English Layout Square

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn WorkshopLeave a comment

I was watching The Woodwright’s Shop the other week and saw the episode where Chris Schwarz made an English layout square and thought to myself that it would be a fun project to build.

You can watch the episode here:  http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/video/3100/3106.html

So I grabbed some quarter sawn cherry I had lying around, ripped it on the band saw and then planed it to 1/4″ thick. Chris made his square 24″ long. Mine is only about 12″ long x 1 1/2″ wide since that was the size of my scrap.

During the show Chris showed how to clean up the half lap joint using a router. Once you set the blade to half the thickness of the wood making the two sides fit together is a breeze. After the joint is cut, simply glue the two pieces together.

I used the front cover of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” to sketch a roman ogee design onto a piece of scrap. Then I used it as a template for all the little details on the square. I used a dovetail saw, chisels and a round bastard file to cut the shape into the pieces of the square.

Lining up the center of the cross-bar with the center of the square I marked the edges where the cross-bar meets the sides of the square. I used a pencil but in hindsight I probably should have used a knife to get a crisper line.

After cutting the half lap joint on the cross-bar, I laid it back on the square and marked where the cross-bar laid on the sides and cut the half lap joints on the sides.

By far the hardest part making the square is to properly line up the cross-bar and cut the half lap joints so that they fit perfectly together on both sides. There are a lot of surface areas that need to meet tightly and an error in one end may telescope to the other end of the cross-bar.

 

As you can see I didn’t quite make a perfect fit on one side. I could have fudged the cross-bar so that there would be a small gap on both sides but I opted to make a larger gap on one side then fill it in with a thin piece of scrap.

Cross bar being glued with thin scrap glued in place. Just don’t tell anybody I screwed up.

For the roman ogee details at the ends I simply used a circle template and scribed a couple of pleasing arches into the wood and cut them at the scroll saw. I really had no rhyme or reason, I just made it look pleasing to my eye.

After the square was glued, I needed to true it up. I laid the square on a board with a perfectly flat edge and ran my pencil down the side. Then I flipped the square over and ran my pencil down the other side. If there were two lines, it’s out of square.

I gauged the distance between the two lines (1/8″) and trimmed half of the amount (1/16″) off the bottom corner of the square. I kept trimming off a little bit at a time off the bottom until there was only one line when I flipped the square over checking its accuracy. When there is only one line, it’s square.

The square turned out fairly nice and was a fun little project to build. I’m sure it’ll be a favorite tool in my shop.

NMO/ Devic’s Disease

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Uncategorized5 Comments

A few months ago I wrote about how I lost my vision through atypical optic neuritis and dodge a bullet being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Well the past couple of months haven’t been so lucky with me.

It happened eight weeks ago while in Lowe’s I noticed that my left foot was slightly tingling and numb. I blew it off at the time as an odd occurrence although back in my mind I was concerned. I woke up in the morning with excruciating back pain and asked my wife Anita to rub it. The back pain eventually went away but later in the day I noticed that my other foot was starting to go numb. I was still hopeful that it was nothing serious and even asked my older brother Steve if he’s ever had this happen to him. He said he did and that it was more likely just a pinched nerve and it would probably go away in a couple of weeks.

A few days go by and I noticed that my legs and feet were getting worse. The numbness went from my feet through my calves up to the knees while also having numbness in my groin area. It felt like I was sitting on a grapefruit when I sat down and I constantly felt pressure in the area. I knew then that this was no pinched nerve.

Concerned, Anita called my eye doctor to tell him what was going on. He told her to have me visit a neurologist so they could look at me. While at the neurologist, I explained my symptoms and the doctor felt I had transverse myelitis on my spine but would need a MRI to confirm. Transverse myelitis is the inflammation of the spinal cord brought on by environmental factors or a virus. It can be so severe that some people with the condition can not walk after an attack. Unfortunately when an attack does occur, it can take several months to a couple of years before the patient returns to normal.

