Chuck Grimmett

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Category: Woodworking

  • Workbench build

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    Step two of the workshop upgrade. Previously: Insulating and heating my workshop with a diesel heater

    Research and design

    The workshop is a small 10×14′ space, so I needed to be very intentional about where I put this workbench to maximize work area. The previous owner had haphazardly installed a 72″x20″ particleboard desk top as a bench, which I shored up when I moved in, but it was way too small and bounced whenever I used a hammer on it.

    I considered a lot of options, and almost went with The Anarchist’s Workbench, but I didn’t have the space to walk around something like this in the middle of the floor, so I decided to go with putting a bench along the full 10′ wall.

    For the top I wanted something hefty. The Anarchist’s Workbench calls for 2x6s halved from 2x12s. I thought that was probably overkill for what I needed and more expensive. I opted for cheaper, more readily available 2x4s.

    I wanted the top to be 31″ deep so I could slide big plastic totes completely underneath for storage. I also wanted plenty of space to work. 2x4s are actually 1.5×3.5″, so that means I needed (21) 10ft long boards.

    Laminating the 2x4s and planing the sections

    When I got to the point of laminating the 2x4s, it was still below freezing at night, so I needed to laminate them in my basement so the glue would set.

    I laminated them in 3 sets of 7 boards each so they’d fit through my 12″ planer. I laid them out, rolled glue on one side of each board, and clamped them together.

    After the first one was done, I ran it through the planer. There were two issues:

    1. It took a lot of passes to get down below the rounded corners on each one
    2. The rough-ish edges didn’t stick together as well as I’d hoped. There were some gaps.

    I decided for the next two sections it would be better to pre-joint and plane the 2x4s before glueing them, and that make a big difference.

    The other thing that made a big difference is that a new set of planer blades came in right before I was ready to plane the final section. The cut was faster and cleaner with the new sharp blades, so I did one final pass on the two I had already planed to both clean them up and ensure the depth of all three matched.

    Framing

    For stability, we opted to mount the bench to the wall on three sides and support it on the fourth with legs. We used 2×4 stringers on the wall and leveled them (not relative to the floor the wall, because nothing in that shed is square.)

    It is 36″ high.

    Routing out spots for the carpenter’s vise and legs

    We wanted to route out spots to flush-mount the vise and to inset the legs, and we figured it would be easier to route the front section before joining all three sections together. Here was my plan:

    Dry fit first.

    That’s my Dad routing. We took turns.

    Biscuit joining and gluing the three sections

    After routing the front section, we used a biscuit joiner and joined the three sections together with glue and biscuits.

    A biscuit joiner is ingenious. Since it always cuts at the same depth, you don’t need to sweat minor variations in the depth of the items you are joining, as long as the top is flat.

    This was a late night. I think we finally finished around 11:30pm.

    Adding legs, shelves, drawers, outlets, and backstop

    The next morning we screwed the top in place on the stringers and set to work putting in the legs and the shelves. I varied from my above plans slightly to leave a section in the middle with no shelving for a chair, trash can, vacuum, etc. The shelves are at different heights to accommodate totes on one side and a set of drawers on the other.

    We decided to run two outlets for above the work bench, then added plywood, which French Cleats will be later mounted to.

    Adding the vises and LED bars

    Sanding the top and putting on a coat of finish

    I planed and sanded the top to even out some uneven spots, especially at the seams. Then I added a coat of a beeswax and linseed oil blend that I made for stools a couple years ago.

    I decided one coat was enough. It is a bench that is going to get dirty and beat up anyway, it isn’t a piece of furniture.

    How is it?

    Great! It is solid and does not budge or bounce. It has plenty of storage and is the right height for me to stand and work at.

    What’s next?

    • Adding dust collection (done IRL and post forthcoming)
    • Adding french cleats (in progress IRL, post when complete)
    • Adding bench dogs (not started)

  • Adding a Climbing Wall to an A-frame Swing Set

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    This is a follow-up to my A-Frame Swing Set post. Go read that one first if you haven’t.

    Building a swing set with A-frame brackets

    Last year I added a climbing wall to one of the sides and my son loves it. A friend asked for the details, which made me realize I should have posted the details here a year ago.

    Charlie loves it and do his friends. It was a good addition to the swing set.

    Wood

    To cover one side, I needed 8 of the 1x6x8ft pressure treated boards, the kind used for decking. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Severe-Weather-Common-1-in-x-6-in-x-8-ft-Actual-0-75-in-x-5-5-in-x-8-ft-2-Treated-Lumber/4564826

    Here is the sheet I used to figure that out: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JE79RWOiklblWVIWV1-GkEgOdemtBh1xLphUyZDpNto/edit?usp=sharing

    I ended up placing and marking them to cut instead of the sheet, but the math was useful in figuring out the number to buy.

