Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2019 i Woodsmith

When the need arises for routing multiple small parts quickly and safely, this small parts sled fills the bill nicely. Basically, the sled holds the workpiece so that it acts like a larger workpiece. The larger size is easier to control and keeps your fingers well clear of the bit. SIMPLE CONSTRUCTION. The sled features a pair of adjustable stops that capture the workpiece between them. The tapered knobs lock the stops in place and serve as handles. To secure the workpiece against the base, a modified toggle clamp is the perfect solution. The rubber tip has been replaced with a block of wood. And the upper nut is replaced with a star knob for quick adjustments. You can find the plans for the sled at Woodsmith.com.…

Materials & Supplies The only way I would qualify for having a green thumb is if you counted the green ink stains from the money that I’ve peeled out of my wallet to pay for all the plants that I ultimately killed. If houseplants have recurring nightmares, it’s me carrying them to the checkout at my local garden center. But there’s an exception to this sad truth. It comes in the form of succulents like the ones you see in the plant stands above. These hardy, low-to-no maintenance plants are super easy to grow. They come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colors. They don’t need much soil, and they store moisture in their thick leaves and stems. These simple requirements inspired these plant stands. Each one is…

The bed for any CNC machine acts as the main surface where a workpiece is clamped in place. The cutter is controlled by software and is capable of moving around the bed to mill project parts. What size bed you build should be determined by the size and types of projects you’d like to make. Since we were aiming for a machine that would comfortably fit in a home shop, we settled on the bed size you see above. Remember that one end of this bed also holds an electronics enclosure. That will be added a little bit later. There’s also a little bit of dead space along both edges of the bed where the cutter can’t reach. Keep these things in mind if you decide to customize the size…

At this point, the gantry sides are locked in position on the rails using the cams. For the next steps, you’ll want to flip the table upside-down on a set of sawhorses. Just take care of the gantry sides. Now, you’ll add components to the undercarriage of the machine. These parts include the lead screw, main motor, and accompanying hardware, as well as the parts that span the gantry sides to connect them together. LEAD SCREW & MOTOR. The drawings above show an overview of the parts you’ll need to add the lead screw and main motor. The woodworking isn’t complicated by any means. Both the motor mount and submount are two layers of plywood and the screw cover is a single layer. Each piece has several holes that need…

For the outdoor seating I built, I decided on two side and two corner chairs. The chairs share many of the same frame parts, but the side chair is a little more straightforward, so I started with that frame. Before you head out to the lumberyard, give a little thought to your material selection. Outdoor projects are exposed to the elements, so the material selection is extremely important. Here, I used durable white oak. For some tips on material and building for the outdoors in general, see the article on page 10. BEEFY FRAME. As you can see in the drawing above, the frame consists of three different parts — front and rear legs connected by rails. The legs are made of glued up blanks that are tapered on the…

Drill Rail Recesses. At the drill press, drill the notches in the rear corner leg blank using a Forstner bit. Left Side Mortise. Use the mortising machine to cut the mortise in the left side of the rear corner leg blank. Right Side Mortise. Flip the blank over and cut the mortise in the right hand side of the rear corner leg. Define Shoulders. Using a dado blade in the table saw, define the shoulders of the angled tenon. Cut Cheeks. Tilt the dado blade and cut the cheeks of the tenon. Sneak up on the cut until the cheeks meet the shoulders. Straight Tenons. After trimming the rail to length, cut the straight tenon on the end of the rear rails.…

To add comfort to the chairs, a series of rails are installed into the notches of the back legs. As you can see in the drawing above, the rails are shaped into a half-round profile and stand slightly proud of the legs. STOCK FIRST. Because each chair has four rows of rails, you’ll need quite a bit of stock for these. I started making the rails by cutting blanks that were twice as long as the finished rails and more than twice as wide. This yields four rails from each blank. After rounding over the edges of the blank (Figure 1), the rails can be ripped free at the table saw, as seen in Figure 2. I then trimmed the side chair rails to length. The corner chair rails were…

The subtle flow that separates this chest from its boxy predecessors starts with the curved, tapered legs. Looking closely at the drawing above and the details of the face profiles, you’ll get an idea of what’s involved in making these legs. Laying out the profile and joinery of each leg is a challenge in itself. To make the process easier, I used cherry turning blanks. This let me focus on the tapers and mortises without concern for how glue lines might affect the look of the leg. TWO TEMPLATES. To maintain a consistent profile on all the legs, I relied on templates. Because the legs are tapered in two different directions, two templates are required. You can find full-size patterns for both at Woodsmith.com. The first template (detail ‘a’ on…

