Joinery results and glue-up life lessons

So, I left off wondering how the joint for the first leg was going to turn out after glue up.  Well, not bad really, here I am using my flush-cut saw to cut-off the overhanging tenons of the bridle joint.

Once cut, clean up with block and jack plane.  With these being bevel-up planes, I used my 25 degree blades for the end-grain of the tenons. 

And the final result looks like this:

So, all in all I'm pretty happy with this for a first try.  There are a few gaps near the top, but I hope to get better with additional joints etc.  So next, I bandsawed the tapers and tried my best to flatten them with my planes.  The inside, curved corner turn out to be difficult.  I made out pretty good with my round-bottom spokeshave, but am still getting some chattering.  I'm going to try and sharpen it again, and see if that helps, if not I'll move to sanding (if only I had an oscillating drum sander).  So here is what the first leg turned out to look like.

I'm satisfied with that.  However I put it under the table like the earlier getto mock-up, and I'm questioning if I've made the taper too thin at the bottom of the leg.  The top is 2.5 inches thick, so I'm wondering if the leg taper needs to be thickened a bit.  I'm going to pillow the leg which I think will make it appear even thinner from the side.  Looking at it from the front however, it's 2 inches thick so looks fine, I wonder how often you would see it from a pure side view (all the legs will be at different angles after all.)  Anyway, my plan is to try out a thicker taper on the remaining three legs to see what they look like.

So, onto the remaining three leg blanks.  This time I marked the legs with my marking gage, on both pieces.  Way better approach.... I also was very careful cutting the fingers out accurately on the tablesaw.

I cut the fingers for all the legs this way and bamm!!!  With a little sanding of the fingers they fit beautifully, slide together very nicely!

So here is another reason why I love working wood and the people who do it.  I sent a quick note to Ian Godfrey asking a couple of questions about technique for this joint.  I figured he was a swell guy, but didn't think I'd would hear from him for a few weeks at least.  I was really just trying to get some tips for when I use this joint again.  So, not only does he get back to me right away, he offers to connect with me privately and address my questions directly!!  I was blown away, what a guy!! - Thanks Ian. 

So with a few pointers from Lord Godfrey and more attention to detail, I finished cutting the joints.  Here is the result:

Much happier than the first leg.  I tried a clamp and the small gap at the top, closed right up.  Nice.  My only regret at this point, (which was also brought up by Ian), was that this beautiful joint will be hidden under a giant slap of maple, ah well, that was why I decided to try it in the first place!  Good practice in any case.

So, here's where things go off the rails a bit.  I have been following a lot of wood working blogs, and I have always been amazed at how much trouble people go to create proper clamping set ups.  Specifically with building specialized cauls and fixtures, always seemed like a lot of unnecessary work to me.  Well lesson learned, it is worth it, and I had to learn the hard, painful way.  Basically, the glue up of the first leg went really well, I seemed to get pressure in the right places and everything closed nicely.  No problems.  Well for the second leg, I don't know why, perhaps I took too long applying the Titebond III, but the glue started to get sticky and started to set on me with the joint still centimeters away from being closed!!  And the clamping strategy I had used previously wasn't able to force it.  Ten minutes of panic and desperation with all trying all king of clamping angles and hammering I was able to get it close, but wasn't able to close it like it should have based on the dry fit. I also damaged a lot of wood fibres with the clamps falling off the sides.  Sigh.  

So, the situation gets worse....  I practice a bit more with my clamps, use a few wedges etc and feel that I've got a more reliable approach.  For the second leg, I work much faster with the glue, apply my new clamps and the mitre part of the joint closes up nicely.  I walk away feeling like only one leg has been compromised.  Well this morning, when I took the clamps off the second leg, I realized the tenons did not seat fully into the morise on the end-grain side!!   I didn't even check this side because I figured if the mitre closed nice, everything else would have too. I've got like an 1/8 inch gap!   I almost cried, I almost kicked the cat.  Anyway, the lesson learned here is to take the time to make the proper cauls to get the proper clamping pressure.  If I had done this, my joint would be easy to close up tightly, with no stress.  I was so eager to get the leg together I blew it.  

Anyway, I'll take a better look at it tonight.  Maybe I can put a wedge of walnut in the gap and fill it.  Not ideal but may be necessary.  I do have the extra leg (the first one I built), but it might have more taper than I want so perhaps I'm stuck with that taper.  I'll build the proper cauls for the last leg.  I was also considering a glue with a longer open time, the Titebond didn't seem too forgiving in that respect.  Unibond might be a better choice but it scares me as I would be using it inside the house and I hear it is nasty.  

At least I'm learning.....  