    If you use 8ft 4x4s for the sides and the A-frame brackets in the previous post, your math should be the same.

    Hand holds, handles, and a bell:

    • Hand holds: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005KUOY8O?th=1
      • I actually bought and used a different kind with different colors first, then needed more and got these green ones, and I like the green ones a lot better. The bolts on these are shorter and don’t stick out the back.
      • You’ll need 4-7 packs depending on the age of your child. 4-5 for the bigger kids, an additional 1-2 for younger ones with a smaller reach. Right now I have 30 hand holds on mine, which is good for Charlie (2.5 years old, 1.5 when I put this up.)
    • Side handles: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MFHB5X6
      • I put these on the sides, with the thought that if a kid gets too close to the edge they can easily grab on to this instead of falling, and Charlie uses these a lot. I’m glad I put them on.
    • Bell: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0811BN1P1
      • I put this bell at the top and Charlie absolutely loves ringing it. Also lets me know he is climbing if I wasn’t paying attention, and I walk back over there.

    The Process

    1. Place the boards one by one against the side, mark them, and cut them to length. Make sure to cut as close to the edge as you can… you want to use the offcuts later on higher up.
    2. Screw each one on before marking the next one. I used 3in deck screws.
    3. Decide where you want the hand holds and drill holes for the bolts. I used one of the hand holds as a guide.
    4. Go around the back and hammer in the T nuts to the holes.
    5. Go back around to the front and screw on the hand holds. I used an impact driver.
    6. Add the handles on the sides. I put them 1/3 and 2/3 of the way up.
    7. Add the bell on top.
    8. Use a belt sander, small disc sander, or router to round over the sharp edges on the cut edges.

    I put a pull up bar on the back side for me. You can’t see it from the front, so it doesn’t look ugly from the house. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09PRD5GRS

  • Turning a Carving Mallet

    I want to share my process more here on the blog, so here is how I made a carving mallet on Sunday.

    I made this mallet so that I can use it to strike gouges for bowl carving, which I want to experiment with. This style of mallet is easier to use for striking gouges than the larger joiner’s mallets I made. This one is pretty similar to the kitchen mallet/ice crusher I made for my friend a couple years ago.

    I started with a piece of the cherry limb that came down back in August.

    Using a large gouge, I roughed it out to make it a cylinder.

    Next, I used a bedan to remove a lot of material to rough out the handle.

    Then I used three different sized gouges and a skew to shape it the rest of the way.

    For the final step on the lathe, I sanded it. First with 80 grit on a few rough spots, then 120 grit all over and then 220 grit all over.

    Off the lathe, I applied a 2:1 mixture of jojoba oil and beeswax to the outside, first rubbing it in with my hands, then heating it up over an open flame on the stove burner and buffing it with a cloth.

    I chose to leave the tool marks on each end:

    • This is just for me and I kind of like being able to see the tool marks.
    • Making a piece without the tool marks involves a longer piece of wood and more steps.
    • If I ever mess up the mallet and need to resurface it, since the tool marks are still in place I’ll be able to throw it back on the lathe and sand it down easily.

    It is drying in the house for a couple days, then I’ll start using it for bowl carving!

  • Wooden Dreidels

    Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel,
    I turned it on a lathe

    Not quite how the original goes, but more fitting for a woodworker.

    I turned three dreidels on the lathe over the past week for Hanukkah gifts. It was nice to get back out in the shop and make a couple things after a long hiatus.

    One of these is going to a coworker without any finish so he can paint it and add the Hebrew letters with his young son. One is going to our friends’ son who is Charlie’s age. Those two are made of cherry.

    The other is going to my close friend and is intended for decoration. It is crafted from a piece of white cedar originating from the same tree used to construct the arbor under which he and his wife exchanged wedding vows. It has a separate walnut handle.

    I used the lathe, rasp, disc sander, and belt sander.

    I’m still trying to decide the best way to finish and put the Hebrew letters on two of them. This is one of those times I wish I had access to a laser engraver, because I think that would look really nice on these.

    Chag sameach!

    Next up: Christmas ornaments. I made some a couple years ago and am ready to more more.

  • A friend asked: I was wondering what your …

    A friend asked:

    I was wondering what your go-to recommendation for a book for a beginning spoon carver would be? Also what beginner level knife set (if any) is the most preferable?

    My answer:

    For beginner knives: You need a Sloyd knife and a hook. I recommend a Mora 106 for the sloyd and probably the BeaverCraft Open Curve Spoon Knive for the hook.

    Both are roughly $20-$30 each and unless you do carving to sell things on a daily basis, you might not outgrow them. As long as you keep them sharp they’ll serve you well.

    I can’t remember if you are left or right handed, but know that most hook knives can come left or right handed. It looks like the specific one I recommended from BeaverCraft is right hand only, but Robin Wood has a similar open curve style that comes left or right. (In fact, it is his design originally)

    For sharpening, get some sandpaper in various grits from 120-3000 and use that on a flat block to sharpen your sloyd and on a round dowel to sharpen the hook.