Now that you’ve got past the hurdle of the tapered legs and side panels, finishing the case parts for the chest should be a breeze. The parts here are longer than the previous ones, but the same methods are used to make them. The biggest of the parts is the back panel. Take a look at it in the main drawing above and you’ll notice it’s a tapered piece of 3/4" plywood like the side panels. Here though, the grain runs horizontally. After tapering the panel with the crosscut sled, you can move on to making tongues on the ends to join the panel to the chest (Figure 1). You have two grooves to deal with on the back panel — one for the divider and one for the chest…

One of the first challenges I had when it came to woodworking was choosing clamps. Every woodworking catalog or retail outlet offers dozens of possibilities. Plus, even if you only buy a few of each type of clamp, you’re talking about a hefty investment. You certainly don’t want to make any wrong choices. So, what do you really need? The answer depends on the type of woodworking you’re going to do, the size of the projects you plan to build, and even how many projects you plan to have going at any one time. Over the years, I’ve used a wide range of clamp types and styles. But what follows is the “set” I find myself using most of the time to meet my clamping needs — and I think…

Most of the materials and supplies you’ll need to build the projects are available at hardware stores or home centers. For specific products or hard-to-find items, take a look at the sources listed here. You’ll find each part number listed by the company name. See the right margin for contact information. BUILD FOR OUTDOORS (p.10) The adhesives and finishes covered in this article are available from most hardware stores and online retailers. 5 COOL TOOLS (p.14) • Amazon Oneida Univ. Hd . B07481HTY6 • Rockler Vacuum Pod Kit . . . . . . . . 53418 CRB7 Router Base . . . . . . 45924 HomeRight Shelter . . . . . . 50535 Bosch Palm Edge Router . 64864 DRILL PRESS MORTISES (p.16) • MSC 5/16" End Mill . .…

Glue Gun Holster One tool I often use in the shop is my hot glue gun. It usually surprises people, but I can’t imagine working without it. Storing and moving it around the shop is a pain, however. That is, until I built this glue gun holster. CLEAN & CONVENIENT. As anyone that has used a glue gun knows, as they heat up and sit, they can get a little messy. Some glue always seeps out of the nozzle. In addition, the hot tip can cause burns if the gun falls over or touches your skin. This caddy takes care of both of those problems. A plywood base serves as the foundation for this holder. Attached to this is a plywood holster for the gun. I shaped the top to…

Whenever the subject of outdoor furniture comes up, it conjures an image in my mind that I’m sure you’re familiar with — or can at least picture. It’s that old, weathered piece of furniture that’s seen better days. The finish is nonexistent, the wood is dry and cracked. A few of the joints are probably loose as well. But that doesn’t mean that outdoor projects you build are destined for the same fate. By making careful material selection and taking some preventative measures, you can keep your outdoor projects looking great. THE CULPRITS. Before I talk about the steps to take for protecting your project, let’s identify the forces that take a toll on outdoor furniture. The big three are insects, moisture, and ultra-violet (UV) light damage. While we can’t…

It’s funny how sometimes the little things make all the difference in the world. Take the five products on these two pages for instance. You can perform most woodworking tasks without them. But the increased level of safety, convenience, or comfort these tools can add makes them well worth considering for your shop. All of these can be found in Sources on page 67. [1] Rockler Vacuum Clamps A vacuum pump is a great tool to have around to use in conjunction with a veneer press. But if you’re like me, the vacuum pump doesn’t get put to use outside of doing veneer work. Investing in a set of these inexpensive vacuum clamp pods from Rockler (left photo) not only provides a new use for the pump, but also solves…

As I said, there’s a little more to do on the columns. This starts with creating a basin for the plants, followed by cutting two grooves in the bottom to fit over the pedestal. To finish each column, you’ll chamfer the top and bottom edges. So dig out your router and let’s get moving. ROUT THE BASIN. While you’re getting the router, grab a pattern bit to use with it. To aid those two, you’ll need to make a jig that fits over the top of the column. The pattern bit will ride along the walls of the jig to shape the basin. (To make the jig, see Shop Notes on page 65.) The column needs to be held firmly in place while doing all of this. The ideal tool…

Before moving on to building the gantry, there are a couple more items that need to be taken care of on the bed. A series of clamp boards fastened to the top of the bed provides a place to secure a workpiece. And at one end of the bed, a simple plywood box serves as the electronics enclosure. CLAMP BOARDS. As you can see in detail ‘a’ above and the photo below, the clamp boards have rabbets along the bottom edges. These essentially create a shop-built “T-track” for use with standard T-bolts, or commercial clamps. This provides a flexible system for clamping a workpiece anywhere on the surface. EASY PROCESS. The How-To box below shows the process for cutting the rabbets at the table saw. All of the clamp boards…

