inside and glued to the burlap.

The inside cushions are a layering of 1 1/2” Lux Foam and batting, the fabric is wrapped around the cushion and only glued on the back. The seat cushion is the same cushion glued to the 3/8” plywood blank and then the fabric is fitted and stapled on the back to the plywood. It just drops into the recess in the seat.

The other cushions are glued to the burlap and the support frame.

Here is that sequence:

And that is the final product. I learned a lot doing this project and I’ll improve many of my processes for the next one based on this. My upholstery is getting better. I’m very happy with the first chair that I designed myself. It delivers on all of my goals. It is also very comfortable to sit in…

The Clock

January 29, 2025

Since I retired nearly five years ago and started doing wood working projects I have been thinking of making a clock. Partly because I think clocks are cool and partly because one of my ancestors was a clock maker. Stephen Hasham ( 1764 - 1861) of Charlestown, NH is my 2nd great-grandfather and he was also a prolific clock maker, he made the movements and the cases. He made church clocks, and clocks for houses, several of his clocks are still in Charlestown, NH and I’ve been there to visit them. My work can’t hold a candle to his, but I am inspired by him and his exceptional craftsmanship.

When I started this project I was thinking about the style that I wanted to do and I was drawn to something that was Art Deco inspired, not a replica but influenced by strong geometric designs. I came up with an initial design and planned to make the case of the clock’s decoration using marquetry so I upgraded my band saw to one that could resaw hardwood stock so I could make the 1/8” stock for the marquetry. I also got a scroll saw so that I could cut out the decoration and the inserts in different woods.

This is the initial design:

The main body color was going to be Curly maple with the darker wood being Sapele and Wenge. The face would be 1/8” aluminum with the dial engraved and faux-engine-turned.

I cut all of the marquetry stock and transferred the design using carbon paper to the front blank and used the scroll saw to cut out the pattern and the matching infill sections.

It was about this point that I started having reservations about this design. It just wasn’t reading the way I wanted, the light wood and thin design elements weren’t doing it for me. I went forward on this front piece through gluing up the marquetry, sanding it and trying a couple of finishes that should have enhanced the curly maple figure. I learned a lot about process, order of operations, and those finishes but I didn’t like the result. I also realized that the scale of the clock was not right either so I scrapped that design and came up with a new version.

Here’s the new version:

I went with a bolder simpler geometric pattern ( click on the images above to expand). The dominant color is the dark Sapele with Curly Maple as the contrast. I also added a dark ring around the clock face made from wenge and instead of trying to inset the face into the marquetry I decided to apply it on top of it. The good thing about this design was that I was able to cut all the veneers on the band saw with a lot of precision and control which made the joints clean and consistent.

I rebuilt the case with new proportions and the new veneers leaving the sides oversize until I had applied the marquetry and then I cut them to size and mitered them.

The top of the clock is cut from a glue up of two pieces of 3/4” Sapele which I cut to a 1/4” overhang of the case body and then I did a double bevel of the top at 22 degrees and 45 degrees. The plinth is made from 3/4” Sapele and has a 45 degree bevel on the top. I also shaped the bottom of the top and the top of the bottom to have a 1/4” rabbet sized so that the resulting rectangle would fit inside the box. This worked to help keep the box square and to allow me to fix the top and the bottom to the body of case.

I had to do two scary operations next. First, I had to use a 4” hole saw to cut out the front of the case to accommodate the clock mechanism. I didn’t want this clock to have a battery powered quartz movement, I wanted a wind up mechanical movement. I got a German made one from a web site called Clockworks. It mounts inside the case behind the face on adjustable brackets that are screwed to the case.

This brings me to the second scary operation which was to cut out a door on the back of the case. I needed the door to be big enough so that I could install the clock mechanism after the case was glued up. I hid the entry hole for the scroll saw blade behind one of the hinges. I used the scroll saw to very carefully and slowly cut out the door.