After I got back from having the MRI, the doctor looked at the images and confirmed that it was transverse myelitis possibly brought on by MS. He told me that I have a mild case of it since I still can walk but it would eventually go away in a few months. He gave me the number of a neurologist who specializes in MS in case I wanted a second opinion. My wife called and made an appointment but the doctor couldn’t see me until Feb 2013. The doctor’s assistant told my wife that if my condition worsens that I should go to the University of Cincinnati Hospital emergency room.

A few days go by and I noticed that my numbness continued to climb up my legs into my thighs. Also my abdominal area was starting to feel numb as well. By this time, I was dealing with this issue for seven weeks with no signs of improvement. My wife Anita pleaded with me to go to the hospital but I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want to overreact and wasn’t too thrilled about going to the hospital anyway.

Then last Wednesday I decided to finally take care of my health and went to UC Hospital. When we get to the emergency room, the nurses and doctors asked me a ton of questions trying to diagnose my condition. They had me walking around on my tippy toes and then walk a line like a DUI suspect. Then they gave me a bunch of neurological tests like smiling and touching my nose to their finger as if I were a stroke patient. They decided they needed to do a bunch of tests on me so they sent me upstairs to be admitted.

While in the hospital, they drew tons of blood from my arm and gave me multiple MRI’s on my back and head. The doctors needed to determine if I had MS or NMO which is Neuromyelitist Optica also known as Devic’s Disease or some other abnormality. The worse part was they needed to do a spinal tap in order to make a conclusive diagnosis. The thought of having a needle stuck in my spine was unnerving. The MS doctor I was planning on seeing in February came to visit me in my room. She thought that I possibly had NMO but would need the results from the spinal tap in a couple of weeks to be sure. In the meantime, she wanted to schedule me an appointment within a week in her office and get me on a drug called Rituxan which should help me with my symptoms.

After three days in the hospital they pumped me with a 1000 mg of IV steroids a day to help alleviate my condition. I was released last Friday but still needed three more days of IV steroids at home. Earlier this week, I went to see the MS doctor. She checked over my condition to see if I worsened and reminded me that I’m extremely lucky that I still have strength in my legs and can still walk. Many of her patients visit her in a wheel chair.

Monday I start treatment of Rituxan which is a form of chemotherapy. I’ll have one treatment Monday and then another on the 22nd. The other day I had another MRI at UC’s imaging center to see if the inflammation has gone down.  I’ll have a follow-up MRI after my second treatment of Rituxan to see how the disease has progressed. By then the results from the spinal tap will be back which should tell what’s exactly wrong with me.

It’s been a trying few weeks but I know I am EXTREMELY lucky. One for not having severe case of transverse myelitis. Two for having a supporting wife and family who help me through this difficult time. And three for having health insurance. I don’t know what the final bill will be for all this but all I know is that if this would have had happened to me three years ago when I was unemployed, I’d be in financial ruin. All I know is you can’t take your life for granted because at any time it can be taken away from you.

Repairing a Desk’s Legs

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture5 Comments

My wife Anita won this desk at a local auction a couple of weeks ago. She loved the curves of the desk and wants to use it for sewing. What she’s going to sew I have no idea but that ‘s what she wants it for. It was in decent shape with a few spots where the veneer needed to be glued down and the leg needed to be glued back to the frame but that’s easy stuff to fix. What really needed attention were the two legs in the back that were missing part of their feet.

More than likely, sometime in the past the desk sat in some water and both back feet became unglued from their leg. I knew Anita was planning on painting it so I just grabbed some straight grain cherry about 1″ thick and glued it onto both back legs.

Once the glued dried, I started filing away the wood trying to recreate the swoop of the pad. Since the bad legs were in the back, it wasn’t entirely necessary to make perfect matching feet with the ones in the front since no one would really see them while the desk was against the wall but I still wanted to give it my best shot.

I used a variety of rasps and MicroPlanes to shape the curve into the foot. I’ve made cabriolet legs before so I had a basic understanding of how to shape them. Once the general shape was created, I drew the bead onto the blank and used my Dremel to carve it in.

After shaving was completed, 80 and 150 grit sandpaper finalized the foot. I was quite pleased with the results.

