Tag: Woodworking

November 29, 2023 – My Newest Woodworking Project

November 29, 2023 /

I haven’t even brought this up, but I have quietly working on another sofa table. My wife wanted to steal the one I made for my office the minute I brought it into the house. I promised that I would make her one and I finally got around to it. It had to come after the summer projects but we are now into the shop time of year.

As a very infrequent woodworker, I am lucky if I get one project done let alone the chance to duplicate a project I have already done once. This was an opportunity to really see if the reason it took so long to build the first one was my problem or it was really that difficult. I knew the answer, but I still wanted to see how fast I could do it. This picture was two weeks after I had drawn up the plans.

As it stands in this picture, this is about 20 hours of work. This includes drawing the design out on graph paper and picking out the boards from the stack. So, it is definitely my problem. I find myself falling into the trap that I don’t have time to do this or that and so things drag on months and months. When I am most productive, I say to myself either ‘I have to get this done today’ or ‘I have thirty minutes, how far can I go?’.

Back when we lived in South Carolina, my wife wanted a mantel built by Christmas. It was about 4AM Christmas day that I finished. I really don’t recommend that kind of effort unless this is your career or have nothing better to do in life but other’s having deadlines is also a good way to not end up flaking out on a project either.

I did have some help on this one that I didn’t have before. I used the taper jig that I built for the first table and I have about the same height of legs. Instead of chiseling out the mortises by hand, I just cut them with the router this time. The first time, I wanted desperately to prove to myself that I had the knowledge to do fine woodworking. This time, I took the pragmatic approach that I had nothing to prove and that was a much faster way to do things. Practicing is a sure way to do things much faster than the first time.

I almost used pocket screws instead of mortise and tenon joinery. That would have knocked at least four hours off of my time. I didn’t think the joinery was actually necessary but I thought that the practice would be good for me. I also think in the end, it made a better final product. By better I mean that the joinery was more likely to stand the test of time then screws. Everyone that has ever had Ikea furniture knows that the first move is when things start to go south in the durability department.

At first my wife was wanting different legs and I thought that I was going to get an opportunity to buy a wood lathe. As much as I would have loved to add that to my tool collection and skills, I convinced her that duplicating the shaker style legs I used on my first table was the fastest way to get this project done. I have other things in the queue besides this table, not to mention my long anticipated wine cellar.

End Your Programming Routine: My Toolbox Fallacy is real. ‘I can’t do this, until I do/get that’. Sometimes I figure out that I bought stain in a color that I already have or I already have the sandpaper. Then I figure out that the thing I was using as my excuse to not do something was there all along and I really had no reason not to work on projects. I am happy with the results and I feel even better that I learned things that really helped me with this table. On to the next project.

March 15, 2023 – My Old Enemy… Time

March 15, 2023 /

I suppose this is somewhat of a project update and some sort of analysis. When starting this project, literally months ago I had scoped it to be done by the end of January. I knew that I was going to be travelling in February but now it is getting to the middle of March and I am not done yet.

Now, am I actively working on the project? Yes I am currently in the glue up portion where I am gluing the aprons and the legs together. This means that I am very close to final assembly and finish. This means that the project will be done. However, this is my last week this month so it is likely that this will now run into April.

When I estimated the project at the beginning of the year I guessed that it would take 100 hours for this project. I am not sure that I have spent much more time than that but I think where I went wrong was 100 hours over a month would be 25 hours a week. And that is not really realistic. I am probably logging 4-6 hours a week.

Extrapolate 100/5 would be 20 weeks. That is five months and by that math and hypothetically I am actually ahead of my estimate. However, I borrowed an old crutch of hope, that was wrong. I hoped that my work would accelerate as it often does when I get into things but hope is not a plan.

I am enjoying the work and I do believe that it will be worth the effort. So, I am not necessarily wishing it to be over but I am certainly looking forward to moving my stereo system into my office. To that end, I am also looking forward to getting my rain barrel setup as my next project.

