woodworking – Page 6 – Nothing In It

Till for Stanley Chisels

Posted on 2020.04.252020.04.26 by Elliott Evans

A long time ago, I bought a set of six Stanley chisels on sale for $25. They came in a molded plastic case that was very handy for taking them places, but kind of inconvenient to have in a tool chest drawer. Recently, one of the latches broke off the case, and since these chisels rarely leave the house anyway, I decided to make a divided till to hold them.

Chisel Till in the Chisels and Scrapers Drawer

The floor of the till is some thin plywood from the scrap pile. The chisel handles are about 1.25″, so some 3/4″ thick 3/8″ wide scraps from the bin made good edges and dividers. These are glued in place, and then secured with 5/8″ x 18 gauge brads from the nail gun. The rail that supports the chisels blades is just some miscellaneous trimming from a 2×4 or something. It’s just glued in place since it’s not at risk of getting ushed over or anything.

Anyway, i’m pretty happy with it. We’ll see how well it does over time, but i think it will be fine. I actually worked on four things today, but this is the only one I completed, so cheers to it.

In the Furo

Posted on 2020.04.23 by Elliott Evans

A furo is a “drying cabinet”. It’s where you put urushi lacquered objects to keep them warm and humidified until the lacquer has fully cured. Depending on the type of lacquer, this could take a number of weeks. In my case “furo” is actually short for “furnace room”, which is a nice warm room in the house that also contains the hot water heater.

I’ve been working on a couple of wooden box projects, and I decided to finish them with walnut oil. Walnut oil is a drying oil (like boiled linseed oil), but it contains no chemical drying agents like BLO does and is food safe. The down side is that it takes about a month to cure, so I can’t show these boxes as finished projects for some time.

Both boxes are constructed primarily of 1/4″ cherry scants. These are off-cuts from trimming down the legs of the two cherry marudai I made. The floors of both boxes are bookmatched resawn maple. The floor of the smaller box is the result of trying to make the larger box and having it come out a little small due to lack of planning. The lid of the smaller box is more 1/4″ cherry that has been edge-glued into a single panel. The lid of the larger box is 3/4″ rough-sawn cherry salvaged from the scrap pile at Mr. Arimoto’s shop. Once the oil went on the raw surface of the cherry, the whole thing went deep and beautiful.

I’m going to try to resist the urge to peek in on them constantly. We’ll see how they look in a month.

Phone Tray

Posted on 2020.04.21 by Elliott Evans

With some surplus wood from the mysterious woodworking project, I made this little phone tray to mount in my car. I got tired of never having anyplace I could put my phone down where it would rest face up so I could glance at maps or whatnot.

The tray, made entirely of 1/4″ cherry, is sized to fit my phone, and has a small cut-out for a charging cord. The wood is sealed with some shellac. The tray is clipped to the e-brake lever, which maybe isn’t the safest thing, but is certainly safer than balancing the phone on my knee while I drive.

The clip (I don’t even know where this clip came from, It was in my bin of miscellaneous hardware. I suppose it’s for holding a broom handle.) is screwed to a block of walnut, and the block is attached to the underside of the tray using “Command” adhesive strips. This is so that if I ever want to, I can replace this mount with something else, or re-use this clip on a tray sized for a different phone.

Two-by-Phonerest

Posted on 2020.04.162020.04.16 by Elliott Evans

A while back, and I can’t really remember how long ago this was, I was working in the shop and wanted a place to rest my phone where I could still see the screen. I guess I had the table saw set up because it mostly consisted of a dado cut into a piece of scrap 2×4. That piece of 2×4 was mostly likely an off-cut from when I shortened my workbench. Anyway, I’ve been using that phone rest ever since. the cut down the center enables you to charge the phone while it is in the rest, provided the rest is hanging off the edge of a surface. I eventually added some foam because the slot was too wide. More recently, I cut the bevel on the back edge so that the phone camera can’t see the rest.

This rest is still a great accessory in the shop, since it doesn’t really matter what happens to it, or if it gets damaged. I think the screw hole in the top is part of the original piece of scrap. This stand didn’t really look very nice in my office, though. Hence, the new one I just made from slightly nicer lumber, using the same design.

This one is made from some left-over cypress from the camp gate project. Yes, I still have lumber left over from that project. I think this one is much cleaner and refined. There’s a bit of boiled linseed oil on there to make the color pop.

