Custom Requirements for a Table and Buffet

The table shown here is made of solid birch. 

There is no plywood or particle board found  here. 

Two removable (grain-matched) leaves were made for this table, allowing it to be either  7, 8 or 9 feet long.

An Interesting Requirement! 

The client required it be sturdy enough to hold two dancing 200lb people on it.  Now that’s custom!  When the customer arrived to pick this piece up, I had put the two leaves in and was sitting in the center of the 9’ table.  

(That’s 180lbs on the weakest point of the table!).

The matching solid birch buffet also had some interesting requirements:

“It needs to be this tall”

(customer held hand parallel to floor and I measured from there).

“It needs to be this long”

(customer held arms outstretched and I measured from there),

If you look closely at the pictures, you’ll see the top is not perfectly flat. 

It was hand-planed.  

Catching up with the Heart Shaped Box

Well, as this was a surprise..we've been careful to keep much of it off of the internet.

The piece is now complete and has been picked up.  So it's time to share!

So I'll go ahead and start adding the pictures now so everyone can see some of the process that went into this amazing piece.

The cylinders were turned on the lathe into heart shapes and then split back open.  Then they were first roughly carved out to remove more material before being carved smooth by hand.

The base of this is where all the mechanical magic happened. Lots of work went into that very small space. ..and I won't be showing all of that publicly. But you can see it getting dry rubbed with a pearlescent powder before it gets a finish.   More to follow!

 

Update on the Heart Shaped Music Box

Remember that really great project we are working on: Heart Shaped Music Box ...
Well I've been plugging away on it and finally have some time to give a small update here.

After working on getting the shape on the lathe with tools, there's a need to get it nice and smooth.  The easiest way it to leave it on the lathe and use sandpaper.

I'll tell you though, that sandpaper gets pretty hot in your hands.  So it's a lot faster sanding this way, but it means you have to stop and blow on your fingers a lot!    You may also notice I was able to make another smaller heart at the base of the larger one.  It just seemed like it was worth a shot instead of losing so much of that beautiful figured maple.  Of the 4 cylinders I was able to make 3 small hearts - the forth having shattered.



Here it is split. 

You'll see the paper that was put between makes a nice clean place for the glue to split back open without losing any of the wood.  And we are starting to see that heart shape.  

Dog Bed - I stand behind (or on) the strength of my work

The dog beds are finished.
After the last step we showed of using square pegs in round holes, we put a finish on them.
They are looking really good and have a rich tone to the color.And you'll notice I stand behind their strength. Well, more like I stand ON in this case!

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What I'm Working On...

Along with the intriguing heart shaped jewelry box, I've got a few other projects in progress in the shop.

I had a request for 2 dog beds.  Here's the dog bed she saw that made her ask for 2 for her larger, heavier dogs.

 But she wanted a style more in keeping with her current bedroom furniture.
Something more like this:

Here are some shots of the progress made on this so far....

The Heart-Shaped Music Box continues

Remember the heart-shaped music box I've been working on?  We'll I've made some great progress and felt I'd share some updates and  photos.

Last time you saw the pieces they were just 4 glued up blocks.  4 because it's best to makes extras when you know there will be delicate steps along the way.

The next step was to cut down the corners of the blocks.  There are two important reasons for this.  For one, the next step was putting these pieces on the lathe to make them round cylinders, and square on a lathe is unstable. Getting it closer to round means less uneven cutting with the lathe tools.

The second reason, look how much material I can salvage from this...

I'm not sure what I'll use it for but, as I mentioned in a previous post, I try to use as much as possible.  

From there the four blocks finally make it to the lathe for the first time.  The goal at first is just to make them actual cylinders.  Just rounded enough to make the process of carving hearts out of them a little easier.

Musical Grade Fiddleback Maple for a Music Box

A board with this kind of figuring is a rare piece.  You can either pay a lot of money for it or search through piles of lumber and hope to get lucky.

I found this beautiful piece a while back . . and I keep it for special uses only.  But a project like that great Heart-Shaped Wedding Ring Music box is perfect to show this off.


Painfully, I had to cut into it.

A Woodworking Tip:  When you're working on a piece that you are going to turn as a whole, but that will be in two pieces again when done (as with a heart that will open in half), glue two blocks together with a piece of paper in-between.




This will let you turn them together so they match up, but will also let you separate them easier on that seam after they've been shaped on the lathe.  If you don't have paper/ cardboard in the middle, the glue will seep into each half and it will be difficult to separate them in a straight line down the middle.  This way you are mostly having to take away paper when you are separating them again.

Warning: When gluing together this way, if a tool grabs onto that seam it can tear it off of the lathe sending wooden blocks flying.  Turn cautiously with light cuts.




It's such a special project, even my glue bear is all dressed up!

You'll see I cut enough to make 4 of the heart portion of this box.  This allows me some room for difficulties in turning or hollowing the piece out.  Things happen and you don't want to have to start over.   So instead I'll bring each one up to the same level together and hope to have 4 when I'm done.

How to distinguish Red Oak vs. White Oak?

#1 Way to do this: read the sign over the stack in the store

#2 Color: Red Oak is red, with some white streaks.  White Oak has a yellowish grey tinge to it, with white streaks. 

#3 White Oak is heavier

#4 Now that we have all of the “DUH” answer out of the way, here is a neat trick.

Find a smoker.  They can blow smoke into the end grain of White Oak and it will travel down the veins and arteries of the wood.  I have had it travel up to 3 feet through White Oak.  Red Oak, the veins and arteries tend to be more clogged and I’ve never had it travel more than 5 inches.  So when you find the squirrely piece that really could be a little too heavy be Red or maybe too dark to be White, find a smoker.  This is a sure fire way to tell.  

No animals were harmed in the writing of this post!

What is Liquid Hide We’ve all heard of horses going to the glue factory. But what part of the horse did they actually make into glue. Sorry folks, no it’s not the whole horse. There were actually three glues made from a horse.

Number 1: the least common, blood glue.
 This had a weak holding power and was typically used for either a stain (being washed off after application and leaving only a stain) or for very temporary holdings (the way we would use tape today).

Number 2: actually used the skin of the horse.
This was a reasonably usable glue. It was able to be made in large quantities, for obvious reasons, and it had a decent amount of holding power. But it was commonly used for jigs and fixtures and other things that you knew you’d be taking apart in a few days for weeks.

Number 3: the liquid hide we actually think of, when it’s referred to, is actually not made of the whole hide it is only made of the snout and the soft pad under the hoof of the horses foot.
This obviously meaning you don’t get to make as much from any particular horse. This is the stuff that we hear about, that held very well, started with an initial tack, would hold for decades and like all the others was reversible with nothing more than steam. All three of these glues are made in the same fashion. Basically they throw the parts into a big pot and boil it until everything turns into mush and then boil it down a little more until it gets a little bit of thickness too it. Then it’s dried out completely into flakes, broken up and sold. To use it, you put it in a pot with a little bit of water and re-boil it, returning it to its former goo. Simple stuff, simply works, really stinky to make.