While it is not my first, fine woodworking project I would consider myself a novice at it. My mortises and tenons were rough. with loose fit for some. My chisels sometimes were dull, causing some of that roughness. This was my first tapered legs that I have made. I learned some things from the experience for sure.

I guess that you could boil all this down to using realistic expectations. If I had just used my brain rather than hoping I could do this, I would have set clearer expectations and by proxy wouldn’t be disappointed by my results. I knew better.

End Your Programming Routine: It’s like I always say, fifteen minutes a day is still almost two hours a week. This is another trap that I sometimes fall into. Ultimately, I am committed so it will be what it will be. And, it truly wont be that long until I am done, I am just lamenting that we are coming into April and I wanted this done at the beginning of February.

February 1, 2023 – Making a Taper Gauge

February 1, 2023 /

I am slowly getting there. I suppose that I lost a little momentum over the holidays and it is taking a minute to get back there, but it is happening and I mean my sofa table project. Last weekend, I got to the point that I was ready to cut my legs. So that is what I am going to write about today.

First, I am going to start at the beginning. What am I doing? I am making what is called a Shaker styled leg. That means that it is tapered from the bottom to the top and those tapers will be on the inside edges. The outside two faces remain square.

The Shakers were a religious movement around the early 1800s as part of the great awakenings of that period. Shaker’s were know for their simplistic styles in efforts to maintain focus on worship. This has translated as furniture that lacks the adornment and decadence of the Victorian designs (they go by other names in the furniture/art/history circles).

So, I needed to taper some legs. I looked at buying some fixtures to do a generic version of this, but I soon settled on the fact that I would build my own purpose built ones. I had all of the materials, so let’s see how it went.

The first two things you need are a base and a fence. I chose a piece of plywood that will act as a sled against the saw fence as the base. The fixture fence was a piece 2×6 that I salvaged from my facia project this summer. That I send through the joiner to get a flat bottom and edge that I want to cut against.

Both the top and back of the fixture fence do not have to be perfect. The back for obvious reasons. On the top, I will mount some adjustable clamps. Because I can adjust for tightness, the top does not necessarily have to be square.

Measure and mark your taper on the base. When you figure that out, you can attach the fixture fence and base together. Counter sink the screws so that everything rides properly with the fixture.

I used some short mending plates to act as a stop for the front edge of the fixture. That way, as I push against the piece, the pressure will keep my workpiece tight against the fixture. My only other piece of advice here is keep metal away from the blade and make sure that the stop is placed low enough to contact your final dimensions. The clamps I placed roughly in equal thirds for distributed downward clamping pressure.

Amateur Tip #1 – The fixture fence should be as tall or taller than the workpiece thickness. Mine was shorter which meant that the clamps didn’t fully lock in place when adjusted to the minimum height. This is part safety and part quality. Had I have known, I could cut a fatter piece from my 2×6 and mounted it on edge

Amateur Tip #2 – After cutting the first face, save the off cut. Reattach the off cut to the main part with tape to maintain a flat (ish) surface for the second cut. If you can get away with rotating the cut edge to the top, then this wont be necessary. I picked the two faces that I wanted to remove and sometimes the first cut face needed to be facing down against the sled to get my taper on the proper side.

All in all, I am very happy with my first attempt. Part of this process is actually getting the proportions correct. I drew them to scale and the looked alright there. I think that they looked pretty good in the real world too. My next step is cutting mortises and tenons for the base. And that is another day.

End Your Programming Routine: There were a few things that I would change. Like for instance, I didn’t verify that my base was square, which is wasn’t. Consequently, my taper was a little more aggressive than I planned. But, that is OK. Experts would say that someone without experience should run test pieces or mockups. That’s great advice for commissions or expensive woods. In this case, my whole project is training. Live an learn, but I am happy with my first shaker legs.

January 4, 2023 – Take Your Saw Blades To the Dentist

January 4, 2023 /

You know, I suppose that I am lucky. I go to the dentist twice a year. One time I was talking to my dentist and he said that some people have teeth so bad that they have to come in once a month for cleaning. Whatever the chemistry or the diet or the personal habits are, there is enough build-up necessary to have a cleaning session.

