Day two of the embellishments class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking with Jeff Headley and Steve Hamilton is now in the books. Today was a virtual potpourri of topics.
I started out by applying more cross-band veneer to my piece. These were strips in between the semi-circular corner elements. This process differed a bit from day 1 in that we were fitting pieces of veneer to a specific opening rather than scribing for the opening from an existing piece of veneer. I did a thorough job of getting my dry joints nice and tight only to find out that veneer really stretches when it comes into contact with water-based glue! This was not an issue, just another part of the process as I learned the technique for slicing the pieces of veneer to create an invisible joint. The interesting part here is that it is actually best to do this in the middle of the srtip rather than at the ends. This way you can overlay the long pieces and get a perfect scarf joint.
After this was completed and while the glue was drying, I moved on to creating a lock escutcheon. This was done with a cardboard template much like the semi-circular corners were done. Thin white cardboard makes a cheap and easily tooled template materials for these kinds of tasks. I layed out the pattern on some thin stock and then drilled two holes and drew in the outline of the remainder of the escutcheon. The escutcheon was cut out on a scroll saw and the bottom edges were undercut with a gouge and hand plane to provide a tight fit when inlayed into the piece. The recess for the escutcheon was done with a small hand held router and a 1/16″ bit. It will be installed slightly proud of the surface and scraped flush.
When the glue on the cross-banding was dry we moved on to edge banding. The rebates for this were done with a sacrificial fenceon the table saw with part of the blade buried in the fence. The top surface was first scribed with a marking guage and then the rebate was created on the table saw. The scribe step eliminated and tear out as long as the cross-band venweer was glued to the surface well. Mine worked out fine. The edge banding was mitered at all four corners. This was done one piece at a time mitering the dry banding with a chisel. Of course the last corner took some additional fitting to obtain a tight joint.
Throughout the day we broke for short lectures on various topics including: bell flower and fan inlay, escutcheon inlay, edge banding and even a couple of unexpected things like door assembly with coped inside corner molds, scratch-stock jigs for cutting flutes/reeds on columns…there was even a quick discussion about doing flared federal-style feet on case pieces.
The weekend went quick but I learned a lot. I’m really looking forward to starting on the Huntboard tomorrow.
Tags: bell flower, crossband veneering, edge banding, embellishments, escutehcon, inlay, Jeff Headley, Marc Adams School, shaded fan
Well, the day finally arrived and after a 9.5 hour drive from New York yesterday, today I started my stint of classes at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I had mentioned in an earlier post that I am doing a weekend class in embellishments leading up to a week long class building the Virginia/Carolina Huntboard. Today was day 1 of the embellishments class with Jeff Headley and Steve Hamilton.
This class is an exploratory of different kinds of mainly Federal-style embellishments. We are creating a mock-.up that ultimately might be a drawer front on a piece. However, we are doing some other things with it that would also be appropriate for a table leg or top. This is all in the spirit of learning and trying different techniques to be used later on our own pieces rather than creating a functional piece during class.
The base material for our piece is a poplar board. Today we veneered one entire face with a light colored Mahogany. Jeff and Steve use Elmers White glue for their veneering work due to the fact that it dries clear and is reversible with water and heat. In fact, that reversibility enters into their technique for adding other features to the piece after the face veneer is applied.
In the pictures (sorry for the blurry one) you can see a bit of what we did today. After the face veneer was clamped for about an hour we cleaned up the bleed-through of glue with a card scraper and scored around the edges in preparation for cross band veneers of a different species. Then the scored areas were coated with water and covered with a wet cloth and a hot iron was used to loosen the veneer. With a sharp chisel we lifted those areas and then re-clamped the piece to dry. You also can see the rounded corners made from a darker Mahogony veneer. These cross banded corners were made from two pieces cut at 45 degrees to keep the grain in a cross-wise orientation as you go around the corner. More cross banding will be put in between the corners all around the piece.
