Bmac

This also might be of some help. 

15 minutes ago, JasonS said:

I realized with talk of a router jig I almost talked myself out a domino at all; that's why I added the brian dump about classes and timing.

2 hours ago, JasonS said:

I made M&T joints with hammer, chisel and saw; a slot mortiser; a router; the DF700. I enjoyed all the methods except the router -

I feel the same about making M & T with routers. To me they are versatile, but they are not enjoyable. It's my least favorite tool in the shop. Some people love them but they are noisy and very messy. 

Another reason for the Domino, and you won't have a tool that creates less mess than the Domino

Let me reemphasize, @Chestnut said the same thing, the small dominos are more useful than you think and are GREAT for panel glueups. Can't really do that easily at all with a router and a router jig. 

I'd go with the 500, for a few reasons;

Cost, always great to save some bucks.

The 500 goes up to the 10mm domino, which I find to be a good size, the 700 only goes 2 sizes larger, 12 and 14mm.

The depth of the mortise is not as great with the 500, I believe it goes up to about 1 1/4" deep while the 700 goes up to about 2 3/4". I do wish it went deeper, but I find the depth of the 500 adequate AND you can increase the width of your mortise with the width settings on the 500. So if you make custom "dominos" you can go much wider than the factory dominos.

Say you need more support, well you can always use the 500 to stack or do multiple dominos in thicker stock. 

But for me, hands down when the 500 is used for gluing up panels the accuracy of the domino has given me the best and flattest panels. The ability to easily size down to small dominos for panel gluing is something I do with almost every project. So in my mind this one factor makes the 500 the best all around choice. I guess you could use the 700 to do this with accessories, but then you've lost the speed and simplicity that you get with the domino. 

Wonderful post and that little dovetail plane is quite interesting. 

I agree completely with your reasoning of putting the base of the legs in the same place on the underside of the case. Really curious why the location of the leg bases were off, and the fact it was exactly the same the second try makes me even more curious. 

I have to step back to something @gee-dub asked earlier, I apoligize if it was answered but I didn't see it answered. The ZCI that came with my sawstop had no slot cut into it. The directions were to lower the blade, put the insert in, turn blade on and slowly raise the blade to cut the slot. That's the whole idea behind the ZCI insert, the slot is only supposed to be as wide as the blade and the slot needs to be cut out by your blade. Was that how your insert was supplied or did it already have the slot cut?

If it already had the slot cut in your ZCI (which would make me wonder why we are calling it a ZCI), the slot is probably the reason. Saw blades are thickest at the teeth, when you raise the blade the thinner part of the blade was not rubbing the slot at the problem area, when you lower the blade the thicker teeth are hitting the slot in the problem area. If the slot was already cut I just think the slot is off, to me that seems the most logical cause. 

If you actually cut the slot than in theory you should have no rubbing. But if there is rubbing it likely means you just need to run the saw and cut the slot wider by raising and lowering the blade.  

Ditto on the Freud blades, just stay away from the thin kerf models, they are typicall too thin for the riving knife. 

32 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

Do you have the templates in physical style or PDF? Megan is on board with the chair and likes how it looks. All we'd need to do is figure out where it goes in the house.

They will be in physical form, no PDF. I can trace my patterns on a large sheet of paper and mail them to you no problem. I'll also be happy to point out the joinery I used and where.

Learn something everyday. Thx

8 hours ago, Tom King said:

Picture is not from today, as this thread asks about, but from day before yesterday. 

My clients that own this house have several years worth of work on my waiting list.   They want a Cypress Shingle roof, as it had originally.  I didn't put this roof on it, but have needed to fix it several times.  The edge of these steel shingles were blown up in a previous, moderately strong storm.  Knowing that a much more severe storm was on the way, there was little to do but include this in several days of preparation.

Not having time to set up scaffolding, I rented this lift.   I want one.   Park it, turn a key, get in the cage, push some buttons, and you're up where you need to work.  The clients are talking about buying one now.

It only took me a couple of hours to fix this problem, so I took it down on our point, and did some limbing with my little Makita battery powered chainsaw.  I could probably make a living with nothing more than the lift, and little chainsaw.

New, these are about 32k.  Rental is $210 a day, but I have to drive 45 minutes, one way, to get it.   Platform height is supposed to be up to 45 feet.  I think that's with the feet on tiptoes, and the extension of the arm out.  You can see the shiny metal where that part is telescoped out a little in the picture.  These soffits are 27 feet off the ground.