A lot of times, your saw blades have the same problem. The quality of the cut is not necessarily the sharpness of the blade, but the build-up of the sap/pitch/crud on the teeth. Not only does that build-up effect the quality of the cut but it also effects the quality of the blade. Meaning, the harder the metal has to work the more heat build-up there is and the more likely dullness and or damage will occur.

Just like the dentist, I brush my teeth, then I scrape them using something like an X-acto knife and then I brush them again. My picture above is after brushing them once. First, I spray on some simple green. I have the blade in a very cheap automotive fluids pan to contain everything and let them soak for 15 minutes. Then I use a bronze bristle brush like you would find in the gun cleaning section of the store.

When to to this is usually visually apparent. You can see the build-up on the saw blade. Now, I am as lazy as anyone else. I don’t like doing this and it takes away from my productive shop time. So, I make the decision on a task by task basis. If I am cutting construction lumber, then I don’t really care so much about cut quality, but on my woodworking projects, I do care about the finish cuts.

All that being said, I would also be more diligent depending on the quality of the blade. The one pictured is a $40 blade today ($30 at the time I bought it). I suppose that this is nothing to sneeze at but there are much more expensive blades. It is a decent quality blade and cut, but in the end these are consumables.

And with all of that, I am not manic about it. I spend thirty minutes doing the major cleaning and maintenance and then I move on. It doesn’t look like it came out of the box but it works much better than before I cleaned it.

Before I scare anyone off, the frequency of cleaning has a lot to do with what you are cutting. I tend to cut mostly fir, hemlock, cedar and spruce. These are high resin woods where the buildup happens immediately. Working with the American hardwoods like oak, maple, walnut and others the pitch buildup will be significantly less. My air dried fir has hidden pitch pockets that are still liquid so it doesn’t take long to coat everything in pitch (including my fingers).

Up until this point I have been referring to circular saw blades. Band saw blades are effected even more from buildup. When I am re-sawing boards, it is nearly impossible to get a straight cut when the blade is not clean. I do the same process, I just leave the blade on the saw when I do it.

There is probably a lot more to say on the topic of saw blades in general but I wanted to focus on cleaning them today. There are specific products for this job on the market, but Simple Green (or generic substitute) works just fine for me. That being said, I have never tried them so they may work better than what I am doing. There are other products that are meant prevent the problem in the first place. Think of it like Pam for your tools. I worry about that stuff effecting the finish that I eventually put on the wood.

End Your Programming Routine: If you are struggling with quality cuts, take a look at your blade. You might be amazed at what a difference a cleaning will make on the final outcome. You also might need a more appropriate blade for your task, so try cleaning first, then replace if results are not desirable.

December 5, 2022 – A Podcast About Nothing

December 5, 2022 /

It is sometimes the little things that move us from one thing to another. I walk through Black Friday to spending some time in the shop. I started work on my sofa table to ultimately hold my Hi-Fi system. This is the final piece in my office setup, but it is a big one.

End Your Programming Routine: Ultimately, we will see if I am right or feel the same way later in life. There a lot of philosophical choices I discuss in this episode. My biggest thing to battle is going to be maintaining progress. Unfortunately, this is a difficult time of year to really do that But, I need to keep pushing every day/week even if it is only 30 minutes a day.

May 25, 2022 – I Don’t Need Another Project

May 25, 2022 /

I am mulling around an idea (I will get to in a minute). I have talked about how we are paying to have our fence replaced. We have signed the contract and put down half of the money. I think it is going to be another month or so before it actually happens.

Switching gears for a minute, we were at our wine pick-up last weekend and sitting in some plastic Adirondack chairs enjoying the weather, music and some samples. We had one (or two chairs) of our own that lasted about a year. I think they came from Dollar General and the sun will destroy that cheap plastic. The chair broke and it went to the landfill.