One foot down, one to go. It took about 30 minutes for me to finish one foot listening to the Bengals game on the radio.

After I was done with both feet, I flipped over the desk to see how it looks. Not too shabby. Once the desk is painted no one will know that the feet where redone. Anita was impressed as well. She didn’t think I would have been able to match the two in the front. I guess I’m good for something.

Empire Dresser

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture5 Comments

My wife won this Empire style dresser this week at an online estate auction site for a mere $50.00. When we went to pick it up the guy who ran the auction was telling us it was probably built around the early 1800’s and was a cross between Empire and Federal styles. The dresser was beautiful with its carved columns, mahogany veneer and old brass hardware.

The dresser was in pretty good shape with the only major damage being the bottom drawer was broken off. Fixing the veneer and making it match with the rest of the piece would be a challenge so my wife and I are thinking of taking out all three bottom drawers and turning the dresser into a wine bar with storage for wine glasses and bottles.

While taking the drawers out I was looking for a makers mark just in case this is some rare piece made by famous cabinetmaker. The last thing I want to do is to retrofit some dresser that if left alone and restored could be worth $20,000. Unfortunately I found no makers mark but I did notice that the piece was made by hand.

The drawers were made with hand cut dovetails and the bottoms were chamfered into grooves in the drawers side. No plywood was used which gave me a clue that the dresser was pretty old. Plywood wasn’t being used in furniture until around the 1920’s.

I also noticed that not that much care was taken in cutting the drawer bottoms. One of the bottom’s edge was wavy and looked like it was cut with a bow saw. Why the cabinetmaker didn’t use a hand saw to rip down the bottom is baffling. Maybe he was in a hurry or didn’t have a hand saw around at the time but, it looks like crap and wouldn’t be considered top-notch craftsmanship by todays standards. However, it was perfectly acceptable back then. Maybe there wasn’t as much scrutiny about how things were built as there is today. If I did something like that, all my woodworking friends would call me a hack.

  

I also could see where the cabinetmaker reused boards that he first cut dovetails for as the drawers backs. The back and the sides are simply nailed together with some finish nails. It’s possible he was planing on dovetailing the back of the drawers but changed his mind for some reason. But nevertheless, apparently back then if the part was not being shown and was hidden from the customers view, then nobody cared what it looked like inside.

The back of the piece gave me another clue as to its age. There were two pockets drilled to accept screws to hold down the top. As I unscrewed one of them, I saw that the screw had a point at the tip. Due to increased machinery technology, manufacturers didn’t start making screws with points until the 1840’s. Before that they were simply blunt and craftsmen would have to pre-drill the hole.

So my guess is this piece was probably built between 1840-1920 by a local cabinet shop who didn’t bother signing their pieces. With no makers mark, there is no way for me to determine who actually built it. I searched the internet for “Empire dresser” in Images to see if a similar dresser appeared with no luck. So in the end, with its major damage to the bottom drawer, I think it’s safe to retrofit this into something new.

A real Stanley No 55 Plane

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Antique Tools16 Comments

A few weeks ago I picked up an old Stanley No 55 plane at an auction. In all my years in buying old tools, I’ve never seen an old Stanley No 55 quite like this one. Stanley referred to the 55 as a molding machine in itself. It came with 55 blades which interchange with the plane to cut different profiles. Stanley even provided a booklet with the plane to help the user create some of the different profiles.

  

When I won the plane at auction, all the parts where there except the screwdriver but who cares about the screwdriver other than a collector anyway? What made this 55 special were the two dozen extra blades that the original owner cut and used with the plane.

If you know anything about a Stanley 55, you know that one of the reasons that most examples that are found out in the wild are in pristine condition is because they were hardly ever used. The plane is notorious for being too complicated to set up with its various fence and sliding section adjustments. Most craftsmen simply gave up and stuck it on the shelf to sit and collect dust.

However, this plane was different. Most all of the blades were sharpened and ready to cut. Even some of the complex cutters had scuff marks on them from where they were used.