Mind-bending bridle joint

Tonight I tried to make one leg joint to see how it would turn out in walnut. I made up an extra leg blank so I thought I would use it as a test piece. I also decided to up the challenge of the joint a bit and make it a mitred-bridal joint as Ian Godfrey did for his leather rocker. (You'll need to go back to the early postings in his blog to see what I'm talking about.)

So instead of a single tenon and a slot, I went with a double tenon (or fingers) and two slots. In addition, in order to get a sculpted inside corner, I added a mitre which allows extra material for rounding on the inside.

So here I am cutting the tenons of the bridal joint on the long portion of the leg.

After cutting the fingers, I cut the mitre on the table saw as well. For the other leg part, here it is marked for the mitre cut. For this one I decided to use my bandsaw. Not sure it was the right decision, I may try the table saw for both cuts next time.

And here it is cut:

Here is the resulting fit:

Not bad for the first time trying a mind-bending joint, but I'm sure I can do better. I think I had some issues transferring the marks from one piece to the other for the fingers. I cut one piece first and then transferred. Next time I might just mark both pieces before cutting. Also, I think my full scale leg drawing needs to be redone with bit more care. I found myself really relying on this drawing for a lot of markings and angle captures (and to keep me sane). I need to be sure it is as accurate as I can draw it if I'm going to rely on this strategy. It's the first time I've worked this way and I don't think I could have attempted this joint without full scale drawings.

Ok, well I'm going to glue up the first leg and bandsaw it to make sure I don't get any surprises when I go to my three remaining legs. Here is what is looks like now:

I'll see how good that joint is tomorrow.

Spalted Maple Slab Coffee Table

Ok, so after lurking on wood working blogs for close to 3 years, I've decided to take the plunge and start my own blog based on my own projects. Not really sure yet how this is going to work out to be honest, we'll see. With a young family, (2 year old and 9 month old), free time is precious and generally I like to use whatever I have to be working in the shop as opposed to blogging, but I'd also like to try and document my progress to share with others so I'll give it a go.

At some point I'll try and give the shop tour, intro to how I came into wood working (actually that is simple - my Dad is the reason I work wood) and my basic interests, but for now, I'd like to just describe my current project.

I'm really just starting to get into buying wood from hardwood suppliers in rough-cut form as I purchased a jointer and planar a few years back. I'd been wanting to build a "live-edge" slab coffee table for some time, so a few months ago, I was at Timeless Materials near my work in Waterloo, ON and came across a 10/4, spalted maple slap that they had salvaged. Seemed like a good candidate for a coffee table so I took the plunge and bought it.

So here it is after I had spent a some time flattening the top with my jack plane. I think it is going to be pretty sweet. So the next challenge was what to do with the legs. I've never done anything like this before so I did some digging on the web, looked at some Nakashima-like stuff, looked through some magazines, and eventually found this table on Deconet.

I was really struggling to figure out how four legs would work with the odd-shape of the slab, but when I saw this, I knew three legs was the way to go. This would also eliminate any rocking that might occur with four legs if the slab started to move over time. So I then started to play around in sketch-up with some leg ideas. Really wanted some funky curved legs, but realized they would just end up competing with the top, and considering I wanted to keep the project reasonably manageable, I decided to go for some straight lines. This is what I came up with:

So, I think I like it and my wife liked them too, so I had a winner. Now to figure out how to build the legs, which I am going to make out of walnut. Speaking of walnut, I found a fellow about an hour from me who has a lot of walnut (flitch cut, live edge and dimensioned) that he sources locally, so I took a trip out and bought all I could fit in and on my Jetta (yes, about 80 board feet of 8/4, in a Jetta. That car never ceases to amaze me, but next time I'll bring a trailer.)

So as I mentioned, I am a blog lurker... there, I said it, my conscious is clear. Some of the blogs I follow are from current and past students of the Inside Passage. One such fellow, Ian Godfrey and another, Nick Nelson are two guys whose work I really admire. Ian Godfrey likes to use bridal joints on a lot of the legs in pieces he makes. So I think I'd like to give that a try. I mocked up a leg out of 2x4 and took a look at how it would work out. (To do this I made full-scale drawings, a technique strongly recommended by both Nick and Ian.) Here is the getto-mock-up. (Yes, that is a cat-litter box.)

So, I worked out how to do the bridal joint for tapered members at a non 90-degree angle. I must confess I was kind happy to pull that off. For the actual legs, I'm thinking of a sculpted inside corner, to have a curved transition from the vertical to horizontal portion of the leg, not convinced this is the way to go yet, but I am going to mill up an extra leg out of my walnut to play with this a bit. Speaking of that, here are the leg blanks:

Well, thats about it for now. Next step is to start playing with the legs. Going to shoot for bridal joints, sculpted inside corner and pillowed outside face. Stay tuned.....

First Post

OK, lets see if this works. The obligatory first test post.

... test .....