Back to Desk / Time on my Hands

Alright. You may have noticed that I have some time on my hands.
This is why heh. All this pre-finishing then waiting hours between 8 stages of glue-ups!
I try to be productive but it's the Minnesotan Summer which is short and erratic. When a couple nice days come around it gets difficult to keep ones nose to the grind stone.
The desk is coming along nicely it seems though.

The crossing clamp and "bracing stick" is simple insurance of the distance in front to keep my angles roughly true.

On an unrelated but geeky tangent...

Glass/beerware came to my step today!
I'm not really an excitable kind of guy but I can get excited about adding to my geekery. I'm pretty pumped to give these a go ;).
I figure a number of people out there, like me, like their beer. I also figure I'd give a "shout out" to pubglasses.com for having a decent selection at decent prices. I am missing one or two styles I'd like to add to my disposal though heh.
(No I didn't build the dinning set heh. It's a set my parents got from a Danish store a number of years ago. Nice and quite though.)

Nightstand/Side Table Mock-Up

Boof!
Nightstand/Side Table mock-up complete!
I was/am surprised at how little I wanted to change from my sketches.
One thing I find tricky about this form is the "foot print" dimensions lets say... For the top to make a nicely functional top and say hold a decent sized lamp and have comfortable room for a glass or whatever, the piece gets pretty deep. Deeper than I would like if I was just looking at the interior space of the box. It starts to look quite cube-like. I could make it narrower or longer though I wouldn't want to add or subtract much. Hmmm. No more than 3/4" either way for functionality sake.

Kind of cute I'd say. By no means is this a spanking new form, of course not. I'm putting my hands, and eyes to it and I'd like to think it'll come out not QUITE like any other. Plus I have the option of tweaking things for certain applications if (hopefully) asked to reproduce this kind of piece. Same goes for the Frame-Top tables, though I feel those are a bit "tighter bound" by the amount going on in those pieces, which I don't see as a bad thing.

Ugh seems like I'm going to have to name this something. If you can't tell by what I call my other piece, I don't really like naming them heh. I already have a side table "design". I was going to call this a Nightstand though I think it could make a handy side table as well. Hmmm... Make it really "Danish" and call it "Side No. 02" or "Table No. 04" heh?

work work aaaaand more prefinishing

Okie dokie. The pre-finishing from last time had been completed. I glued on the little rails to my aprons and then needed to trim them flush. For the end grain I used a block plane and clamped on a backer block as to not blow out fibers upon exiting the end grain plane strokes. I simply used the angles of the ends themselves to guide my cuts.

It was also time to make a cut that I have been a little scared of. Make the top of the front legs square. Initial cut was on the band saw then I took a plane iron and small mallet for chopping and slicing them clean, neat, and accurately. Wasn't actually as scarey as I thought though it was good to pay extra attention to.

Again involving these little "ramps". Plane the ramp down flush to the inside Oak pieces. Again, the only reason I have these little ramps is that they are a part of my drawer pocket. I want a "seamless" joint between these pieces as to not interfere with the workings of the drawers.

Leg pillowing! Feels like I haven't made legs in a while. I forgot how much time it takes to nicely pillow a leg. This is possibly why it is among the first things to leave a "krenovian's" work when trying to make ends meet.
It is a detail. To some perhaps a small detail. To me, however, I feel it makes a big impact in my work. I find that this detail is rarely specifically pointed out but contributes to an overall effect/"aura" of the pieces. They simply wouldn't feel or be the same piece without it. For now I will stubbornly "stick to my guns".

All surfaces and edges refined and preped... More pre-finishing.
I do have a little work I could do for some of the interior parts though I think I will save that as something to do while the assembly is happening after finishing is done. It will be a pretty major assembly being completed in a number of stages... I'll have time.

For now I may use some time to get a head start on a full scale drawing and maybe mock-up of the next project among other things none woodworking on my plate.

The next project I'm looking at is a pair of nightstands for a lovely talented little Scandinavian blooded gal whom I will be bartering for logo/web design and branding work.
Found this photo in a google image search. I quite like the concept and overall design/proportions and is vaguely similar to the Oak Wall piece I finished not too long ago... that is to say an open box heh not a huge leap. Well I'm looking at taking this piece as inspiration for a nightstand/side table "NN adaptation".
The "box" will be of Euro Beech and I hope to make little stands of Kwila.

Oil takes time

Ok. So the major joints have been cut and fit. I "whipped up" some rails that will be applied to the aprons which will correlate to the horizontal drawer pocket division in the front of the desk (the bottom of the drawer pocket).
Nick B, you'll notice this ha you did something like it on your hall table :P.

Before those little rails are applied I'm going to pre-finish the face of the apron and rail along with the little step corner of the rail. This way I don't have to deal with trying to put finish along corners. However, oil TAKES TIME to dry so it will be a bit of a process.
I'm changing up my oil concoction a bit. I took out the 1/3 plain tung oil and am just thinning down Original Waterlox by 1/3. I figure the desk is something I want a little more "heafty" finish on. That's not to say "thick" though. I'm also not planing on using wax to simplify any touch ups in the desk's hopefully long future.
Ha if only I got paid for product placement.
With this cut of finish I'm finding 24 hours between coats to be alright for the first 3. I though about finishing with the 4th and last coat without thinning the oil. It has been about a day and a half and needs more time. I'm not thrilled about how it's looking but what can ya do but wait for it to dry enough to work with. So I'll see how it goes and see what I can do.

