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Link of the week

Link of the week

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David J. Marks’ website

David J. MarksAnyone who has watched an episode of Woodworks has seen the creativity, skill and calm demenor of David J. Marks.  Sure, this Santa-Rosa, California based woodworker is famous for his shows, but they only touch the surface of this extremely talented man.

He’s a multiple award winner, frequent contributor to woodworking magazines and all around busy guy.  His work is featured in collections and art galleries throughout the country.

David describes his work in his bio:

My inspiration is derived from a fusion of styles including ancient Egyptian, African, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Asian. But essential to all my designs is the attention I pay to fine details.

David has also inspired several up-and-coming woodworkers, including Marc Spagnuolo, the Wood Whisperer.  And, yet, he still remains exceptionally approachable and down to earth.

A visit to David’s site will inspire.

Tools

An awesome find…

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3/8″ Mortise Chisel

  • Won on eBay – October 2008 – $9.99

After drooling at some new mortising chisels, and bemoaning the fact that high-quality models started at $60 and up, I combed eBay looking for some old steel to get my hands on.

A friend of mine drew my attention to this little gem.  The description was intriguing:

Antique Page Whitmann & Co 3/8″ wide Mortising Chisel. This lot features a scarce cast steel mortising chisel manufactured by Page Whitmann & Co.  The heavy blade allows the chisel to be used as a lever against the side of the mortise. This scarce socket chisel is marked “Page Whitmann & Co W. Fitchburg”, “Cast Steel Warranted”. This dates this chisel to 1850’s, Civil War Era. Page-Whitman & Co started when Albert Page left Abel Simonds in early 1845 to for A G Page & Co and through mergers became Page Whitmann & Co. There is no handle.The blade measures 3/8″ wide. In good condition. Overall measurement is 11 1/2″ long. Great browning age patina. This is a rare chisel for your collection or use.

eBay picture of chisel

Hey, it was worth a bid.  Fortunately, I was the winner on the auction, and it recently arrived at my home.  The first thing I had to do was make a handle, and I’m KICKING myself that I didn’t set up my camera to show how I did it.  Basically, I followed the directions written by Bob Smalser on how to make a chisel handle.  I used a chunk of maple that was thick enough to work with, and came up with this…

Mortising chisel with Blue Chip for comparison
The Marples 3/8″ bench chisel is there just as a comparison… this chisel is HUGE and heavy.   After I got the handle fitted, I ran the flat of the blade against the grinding wheel of my Work Sharp.  That took a whole lot of scale and pitting out of the blade without removing all of the patina of age, then I reground the bevel to the 30 degree angle that helps keep this beefy chisel’s blade from chipping.

Just for giggles, I took a piece of 2 x 4 scrap which was sitting around the shop, quickly marked out the lines for a sample mortise and went to work.

Three minutes later – I cut my first mortise with a mortising chisel…

My sample mortise...

Wow… this chisel wants to cut straight, deep mortises. Granted, this is kinda rough and into construction grade lumber, but WOW, I can see myself cutting mortises with this grand old tool for years to come.

Now, I just have to get a complete set of mortising chisels…

Projects

Spoooky Stuff I’ve Built

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Decorative Halloween Coffin

  • October 2008

Scary Helpers with the CoffinWalking into any large retail store is always an Jack O' Lanterninteresting experience.  Because mass merchandisers have to think well into the coming months, they have to push the products for events quite a long time from now.

My kids were barely out of school for summer break (maybe a month) when retailers started putting out their back-to-school selections.  Once the tykes were back in class, the displays shifted again – this time, the Halloween stuff came out.  Of course, now we’re looking at Christmas items everywhere…

When the Halloween stuff hit the shelves, the wheels started spinning in my head.  This project is a miniature pinch-toed coffin made out of one sheet of 1/2″ CDX plywood.  Most of it was assembled with glue and brad nails, and glue blocks add some reinforcement for the sides and bottom. The toughest part of the build was getting the angles right on the sides. To get the angles right, I bisected the angles using a compass and used a sliding T-Bevel to set the blade properly.

Bisecting the SCARY angles...I got some galvanized T-hinges from the hardware section and used those to operate the lid.  When we are out of the season, I’ll put all of the decorations into it and use it for storage up in the attic.

I finished it by rolling on two coats of an exterior primer and two coats of exterior house paint.  Hey, it’s going to be out in the elements.  I went to the local crafts store and got the large RIP letters for the lid.  A nice touch.

Eerie Fog coming from the coffin...I have it chained to a tree in front of my house (unfortunately, in my neighborhood, nice seasonal decorations have recently developed this nasty habit of ‘walking’ away…).  To complete the look, I added a green flood light and a fog machine, which spills an unearthly green lit fog across the lawn when it’s activated.  Pretty cool stuff.

Quick Polls

Quick poll

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Edge JointingIn order to get tight joinery and excellent results with your woodworking projects, you have to start with flat, straight and true boards.  And, when it comes to edge jointing your boards, there are lots of options out there.

From shelling out big bucks for an aircraft carrier sized jointer to some clever and creative work arounds, everyone has their favorite method for getting their boards edge jointed.

So, what is your preference?  How  do you get  those arrow straight board edges when it comes time to mill your lumber?

[poll id=”45″]

Link of the week

Link of the week

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Woodbin’s Sagulator

Sagging shelvesSo, you want to build a bookcase with some shelves to hold a few nick-nacks in the living room.  Rather than spend lots of money, you opt to build them out of painted MDF.  After a few months of holding ceramic kitties and a vase of flowers, your spouse says, “Don’t you think it wold be cool if we put my 1957 collection of the Encyclopedia Brittanica up there?  They look so good.”

