A couple of weeks ago I read some info about General Finishes new Enduro-Var Urethane Varnish. From the GF website: Enduro-Var is a self crosslinking polyurethane that looks more like an oil varnish than a water coating. It ambers slightly, is our most durable coating, is highly water resistance, and is both sprayable and brushable. It is our top of the line coating and should be used when you need the very best. Suitable for floors, cabinets and millwork.

 

 

 

I started this project in October of 2009. It started as this:

I finally finished it last week. It is all Cherry with the exception of the drawer sides and bottoms which are Pine. I made it for my parents. They wanted something to put their flat-screen TV on that would also store their audio and video components as well as DVD's, books and other stuff. My mother wanted something elegant but not too fancy. This is the design I came up with. They didn't have media cabinets in the mid to late 1700's, but I think that if they had maybe they would have looked something like this. The remote control is RF, so no glass is required in the doors for it to reach the components.

I feel that Cherry is such a beautiful, lustrous wood that I am loathe to apply a stain to it. This piece is finished with a mixture of boiled Linseed oil and varnish - hand rubbed to a satin finish. It has a nice color now and it will only darken and grow more rich over time. Although I use a lot of power tools in my work, I also like to use as many hand tools as I can. Therefore, all of the dovetails were cut by hand.

 

The cord organizer also doubles as a vent to allow some air circulation. The whole thing is easily removed for easy access to the back of the components. One of my pet peeves has always been poor access to the cabling of my AV systems. That shouldn't be a problem here.

 

If you would like more information on this project, I made several blog posts about it at Lumberjocks which you can view here: http://lumberjocks.com/Loogie/blog/series/2115

Although fine woodworking is my passion, there comes a time when SWMBO doles out the honey do's. This spring my wife decided that she HAD to have chickens at the house. When we began to price chicken coops I almost croaked! $1200 and up! So I said what most handy spouses say "No way! I can build that!" I built a small 2' square pine box to use as a brooder when the new 2-day old chicks arrived. They quickly out grew that and moved on to a cardboard wardrobe box. We saw the end in sight for that too. A real coop was needed and sooner rather than later. I spent a little time researching chicken coops online. I found one I really liked and the fit our needs well and reverse engineered it from photo's. It took me two full days of work to build it, but it's done - and the chickens seem pretty happy with their new digs. Now, back to finishing that entertainment center!

Yesterday I flew into Laguardia Airport (LGA) in New York City and was spending the night at our crew hotel right by the airport. We don't have too many flights into LGA so I don't get to stay there very often and most of the time when I do stay there we get in pretty late. However, yesterday we were scheduled to get in at 1pm. Being in NYC that early in the day I knew I had to do something with my day. I immediately thought of paying a visit to the Tools For Working Wood showroom. Joel has mentioned on his blog several times about being located in a warehouse and after doing a little map study on Google Maps I knew it was a pretty industrial neighborhood.

This is a picture of the building at the street address. Not much to see here to indicate that you're in the right place, but I went inside hoping to find a sign. No sign. I had written down the street address and had a print-out of the Google Maps directions, but I knew I was missing a key piece of information. I pulled up the TFWW site on my phone and found that key piece of information - 5th Floor! Up the stairs I went. There are apparently a couple of huge freight elevators I could have used, but I knew the stairs would work. On the 5th floor I finally found a sign. Not a big sign by any means, but a sign none the less (are those bullet holes in the door?).

The "store" is really just a corner of the warehouse space that has some displays set up. Not spiffy at all, but very functional. They have two benches set up, one of which I recognized immediately as the location where a lot of the photos for the website are taken - there's great natural light next to a huge wall of windows.

As you can see the hand tools are all on display and customers are free to try out as many as you see fit. I was particularly interested in seeing the difference between the Ashley Isles Mark 2 bench chisels and the Round Back chisels. I cut two dovetails with the Gramercy dovetail saw and proceeded to chop out the waste using one 3/8" chisel for each. The Mark 2 chisel felt nice and pretty balanced, very similar to the cheap Czechoslovakian bench chisels I have now - which "feel" fine to use but don't hold an edge as long as I would like and have too much of a flat grind on the side of the blades. The Round Back chisel felt very nice to hold by the blade (which is how I hold a chisel when chopping the waste between tails). There was definitely more "feedback" (bending/give) in the Round Back blade than with the Mark 2's when I tried to take a heavy chop - heavier than I would normally execute, but I was testing them. Having said that, I didn't find the "feedback" to be a negative thing - I kind of liked it. I think it would definitely let you know when you need a quick honing of when to re-attack the work. The Mark 2's are marketed as bench chisels and the Round Backs are Dovetailing chisels. As for the flat grind on the side of the blades, the Mark 2 chisel had a very small flat area - probably only 1/32-3/64's. The flat on the Round Back was even slightly smaller still. I wasn't completely convinced one way or another. But I'm leaning towards the Round Backs. We'll see. I think these chisels are a good value for the price. I would probably order the 1/8"-1" set of six for $166, but they are out of stock right now. One additional thing that really like about the Round Backs is that they do not get taller (profile view) as you get closed to the handle like bench chisels do. That means that if you need to pare between two tails and you can fit the chisel though the gap, it will go all the way to the bottom of the tail. I also means that they won't get taller with higher sides as you sharpen them - which is nice.