    This is a great video on sharpening from Emmet van Driesche:

    For books: The one I want to recommend isn’t available yet. My friend Emmet van Driesche is writing one now. So I think I’ll recommend Barn the Spoon’s Spoon book.

    I think that is along the lines of what you are looking for: Primary greenwood carving with knives and axes, not bandsaws and sanders. Though if that assumption is wrong, I can recommend others.

  • Building a swing set with A-frame brackets

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    We just built my son a swing set using Eastern Jungle Gym’s A-frame brackets. When I started out, I couldn’t find a guide that laid out everything I needed to buy, how to put it together, and what kind of footprint the finished product would have. So I decided to put one together.

    Finished Dimensions

    • Width: 7ft 3in
    • Length: 13ft 3in
    • Height: 7ft 9in

    Lumber

    • 4 – 4″x4″x8′ pressure treated posts
    • 1- 4″x6″x10′ pressure treated beam

    Some people don’t like the chemicals in pressure treated wood, but this is going to be out in the elements 24×7, so I think it is worth using treated lumber to keep it from rotting. I plan to put deck sealer & stain on mine once it dries out a bit.

    Lumber is very expensive right now, so this cost $127 when I purchased it in July 2022.

    Hardware

    • 2 Eastern Jungle Gym A-Frame brackets
      • This kit comes with the brackets and the bolts that you will need. Make sure to get the A-Frame brackets, not the 90 degree brackets.
    • Swing brackets
      • You need two per swing. The 10′ beam has enough room for two swings, so I linked to a set of four brackets. You could squeeze in a third if you needed to. These are nice because they will go all the way through the beam and hold a lot of weight. There is no way these are coming out. The ones that just screw to the underside of the beam with a few screws make me nervous.

    Swings

    You’ll need swings! The swing set I built is for a 1 year old, so we have two baby swings: One black bucket swing like the ones you see at playgrounds and one of the blue Little Tikes rocker swings that is more of a full seat. Charlie likes both, so we usually switch between them when we are swinging. He usually starts in the bucket swing then switches to the rocker when he gets tired of holding himself up. We also have a regular sling-style swing to switch in if an older kid comes over (or for Amanda or me to use!).

    We also plan to get a two-person porch swing to occasionally swap in so Amanda and I can sit there while Charlie is playing in the yard when he is a little older. The swings are easy to change with the swing brackets I linked to above—just pull out the pin, pull off the chain, put the new chain on, and put the pin back in.

    Eastern Jungle Gym, the makers of the A-Frame bracket we are using, has lots of good swing options for all ages.

    If you buy or have a swing that doesn’t come with chains, you’ll need approximately 10 feet of swing chain per swing (5 feet per side).

    Tools

    • Drill set up for drilling
      • I think we used a 3/16″ for drilling pilot holes for the lag bolts for attaching the A-frame brackets to the posts and beam to avoid them splitting.
      • We used an extra long 1/4″ bit to drill the initial hole though the beam for the swing brackets. Then we enlarged it from each side with a 7/16″ bit (the hanger brackets are 10mm, which is between 3/8 and 7/16).
    • Impact driver
      • You either need a socket adapter to use one of your sockets with the impact driver to drive in the hex lag bolts, or you could use a universal driver if you have one.
      • If you don’t have an impact driver, you could use a standard drill on the low setting, or you could use a socket wrench, though it will take longer.
      • Some swings have special kinds of bolts that you need a special driver (like a star bit with a pin in the center) to attach to the chain. Take a look at your swings before you get started to see what you’ll need.
    • Bolt cutters
      • We needed to cut some chain down to the right length, so bolt cutters came in handy.
    • Adjustable wrench
      • You’ll need a wrench to put the nuts on the hanger brackets. They are too long for a driver.
    • Hack saw with a metal cutting blade + Angle grinder with flap disc
      • The hanger brackets we bought stuck out of the top of the beam a few inches, so we used a hack saw with a metal blade to cut them down after they were on, then ground them down with an angle grinder + flap disc so they wouldn’t be sharp. This step is totally optional.
      • The bolts are stainless steel, so they will dull your blade quickly. Might need a backup blade.
    • Sawhorses
      • Sawhorses are helpful, but not necessary. You could put this together on the ground.
    • Rubber-faced hammer
      • We had to tap the A-Frame brackets and the swing hanger into place with a rubber-faced hammer. If you don’t have one, you can use a regular hammer with a piece of 2×4 as a buffer so you don’t mar your brackets.
    • Measure tape
      • We need to do a bit of measuring to get the swings in the right place.
    • Short step ladder
      • Will be helpful for driving the bolts and attaching the swings once the swing set is stood up.
    • A friend
      • This is heavy. You’ll need someone to help you stand it up!

