Bmac

4 hours ago, jgt1942 said:

I just found this post and LOVE it! What a beautiful piece of work. 

BMAC, MUCH thanks for the EXCELLENT post!

I'm getting ready to build my first two chairs for two granddaughters. Because I've never built one I was going to first build one from scrap 2x4s and hopefully make all of my mistakes there. I've been watching a video by Scott Morrison and IMHO your post is as good or better.

Because the girls are small I've decided to reduce the plans to 75% of the original size. I did this in CorelDraw with a plug-in. I've printed the new plans, taped all the sheets together, pasted them on 1/4" BB plywood, cut them out. I've preped the wood. I'm at the point where I'm ready to mark with the templates.

Thanks for the kind words. Doing these rockers are a real pleasure, hope you experience that in your build. Would love to see pics of your project too. Project journals are my favorite part of this forum and I've become a better woodworker by posting my work!

I'm not a turner so the advice I'll give should be taken with that understanding. 

First seal the ends and select the larger rounds with straight grain, avoiding knots. I would then split in half, down the pith, if you don't split them you will get radial cracking. From there you could store them in a garbage with or without wet sawdust. You could also turn some rough bowls or whatever while wet and then dry them slowly.

As for the 8" elm, that's pretty small, but again you could split the larger pieces down the pith and try to use.

I've taken pieces like this and carved bowls out of the 1/2 rounds while wet, pleasure to carve wet wood. It's a pleasure to turn wet wood (so I hear).

Dang, that's good!

9 hours ago, Woodenskye said:

Nice work!  What woods did you use in both of these?

The smaller box is Curly Hard Maple, left over from my rocker build last year. 

The other box is Norway Maple with a Black Walnut lid. 

2 hours ago, Hammer5573 said:

I recently obtained a large amount of white oak and ash. I want to minimize the cracking that occurs on the ends and I remember seeing posts about different products that are designed for this. Can anyone recommend a good product..?

Was the wood already dry? If the wood is dry it's not nearly as critical to seal the ends. 

When wood is wet, end checking begins almost immediately, I always seal my logs within hours of dropping the trees. So if the wood is in the process of drying sealing the ends now will likely not prevent cracking.

As for products to seal the ends, latex paint is not nearly as effective as anchorseal. 

Nice job as usual, gotta love that butternut.

4 hours ago, Chet said:

Great job again Dave.

Boxes are going to be my go to project I guess.   My wife says the house is getting kind of full of my furniture projects so I guess I need to down size my thinking.

Chet, surely she’ll allow a Maloof Rocker!

A real classy piece, great design and super job pulling it off. Absolutely love the figure you got on that top, WOW. That will go real nicely with your Roorkee Chair.

I used it for my outfeed table for the tablesaw, like you were thinking and it worked out great. I like that it's surface is slick and boards slide right over it. I also do most of my glueups on that table, very easy to clean up any glue drips after the fact. 

Jigs are another great use along with shelving. 

Great explaination Tom, it sounds like I sharpen it very similar to you. While milling I stop and sharpen every few tanks regardless, and i really keep an eye on my rakers (depth gauge). I set my rakers based off the wood I'm milling, bigger bites in soft woods, smaller in harder woods.

@Coop, the explaination really is longer than the doing. If you watch someone sharpen a chain correctly it is not that complicated, but the little nuances Tom is explaining mean everything.

@Tom King , what scored that piston, the fatal event? It wasn't clear to me in your post. I've had that happen to one of my 660s last winter.

Is your carcass glued up? If not you could possibly do it with a dowel, 1/2” size. Drill your hole through the bottom shelf into the leg, doing your best to drill at the angle the leg sits. You’ll need to do this with the bottom sitting on the legs with the legs in the correct position, drill through shelf and into the leg. 
To help with stability, clamp the bottom shelf to your workbench with the legs in position between the shelf and the workbench, the clamping pressure should be enough to stabilize the legs for the drilling procedure. It might be a little hairy but it should work.

Yes, a domino could be used here too, but if you don’t have one it doesn’t help. 
 

I would also consider in addition to the dowel a brace glued in place under the cabinet and on the part of the leg the is not visible. 

I'll make a note and take/post some pics. Keep an eye out for them!

On 4/28/2020 at 10:46 AM, derekcohen said:

If you are starting down the path of dovetailing, get the Veritas 14 ppi dovetail saw. This is a comfortable saw to use, and the teeth are sharpened at a 14 degree rake. This makes it one of the easiest dovetail saws to start. It is a little slower to cut, but overall offers the novice the most control.

If you are reasonably practiced, get the Lie Nielsen. This is 15 tpi, but the teeth have around 2-3 degrees of rake. This makes the saw cut fast, but significantly harder to start the cut. As a result, there is less control at this stage than the Veritas if unpracticed with such saws.

If you are advanced, get the Gramercy dovetail saw. This is a saw that must be held with the lightest grip, which forces you to let the saw do the work. You need experience to loosen your grip like this. However, it will reward with a smooth, controlled action.

Regards from Perth

Derek

I agree with Derek, I started with the veritas (which I found adequate) and on his recommendation bought the Gramercy saw. It did take awhile to get used to it, harder to start, but once comfortable with the saw it is a pleasure.

Yes, you will like them, may like them so much you buy more. The light weight is such an advantage as I stated before!

Don’t know, not a real ash fan. With me not working I might need to save my pennies for that maple log 

But it would be cool to make a curly ash baseball bat

@pkinneb, Yes, I have been very pleased with the Dubuque clamps, strong and very durable. Love the fact that they are so light compared to pipe clamps!

In the end having different styles of clamps let you do more. I would recommend getting different styles and different lengths. The quick grips have their place, but you definitely don't want to spend the price for these in larger sizes. I mostly use the quick grip style to clamp stuff down to the workbench. 

My main clamps are aluminum bar clamps. These are not too expensive, they are light, and do great for most simple clamping jobs and excel at gluing up panels. Pipe clamps basically do the same job, but I much prefer the much lighter aluminum. Size wise the 24" clamps do most jobs. These aluminum bar clamps have served me for many many years. 

My second most used clamp are the F style clamp, these too can be gotten pretty inexpensively and some guys have already posted a few sources at good prices. I'd get a bunch of these at smaller sizes, say 8", and a few at larger sizes. These larger F style clamps (I have four at 36") come in pretty handy for some clamping situations. 

My next clamp I use, but not nearly as often as the ones above, are the parallel style clamp. These are great clamps and I should use them more but they are more expensive and I only have a handful of them. These do have a great large clamping area and great clamping pressure. Biggest problem I have with these is it's often easier to just grab the lighter aluminum bar clamps. 

Super Job! Awesome result on a challenging project.

3 hours ago, Spanky said:

#1 for this spring for my wife. #2 for you. #3 for Coop. #0 for the crybaby. 

I got to start building more stuff then!

So I'm losing track, how many curly maple logs are you going to mill? 

18 hours ago, Chet said:

Would a vacuum bag work for glue up's of this nature?  I know you would need a long bag but it might solve the clamp shortage.

Well I'm not sure, never used a vacuum bag but this is a cumbersome thing. Also the pieces/strips for the sides often need positioning after each sucessive clamp placement. So I may have a 5 ft strip, glue is applied to the strip, clamped in position at one end, other clamps to be used are lined up ready to go, next clamp placed, strip positioned, clamp snugged down. So on and so on, some strips may need 20 clamps. Often I'm bending the strip in 2 directions, around the board and to follow the sweep or curve of the board. 

If a vacumm bag could be used I like the idea of even uniform pressure from all directions that is offers.