Fortunately both operations came out great and the hole saw didn’t just tear the marquetry off the plywood backing…

I also realized that mechanical clocks like to be level and there was a good chance that the wooden base would change shape or the place that I was going to display the clock would be out of level. While I was looking around for tiny adjustable feet ( I didn’t find any ) I found these semi-spherical feet for handbags made from brass. The screws had a 3/8” flat head. I realized that if I glued these screws into the bottom of the case I could partially screw the feet on to get about 1/4” of adjustment in each corner. This worked out great using some CA glue to fix the screws into 1/16” recesses cut with a Forstner bit.

To make the face of the clock I bought an .SVG file on Etsy of an “Art Deco” clock face that I liked. I deleted a couple of elements from it and sized it for the 6” diameter dial that I wanted and printed it full size. I used carbon paper to transfer the design to the aluminum. I used my dremel tool with a small ball nose bit to engrave all of the numbers and markings into the aluminum. I did some sanding to remove burrs and then I painted all the engraved areas with black acrylic paint. I then sanded the face up to 7000 grit and polished it with a polishing wheel on the drill press and some polishing rouge. I then sprayed it with clear acrylic applying a couple of coats. I ended up improvising the design in the center because my attempt at doing a faux-engine-turning decoration wasn’t satisfactory. I like the hand made nature of the dial, it certainly reflects my current skill level.

Finally I glued up the case using many many clamps. I then did some touch up sanding and then I applied two coats ( over two days ) of General Finishes Hard Wax Oil.

Once the finish was done I roughed up the back of the clock face and used CA glue to attach it to the clock case. After that was solid I installed the clock mechanism into the clock.

I then had to spend a little time getting the chiming to be correct relative to where the hands are but it is working great now keeping good time.

I’m very very happy with the final result.

Some small projects...

September 15, 2024

After finishing the bed project I took some time off and caught up on my comic book reading and other non-workshop activities. My beautiful and talented wife in that same time-frame went to weaving school and came back with a lot of new knowledge. One of the tools that she discovered at the school was a warp tensioning device like you see in the image above. When it is in use during the initial setting of the warp on the loom, the warp is passed over and under the rods before it passes over the beam, this helps even out the tension and make it consistent as the warp is wound up. She described it to me and showed me some pictures of them and I figured I could make one pretty easily.

I had some maple that was 1 1/16” x 9 1/2” x 24” which had some bark inclusion and milling chatter marks on one side that was perfect for making the parts for the clamping mechanism. I made a pretty detailed drawing because the clamping mechanism needed to fit the back beam of the loom fairly precisely and I wanted the center of the rods to be in line with the top of the beam.

I had to order 3/4” poplar dowels which took a few days to come, but they were nice and smooth and straight which was excellent.

The front part of clamp opens with a hinge in the front to grasp the four rods and then there is screw knob that screws down into a threaded insert in the body to clamp down on the rods. The kerf from cutting the front so it would hinge provides the difference that allows it to clamp firmly on the rods. I installed the hinge on the end with a chunk of rod clamped in the furthest hole so that the hinge would be installed to close fully without putting stress on it.

I created a bar clamp from two 1 1/16” x 1 1/16” x 5 1/2” pieces of maple with clearance through holes drilled at the ends. I couldn’t find long enough bolts at the hardware store so I got some 1/4 20 stainless all-thread rod and cut my own bolts. I used 1/4 20 wing nuts and some 1/4 20 bolts to secure them and make them hand-tightenable. I screwed the clamps to the outside of the bar holders at the matching angle to the 45 degree shoulder I cut on the bar end of each of them. The angle matches the angle of the back beam on the loom and registers everything firmly and at the right height.

I sanded everything to 320 grit and then I waxed it all with a coat of paste wax.