    Putting it together

    1. Put the A-frame brackets on the 4x6x10 beam with the outer edge of the beam flush against the outside of the brackets. Make sure the spots for the legs are facing out and down.
    2. Drill pilot holes with 3/16in bit and drive the lag bolts in to secure the A-frame brackets in place.
    3. Drill the holes for the hanger brackets. Measurements here assume two regular swings. You may need to adjust if you are adding a third swing or a two-person swing.
      1. Measure 10in from the inside edge of the A-frame bracket and make your first mark. This is where the first bracket of the first swing will go. Then measure 24in from your mark and make your second mark. This is where the second bracket of the first swing will go.
      2. Repeat from the other side.
      3. You will have something like 29in between the two inside marks.
      4. Make marks in the middle of the beam at your marks.
      5. Drill the pilot holes all the way through with the long 1/4in bit at all four marks. Make sure the bit is perpendicular to the beam and straight.
      6. Enlarge the holes with a 7/16in bit from both sides.

    Here is a rough diagram of what the bracket placement looks like:

    1. Put in your swing hanger brackets.
      1. You want the bracket flush against the beam on the bottom, so run one washer and nut all the way down to the U-shaped hanger.
      2. Tap the bolts through.
      3. Put a washer on the top, then use your wrench to tighten down the lock nuts.
      4. Cut off and grind down the bolt if you’d like to. Leave some of the thread in case you need to get the bolt off later.
    2. Put in all four posts for the legs and drive one bolt in each, then stand it up. You’ll probably need two people for this.
    3. Adjust the legs (wiggle them, pull them out, push them in, etc) until they seem solid and at a good resting spot. Then drill pilot holes with the 3/16in bit and drive in the remaining lag bolts.
    4. Attach the swings. Make sure the chains are the same length. Count the links! If you need to shorten the chain, this is where the bolt cutters come in handy.
    5. Go get your child and push them on the swing!

    Future plans

    1. We plan to put deck sealer + stain on the wood to help it last longer (and look better in the yard)
    2. Next year I plan to put a small climbing wall on one side, kind of like this:

    Update, March 2024

    I added the climbing wall and wrote a post about that, too.

    Adding a Climbing Wall to an A-frame Swing Set

  • Dry vase

    I got back out in the shop today for the first time in a while. I decided to split a piece of cherry I’d been saving and turn it.

    With the first piece, I had intended to make another French rolling pin, but a few unfortunately placed cracks foiled that plan. Only the middle section was useful. So I turned a dry vase!

    With both ends supported, I started by roughing the piece out to make it round, then I turned it to the basic shape I wanted. Then I cut a 2×1.5in holding piece on the big end and took it off of the two centers and cut off the excess. I held the piece in the carpenter’s vice and drilled a 4in hole in the top to put stems and sticks in. Then I mounted the vase in the Nova chuck with only one end supported and sanded it with 150, 220, 400, and 800 grit, then finished it with a beeswax/jojoba oil polish. After cutting it off of the chuck, I sanded the bottom flat.

    I can make a couple more of these out of the log I split as long as it doesn’t crack any further!

  • Finished the Skin-on-frame Adirondack Guideboat

    I’m thrilled with how it turned out. Detailed build post coming soon. Until then, I’ll be out rowing on the Hudson.

  • Spoon Carving

    Some spoons, scoops, and spatulas I’ve carved in the past two years:

    My Process

    • Roughing: I tend to cut out most of my blanks on the bandsaw, though sometimes I axe out my blanks. Occasionally I’ll use a drawknife on my shavehorse.
    • Shaping: I shape with both a Foredom rotary tool and a standard Mora 106 sloyd knife. I remove a lot of material quickly with the Foredom, then refine with the sloyd.
    • Bowl carving: I use a Matt White hook.
    • Finishing: I use a Kunz gooseneck scraper, sometimes I sand, other times I knife finish, and I always use a broomcorn polisher and ceramic burnisher. I then coat the spoon in a mixture of jojoba oil and beeswax (2:1).

    Unlike the folks who are dogmatic about only carving greenwood, I carve both greenwood and dry wood, depending on what I have around. Some are firewood, some are offcuts from other projects, and some are foraged from downed trees in the woods nearby. I prefer cherry, but have also carved oak, walnut, beech, and mahogany.

    Some folks get hung up on only using hand tools for spoon carving, but I don’t. Carving is all about removing as much material as you can as quickly as you can early so that you can spend the rest of the time where it really matters: refining the shape. A bandsaw, rotary tool, and beltsander really help with that. Some folks only carve spoons and do it in a particular way, and that is fulfilling for them. I mostly carve utensils to use at my own table or give out as gifts. Carving spoons is just one kind of woodworking I do amongst many others.