After a few books go up on the shelves, you notice a huge sag in the middle of the shelf span.  Bummer.

How were you to know?  Well, if you had checked with Woodbin’s Sagulator, you would have known exactly how much those shelves would have sagged.

This ingenious calculator allows you to determine the amount of sag you can expect based on the shelving material, thickness, width of the shelves and the weight of the goods they can be expected to hold.  You can even calculate how adding an edge to the shelves can improve their ability to hold weight.

If your plans include building some shelving, the Sagulator is an excellent resource to use in the design phase.

Spotlight

Building Smiles one Toy at a Time…

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In my experience during the past decade, I’ve found that woodworkers are an exceptionally generous bunch.  Most of the time, you can find them building gifts for friends and neighbors or volunteering their time to work on a project for their local school, scout troop or place of worship.

Painting the toysThis past weekend, I met a group of woodworkers called the ToyMakers of East Lake at a community event, and their story was a heartwarming one.

Back in 1982, a woodworker named Jim McCullagh was alarmed to hear that his grandson had no toys to play with while staying at a children’s hospital.  Knowing that play can at least help keep little minds occupied, he and several friends began making small colorful wooden toys.  That was the beginning of the ToyMakers organization.  As the years past, the effort gathered momentum, and today, there are 101 chapters across the United States and four in Canada.

I met with Gene Watson, Mac Russell and John Little of the ToyMakers’ East Lake, Florida chapter, who graciously offered to take me on a tour of their spacious workshop.  Situated in an abandoned garage on some land owned by a nearby Methodist church, the space allows the nearly 50 members and associated volunteers the space to work.  Donated tools – band saws, table saws, sanders and drill presses – line the walls and occupy the shop floor.

Shop CabinetsEven the shop cabinets were donated to the effort.  In fact, they were actually custom high-end kitchen cabinets in a home until a chemical spill during a counter top installation went wrong, staining some of the cabinet doors.

I arrived during one of their Saturday work sessions (They also have Tuesday morning sessions).  Stacks of donated wood from area hardwood suppliers were stacked in shelves.  Even though some of the members were away exhibiting the toys at other community events, the reduced crew was very busy cranking out parts for wooden ambulances, fire trucks, helicopters and other pieces.  While some of the workers were cutting, many other were sanding, painting and assembling the vehicles to prepare them to go to kids in the community.

A work day...Because of the ToyMakers’ non-profit status, high school students who are required to do volunteer service to qualify for state scholarships often sign up for service with the group.  Given that the fate of their scholarships rides on their volunteer hours, working with the ToyMakers is a pretty enviable assignment.

 Some of the toys do go to kids in area hospitals, while others go to other critical contact points with the community – organizations that shelter families from domestic abuse, centers that help parents break drug addictions – wherever the need is most critical.

While building the toys is a satisfying way to spend a Saturday, the real reward comes when the toy deliveries take place.  The group aims to have four toy deliveries a year.  Three months’ work can result in nearly 1,000 completed toys for area kids.  In fact, the group’s motto is that they, build smiles, one toy at a time.

As I left the shop after one of the group’s coffee breaks, the members were right back to work. After all, the holidays are coming quickly, and there are so many more toys to build.

…

 P.S. – The members of the group asked if I could post the following:  For other individuals or groups interested in starting their own group of ToyMakers, we would be most privileged to furnish  patterns, methods and suggestions that we have found to be most appreciated by the children and the centers where we deliver.  

Projects

Stuff I’ve Built: Bandsawn Cat Box

3 Comments
  • September 2008

Cat Box ClosedThis is one of those projects that you don’t want to build, but want to put yourself into 100% once you agree to it.  Recently, a friend’s cat passed away quite unexpectedly.  It was pretty traumatic for her, and she asked if I would be able to build something for her to keep some of his keepsakes in – his collar, a clipping of his fur… stuff like that.

At first, I wanted to build a basic rectangular box out of some exotic woods, but I hadn’t yet built a full-blown bandsawn box.  I figured this would the an excellent opportunity to give it a shot.

The body of the box was cut from some 2″ thick cherry scrap, and the top was taken from a waste piece of maple I had planed to 3/8″ thick for a previous project.  You see why now you can NEVER part with a scrap of wood!

Once the pieces were milled square and true, I sliced a chunk off the bottom of the piece for the box bottom.   Once I had done that, Cat Box OpenI taped together a sandwich of the pieces – the two cherry and the maple.  I cut the outside of the box, then cut out the circle on the inside of the middle piece.

There was a tremendous amount of sanding required to get the box into shape.  Apparently, my narrow blade had too many teeth per inch, leading to tremendous burning, especially in the cherry.  That’s something I’m correcting by getting a 3/16″ blade with far fewer teeth…

Once I glued the peices together and sanded again, I inlaid four rare earth magnets – two in the top and two in the body – to serve as a ‘latch’ for the box to keep the top affixed.

Before finishing, I cut some scrap veneer pieces to make the eyes and whiskers and glued them on with hide glue.  This way, it was easier to scrape and sand the leftover bits of glue off the maple.

Finishing included my standard wipe on of 1# dewaxed shellac.  After letting it cure and sanding it down with 400 grit wet-dry paper, I wiped on two coats of my own homebrew finish.

I guess I hit the mark.  Shortly after she recieved the box, she called me, in tears, to thank me for the project.  At least I was able to help her through a tough time…