With the sides of the gantry connected over the top and underneath the bed, there are just a few more parts to add to wrap up this portion of the CNC machine. And the remaining woodworking should look pretty familiar at this point. Here you’ll be adding the mounts and rails to the gantry that control the Y-axis movement of the machine. After that, I’ll walk you through the process for aligning the gantry at both ends of the bed and tightening the motor mount bolts. SHORT RAILS. But first, start by making another set of rails. The only difference from the rails along the side of the bed is that we’ve separated these rails so the gantry screw can run between them (illustrations above). But the process for cutting…

For outdoor seating, a slatted seat works well. Even with a cushion, it allows water to drain off and also promotes air flow to help things dry out after getting wet. For the seats on my chairs, I made a frame using mortise and tenon joints. Inside this frame, mortises will be used to capture the tenons on the end of the seat slats. Then, the entire seat assembly is attached to the chair frame. FRAMES FIRST. As you’ll notice in the drawing above and the main drawing on the next page, the seat frames have notches cut in them to wrap around the legs. The seat frames for the chairs are identical, but the notches are different between the side and corner chairs. After cutting the frame parts to…

I’m not going to sugar-coat it, working with tapers can be a real challenge. But all the work you put into the legs will pay off as you start making the side panels and their supporting parts — the edging and rails. As the drawing above reveals, the tapered side panels are 3/4" plywood. You’ll also notice that this taper, when viewed from the side, brings the front and back of the case back to 90°. That’s because the taper you’re cutting here is a flipped version of the ones you did on the side of the legs. There are no fancy calculations needed to do this. You’re going to make these taper cuts (and many of the rest in this project) with the aid of that waste piece you…

At this point, all that’s left to do is top off the sugar chest with a lid. And I think you’ll agree that it’s a fine-looking lid at that. As the drawing above reveals, the lid is a 1"-thick solid wood panel that’s glued up from narrow boards. It’s mortised for the hinges on the back and the strike plate for the lock on the front. But first, let’s make the lid. LID DETAILS. After gluing up the panel for the lid and squaring up the ends, you need to rout the top edge (Figure 1). This wide, sweeping profile softens the edge without drawing too much attention to itself (detail ‘c’). LOCATING HINGES. This thick, large lid is a wonderful thing to look at and complements the chest nicely.…

For a few years now, “live edge” furniture has been all the rage. You see examples of this everywhere — a board with one or both edges that still retain the profile of the tree trunk. To some, this style and look is new and interesting. Fads in furniture are all fine and good, and “live edge” deserves its fifteen minutes of fame. But for more traditional woodworking, boards like the one you see in the photo above are still a few steps away from being production-ready for a project. One of those steps is having a straight edge on at least one side of the board. CONTROLLING CHAOS. Making controlled cuts on long boards at the table saw requires the use of the rip fence. Continuous support of the…

Axis Limits. Shane Burk of Lubbock, TX installs a pencil into the chuck on his CNC head. This way, he can draw axis limits on his CNC bed and pre-draw part locations on his worksurface. By pre-drawing, Shane can maximize his material and make sure his parts fit before he cuts. Cheaper Sweeper. Steve Schroeder of Waukesha, WI discovered that a door sweep makes the perfect cleanup brush. The sweeps are available in long lengths and are inexpensive. By cutting a piece into shorter lengths, Steve now has a brush at each tool. Makeup Dispenser. Bob Zimmerman of Des Moines, IA uses a self-dispensing makeup container to hold solvents that he uses in his shop. The dispenser has a pump top so Bob can grab a towel…

In many shops, the router table is an indispensible tool for its ability to create custom profiles. Most router tables have a surface large enough to accommodate a substantial-sized workpiece. However, one place where many router tables encounter challenges is routing small workpieces. The problem is that large openings in the tabletop and fence can cause a small part to catch or “dip” below the surface. This can not only spoil the cut, but it’s also unsafe. But that doesn’t mean you need to give up on routing small parts. Making cuts safely and accurately requires a different strategy and some simple, shop-built helpers. THE PROPER MINDSET. It may seem counterintuitive, but the best way { to go about routing small parts is to avoid it whenever possible. However, that…

One of the best parts of woodworking is that there are several approaches to accomplish nearly any task. So you can tailor techniques to the tools you have, your shop space, and even personal preferences. It also eliminates the notion that there’s one “right” way to do something. You can see how this plays out in creating mortises for mortise and tenon joinery. The standard technique we often use in Woodsmith is a two-part operation. First, the majority of the waste is removed with a Forstner or brad point bit. Then a chisel straightens the side walls and squares up the ends. However, I was looking to streamline the process, especially when I have a lot of mortises to make. The options range from using a router to investing in…