Tomorrow, we”ll be inlaying a small fan and some bell flowers as well as the remainder of the cross-banding and also applying a another stringing/banding all around the edge of the piece. In the interests of time, the fan and bell-flowers were pre-made at a veneer factory. Today we cut them out of larger sheets with a knife. An interesting fact that Jeff mentioned to us was that in the days when this kind of period furniture was being made, there were people who specialized in things like inlay, carving and turning, etc. Furniture makers would often buy their banding, fans, bell-flowers and things like that from those makers for incorporation into their furniture pieces.
I’m having a great time so far and looking forward to more tomorrow. The Marc Adams School is a great place with alot of talented and creative individuals and it certainly gets my woodworking juices flowing! Oh, and did I mention the free ice cream machine in the cafeteria…
Tags: bell flower, crossband veneering, embellishments, inlay, Marc Adams School, shaded fan
Another year has passed and once again it’s time for Woodworkers Safety Week. The idea for this week dedicated to woodworking safety came from Marc Spagnuolo of The Wood Whisperer fame. Each year during this week, many of us who blog about woodworking take time out to share stories and methods highlighting safe practices in the workshop.
With my pending trip to the Marc Adams School of Woodworking, I thought that this year to do my part for Woodworkers Safety Week 2009 I would share a couple of basic safety principles that Marc Adams espouses and that I have followed in my shop for many years.
The 12″ and 3″ Rules
These rules are extremely simple in concept but following them in practice will do a tremendous amount to keep you safe in the shop. Simply stated these rules are as follows:
- The 12″ rule says that you should avoid machining any piece of stock that is that 12″ or less in length.
- The 3″ rule says that you should always keep your hands at least 3″ from any guard on a piece of machinery when using it.
To me any piece that is 12″ or less in length is a potential accident waiting to happen. Whether you want to joint, plane or rip it, if it’s that small you would be well served to find a non-powered way to do so. Here’s why:
- On a jointer, a 12″ piece either on edge or on its face could easily tip into the cutting head and be kicked back. If the piece is kicked back your hands can easily be directed into the cutters with disastrous results.
- On a planer, kickback is rare. However, depending on your planer type, the distance between the pinch rollers on the machine is about 12″. As a result, problems can occur if a piece that is too short is fed into a planer and is in contact with the knives but not restrained by the rollers. Unless you back up the shorter piece with a longer one of equal thickness, it’s best to bring it to desired thickness using another method.
- On the table saw, a 12″ piece can be hard to control when ripping. Because of its size, it may have the tendency to move away from the fence and into the rear of the spinning blade causing a significant potential for kickback.
- Similarly, when crosscutting using the miter saw or table saw, a piece this small is very difficult to control (unless you are just trimming an end) and can put your hands too close to the spinning blade to be safe.
The best way to avoid contact with the blades and cutters on our machinery is to keep our hands at a safe distance. Following the 3″ rule is actually very simple in practice.
- On the jointer always use push blocks between your hands and the stock. Avoid placing your hands directly on the wood so that they will pass over the blades when using the machine. When edge jointing, ride the rear (pushing) hand on top of the wood and along the top of the fence. Move the other (clamping) hand around the blade guard to the outfeed side to maintain clamping pressure against the fence.
- On the planer keep your hands more than 3″ away from the infeed and outfeed sides of the machine.
- On the table saw always use a push stick to rip stock that would cause you to come closer than 3″ from the guard. Similarly, when cross cutting never crosscut short stock that would cause you to violate this rule unless it is safely clamped to the miter guage or cross cut sled.
- On the router table use push sticks or blocks to operate on narrow stock. Feather boards and or auxiliary fences and guards are also helpful to keep your hands away from the spinning cutter.
While there may be rare exceptions when a 12″ piece of stock could be cut without issue (for example on the bandsaw) I rarely find the need to. I can almost always plan my work so that I am working with larger stock.