I also spent a bit of time with Joel Moskowitz chatting about tools, woodworking and life in general. It was a nice visit. If you are into woodworking(and you probably are if you're still reading this) then I would recommend you stop by to try out the tools if you're in the vicinity. Just be prepared for a little bit of a treasure hunt to find the place.

I found myself in Oklahoma City this afternoon and decided to walk up to the memorial. What a great memorial it is. The museum is particularly well done. I definitely recommend that you make the time to see it if you are ever in Oklahoma City.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre

(download)

Click here to download:

Oklahoma_City_Memorial.zip (2.16 MB)

The left side of this board was handplaned smooth and the lightly scraped, the right side was sanded through 320 grit. You can see that the finish is more easily absorbed by the handplaned side. More absorbtion=more protection.

It was a fine day for horse racing at Shawan Downs today!

I'm Pretty sure it's on Fine Woodworking Mag's free site.

http://www.finewoodworking.com/SkillsAndTechniques/SkillsAndTechniquesArticle.aspx?id=30007

In this job every so often things fall into place that allow you to do cool things on the cheap. Today was one of those days. My last flight got into PVD at 1:00pm which is much earlier than usual and left plenty of time for an excursion. The weather was forecast to be nice so I lined up a rental car and hit the ground running.
When I was at WIA one of the seminars I took was "Early American Furniture: Anatomy of a Masterpiece" with Jeffrey Greene. Well, it turns out that Jeffrey Greenes retail shop The Ball and Claw is in downtown Newport, so naturally that had to be the first stop.

I should add that while I was at WIA I talked to Jeff about stopping by to see his shop if/when I got a chance to go to Newport and he said "Sure, just give me a call before you come out." Unfortunately I had no idea it would be this soon and I forgot to get his contact info. I explained the situation to the kind lady at his retail establishment, but she said she had no way to get a hold of him. I guess that just means I'll have to make another trip to Newport to see his working shop at some point in the future.

After having listened to Jeff's lecture I was eager to examine his masterpieces. I was not disappointed. Here are a few quick quotes from his pamphlet in the store "His expertise is in creating historically accurate replicas of important original pieces in museums and private collections." and "Greene has been authorized exclusively to replicate furniture in the collections of : The Newport Historical Society (which now owns all the historic mansions in Newport), The Rhode Island Historical Society and The Newport Restoration Foundation." The first piece that really caught my eye was a Highboy.

I've been studying furniture design and construction for years, but this was the first time that I'd been able to truly examine a period replica that I knew had been made true to the original in every way. The craftsmanship was amazing. Knowing that Jeff works in his shop alone and builds these pieces with period tools and techniques makes it even more amazing to me. I picked up Jeff's book American Furniture of the 18th Century: History, Technique, Structure at WIA, but I've only made it through chapter one so far. Most of the construction was exactly as I expected base on my previous readings. The one detail that stood out to me was the drawer construction. The drawers were all dovetailed with half blinds at the front and throughs at the back as you would expect and the bottoms were solid raised panels, but it appeared to me that the raised panel drawer bottoms actually came all the way through the drawer sides (I can't believe I didn't get a picture of this!). Kind of like a really wide through tenon - looking at the end grain of the drawer bottom panel (about 3/16's thick there) with about 1/2" of draw side below that - the drawer sides appeared to be about 1/2" thick as well. That was something I've never seen before. It would seem as though this setup would significantly weaken the drawer side unless the whole thing was glued up, but it would be a cross-grain glue joint as well. I don't know. I'll have to look it up in the book when I get home for sure!

The second piece I gravitated to was a Tiger Maple Flat-top Highboy.

I love this piece! On this piece I only examined the small drawers at the bottom. Similar construction to drawers above except that these drawer bottoms were just flat panels that were nailed onto the bottoms of the drawers. I believe this is an earlier piece - hence the more rudamentary drawer construction, but that is complete conjecture on my part.

I also took a look at a beautiful table.

I particularly liked the proportions of this table and the exquisite Queen Anne cabriole legs.

I have to thank the shop attendant for letting me remove drawers and take pictures of the pieces so I could share Jeff's wonderful work with you all.

Of course I couldn't visit Newport without also stopping by to the The Breakers

The Breakers is an amazing place. Pure opulence. What amazed me most was that the entire thing was built in less than two years! It's definitely not my style but it was still very interesting and I look forward to going back to tour more of the Mansions at a later date.