My beautiful and talented wife was planning to send a gift to one of her friends. It inspired me to offer to make a presentation box for the gift and so I volunteered. I had happened to have purchased some curly maple from WoodCraft when it was on sale for 70% off. I decided to make the front and the back of the box out of that material and the sides out of some Sapele left over from the bed project.

I wanted to make the panels book matched and 1/4” thick. The stock that I bought was 3/4” thick so I had to make a resawing jig for my 10” RIKON band saw. I don’t think most people would try to resaw anything with such a small and underpowered band saw but I figured I’d give it a try. I have a 1/2” 3 tooth per inch blade on my band saw and it is surprisingly rigid and cuts pretty well. I did manage to stall the band saw several times but by patiently finding the slow feed rate required I was able to cut two book matched panels 4 1/2” wide.

I edge glued them together and the resulting panel required some flattening with the sander but in the end it came out very nice. The figure on the front panel has a great “face” image of something like a snake or an alien. I got both the front and the back of the box out of one glue up. I flattened and sanded to 320 grit both sides since I wanted to finish both the outside and the inside of the box.

I have to say I thought the milling on the original blanks was pretty rough when I got them but I later realized with the curly grain going every direction it probably doesn’t plane very well.

I cut the grooves for the front and back of the box and then cut miters for the sides. I also cut a small bevel on the inside and outside of both sides of the box. I put hard wax oil finish on the panels and then installed them in box and glued it up with tape to hold and align the miters. I made sure the box was square and flat by doing the assembly on my cast-iron table saw table.

Once the glue was set I cut the box open on the table saw, sanded the new edges and then put hard wax oil finish on the outside and inside of the box.

I mounted the hardware and after a couple of days I put some paste wax on the box to add some additional sheen.

The final project was a new version of a weaving tool that I’d made before. My beautiful and talented wife has been using the tapestry/rug loom that I made for her to weave rag rugs. These are rugs that are made with strips or tubes of scrap fabric from old clothes, sheets, drapes, etc…

In order to keep the warp the same width while you’re weaving using such a heavy material for the weft, one uses a device called a temple. The temple is a stretcher placed across the warp that pulls on the edges setting the warp to a specified width. Previously I had built a temple that used spring clips to grab the warp, see below:

The device has adjustable length by sliding the center bar out and the pins secure it at a specific setting. This one worked ok but the clips were hard to secure onto bulky fabric while holding everything in place. So I agreed to make a different style that uses pointed metal teeth on the underside to grab the fabric and stretch it to the right distance.

I made it out of the same western red cedar that I made the one above and instead of using metal pins I used some 3/8” oak dowel rod to make the pins for this one, the knob head for the pins is just 1” maple rod segment drilled for 3/8” fit and then glued on and rounded.

I made the teeth out of some heavy gauge stainless steel finish nails I sharpened by spinning in the drill against the sanding disk. I cut the teeth to length using my reciprocating saw and a metal cutting blade. I glued them in using CA glue.

I sanded everything to 320 grit and then put a coat of paste wax on everything.

That’s it for now, I’m working on designing a new project and I’ll share my progress soon.

Re-purposing Skills

August 13, 2024

I’m retired but I still do a lot of projects. Most of them are solitary projects with perhaps one collaborator. They are by and large not software projects, they are wood working, music, art, writing and publishing projects. I don’t work for the client of these projects and in many cases I am one of the clients of them. My role is diverse: designer, manager/planner, engineer, fabricator, and delivery guy. Schedules and priorities are mostly mine or very much in my control. I have a great deal of latitude to decide what is “good enough” and what is “done.”

I find that my life before I retired provided me with a lot of the skills that make this new life satisfying. I have a lot of experience looking at a large task and breaking it down and prioritizing it into a series of smaller tasks that are reasonable in scope. I readily recognize what is going to be difficult and that allows me to focus on those tasks and spend time figuring them out. The main psychological benefit of this is that I’m not afraid of big projects because to me they’re just a string of little projects.