But what was most intriguing part of the plane was the extra cutters that came with it. These cutters weren’t special cutters available from Stanley at the time. These were probably handmade by the craftsman himself. The mere fact that this craftsman knew not only how to use the blades that came with the plane, but went so far as to make a couple of dozens of extra cutters and put them to use makes me green with envy.

I admit that I have messed around with a Stanley 55 plane in the past. And while I was able to make some of the simple profile blades cut well, I had very little luck with the complex ones. The biggest problem with cutting complex profiles with a Stanley 55 is the fact that the plane rides on skates and does not compress the wood in front of the blade like a wooden complex molding plane does. You often end up getting a lot of tear out in the grain ruining the piece you’re cutting.

So how this craftsman got the plane to work well enough to motivate him to make his own cutters and put them to work baffles me. The one thing I do know about making the Stanley 55 work well is to use straight grain wood and have a very sharp blade to avoid tear out. Apparently this guy was a master with the plane getting these complex blades to work. I just wish he would have left a pamphlet on how he did it.

Turning a Door into a Headboard

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture2 Comments

My wife Anita and I bought an old door off of Craigslist a few months ago with the intentions of using it as a headboard for our full size bed in our spare bed room. This type of “recycled” work is new to me but it’s all the rage nowadays and my wife has just opened up a business called Bella Chic Decor where she rehab’s old furniture. We’ve been antiquing for a few weeks picking up a whole bunch of old furniture to build up her inventory and she spends time sanding and repainting it. She also has rented a space at a local antique store to sell her stuff.  She’s been doing really well and the furniture she rehab’s looks the bomb so her future looks bright.

Once we got this door home I needed to measure it and decide where to cut it in half so it would work as a headboard. I ended up using three panels of the five panel door in order for the design to make sense. Cutting the door was the easy part. I whipped out my Festool panel saw and cleanly ripped the door in half. Then I filled the door knob hole and latch with scrap wood and putty.

Turning the door into a headboard was a sinch. I knew the headboard needed to be at least 54″ long in order to fit the bolt holes for the full size bed frame so I added extra wood on each side from a 2×8 ripped down to 6 1/2″.

For the top, I simply added a piece of 3 1/2″ wide ash I had lying around and nailed it to the top with my pneumatic finish nailer. From there I cut and nailed a piece of crown molding I bought at Home Depot.

After I was done, Anita painted the headboard with chalk paint and applied a coat of dark wax then clear wax on top in order to protect the finish. The old door really came out nice and makes a stunning headboard.

Thanks USPS

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Antique Tools2 Comments

So I sold this Stanley No 8 plane on Ebay two weeks ago for about $82.00. I get an email from the buyer last week claiming that he received it broke. It’s not too often that tools I ship end up broken during shipping but when it happens it makes me want to go down to the post office and go postal on someone.

Over the years, I’ve shipped hundreds of planes all over the world to places like Canada, Italy, Australia, England and France. Every time I take care in making sure the plane is well packed and well protected. But when I finished packing this boy to California, a little voice in my head told me I better add insurance to the bill.

A couple of years ago it was the buyers responsibility to pay for insurance when they paid for the item. Now Ebay turned that responsibility onto the seller. So if you sell something expensive through Ebay without insurance and it breaks during shipping, you’re responsible even though the buyer didn’t pay for insurance. I don’t ship everything I sell with insurance because it adds expense to the shipping and handling charge and buyers often get turned off to an auction if they feel the shipping charge is too high.  But thankfully I had enough foresight to pay the insurance for this plane.

When the buyer emailed me it broke, I told him to file a claim through Ebay so they would know the plane broke during shipping. I used Ebay’s third-party shipping insurance called ShipCover and not the USPS. Once the claim was filed, I went through Ebay’s dispute center where they acted as a mediator between the buyer and seller.

As soon as the buyer filed his claim, Ebay immediately froze the money he sent me through PayPal until the dispute was resolved. That can be a hairy situation if you already spent the money your buyers sent you. If there isn’t enough money in your account to cover the disputed item, Ebay will often take the money from your bank account. Talk about a sticky situation if you start bouncing a bunch of checks because Ebay froze your money.