My wife was talking about how she likes the wooden ones, but that they were expensive. That got my mind working. If I salvaged some of the fence boards, I would have a good start on material to build my own chairs. Ideally, I would be selective and take the best ones. But this all depends…

The whole deal includes tearing down the old fence. If this happens while we are home, then of course I don’t think they will mind me taking some of the waste (and picking my boards). If it happens while we are in Spain, I may miss the boat on this whole thing.

The truth is, I would like to do some test work and see if the boards can even be salvaged, but, I don’t want to tear the fence down to do so. I think I can run them through the planer and resize and they would be fine for making plenty of chairs. I do have some reservations however.

Looking at the fence, none of the boards are clear (knot free). Some of them are pretty rough. I suspect that there is going to be a high degree of waste due to wood failure or brittleness and deep weather wear. But, I won’t know that until I do some test work.

The other thing I am not sure of is they are cedar. Depending on the grain pattern, cedar can be rough. So, I am concerned about the possible splinter factor. Some species can have pretty tight grain patterns but I think this fence started out rough sawn which make me think that there is a smaller probability that these boards will make good chairs. Once again, I would like to investigate.

As woodworking projects go, this is a pretty simple one. I would guess that I can knock out a chair in a couple of hours. It means that whatever plans I have wouldn’t be derailed significantly to build a couple of chairs. I am thinking that I would use a semi-transparent stain as well. This project will require some new wood as the structural pieces and I would like to blend the overall look to something more uniform.

I suppose the other option is that I could laminate pieces to make thicker stock, but again this would be another experiment. I am not a huge fan of glues and outdoor exposure, but it would be an option and require less new material. Maybe I will selectively remove a couple of boards to check for viability before I commit to this.

End Your Programming Routine: I hate the idea that all of this wood will simply go to the landfill. I would rather see it turned into firewood rather than simply hauled off to the dump. The real problem is that time is money. Nobody from a job perspective has time to break all the panels down, pull the nails and stack it, cut it, store it and market it or even give it away. To top it off, cedar is not the best firewood by a long shot. That being said, if I can efficiently use it that would be my preference.

November 24, 2020 – Mantel Project is Complete, More Have to Want it

November 24, 2020 /

I finished my mantel project on Sunday. I kind of fell off of keeping track of my hours and I definitely didn’t hit my target date. I suppose if you are keeping up with the theme, I didn’t really want to.


I had other things that I would rather do. I had bids that I needed to get out. I had interviews to attend, I had blogging I wanted to do. I had other things that I had to do like hanging light fixtures, moving furniture for new carpet and assembling new furniture.

As with all projects, I ran into some things that didn’t go exactly as I expected. I was going to use a special router bit to make the 45 degree miter stronger, but I found the setup to be way too fussy without a proper router table. I also found that the air dried fir was too brittle to precision route an touchy joint. Those kind of derailments made me pause for a new strategy and that kind of pause put the brakes on momentum of the project.

To be truthful, I am looking more forward to the table that I am going to build next. I built this one first to get it done because the next project is going to be significantly bigger. I will need to do some more planning to get a more accurate estimate of how long things are going to take. One thing for sure is that I am not going to have the kind of time that I had previously.

With the holidays approaching, there is always significantly less free time. I also took a seasonal job delivering for Amazon. I may be working four to six days a week doing that for now. I think it will allow time to keep looking for a replacement job and writing but there is only so much time in a day and week for doing projects.

This is a job that I wanted. Don’t get me wrong, it is my lowest, post college degree paying job by a long shot. But, it is a four ten hour shift a week, turn it off when you clock out kind of gig. It is going to bring in some money consistently and there are worse jobs for less money out there. Believe me, I have been looking.

I have always thought that I would be interested in a job driving. I can download my playlist, listen to my podcasts and get paid to do so. I will talk more about my experience later, but I am thinking that this could be fun for a while.

If you were to ask me what my favorite job was, I would tell you that it was when I was a student janitor my senior year in college. Many people could find the downside in being a janitor, but I actually liked it, a lot. Beside the obvious benefit of getting some spending money, it forced me to budget my time effectively because I worked every week night. The best part was getting away from my complicated cerebral calculus and high level science projects and spend three hours a day sweeping, mopping and doing event setup. I lost twenty pounds, stayed focused and got paid.