Over the years I’ve gained the knowledge about myself of what I’m good at and what I’m not good at. This has allowed me to plan things that challenge me but also play to my strengths. For example, I am not good at very fine details that need to be perfectly executed, and though I admire the skill of people who can do this my personal taste leans more towards restrained details. I generally plan my designs with this in mind.

In my career I learned to believe in myself to be able to learn on job what I need to know in order to succeed at a task. In fact it is really the learning style that is most effective for me, classes and school were never very engaging for me. This also reduces my fear at perhaps getting into a project and then not being able to finish it.

I also learned to “grind,” which is where you have to do something day in and day out for a long time in order to finish a project. In the old life it was testing, bug reporting, triage, bug fixing, building, repeat… in the new life it is building a sub component, test fitting everything, taking it apart, adjusting or building the next thing, repeat… until you’re done.

Probably the most powerful thing is patience. Once you accept that something is going to be challenging and is going to take a long time you can settle in to a process and drive it to completion. I wasn’t patient at the beginning of my career but by the end of my work career people would often comment on how patient I was. I am happy to say that I’m patient with myself as much as I was ever patient with my co-workers.

Finally, having a personal process and incrementally improving that process was something I learned in my career. It allows me to plan projects that are going to teach me something new and keep the rest of the process constant while I do that. If something doesn’t work, I just don’t do that again. I look back over the last four years or so of projects and I can identify the process and infrastructure improvements that have been added to my process and it is very satisfying.

In any case these were just some thoughts that were going through my mind for a while recently so I figured I’d share them.

Screech Owl House

August 12, 2024

A while ago we saw a family of about five screech owls on the telephone pole and lines near our house. I looked online and found that in our area they need houses because people are removing a lot of trees with rotten hollow trunks on them which is where they would normally nest. I found some plans online and built a quick house for them out of Western Red Cedar.

It is 10” x 10” x 20” all of the joints are glued and nailed with finish nails. There are drain holes in the bottom to make sure it doesn’t collect water.

Building it was less than a day and very simple. Then I needed to get it more than twenty feet up a tree in the yard. I was not going to be able to do that myself. I contacted our arborist John Collins at North Shore Arborists ( https://northshorearborists.com/ ) and asked him if he could install the house for me and he said he’d be happy to.

John came with his climbing gear and expertly scaled the tree, pulled the tools and box up with a rope and quickly attached it to the tree in the perfect spot. If you'‘re on the North Shore and you need tree work done, John and his team are the best.

Now the box is available for residents, hopefully a family of owls will move in.

Bed Frame: Headboard and Nightstand completion

August 5, 2024

As I mentioned at the end of my last post even with the bed frame complete I had a headboard to build and upholster and a nightstand to build for my wife. Below is my design for the headboard:

The frame is made from 5 1/2” x 1 1/16” Sapele joined with mortise and tenon joints. I then added a 1/2” bevel detail on both the outside and the inside of the frame. Overall it is 77 3/4” x 35”. Inside the frame is a piece of 1/2” natural birch plywood with a 1/8” gap around the perimeter. The panel is attached to the frame with eight flat brackets on the back side. The back of the panel’s edges have been rounded with a 1/4” round over router bit to allow the upholstery to easily wrap without snagging or ripping. Five holes are drilled along the center line of the panel to allow buttons to be attached, pulled tight, and secured through the upholstery.

I finished the frame with the same Hard Wax Oil as the rest of the furniture.

I ordered high quality 1” foam from https://www.foambymail.com/ ( I’ve dealt with them a couple of times now and they do great work ) along with some 1” synthetic batting. I cut the foam and the batting to fit the panel and using a contact adhesive I glued first the foam and then the batting on top. Then we wrapped the panel in some beautiful fabric which we repurposed from some drapes that we don’t use anymore, stapling it on the back of the panel. Then we made buttons covered in the same fabric and after acquiring a 10” upholstery needle we passed thread through the holes in the panel, through the button and back to the back and then secured the tensioned threads with staples on the back.