    Resources I’ve learned from

  • Making kitchen tools from a log

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    A friend gave me some nice cherry logs that I sealed the ends of and let dry for the past year. I haven’t done much of my own milling, but I decided to get one of the logs out and see how much I could make out of it.

    What I ended up getting out of one log:

    • Kitchen mallet
    • 3 French rolling pins
    • 1 traditional rolling pin
    • 2 cooking spoons
    • 1 eating spoon
    • 1 eating fork
    • 1 coffee scoop

    First I split it in half and then split one of the halves in half again, leaving me with a half and two quarters to work with. Look at that gorgeous red!

    I milled the half down into a square blank on the bandsaw, carefully removing the pith, which always splits when it dries. I also cut off most of the sap wood (the wood around the outer edges). Sap wood is younger, more wet, and more susceptible to splitting and tearing that the heart wood, which is older. The sap wood is growing and it is where the tree’s nutrients are carried to its limbs. The heartwood is no longer growing.

    Mallet/Ice crusher

    Turning: First, make it round. Second, plan out the cuts. I tend to mark them with a pencil. This wood was still a bit green, so it cut easily and made large shavings. I roughed it out to its final shape, then had it let it dry for a few hours before I could smooth it out and sand it.

    Once it dried, I sanded it with 80, 150, and 220 grit sandpaper. Then I cut the grooves in the handle with a skew chisel and sanded the whole thing with 400 grit sandpaper before cutting it off the lathe. I cut it off by gouging the ends down to the size of a dime or so, cutting it close with a hand saw, then sanding down the ends to match the 400 grit. After that I take it inside and finish it with a coat of mineral oil + beeswax that I heat up over a flame on the stove so it soaks in and buff the wax with a cloth.

    Finished! I paired this with a Lewis Ice bag when I gave it to my friend.

    Rolling Pins

    All of the rolling pins started out just like the mallet, but the blanks were a little smaller. I didn’t take many photos of that process, but in essence it is the same as the mallet:

    1. Plan it out
    2. Rough it out
    3. Finishing cuts
    4. Sanding
    5. Finishing

    Each rolling pin is roughly 14 inches long. The French-style can be used for all 14 inches. The traditional one can be used on the 9 inch center portion.

    The three French-style rolling pins have a taper all the way across. To achieve this, I used a pair of spring-type calipers to measure the thickness at points equidistant from each end. I used the same technique on the traditional fixed-end rolling pin to cut the handles. I couldn’t resist putting the decorative bands on there to help with holding it.

    Spoons and utensils

    I was able to get a few spoon blanks out of this wood, too:

    • 2 cooking spoons
    • 1 eating spoon
    • 1 eating fork
    • 1 coffee scoop

    I haven’t quite finished these yet. Hoping to do so this weekend. Note: Some of the things pictured are not from the log. I had three spoons already cut from a different piece of cherry I had. The butter knife, too.

    Lessons Learned

    1. I need to plan out my blank cuts a little better. I cut things a little too big on the first pass, but the second cuts didn’t leave me much room to do anything with, so I wasted wood. I could have gotten at least one more rolling pin out of this, maybe two.
    2. The surface of the wood needs to dry a bit before turning to avoid tear out.
    3. I didn’t take branches and knots into account when planning out the initial cuts on the bandsaw. Thankfully it didn’t cause issues this time, but definitely could have. I need to plan better next time.
    4. I should remove the bark with a draw knife before splitting and cutting to make the sawing cleaner.
    5. Getting a split flat with the draw knife would have helped for the initial bandsaw cuts.

  • Bread Lames

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    Like a lot of folks, I’ve been baking sourdough bread this year, and I wanted a bread lame to score the top.

    While making a few other projects, namely spoons, I split two small pieces of cherry with a natural curve that I thought would be perfect for a bread lame, so I got to work shaping them and looking for hardware.

    I did the rough shaping on the shavehorse with a drawknife, then did the final shaping with a Foredom flex shaft carving tool, sanded up to 400 grit, and coated them with mineral oil and beeswax.

    The razor blade is held in place by 8-32 x 1/2 in knurled brass knobs that pinch the blade in a small groove cut down into the wood.

    I kept one and gave the other as a gift.

  • Turning Candlesticks on the Lathe

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    Back in September I made a serious effort to learn how to turn wood on the lathe. I turned a few tenons on the stool legs earlier this year, but that is it. I was on the hunt for a good beginner project and Amanda asked for some candlesticks, so I got to work.

    As far as beginner/learning projects go, simple candlesticks are a great option. They take more planning than just making something round, but can be as simple or as fancy as you’d like. I didn’t get very fancy. I kept these to simple curves and let the wood grain shine.

    I made three sets:

    • 5 pine
    • 2 cherry, one with a live edge
    • 3 oak, all with a live edge

    The Pine

    I made the five pine candlesticks from a Douglas fir 4×4 post left over from making our garden boxes this spring. They were inspired by a set that Amanda saw at West Elm.