Obeying these simple rules in the shop has kept me fairly safe and trouble free over many years. So, when that voice in your head tells you that something you’re about to do isn’t safe, don’t do it because it probably ins’t…if you analyze the operation you’ll most likely find that it is probably violating one of these rules!
Tags: safety, Woodworkers Safety Week, woodworking safety, workshop safety
I’ve mentioned before that I’m basically a self-taught woodworker. Lot’s of reading, watching videos and making mistakes have gone into my “training” in the craft. Well, that’s all about to change for the better…
I had been thinking about the possibility of taking a class or two in some facet of woodworking. For years, I’ve procrastinated and never acted on those thoughts. Finally, this year I decided to take the plunge and sign up for a class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I’m going to be there for a weekend class (May 9-10) on Embellishments including stringing, cross-band veneering and other inlaid features. Following that I will be staying on during the following week (May 11-15) for a class building a Virginia/Carolina Sideboard. These classes will be with Jeff Headley and Steve Hamilton. Jeff is a forth-generation cabinetmaker and has written for Fine Woodworking and Steve works with Jeff in his woodworking business building period reproduction furniture. The picture shows Jeff’s version of the Huntboard that I’ll be building. I’m really looking forward to this class for the opportunity to learn some new techniques and to improve my skills – especially in the hand tool area.
As evidenced by my lack of posts on the Sculpted Rocking Chair recently, I’ve been gathering and prepping materials for the Huntboard. So, my progress on the rocking chair will be on hold for a bit while I go off to school. I’ll be back at that project as soon as I get home. Also, I plan on blogging about my time at the Marc Adams School as well as progress during the classes so, keep an eye out here for updates.
Tags: crossband veneering, embellishments, Huntboard, Jeff Headley, Marc Adams School, Steve Hamilton, string inlay
You may be wondering just when does the sculpting of this Sculpted Rocking Chair actually start? The answer is that is starts now!
Well, maybe after a quick commercial interruption…you’ll recall that in the last post I had glued the two perfectly good front legs together with a piece of two inch stock in between them. Well, of course they were not going to stay that way. So, I traced a curve onto the adder piece between the legs and then cut them apart on the band saw. The front legs will be cut and sculpted further at a later stage. Now that that was out of the way, I could turn my attention to the first efforts of sculpting on the chair – shaping the seat.
To start this process, I first layed out the outline of the seat area from my templates. Next, I carefully layed out the locations for some depth holes. I drilled these holes into the seat to help me judge when the sculpting had reached the desired depth. The rear holes were drilled at 3/4″, the center holes at 5/8″ and the two sets of front holes at 1/2″.
To do the rough shaping I used a coarse Kutzall donut-shaped disk in an angle grinder. This disk removed material very quickly and produced copious amounts of dust! However, if careful I was capable of fairly fine work with it. The key was to use slow, steady movements of the grinder in the direction against its rotation. I started the shaping at the rear of the seat, staying about 1/4″ away from my layout lines and gradually working toward the finished depth. When I was about 1/8″ away from the finished depth I moved to the front to work it to a similar level. The center keel of the seat had to be shaped manually as I went along. After I got the entire seat to within about 1/16″ of finished depth, I carefully used the grinder to shape up to my layout lines. The sequence of pictures below shows the process from start to finish.
The next step was to move on to sanding with the random orbit sander. I started this with 60 grit to even out the coarse surface left by the grinder and then moved on to 120 grit. I also used folded sandpaper and my thumb to ride the curved surface along the edge of the shaped seat leaving a crisp line along the top. In the picture, you can see how rough the surface was prior to sanding. A little more layout on the front of the seat, some filing and some sanding and I had contoured the front of the seat to allow the user’s legs to wrap nicely over the front edge of the seat.
In the final pictures you can see the final shaped seat ready to be joined with the legs.
Next up: Shaping the rear legs and arm rests
Tags: angle grinder, Hal Taylor, Sam Maloof, Sculpted Rocking Chair, shaping seat