I adapted the two reading lights we already had on the wall to be instead mounted on the headboard with their cords running through a hole in the frame and hidden behind the frame. The headboard is mounted on the wall using a metal french-cleat like system called Z-clip by Monarch Metals. Two 66 1/2” long metal brackets are mounted to the wall 29” apart and on the back of the frame 18 clips 9 on the top rail and 9 on the bottom rail interlock with the wall brackets to give an almost flush and very secure but removable mounting for the headboard.

While I was waiting for foam to arrive I also built a nightstand out of scrap material from the bed frame project. The other nightstand no longer fit next to the door so we needed one. Also, it needed to be step shaped to provide easy access to the bed for our geriatric cats. The design is below:

I had some 11 1/4” x 3/4” Sapele so I glued an additional 1 1/2” edge to fill out the final depth of 12 3/4”. I made a raised panel for the door to the storage at the top to echo the panels on the bed frame. The sides are connected to the top with a tongue and groove joint. There is a small shelf inside the storage area and birch plywood back. I mitered a 3/4” x 1/8” border around the two top surfaces to frame some felt to add padding for phones and cats, and an attractive blue color as well. I’m not happy with the cheap hinges that I have on there right now I may go back and redo them since they don’t close very straight or flush. I added a magnetic catch to secure the door. I had a bag of ( I think cherry or walnut) shaker nobs and I realized that they would make nice feet for the nightstand so I used four of them for that purpose and I cut down a fifth one to use as a center handle for the door.

I applied the same Hard Wax Oil finish as the rest of the furniture and then glued on the felt with contact adhesive.

We’re really happy with how everything came out and I’m looking forward to a short vacation from shop work!

Bed Frame: Completion

July 25, 2024

This bed replacement was a big project and technically this is just the first phase completed. At the end of last post I had just completed one quarter of this king size bed frame with storage. I went on to finish all the steps on the matching corner of the frame and to make sure they fit up with each other.

I also built the footboard with it’s nineteen spindles, thirty-eight mortise and tenon joints and very fiddly assembly including making sure it would fit the already cut dry mortises in the uprights. This was an entertaining glue-up which I made sure to let dry completely while held in the position it would live on the bed later on.

The cap that tops the footboard was screwed on also in place to make sure it would clear the tops of the uprights, some tweaking was required including cutting it to precise length with matching overhangs.

Then it was on to sand and finish the last two panels, glue them up and put them onto their respective sub frames.

Finally I masked off the hardware and drawer fronts on the drawer bodies and sprayed them with a clear enamel to just give them some surface protection.

After some drying and curing time, it was time to move everything to the bedroom on the second floor of our house. My beautiful, talented, strong and patient wife helped me to move each of the sub frames, drawers, slats, and footboard out the garage door, up the front steps, up the inside stairs, and into the bed room.

After regaining my composure I aligned and bolted up the frame components.

We installed the slats, screwing in the first slat and the last slat after adjusting the spacing.

Then we installed the drawers and put the mattress on to the frame and we were done ( see picture at the start of the post ). You may notice some blue tape on the wall, these tapes mark the stud locations in the wall. The next project will be an upholstered headboard which will be attached to the wall with a Z-clip system. So before putting the bed where it’s going I had to determine the stud locations by finding the stud that one of the electrical outlets was attached to and spacing across.

The cat approves of the new bed and I can say after sleeping on it that it achieves all of the goals that we had. It is very stable and silent even with a large creature like myself moving around on it. It fits the king mattress perfectly with a little allowance for the mattress to change shape as it is used. It provides easy to access storage under the bed.

Of course this project has spawned some follow on projects, the headboard is the first one, and also there will be a matching bed-side cabinet/table to replace the one that now no longer fits on my wife’s side of the bed. Stay tuned for those projects!