We had some wind damage on our place from the extreme winds, but the two pieces of tin blown off the mechanic shop were blown off after the rain had gone through, so no real damage to anything inside.  I have the new tin ready to go back on tomorrow, after the wind calms down some.

Mike took the photo, and as you can see, he makes no claim to be a photographer.

 

 

 

Tom, what's going on with their chimney? Looks like there is a pretty big space between the roof and chimney.

8 hours ago, JohnG said:

I’d be more than happy to pay for them, too. They’ll probably be stored away for a long time as a “some day” build. I’ll do the guild rocker project first to have my hand held through the process. Don’t think this one would be a good first-chair project. 

I wouldn't charge, wouldn't even think of it. It would be a pleasure to see someone else build this.

Yes you would need to do the guild rocker first at the very least. My templates may look more like a puzzle with no directions if not. 

5 hours ago, Chet said:

This can be true, when I went to pick up my chair from the upholstery shop all the workers wanted to keep it.  Of course all you have to do is offer a reasonable price for something custom made like that and then all of a sudden the chair isn't as comfortable as they thought.

@Bmac this has been great to follow.  I think we have all seen photos of something we would like to make but not having any measurements, only having the photo to go by can make some of us bock at the idea.  But you have definitely proven it can be done.

 

Thanks Chet, my version is far from exact dimensions of the original, guessed at a lot of measurements. Glad you've enjoyed following along. 

4 hours ago, JohnG said:

I’d be in for some templates! 

Looks amazing!

Thanks John. I'll be happy to share templates but don't expect video lessons to go along with them. 

6 hours ago, Chestnut said:

I may take you up on that. I have the PERFECT place for that chair in my house. It looks really fun to build.

Megan just may have vetoed getting me an MS661 for my birthday...

I'll tell you those new saws are terribly expensive. I've had great luck buying refurbished used Stihl 660's. The nice thing about the 660's is they are easy to repair and get parts for. Dropping $600 or so bucks for a used one is a big savings. 

1 minute ago, Spanky said:

Bmac will have templates for rent or for sale soon. 

Ha, you got me figured out. 

31 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

If I was an upholstery guy I don't think I'd sit in the chairs I did unless I needed to test something. I fear it would cause me to be come somewhat attached to it....

This chair looks beautiful... I really REALLY like it.

The upholstery guy said he'll need to test it some to figure out how much to bulk up the cushions. When we looked at the photo's of the originals he did comment that the cushions are pretty full contoured. 

 When you are ready I can send you the templates.

Purchased a few books on MCM and Danish Modern, not how to books but very much picture books for inspiration. I will say that because the books are not woodworking centered, you'll get pics of all different materials used for the furniture in these books. It is helpful to see the lines and shapes though. Here are the few I think are somewhat helpful.

This book on Danish Modern is fairly interesting, and cheap. Not a bad reference but absolutely no woodworking insight, purely visual and inspirational.

https://www.amazon.com/Danish-Modern-Andrew-Hollingsworth/dp/1586858114/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=danish+modern&qid=1581082093&sr=8-3

For MCM, these two are somewhat helpful for inspiration, again no woodworking insight;

https://www.amazon.com/Mid-Century-Modern-Interiors-Furniture-Details/dp/1840914068/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mid+century+modern+furniture%2C+book&qid=1581082394&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Mid-Century-Modern-Furniture-Cara-Greenberg/dp/0517884755/ref=sr_1_9?keywords=mid+century+modern+furniture%2C+by+cara+greenberg+book&qid=1581082493&sr=8-9

Overall I found the reading and designs interesting. It gave me a few ideas, but I can't say they are must have books. If you are interesting in this style and want to delve deeper than they have a purpose. I do think they will impact my design and builds somewhat in the future.

Next I'm going to investigate books in the American Studio Furniture Movement. Interestingly, the above books are somewhat separate from this movement, very little cross reference. For example, Maloof was never mentioned in any of the books. Nakashima had a few mentions.

10 hours ago, Chestnut said:

All the chair backs are done and stacked in a safe place. The nested backs are oddly satisfying to look at so I thought I'd share another picture.

 

I can understand your sense of satisfaction, you have a neat design that you envisioned years ago and you are building chairs. As a self proclaimed chair junkie by @Mark J, nothing is more satisfying than building chairs. Maybe I'm reading to much into your comment or maybe you are feeling the first symptoms of chair addiction. 

Things are looking great with the chairs and congrats!