So I've had some time on my hands. I made a bit of a story-stick for the drawer pocket and got going on the web-frame.
Here is the mortise side of a couple slip-tenon frame joints.

And then there's the frame members for the pocket partitions.

Poof! Gluing up the middle pieces to the front horizontal piece. This will just make life a little easier when gluing the whole frame up.

Now what? Well I suppose I can get a start on some initial leg shaping!

Work is a little here and there at the moment but at least things are starting to look less like random boards!

Sticks to Structure

Ok back again.
Last time the mortise making on the rail side was done. Now the leg side.
I normally like to keep my leg blanks square for joinery when I can. The front two legs are to be at angles pinching into the desk and need to get angles planed in where the drawer pocket meets the leg. This would be unnecessary if the desk was square, or I had put a visual space and made drawers to come out a little away from the leg.
At any rate I need to cut some of the profile to allow those little juts to become the angles I need.

Started by taking the angle off my shop drawing with my little bevel gauge. The square is to check for squareness relative to the end grain, aka top of the leg.

Then a whirl wind of angled mortise making happened at the boring machine where I was too wrapped up to stop for photos it seems.
This however is the last part of that whirl wind. The dowels is where the drawer pocket partition meets the back apron. I used dowels because normal mortises would have been all cross on end grain which doesn't help too much and the partition is too thin for lateral tenons... dowels was the answer.
That is one full corner of joinery!

Woot! A skeleton of a desk emerges.
Getting to this point was a big relief. I stood back to study it a bit and couldn't find much energy to do much else for the moment. Hopefully the scariest part is over, hopefully.

Desk Leg Joinery Begins

Back to the Desk!
Once again I'm working with angles off 90. Furthermore none of the leg joinery angles even repeat! Well except for the side apron and side stretcher because they are on the same side.
I rough cross cut components on the table saw and took them back to my bench where I used this perhaps odd set-up. Dig it or oppose it, this is the way I tend/like to work heh. With no angles matching, what's the point of making fancy jigs? I'd need like 8 of them! I simply used a little ingenuity in choosing how I made the cross cuts on the table saw to be able to dial in the angles afterwards with minimal sweat :).

I'm not a machine, I'm flexible, as are the projects I work with. I train to trust and be confident with my hands to be able to effectively fine tune complicated builds like these. SOme will school me with jigs and machines, but as one would guess they're simply not for me ;).

However I DO like to use some nice jigging! Love that boring machine and X-Y table (if only I had a proper one).
Above is a top view look at a back corner of the desk "shop drawing".
To the left the side apron comes to the leg and to the right the back apron meets the leg as well. The further to the right there's a drawer pocket partition. Always looking to maximize joint strength, this is what I've come to for this corner. The back apron was thick enough for two 3/16" tenons but I figured I'd maximize the depth of the side apron 1/4" tenon and use a 1/4" + 1/8" twin tenon in the back. The sides also get stretcher so I can put a deeper tenon in at that location.
In theory I'm pleased with this set-up, I think Robert would be too heh.

So here I am at the boring machine. I have a spacer to define the width of the mortises, a spacer defining the horizontal distance between mortises, and a spacer for the vertical dimention of the twin tenon mortises.
Also to make like quite easy with the curved pieces I'm using a small riser block to clamp to which with bring the last 1.25" of the curves to a "flat" plane allowing the tenons to come "straight" from the aprons... Low tech and effective, again.

Mortises made in the side aprons, side stretchers, and sides of the drawer pocket. Funny enough it all worked out so that all these mortises are 1/4" x 1-1/4" which is a happy accident that makes work a bit easier.

And here's that back apron with the "twin" tenon mortises in it. Pretty neat I think!
Next is the scary part... Putting mortises into the legs at all sorts of angles... and I don't have any spares! Yikes!!!

Cherry Display Cabinet

Finally! You know that wall piece I was working on months ago? Here it is :).
Cherry Display Cabinet
18" x 23" x 7"
Cherry (air dried), Maple (air dried), Jatoba

The glass in this piece presented photographing problems. I couldn't get the lights in position that I really liked due to reflection hence the big shadows.

  The color temp of these lights seem to be true which is great for the piece! However I had been over compensating with the back drop. This is the same back drop I used with the Maple Showcase and now doesn't give as warm a feel as I would like. But hey I much prefer knowing what the end result is going to be!

I mentioned as I was building this piece that I was trying a little something different in terms of finger prints here and there. The piece prior to this was very highly regulated and smooth/fared out. That kind of work is great for the right piece. This time I went more relaxed, that's not to say sloppy, just a little more free.
I kept the facets and kept them a little more evident. It was fun for me, I like the results, and I think others will enjoy it too.
Trying to capture it in a photo is another story. Click on the pic to enlarge it and you should be able to see it in the shaping of the end grain/side.

Mmmm that notched pull. Scary but worth it.