Bed Frame: Progress

July 16, 2024

Just over a month ago I started on building a version of the design I described in my last post. The design has changed in small ways, mostly simplifications and optimizations and in some cases addition of critical details. As usual it involved a trip to Boulter Plywood Corp. in Medford, MA where I bought all the material for the inside frame of the bed, all Poplar and a little bit of plywood and for the outside panels which is all Sapele. It was my largest lumber order to date and I selected each board and they kindly delivered it since it wouldn’t fit in the Audi. I have to say the quality of the S4S lumber from Boulter is wonderful, very straight, very cleanly milled, very few defects.

In addition to ordering fasteners, drawer slides, handles, leveling feet, webbing, bolts, a drilling guide block, hard wax oil finish, more clamps. I acquired a new machine, a Grizzly Industrial bench top mortising machine. This has improved the quality of my mortise and tenon joints by leaps and bounds, not to mention the speed.

I also built a panel raising jig for my table saw, it consists of a tall add on fence to support the panels and a raised feather board to help keep the panels flush to the fence when cutting the the bevels on the panels. I iterated a little bit on this but all in all it did a great job cutting all the panels.

As usual I started building from the inside out, the bed frame that supports the mattress is built in four sub-modules. I chose to frame it out of 1 3/4” x 3 1/2” poplar, each sub module has one doubled post and then three other posts that are going to bolt to their neighboring module to form a doubled post at every intersection. There are eight mortise and tenon joints per module, each module is essentially identical except that the foot modules have their top rails on one side cut down to 3” to give more room for the drawers that will be installed in the foot of the bed.

I installed leveling feet in all the corners of the sub modules. I carefully drilled bolt holes between all of the modules after clamping them together square to each other. I used 3/8” x 4” bolts with washers and lock washers to bolt them together. Then I cut the slats ( 3/4” x 3 1/2” Poplar) to length and spaced them two inches apart and then connected them with upholstery webbing. The frame is very solid.

Next I worked on fabricating the panels that are going to wrap the frame. For each panel created the perimeter frame out of 3/4” x 3 1/2” Sapele joining them with mortise and tenon joints. Each frame part gets a 1/4” x 1/4” groove on it’s inside edge to accept the floating panel. After dry fitting each frame I measured for the floating panel and cut it from 3/4” x 9 1/4” Sapele boards allowing 3/8” extra to fit into the groove. I used the panel raising jig to cut a 2” wide bevel on the front of each panel and then I put a 1/4” x 1/4” rabbet on the back side so there is a 1/4” edge tongue around the edge of the panel that centers it in the frame.

Adjacent panels have a dry tongue and groove joint that connects the sub modules. I dry fitted adjacent panels to make sure the fit between modules was correct. The foot board was complicated, I joined the uprights of the foot board to the intersecting panels with grooves and splines. The nineteen spindles between the two rails required a LOT of tweaking to get right. Because the modules have to come apart, the rails will be inserted into dry mortise and tenon joints in the uprights and held in place by pressure from the sub module bases.

Next I built the two huge drawer bodies 8” x 40” x 31 3/4” out of Poplar for the sides and 1/4” plywood for the bottom.

I fitted them in their corresponding sub frames and added internal structure to support the heavy duty drawer slides.

And finally I started installing the panels onto the modules with the foot right module. I sanded all the frame parts 80 ( for the ones that I milled ), 120, 220, and 320 grit. I applied General Finishes Hard Wax Oil to the raised panel first so that if it shifted around in the frame there wouldn’t be any unfinished edges showing. I then glued up each panel and applied finish to the frame after the glue had cured.

I then assembled the panels onto the sub frame and attached them with cabinet screws from the back side. I carefully spaced the drawer front inside it’s frame and attached the drawer hardware and screwed the drawer face on from inside the drawer.