Luckily I had enough money in PayPal and after he filed his claim, I filed mine to ShipCover through Ebay. A few days go by and I received the plane back from the seller. My frozen money went back to him and I was rewarded the $82 from ShipCover. The dispute was settled and life goes on.

Sofa Table

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn FurnitureLeave a comment

Last fall my wife Anita and I redid our screened in porch. Since then we’ve slowly added furniture to the room but what we really need is a table to put our 20-year-old TV on. Right now the TV sits on a big clay pot with a piece of plywood on top. Not an ideal place for a TV so she asked me to build something quick to use for out there. So I designed this table which measures 56″ long x 17″ deep x 30″ tall.

Because the table will be outside, I decided to build it out of 2 x 8’s in case it gets destroyed by the weather. Plus, I really didn’t feel like spending the money on something more weather appropriate like cedar or teak. The 2 x 8’s around here are Southern Yellow Pine and if you scavenge through a pile, you can find some clean board free from knots. Once I bought the boards I let them acclimate in my shop for a couple of weeks.

Since 2 x 8’s are 7 1/4″ wide, it was a no brainer to make the sides of the table 7″. In some cases I was able to rip the boards in half on my bandsaw to yield two thinner pieces. Because the boards are a 1 1/2″ thick, cutting them in half yielded a two boards 11/16″ thick rough sawn. I kept planing those boards to 1/2″ thick and used them as the drawer stock.

I tried using the grain to my advantage as best as I could. The bottom slats only being 1/4″ thick are susceptible to warping so I cut them with quarter sawn or rift sawn wood.

Those aren’t dovetails!

What can I say, I wasn’t in the mood to cut half blind dovetails. I’ve used this pin joint in the past when I built my toolbox ten years ago. Those have held up fine over the years and these drawers are going to get minimum use so I’m not too concerned.

Anita plans on painting the piece with gray chalk paint and distress it a little to make it look old. Painted gray with some nice old style handles and this table will be a show stopper in our screened in porch. But I have a feeling a new flat screen will be on top of it instead of a 20 year old dinosaur.

SawStop injury video

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Workshop2 Comments

I felt what happened to me last weekend on my SawStop was so eye opening that I decided to post a video explaining what happened to help other people not make the same bonehead move I did. Plus I wanted to implant it in my brain so I never do something that stupid again.

I contacted SawStop and sent the damaged cartridge to them for inspection. They contacted me a few days later and told me that will be sending me a free replacement cartridge since it was a “save”. I’m glad because at $69.00 a pop, they’re not exactly cheap to casually have a spare around.

My SawStop Works

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn WorkshopLeave a comment

I’m a little too embarrassed to post this but I figured I should. I always thought I would be one of those SawStop owners who would own a SawStop for thirty years and never had to use the safety trigger. Today put an end to that dream.

I was ripping a piece of 3/4″ walnut 1″ wide when the next thing I knew I heard a large bang. I looked and saw the blade was gone. I backed away from the table saw and looked at my left thumb. Somehow my thumb caught the blade. I wish I knew how I did it, but it happened so fast I’m not entirely sure how. I wasn’t rushing and I was paying attention to what I was doing, even using a push stick.

I was using my left hand to gently hold the wood away from the blade and using my push stick with my right hand pushing the wood through.  I think what happened is right before I got cut, I felt some vibration in the wood and it caused my left hand to slide into the blade. I mean, it had to have happened that way. It’s only logical explanation of how I got cut. I just can’t believe how fast it actually happened.

The damage to my thumb is not that bad. The blade took a chunk of skin off and ripped my fingernail but no stitches are required. I can’t even imagine the damage that would have been caused had I not owned the SawStop. More likely I’d be in the emergency room tonight trying to have the top of my thumb reattached.

After I got my thumb taken care of, I took the cartridge and blade out of the saw. I’ll have to go buy a new cartridge tomorrow at Rockler and use another blade but it’s still far cheaper than an emergency room bill. I think my table saw has just paid for itself!