Got a chance to go to Barcelona for my birthday and my wife took me to see some Gaudi. I have never been more inspired regarding woodworking. I thought you guys might like some of the pictures:
Making a heavy-duty rolling kitchen island out of 4x4 cedar. Got it glued up and dug out the router sled, and now it's time for beer then some sanding. Shouldn't take too long to put it all together with the Domino... best. joining. tool. ever.
A few people were asking me how I flattened the top of that table top. I used what some people call a "router sled". I took a 2x8 and cut it in half, making 2 rails, then jointed the top edge of each rail to get them perfectly flat. I then screwed a couple of small pieces on the inside that I could rest spacers on. If you look in this pic, you can see what I mean. (The bottom has already been done, and I'd just flipped the piece over and was about to position and clamp it between the rails). Those really are 4x4's, just the double cut on the end I made with my skill saw was off a bit so it looks like a stack of 2x4's. The 4 small spacers you see on each side of the piece are loose, but resting on spacers that are slightly wider than the loose piece. The attached spacers are there to keep an equal space between the piece and the rail (because you need that air gap unless you want to chew up your rails with the router, which I did in a few places anyway), whereas the loose piece that sits on top of it helps to ensure the height of the piece is the same at all 4 corners. What you don't see are the 2 big clamps that would hold the whole thing together, with the loose spacers removed. I tightened things up just enough so that the piece wouldn't slide, then used the deadblow to get the rails to form the plane I wanted, then tightened things down. I built a sled that the router slides side to side in, that rests on those rails, and then you just start routing it side to side and move down the whole piece. Then flip, and do it again on the other side. I then used this bit (in a larger size than is listed): http://www.leevalley.com/us/hardware/page.aspx?p=30177&cat=1,46168,69435,46171&ap=1 It's a 1.5" wide bottom cleaning bit designed for exactly this. Just ran it at the lowest possible speed on the router (it's a BIG bit), and it worked like a champ. It's a common procedure for flattening a bench or large piece of wood, like a slab. This is a good video by the Wood Whisperer, who uses a fancy string technique to get a flat and square plane. Ron Swanson / Nick Offerman has done some incredibly amazing stuff with a really fancy router sled he built, and has been featured in Fine Woodworking. http://www.finewoodworking.com/workshop/video/tour-nick-offermans-workshop.aspx
Here's a close-up of how much I was taking off.. hardly anything, but it would still have been a bit of a workout with a hand plane. As much as I tried to get everything as square and sized as I could with the jointer and thickness planer, it was still out just a little bit... I'm using cheap tools, after all... I think my jointer and thickness planer aren't even $500 combined. There was a little bit of a bow in the piece after the glue-up dried, so this was a great way to flatten it out.
I also find with a jointer, unless you have a really long table, it is really hard to get a perfectly square edge.
Finished the island just now. Opted to finish the top with just mineral oil. I filled in any knots with some CA glue and you can't even tell where they are by touch. Flawlessly smooth top. Then I finished the bottom with some black walnut danish oil and threw 4 full swivel, lockable castors on it.
This is the top that I just hit with 8-10 coats/soakings of mineral oil. That way it's nicely food safe and easy to maintain. What you don't see is the towel bar I put in. Just go some 3/4" hollow steel tube and then blacked it with this stuff: https://www.jaxchemical.com/jaxshop/shopexd.asp?id=64 Then clear coated it and it's now a blackened metal, smooth towel rack. All in all I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, for less than $100 in materials. And it's nice and solid, that's for sure, and easily rolled out onto the deck for BBQ-ing. EDIT: Ignore the shitty floor... this is a rental place, and they put in the cheapest fucking flooring they could find, so normal walking marks it up like that. It's a ski-chalet type place anyway, so it kind of fits, but it's not flooring you'd typically expect to see in a kitchen.
Yeah, there's a cedar mill a half mile from my place... it's stupidly cheap. This stuff was just a bunch of 4x4 landscaping posts that were on sale.