In the past, computer numerically controlled (CNC) machines were predominantly found in large industrial settings. But just as computers have gotten smaller, so have the CNC machines, and the types of jobs they can complete has increased. It was just a matter of time before CNC technology crept into the woodworking shop. We thought it was time we introduced our own shop-built CNC router. The entire project (minus software) costs about $1,300. With a working area of 24"x48", it’s a lot of bang for your buck. It’s ideal for tech-savvy woodworkers looking to add a CNC router to their shop. HOW DOES IT WORK? In the simplest terms, a CNC machine works by moving a rotating cutter (in our case, an off-the-shelf router) around a large table (the X and…

Now that the bed of the CNC router is mostly complete (there are still a few finishing touches that need to be done later on), it’s time to turn your attention to the gantry. The gantry moves the motor mount along the length of the bed (X-axis). It rides on the two rails along the edges of the bed. It also provides the foundation for the bridge that spans across the bed and gives the machine its side-to-side movement (Y-axis). DOUBLE-LAYER SIDES. I began construction on the gantry by making the two sides and the side supports. The supports provide added rigidity to the sides. The best way to make these parts is to cut rectangular blanks to size using the dimensions shown in the two front views above. You…

When summertime is on the horizon, I start daydreaming of boating, gettogethers, and barbecues. But one of my favorite things is those summer nights that are nice and cool after a warm day. These are the nights that we often find ourselves lounging around the fire pit. And when I first saw the design for this seating, I knew the deep seats were the perfect place to curl up on and enjoy one of those nights. MODULAR DESIGN. One of the things that I like about this seating is it’s modular. The chairs are designed to fit together to create sofa-type seating, as you can see above. The combination of corner and side chairs means you can build as many as you like to fit anywhere. Beyond the modular design,…

After building the side chair frame, you’ll find many of the same parts on the corner chairs. Both chairs share common front legs, back legs, and front rails. To build the corner chairs, you’ll add a rear corner leg and a pair of rails with angled tenons. REAR LEG POSITIONING. The process of making and adding a rear corner leg will look quite familiar. It follows the same steps that are used in the rear legs that you already built. There are two differences, however. The first is the angle of the back support. This leg is slightly more upright. This allows the back slats that you add later to flow at the same angle as they turn around the corner of the chair. The second difference is the orientation…

I had never heard of a sugar chest until I teamed up with our creative director, Chris Fitch, to work on this project. The function of a sugar chest was to protect and parse out the valuable commodity that sugar was in the nineteenth century. The earliest sugar chests most likely were modified blanket chests. Our version expands on the modest examples that came out of Kentucky, the same place Chris hails from. Go figure. The upgrades start with the tapered and splayed cherry legs that set the tempo for something more than the square boxes of the past. The legs are wed to plywood sides and back. A solid hardwood front holds an elegant half-mortise lock. Combined with the thick cherry lid, lets you securely store your cones of…

You’re pretty much out of the forest of tapers, bevels, and angles. There’s only a handful of tasks left that aren’t square cuts. What you’re facing now are some large drawers that reside in the lower portion of the chest. You’ve earned the change in pace, so drag out your dovetail jig and prepare to make some sawdust. The two drawers run the length of the chest. The 1/2" maple boxes are the same size and joined with half-blind dovetails. Both have 1/4" plywood bottoms. The false fronts are 3/4" cherry hardwood and are tapered on the ends (as I said, pretty much out of the forest, not all the way) to match the opening in the case (detail ‘d’). They’re attached with screws from the inside of the drawers.…

For centuries, locks have been used to secure the contents of all sorts of furniture. A perfect example is the sugar chest on page 44. The upper compartment of the chest is secured with a traditional half-mortise lock. The body of the lock is hidden on the inner wall of the chest. The lock is also mortised into the back of the front panel so that it’s flush with the top edge and the inside wall. It works in tandem with a strike plate. To align it perfectly to the lock, the strike plate is mortised and screwed into the lid (after the chest is assembled). After the lock and strike plate are installed, all you’ll see from the outside is the keyhole that you’ve fashioned. When the chest is…

Spline Slot Jig The outdoor furniture on page 34 has a back rest that’s slightly reclined. To strengthen the miter joint on the back rest for the corner chair, a pair of splines are added. For safe and accurate slot cuts, you’ll need to build the jig shown here. MITER JIG. The jig consists of a wide plywood base. On top of the base, a pair of tapered braces hold a plywood face. The braces hold the face at a 68° angle in relation to the saw table. Two fences are attached to the face of the jig, at opposing 82.7° angles. See detail ‘a’ below. A toggle clamp attached to each fence holds the workpiece in place. The entire jig is held together with glue and screws. A PAIR…