I must have seen this design someplace. I can’t imagine that I came up with it myself. It’s just too simple and elegant. I might make a Mark 03 version from some ipe that Mr. Arimoto gave me.

Till for Carving Tools

Posted on 2020.04.15 by Elliott Evans

I have this set of five wood carving tools that I bought at Harbor Freight way back when, and they’ve been rolling around in a cardboard box ever since then. I have a more involved box project going on right now, but while I was waiting for some glue to dry I decided to make a wooden till to hold them.

It’s just some pine 2×4 trimmings glued to some thin plywood. I wound up making it way longer than it needed to be, so I added the partition so the back part could be a a little bin of miscellany. I’ve been meaning to make this till for a while, so it was nice to just make a thing in a couple of hours and put it to use right away.

Chris Hall

Posted on 2020.04.09 by Elliott Evans

I am posting this with great sadness. Those of you who know already who Chris Hall is probably also know already that he passed away the day before yesterday at the end of a long battle with cancer. Chris Hall was a woodworker who I never met in person, but who I got to know through his Internet presence and real world product. Chris’ work always showed extreme effort and serious attention to detail. He always showed, usually step by step over the course of several months, exactly how much beauty a person can create through relentless dedication to craft. He shared so much of himself with the Internet, and everybody I know who recognizes his name will always mourn him.

Several years ago, he rebuilt the entrance gate to the Tenshin-En Japanese garden at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I finally had a chance to visit the garden and its gate back in May, and the peaceful nature of this garden will always serve as a memorial to Chris for me. Here is one small detail of the gate, to show the nature of his precision and attention to even the smallest parts of every project.

Post, through-tenoned crossbeam, and wedge.

Shogi folding stool

Posted on 2020.02.232020.02.23 by Elliott Evans

I just completed this shogi folding stool that uses a new design. Instead of the ends of the legs fitting into slots in the feet (like in the old design), the legs are joined to the feet using wedged through-tenons with shoulders that curve up around the feet. I also used a new method of sewing the fabric of the seat so that stress on the stitches is lateral instead of longitudinal.

The frame is made almost entirely from red oak planks and dowels. You can just about see the walnut wedges that secure the tenons in the mortises. There’s also a respectable amount of glue and filler, but that can be our secret. The hinge axles are brass-plated hinge pins that I custom cut to length and cross drilled to accept brass cotter pins.

I like this design for the shogi because it is more properly medieval, even though I used even more modern machine tools to make it than before. I used a table saw to cut the legs and dowels, and to cut the joinery I used a drill press, band saw, and mortising machine.

Shop Talk

Posted on 2020.02.05 by Elliott Evans

Mr. Arimoto has a large job to deliver a few dozen rustic-looking tables and booths for a new restaurant somewhere out in the suburbs.

I have been helping out in the shop, mostly scraping, sanding, and finishing. Since I have lots of experience doing this kind of thing for fun, it’s good solid work. My days have been spent leaning over one table top at a time, chatting with Mr. Arimoto when noise allows. This does not leave much brain left at the end of the day for composing thoughtful blog posts.

On the other hand, it gives me lots of chances to look at interesting pieces of lumber he has around the shop. Look at this piece of walnut that actually has some walnut inclusions.

Walnut slab with walnut inclusions — Just look at it.

Kunz Glue Scraper

Posted on 2020.01.242020.01.26 by Elliott Evans

Every once in a while, somebody lends you a tool to use, and using that tool elicits the reaction, “Where has this tool been my entire life?” Such a tool is the Kunz Glue Scraper .

“This is not,” as I said to Mr. Arimoto, “a tool for delicate work.” When you’re gluing wood together, a certain amount of glue “squeeze” out is all but inevitable. You can swab it, you can sand it, you can plane it, or you can cry about it. The right glue scraper, used over a beefy enough work piece, makes the glue chips fly away from your work piece. This long two-handed handle and thick, sharp, steel double-edged blade makes short shrift of your squeeze scraping. This tool means business.

Arimoto Bannister

Posted on 2020.01.13 by Elliott Evans

I spent some time yesterday and today helping Mr. Arimoto install a bannister and railing that he’d made for a client.

Tadao cut and shaped the pieces from walnut, and finished them with Osmo Polyx oil finish. We spent about ten hours total getting everything cut to fit, installed, and touched up.

He didn’t make the metal balustrade, so we had to adjust everything to fit somebody’s else’s work. It was a good exercise in the difference between theory and practice, or between design and execution.