Here is the first completed sub-module, I’m really happy with the progress so far, there are a few tweaks and probably a second coat of finish but mostly it’s just repeat this process four more times…

Bed Frame: Designing a new project

May 6, 2024

I don’t usually discuss projects when they’re in the concept or design stage of the process. All of my projects go through those stages to some degree unless it’s a repair or something very ad-hoc. I guess I don’t write about the design because I still might not actually go forward to construction. I figured I would change things up this time and see what happens.

My beautiful and talented wife and I have been discussing the shortcomings of our current bed and bed frame. The bed on my side is a bit too soft for me, which is just right for my wife. The frame creaks a lot. The mattress plus box spring plus frame height is a little high for us. It would be nice to have a little more space, it is currently a Queen size. We have a bunch of low plastic boxes that store winter/summer clothing under the bed, drawers would be better.

I measured the space available in our bedroom and a King size bed 80” x 77” would fit without significantly impacting movement around the room. I also learned about Twin XL mattresses which are 80” x 38” and two of them put together are referred to as a “split king.” This would allow us to have two different firmness mattresses on one king frame. I decided to make a platform bed frame so we could get rid of the box spring and have a solid structure supporting the mattresses.

Another practical requirement is that I need to build this bed frame in my shop in the basement and get it to the bedroom on the second floor with only my wife’s assistance. I decided to make the frame modular and construct four frames for each quarter of the bed and they would be bolted together on the inside upon final installation. I also intend to put leveling feet on each sub-frame so I can get the whole surface level.

I decided to hide the frame that actually supports the mattresses behind decorative panels. After some discussion we decided on raised panels which are in keeping with our colonial style house. ( see the first image in this post ) Since you won’t see the frame I decided to make it out of Poplar to control costs and manage the overall weight of the bed. Slats will sit on top of the frame hidden on the sides by the decorative panels.

Each frame module will be a mirrored version of the one in the image above ( several views). The panel face frame will probably be glued to the face or faces of the module as needed. The headboard will be a separate construction which will frame a decorative padded fabric element and will be attached to the wall not the bed frame. The foot-board will be attached with screws ( perhaps concealed by decorative covers or plugs) to the end modules at assembly time. The end modules will contain two large drawers taking up nearly their entire internal space that pull out on heavy duty long drawer slides.

The drawer faces will echo the panels on the sides of the bed.

The rest of the furniture in the room is made from cherry and is in the Mission style. We didn’t want more cherry and after looking at a number of possible other woods we chose Sapele for it’s color and nice grain patterns. As for finish I’m testing a few different ones on a 4’ piece of Sapele that I sanded to 320. The current contenders are Natural Danish Oil, Wipe on Polyurethane, and Hard Wax Oil.

Natural Danish Oil, Wipe on Poly over Danish Oil, Wipe on Poly by itself, One coat of Hard Wax Oil, Two coats of Hard Wax Oil

This design has been through a few iterations. Each iteration I look to see if I can simplify something or understand any important details like exactly how the panels will fit together or respond to feedback from my wife. I try not to be too attached to any given element of the design and step back and try to evaluate it as a whole. The good part about iterating on drawings is you can just make a new drawing and it is cheap and relatively easy.

The next step for me is coming up with a cut list based on the “final” design and figuring out the materials cost estimate. That process might generate some design changes as well.

Scrap Wood Art

April 21, 2024

I took a couple of weeks off after my last project to catch up on my comic book reading. I can report that I got through my entire TBR pile, quite satisfying. I also started working on designs for a couple of future projects, went for some walks, did some cooking and took some naps. At the end of my “vacation” I needed something small to do in the shop that would be fun and not require new materials or a lot of time commitment.

I pulled out my Build Dice from Simone Yetch’s online store, the idea is you roll the three dice and they suggest a thing to build. So, I rolled the following:

This was pretty good for a first roll, usually I have to roll a few times to get something that is interesting to me. I have been wanting to do something with 1/8” veneers, triangles, and scrap wood so this was the perfect excuse.