    I turned two individually, then planned ahead and turned three at once:

    I finished them with mineral oil and beeswax. We used them at Thanksgiving and now have them on our mantle:

    The Cherry

    I turned the cherry candlesticks from some beautiful black cherry wood that my friends Erin and Tyler brought to me from a tree that they had cut down on their property. I sent these candlesticks as a thank you.

    Since I turned these from a small log that the bark was still on, the grain pattern is completely different than the pine. It also had some cool bug damage inside that I kept. I chose to give one of them a live edge by leaving the bark on. I also finished these with mineral oil and beeswax.

    They look great on Erin and Tyler’s mantle.

    The Oak

    The oak candlesticks came from a limb off of a huge oak that fell in the woods at the end of our street. The trunk of the tree was pretty rotten, but the limbs I cut had some beautiful spalting. I loved the live edge I put on one of the cherry candlesticks, so I decided to make all three of these live edge.

    In progress
    Letting the green wood dry out pre-sanding

    I made a leveling jig to level the tops of these.

    Finished!

    What I learned about turning through this project:

    • Sharp chisels make a world of difference. I bought a jig to make sharpening on the Shopsmith faster and easier.
    • Turning green wood (the oak) is very fast in the initial stages, but then it needs to dry for a few days before final shaping and sanding.
    • How to center irregularly shaped pieces of wood.
    • How to turn multiple items at once with a little planning.
    • Never turn something without planning it out first. “Figuring it out as you go” doesn’t work very well on a lathe.
    • Sanding something to 220 grit vs 800 grit makes a big difference. 800 almost makes the piece shine.
    • Sanding is easier with long strips of sandpaper that you loop under the work piece vs pushing a piece of sandpaper against the piece with your hand.
    • I used a step drill to make the holes in the top for the candles because it ends up tapered to better hold the candles.

  • Turning Christmas Ornaments

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    We decided to change up our Christmas decor this year and go with an all natural aesthetic. Dried orange and cranberry garland, a basket instead of the tree stand, and wooden ornaments.

    I’ve been learning how to do lathe work this year, so after Thanksgiving I started turning ornaments. I’m still pretty new to turning and had to throw about as many as I saved into the burn pile. Frustrating, but that is the way it goes when learning a new skill.

    I first roughed them out and shaped them with a spindle gouge, then sanded them down with 80, 150, and 220 grit successively. On some of them I paused here and cut decorative grooves with a skew, then finished sanding with 400 and 800 grit. Then I cut them off the lathe, sanded the top, drilled a hole for the hook, and screwed in the hook.

    I coated the ornaments with a mixture of beeswax and mineral oil that I heated up and buffed on with a rag.

    Learnings

    • Green wood, especially branches of a similar diameter as the finished ornament (and thus have the heartwood in the middle) will crack every time when they dry. This is why the spalted oak doesn’t have decorative grooves.
    • Turning without a center at both ends (like with a chuck that grips the wood from the outside) is a lot more delicate than turning with two centers. The wood can flex and cause a catch!
    • Using skews is tricky. I still catch more often than I’d like.
    • If you can turn the entire piece without removing it from the chuck, you should. It is very difficult to get it positioned exactly as it was, so you’ll have to reshape the piece after you put it back in the chuck.
    • Your chisels need to be super sharp when dealing with soft wood like cedar or pine, or else it will tear out. I have no finished pine ornaments and only one finished cedar ornament, but I tried five others.

    In progress shots with a piece of oak:

    • Roughing it out
    • Sanding
    • Cutting grooves
    • After final sanding

    Here are two in-progess shots of the spalted oak ones that eventually split. I turned them both out of a single piece:

    Finished ornaments. The small spoon is a hand-carved bonus!

    • L to R: Spalted oak, cherry, cedar
    • L to R: Oak, spalted oak, spalted oak
    • Spalted maple, cherry, mahogany, oak

    The whole set:

    Here is how they look on the tree:

    Merry Christmas!

  • Wooden Joiner’s Mallets

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    I made three wooden joiners mallets this year, following the Paul Sellers videos (1, 2, 3).

    The first has a head of laminated Beech and an Ash handle. Mostly because that is what I had around!

    There are no nails or screws in these, just wooden joinery. The handle and mortise in the head are both tapered to ensure a snug fit.

    The process is pretty simple: Cut the head and handle to size, find the centers, plan out your mortise, drill out the mortise, chisel the mortise the rest of the way, shape the head, shape the handle, then coat!

    Drilling the mortise with a brace and auger bit
    Before and after finishing

    I finished it with a mixture of boiled linseed oil and beeswax.

    It is rougher than the next two I made, which is to be expected for my first time cutting deep mortises like this with a chisel. I also didn’t pay as much attention to the corners as I did with the later ones. I don’t love the way this one looks, so I use it as my main mallet for chisel work and don’t mind banging it up.