I am hoping that this job will be a motivator with some of the same side benefits. In the mean time, I still have some days to do my own business if I get any or work on projects.

October 26, 2020 – A little more about project planning, with an actual plan

October 26, 2020 /

Sometimes when I write, I don’t have a solid end goal in mind. I am writing against the clock to get my content generated so that I can move on to the next thing. I really wanted to get an example plan made up so that I could show it in action, but I didn’t want to spend the time I needed to make the plan, craft a well written article and also get some other work done.

Maybe it would be better to hold off and write something more comprehensive. But, the way I am working now, I am looking for not letting perfect be the enemy of the good. So, today I have created the plan for my mantel project and I can talk about how I use it.

On Friday, I introduced the concept of work segments (or units as I have written above). Remember that those are the blocks of time that you have to complete a particular task, or tasks that have a natural ending. So, I have broken my tasks down to what I think I can accomplish on a given date (assuming no interruptions) with no more than four hours a day. If I treat each unit as a work day and my work days are Monday through Friday, then I would in theory be completed with this project on November 4.

I want to say a little more about planning. In my past, my experience and expectations as a project manager was to over plan (in my opinion). If you look at my plan carefully, you will see that there are still decisions to be made. That means that my end date could very well slip because I didn’t build any extra time for ordering bits, testing colors or making mistakes cutting parts. I am very close to margins on my whole lumber bill of material which means I may have to mill up more lumber to finish this project. The truth is, I should have done some of this planning before I started cutting and now I am hoping to make it work.

Wouldn’t then over planning play into my benefit? Well, maybe; the devil is in the details. In my opinion, the best plan is detailed enough to guide your work yet broad enough to have room for unanticipated elements or decisions that have yet to be made. I also feel like too much detail leads to rigidity causing too much time fiddling with the plan instead of working. I actually made this plan more detailed that I would normally to illustrate how the pieces should work together and the consequences of how one thing might effect the other.

If this project was a job, once my project roadmap is set, then I would just get started. I wouldn’t spend any more time adjusting mid-stream unless there is a change in scope for some reason like this changes from a mantel to a whole fireplace surround. Once the bid is confirmed, then there is nothing really to do except document the hours and cost against the plan. There is probably another article about dealing with change some time in the future. I don’t see it on this project, but if the opportunity arises, I will write about it then.

This plan is really for my me and my wife, this is her project and she is the customer. I do use this process but the main reason that I put it together is so that I have a way to communicate where I am at on the project, what is left to do, any expenses that may occur and when she can expect that I will be done. She does not get into the technical details of how things get done or what tool/technique should be used, but she does understand time. Each decision of the day potentially has a compromise on the schedule. It means that to get this finished, time has to be allocated in the shop in addition to my other business dealings and family life. I also have a much larger project, the farm table waiting for this to get done.

When it comes down to it, there is no real deadline for this project. But as I said on Friday, without deadlines things tend to slip and this might get put aside for months. If this were a job, I would want to add travel time to get materials, planning time, billing time and build more time into the schedule to account for unknown. That would then go into my estimate for my bid.

I am going to keep track of my hours for my own business purposes because I have largely done woodworking as a hobby, but I would like to have in my pocket the effort of a custom mantel. I would also mention that I have the material already so there is no cost there. All in all, this is probably a $2000 project for a paying customer.

October 23, 2020 – Planning for the end and success

October 23, 2020 /

If you are like me, then you then you tend to prioritize the things that you want to do over the things that you don’t want to do. Or maybe said a better way, I deprioritize the things that I don’t really want to do and find lots of reasons to not do them. This has lead to projects literally sitting around in the shop for years.

Sometimes, when these projects are personal you want to get away from rigidity, accountability and structure. It is OK not to proceed with a plan because that is part of the escapism or hobby aspect. Other times, even when the project is personal the shop space is used for business purposes and having partial built projects is going to be in the way.