I had a nice glue-up that I didn’t use from another project that was 2” thick and was a sandwich of 1/4” walnut on both sides and 1 1/2” maple in the middle. That set the size of the slices I was going to use to 2” and therefore the size of the triangles.

I had some walnut off cuts and also western red cedar off cuts which I cut to 2” and I cut 1/8” thick slices out of all of them. They weren’t super even but I was figuring I’d have to flatten everything later.

I built a small cross cut sled for my table saw and put a stop on it at the right angle to cut my triangles.

I cut a whole bunch of triangles from the 1/8” x 2” strips, it went very quickly using the sled. I deliberately didn’t make a plan for how many of each or a particular pattern I wanted to do. I just got a 12” x 15” piece of 1/2” plywood that was pretty flat and marked a center line on it and started putting triangles on it until I saw the pattern that I wanted.

It was a pure accident that I was able to make a border around the central pattern using the glue up triangles. I didn’t worry about perfect placement or alignment of the pieces, and I glued them down to the plywood. After the glue had cured I went back and filled all of the cracks with fine wood filler so that the surface would be consistent when I leveled it.

When the filler had hardened I got out my trusty Makita Belt Sander with a 60 grit belt and leveled the whole surface. I followed that up by sanding 80, 120, 220, and finally 320 grit to get a nice smooth surface.

In the spirit of using up things that were “trash” I had a can of Cherry Danish Oil which after testing I found to be way too red for the project I bought it for and in general probably too red for me. I thought red would be a cool color for this mixture of woods to bring out different tones and features and add a bit of surprise to the look. So I applied the danish oil and I also wet sanded the first coat to see if I could get some grain filling with different colors from all the wood.

I really liked the results, the “dirty” look to the maple is a really cool effect. Finally I had some 1”x1” maple offcut that I made a frame from to set off the panel. I just sanded the frame nicely and put paste wax on it. It was a two day project, but I like how it came up and now I have some art for the shop wall.

Building Project: Pull out shelves for shop storage

April 5, 2024

When you have a shop in a relatively small basement storage space is at a premium. I’m constantly looking for ways to add more storage or in this case make the storage I have more usable. The top shelf in the storage behind the basement stairs has been an evolution from open shelves to a set of flat deep drawers and now to make the top shelf more effective pull out shelf organizers. The problem was that if anything went to the back of this 24 inch deep shelf it would be very hard to access. I saw a great deal on Amazon for Blum TANDEM under-mount slides and I’d been watching someone on YouTube making pull out shelves for a kitchen pantry and this gave me the idea to make a bunch of pull out shelves for the shop.

Three of the units are six inches wide and two are nine inches wide. The front three are 18 inches tall and the back two are 15 inches and 14 inches tall respectively. They are all 21 inches deep. The end panels are 3/4 inch natural birch plywood and the top, bottom and shelves are 1/2 inch natural birch plywood. The rails to keep stuff from coming off the shelves are 1/4” natural birch plywood.

The construction is just rabbets top and bottom and dados to support the shelves. I used glue and 15 gauge finish nails ( I love my Milwaukee cordless 15 gauge finish nailer, it is fantastic ). The back of each cabinet is nailed and glued on.

The TANDEM under-mount slides are pretty easy to work with except for one tiny oversight on my part, there is a minimum drawer width because the levers and mechanism to connect the cabinet to the rails have a fixed width and I was just under it with the six inch wide cabinets. I was able to work around it by modifying the bottom of the six inch cabinets so it all worked out.

I also had to reduce the height of the furthest back cabinet because the spacing between units wasn’t as tight as I’d estimated. I was able to just slice the top off of the unit and make it into an open topped roll-out, just like I had designed it that way to clear the pipe going over it.

All in all they work great, pull out smoothly, soft close, clear everything around them and have made that space very usable. I even have some “baby fat” as Adam Savage calls it, extra storage that is empty. That won’t last long.