    After learning a few lessons on the first one, I made two more with Oak heads. One was a Father’s Day gift for my Dad with an Ash handle and the other has an Oak handle as well and is kept on the house bar for crushing ice. I didn’t take any progress pictures unfortunately. I did get to use my first mallet to make these, though!

    I opted to let the heads soak up mineral oil to give them a little extra heft and to help keep them from splitting. After they soaked up oil for a few days, I let the surface dry out a little bit and then coated them with Mighty Bull’s Wax Archived Linkfrom Corey’s Bio Blends.

    The ice crusher has a shorter handle and a smaller head. It works great with a Lewis bag!

  • Malloreddus Boards

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    Amanda was watching a video about different types of handmade pasta (we had a lot of time on our hands during the pandemic and finally got some flour!) and asked if I might be able to make a malloreddus board. I decided to give it a try!

    I started with sawing and planing down a piece of Beech I had for the board:

    I tried a bunch different methods of making the grooves:

    1. Carving by hand didn’t work. I could never get lines that straight.
    2. Using a Dremel didn’t work. Again, I couldn’t get lines that straight.
    3. Using a Japanese pull-saw was okay, but still sloppy looking.
    4. I don’t have a router, but a router table might have worked.
    5. Tablesaw!

    I ended up using a tablesaw tilted at a 45 degree angle and a bunch of homemade spacers, slightly wider and longer than popsicle sticks that I cut out of an old piece of fencing that I planed down. I started with all of the spacers, then I’d cut a groove, remove a spacer, and repeat.

    It worked! Took me a little while to get the blade height just right, but I’m happy with how it turned out.

    They needed a little clean up with some sanding sticks, but otherwise looked good!

    I made two of them and cut them out in a round shape with a handle.

    After some sanding, they were ready to make Malloreddus with!

  • Coffee Filter Holder

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    Amanda and I wanted to hang our coffee filters in a little nook above our coffee grinder, and I happened to have a lot of free time on my hands back in April, so I decided to make one.

    This one by Yoshitaka NakayaArchived Link that inspired me:

    I didn’t really have much of a side view, but this was enough to go off of.

    For the wood, I decided to use a strip of maple I had. I planed it down to the thickness I wanted, then worked on figuring out the angle and overall width of the holder.

    Next I cut a walnut accent piece and transferred the size onto the wooden holder and then chiseled that out and inlayed the walnut.

    Then I chiseled notches for the end pieces.

    Last I glued everything up, let it dry, sanded, added the back piece for a hanger, and coated it with a clear satin wipe-on polyurethane.

    It holds about 20 Chemex filters and looks great on the wall!

    Here is a quick sketch with dimensions:

    If I make one again. I’d probably cut the middle piece out of a single piece of wood instead of trying to join two pieces. I unfortunately didn’t have a wide enough piece of wood to use and there was a pandemic on, so I made due.

  • Cape Falcon F1 Kayak Builds

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    Over the winter of 2018/2019 and summer of 2019 I built two Cape Falcon F1 skin-on-frame style kayaks. I want to be better about documing my projects here, so I’m taking a few posts to document the backlog.

    The primary benefit of a skin-on-frame style kayak is how light it is. They end up being ~30lbs, so they are easy to carry with one arm and for one person to toss it on top of a car, not something you can do with a heavy fiberglass boat.

    These specific boats were designed by Brian Schulz of Cape Falcon Kayak and I used a combination of his excellent online courses to learn how to build them, plus the tutelage of Jack Gilman of YPRC Boatbuilders and Jon Richer of Hudson Boat Company.

    The First Build

    The first build was as a group with YPRC and took place from October 2018 to May 2019, with a two month break in the middle during the coldest part of the winter. Six of us built boats together twice a week and roughly kept pace, helping each other out as we went along.

    I honed a lot of important techniques through this build:

    • chisel work
    • using transfers and offsets rather than pure measurement
    • building jigs to help build something else
    • shaping with a block plane
    • peg and lashing for connecting wood without nails or screws
    • applying polyurethane
    • steam bending
    • fixing mistakes (skin-on-frame is a forgiving medium!)

    Routing the gunwales, laminating curved deck beams, chiseling straight deck beams, and assembling the frame:

    Steam bending ribs, lashing the keel and stringers, shaping the stem, and finishing the frame:

    Making coamings, cutting and sewing the skin, and applying polyurethane coating.

    The finished boat!

    The Second Build

    After learning a lot on the first build, I teamed up with Jon Richer to build another alongside him at a faster pace so that Amanda could have her own kayak to go out in, too. We built two as a public demonstration at the Edward Hopper House Museum in Nyack, NY. We knocked it out in about 4 weekends with some travel in between. I was much more confident after having built the first one, which translated to a faster build time. It was a great feeling.