Today, I am going to talk about building a project plan to get things accomplished in your life. These are the techniques that are working for me.

  • Visualize the End State

This probably seems self explanatory, however you need to know what the end state looks like. What is this job going to create, look like, function or how is this going to benefit me? It helps to have an end in mind when starting a project. Without a definable benefit, I would question that there is value to this project.

For wood working projects, I like to sketch out what I think the end state is going to look like. This helps me select the right lumber I am going to need and keep track of the sequencing as I work through the sub steps.

  • Be Realistic About Your Tools, Space, Skills and Available Time

For me, the biggest gotcha here was not looking at the overall time commitment and just starting on something without regard to how long a project was going to take or even whether this was a priority. I would suggest, look at your schedule and determine what available blocks of time do you have consistently. A 1000 hour project is a lot of nights and weekends.

The reason this step is important and in this order is that later, when you are determining your work segments, you are planning to make success within the time that is available. Let me try to be a little more clear. If you only have one hour a day available, your tasks need to broken down to the point that you can succeed within an hour every day.

  • Create Work Segments That Fit Your Available Time

If you only have one hour a day to work on a project, then your planning needs to be to that level. Since I am probably largely going to work on this project as part of working time, I won’t have that short of constraint. I will use it as an example.

  1. 4hrs – Rough Mill lumber 4x 6″x72″

or

  1. 1hr – Find the rough boards in the lumber pile that will yield 6″x72″
  2. 1hr – Rough cut four boards 6″x72″
  3. 1hr – Joint the four rough cut boards
  4. 1hr – Plane the four rough cut boards
  • Create Your Own Deadlines Using Your Work Segments

You can add up all the job parts and put them on a calendar. That will essentially give you a project time line for completion. Just remember that life is here, I don’t live on an island. I don’t have the luxury of every weeknight and all weekend all the time. I suspect that most people don’t either, so don’t build that in to your plan.

Do also build some extra time into each task if possible to correct mistakes. Unless you are an expert (in which case you probably don’t need this help) you are going to have some things to correct. This is time that can be used to jump ahead in the plan if everything goes well.

I know that once I get things planned, I now want to meet or exceed my own deadlines. That is OK. The point of this whole exercise is to get things done and feel good about it.

  • Socialize Your Plan for Personal Accountability

It is pretty easy to do all the previous steps and still not get things done. You have to be on edge a little bit about whether you are going to succeed to keep you engaged. A spouse pushing is a pretty big motivator, but a social media post or a friend could also work.

  • Keep Track of Your Progress for Future Use

Maybe you just guessed at how long something would take and you were badly wrong. You would want to account for that next time. There is also a piece where experience and familiarity can speed things up so it is helpful to keep track of progress for better future estimating.

There you go, you have just project managed your first project. That is all there is to it. I have used this technique to get un-stuck on projects very successfully. It is also a similar mindset to building estimates for my business.

October 21, 2020 – New project beginning

October 21, 2020 /

I have to say that I have been struggling a bit today. I know what I want to write about tomorrow, but today is a challenge. My mind is elsewhere, I don’t really want to be in front of the computer and I suspect that it has to do with some recent job rejections.

About a month ago now, my wife asked me to prioritize some build projects. One was a mantel over the fireplace and the other was a farm table. At that time, I had several concurrent jobs as well as a drywall repair job upstairs where the table is part of the whole scheme. That means now is the soonest I could get started.

I think that the mantel is going to be relatively simple. So that is the project that I should start on first. I am posting a picture of the table inspiration below.

Going out on a limb here, but with constant effort, I should be able to do this in less than a month, including two benches with the table and the mantel. Part of my previous issues included not spending dedicated time on the project. Well, that shouldn’t happen if I am spending my time building a business and partially working (plus my wife wants them).

Now you know the push of the next month’s worth of posts. Unless I score a big job, you can expect more problems and commentary about wood, maybe some tool reviews if I have to buy anything new for this project.

Alright. Now I have shaken the cobwebs out, it is time to wrap this up and get to work. I think that Friday will be how to build a successful project plan.