15 hours ago, pkinneb said:

That is awesome! Not only is it an outstanding job on the ww side but your ability to break the piece down off of pics amazes/ inspires me. 

Thanks Paul. I'm actually really surprised myself how well it's going. I've had a few things not go perfectly, the back supports looking too short and the length of front leg above the chair too short for perfect arm stock placement, but those were easy to correct. I think I've just made enough Maloof chairs that I understand his construction. There is no way in a million years I would have figured this out otherwise. 

One annoying aspect of this build is I have to wait until the very end to actually sit in the chair, no early test "sits". In fact the upholstery guy will be the first to sit in it.

When I'm done I can send you a copy of the templates!

I just caught back up to this. I misunderstood what you were going to do with the end spacers that are glued cross grain to the case. I thought you were going to make vertical cuts into the spacer to relieve the potential restriction of movement of the case. If you make a few vertical cuts into and through the spacer these cuts will not be visible and they will allow the case to move more freely. No longer would you need to hope the spacers "stretch" if the side of the case expands. 

I think this is an easy thing to do that would add some piece of mind.

There are a lot of ways to do this, templates are basically essential. With the shaping I use rasps, gouges, sanders, and die grinders.

Here are some examples of what I used to make Jory Brigham's Hank Chair. With this I start with a full size template and cut the full size into smaller pieces:

Then trace my pieces to my stock. Notice how I use existing straight edges for certain orientation of pieces;

With this project I then used the template to set the angle of my cuts;

This really simplifies it, and there are other ways to do this. Doing a table should be pretty straight forward. Are your joints going to be at 90 degrees?

3 minutes ago, derekcohen said:

The other item to factor in is that the case is 20mm thick and the internal side panel is only 6mm thick. Not only is it insulated, and has two expansions grooves, but it is 40mm narrower than the case side. I doubt it can have much impact. To be safe, I with add a 6mm groove through the centre.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

Yes, I thought about that also, the thinner internal piece will likely lessen the problem. 

21 minutes ago, derekcohen said:

No, I would not try and plane it away. There are expansion grooves at the bottom and top. I am thinking that I might also add a groove through the centre - it will never be seen and it just reduces the surface area some more. What do you think?

Regards from Perth

Derek

I like that idea, didn't even think of it. Could even do 2 grooves if need be, not sure how long the end pieces are. Do you think the vertical grooves will affect smooth drawer movement? If they do I'm sure you can come up with a solution for that as you move forward, and as you said the grooves will be completely hidden.

By separating the internal piece you've likely solved the main problem of the cross grain glue up! Great idea!

Just got back in town, I've been meaning to comment on this.

My vote is maple, curly maple or ambrosia maple. Better yet some Spanky curly ambrosia maple is the best in my book. Here are a few examples;

Cherry with walnut looks pretty darn nice at first, but that look "fades" with time. As the cherry gets darker the walnut gets lighter. Many of my early pieces were these two woods together, and now it's hard to tell them apart. Here are a few examples from a bed I made years ago;

Much better solution for the drawer dividers, getting the grain running with the top and bottom is something you really needed to do. You could have gotten away with the other setup if you just glued the front edge of the dividers and left the rest floating in the dado. Because you are covering the dividers with your drawers you would have been ok (no end grain showing that would look out of place), but you still would have the issue of expansion and possible buckling of the case. I like the change to getting the grain matching the top and bottom of the case. 

I am still concerned long term with your side pieces you glued on to the ends of the case. I know you built in some room for expansion, but I'm worried such a large area glued up cross grain like that may cause other problems. Mainly cracking or splitting of the sides of your case since the sides will not be able to expand horizontally. Also the top and bottom are not restricted like the sides so you'll have differing expansion and contracting going on with the sides and the top and bottom. Early in my woodworking development I've paid dearly for gluing areas cross grain like that. 

Do you think it's possible to plane off those pieces without ruining what you have done so far? Don't mean to be hyper critical, the work you are doing is exquisite, hate to see that kind of workmanship like that suffer in the long run. 

1 hour ago, Chestnut said:

Nothing really. The chairs that initially gave me the design idea are $350 each in cherry. It's not a massive sum but it's expensive compared to the $450 the lumber will cost me.

Well my point is a lot of chairs you buy today are not going to have the joinery you plan to use. Most mass produced chairs are just held together with dowels.

Regardless of their construction, 6 x $325 is $2000, minus your $450 investment saves a decent sum. I know it's not massive but sounds like you have an argument to add a new tool to the shop, or at least buy some more lumber!