    Things that we improved on the second build:

    1. We used red oak for the ribs, which bent a lot better than the ash we had in the first round.
    2. We cut all of the stock we needed in a single, albiet long, day, which saved us lots of setup time.
    3. We made the middle deck beams first, which means that if we mess up that one we can always use it for the small deck beam at the end, which is much shorter.
    4. We oiled the entire frame outside on a warm, sunny day, which allowed the oil to soak in better.
    5. We used a faster method for tightening and sewing the skin on, which made it a 4 hour endeavor instead of 2 day 8 hour endeavor.
    6. We were able to reuse some of the jigs we built in the first round, which sped things up.

    Amanda and I absolutely love our kayaks and take them out regularly, both on the Hudson and inland lakes. I get a ton of joy every time we use them. Paddling in something that you built yourself and know every single part of just can’t be beat.

  • Maintenance on a Shopsmith Mark V

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    Two weeks ago while using the lathe on my Shopsmith Mark V, I heard what sounded like the belt slipping. I’d also been having some problems cutting heavy stock on the bandsaw attachment, so I figured it was time to change the old belts.

    I had replacement belts on-hand from Jacob Anderson Shopsmith Repair, so I started watching his excellent videos to figure out how to tear down the headstock and replace the belts, I quickly realized what my actual problem was: The floating motor sheave was stuck open, so when I turned the Shopsmith up to higher speeds, the motor sheave didn’t close in relation to control sheave opening up, so the drive belt had too much slack and wasn’t getting any traction. After roughly 45 years, the sheave got gummed up with old oil, grease, dirt, and sawdust.

    Here is the stuck open floating motor sheave, in need of a cleaning and repair.

    The floating motor sheave is number 119 in the diagram:

    A better version of this is available at Shopsmith.com

    Since I had to tear down half of the headstock to get the motor out to work on the sheave, I decided to go the rest of the way and replace the upper Poly V belt as well. The whole thing needed some serious cleaning, oiling, and greasing anyway. My model was made in the mid 1970s and I don’t think it had ever been completely taken apart. The putty was still in the quill set screw at the top of the case. I don’t expect that is the kind of thing you replace after scraping it out.

    Again, Jacob Anderson’s videos were incredibly helpful in figuring out how everything comes apart and goes back together. If you need Shopsmith parts, buy them from him!

    The whole process took longer than I expected. It took me about 20 hours over the course of four days to take it completely apart, clean it, oil the moving parts, grease the bearings, and get it all back together again. I’m including the time I spent watching videos and making various jigs to help me work on it.

    My empty headstock.

    A few tricky points:

    1. Removing the spring on the motor sheave.

    The spring needs to be compressed in order to remove the retaining ring, and that spring has considerable pressure and a washer with it. Using Jacob Anderson’s advice, I drilled a hole through a piece of plywood and carved a groove for the washer to set in, pushed the spring down, and held it in place with some quick clamps. The washer still shot across the room, and it was pretty tricky to get back together again, but I don’t see any way it could have been done without something like this board.

    2. Unsticking the floating motor sheave.

    This thing wouldn’t budge by hand. I had to use a piece of plywood underneath and one on top, hammering them together to force it open. Once open, I did a good cleaning to remove the grime, then polished the shaft to help the sheave move. It still doesn’t move as easily as the top one for me, but it does move.

    3. Putting the idler shaft (number 105 in the diagram) and eccentric bushing (103) back in after replacing the Poly V belt (55). The old belt was stretched out, but this one was much tighter. I also frustrated myself by stupidly putting the idler shaft and eccentric bushing back in once before putting the Poly V belt in and had to take it back apart. What a pain.

    4. Calibrating the speed control

    First, none of my three sets of Allen wrenches were long enough to get to the tiny screw inside the speed control face in order to take it off. I had to go out and buy some longer ones.

    Second, you can’t adjust the speed control without moving the drives, either with the motor or by hand. This is not easy, especially since you probably set the control sheave open as wide as it could go (high speed) when putting the belt on. In order to calibrate it, you need to close down the control sheave to get it back in Slow mode. You shouldn’t start the machine at a high speed anyway, so you have to do this all by hand. Adding the disc sander attachment helps quite a bit by giving you something to turn like a steering wheel.

    5. Putting the switch back in

    I wasn’t paying close attention to the orientation of the switch and had just assumed it was still in the Off position, despite lots of jostling, so I had to be careful when plugging it back in for the first time. Thankfully I got it right, but I think I might mark it or tape it next time.

    Thankfully everything worked as expected when I put it back on the stand and flipped the switch. The difference is night and day. No more slipping belts or the drive stopping when cutting heavy stock on the bandsaw or shaping something on the lathe at high speed.

    With regular oiling, I shouldn’t have the issue with the floating motor sheave locking up again. Fingers crossed.