Public service announcement: If there is even the REMOTE chance someone is going to need to take something apart, repair it, improve it, or in any way work on it after you, fucking know what you're doing or get someone who does. I'm doing home renos right now and it took me far too long to install 50 some odd cabinet pulls because the fuckwad before me "guestimated" 3 in centers. For the sake of not fucking up the cabinets any more, I had to use my set of needle files to get the holes straight, and tomorrow I get to go back with wood filler and plug the holes where the jackass measured wrong (the large base of the old pulls covered them up).
Thankfully the large base was an option, fucking up custom cabniets by guessing is bush league shit, I'd be pissed if I were the homeowner.
I recently got a couple of tools I'd wanted for a long time. First is a spokeshave. A friend out in Washington found one for $10 and sent it my way. This is a store brand older tool with a little bit of curve in the blade, and after a few minutes of sharpening work it started peeling curls off test pieces with ease. I am very much looking forward to carving portions of gunstocks with it. Second tool is a 9.5" smoothing plane. I found this in shit shape at a used tooling shop for $10 and took it home to clean up. It is another store brand tool but was likely made by Stanley decades ago. I took it apart, sanded and waxed the handles, scrubbed and oiled all the parts, stoned the bottom flat, and re-sharpened the blade. It isn't quite good as new, but is sharp again and will suit me well. Spoiler: Before and after
For the next 8 months, I'll be on a ship with nothing to read except pleasure books. I'm looking to get into woodworking and want to learn the basics, but all I can do is read, no hands on. Where should I begin looking?
Honestly I wouldn't even mess with books to start. Wait until you're off the boat, think of something you'd like to make then fuck around with some basic tools and cheap lumber. Trial and error, get used to thinking up something in your head, taking a few measurements, then making it happen. It's an amazing feeling to go from an idea to something physical. Your introduction to woodworking needs to be fun otherwise you won't stick with it. And fucking around and building shit is fun as hell. Some basic tools to make the fucking around part a lot easier (aside from the initial hammer, power drill and bits, circular saw, jig saw, sanding block, etc.) : - self-centering tape measure - quick square tool - magnetic nail pouch - chalk line reel - Folding tables make fantastic workbenches - if you have an actual workbench, a woodworking vise will make life a lot easier - folding sawhorses are also great because they're so portable and take up almost no room when not in use - get clamps, whatever you can afford. C-clamps are great as long as you don't tighten them down too much and dent the wood (you can/should always put something between the wood and the clamp to spread the grip weight). Spring clamps are cheaper but can pop off. The best is a bar clamp but those are more expensive. And since you did ask for books even though I woodn't start with them: - here's a good intro based off this guy's workshops/classes - this covers some basic projects and the kindle edition is free - some more projects that look elaborate but are really quite easy once you get the hang of it Woodworking is one of those things where you will be limited by the type of tools you have. But think of it this way: you can buy a shelf off the shelf, or you can buy that router you had your eye on so you can build the shelf yourself. As with many things in life, you get what you pay for by and large. I still use the same C-clamps from a decade ago, even though they have epoxy and paint on parts of them and look like shit. Meanwhile, I went through two different circular saws and three different drills because I was being too much of a cheap ass to buy what I should have gotten the first time around.
$22.95 worth of pressure treated lumber and some deck screws (pocket hole jig for the box frame), and I have a sturdy mofo bench for admiring the fire (read: drinking beer by the fire). I've heard different opinions on this: I want to add a sealant to give it some longer life. For decks and stuff, I have always waited a couple months after to construction to allow some drying and expansion / contraction before sealing. I was told that the pressure treating chemicals keep the wood wet for so long, and the sealant can't penetrate as well, if you do it right away. But, a guy I talked to the other day said to do it right away, because the sealant actual holds the new preservative in better. He said, the with old CCA preservative, waiting was best, but that with the new ACQ preservative, sooner is better.