Under Way!

Out milling a couple of times recently. Lucky to have had gorgeous weather both times.

First outing of the season milled up some maple and some cherry.

Second time out was Port Orford cedar and Monterey cypress. Gave all the PO away, Only kept a couple small chunks of the Monterey. I have way too much of it already.

Also got a third load of cherry into the kiln. I think I have enough material to dry one more kiln load after this. It'll be a mixed load of cherry, elm, some softwoods and I'm not sure what all else. Unfortunately it is buried deep within my pile and will require a bunch of moving around to get to it.

And made a bit of headway on preparing stock for some Christmas gift boxes. Hoping to make 6 boxes with wood that I have harvested locally, based on a design I saw in FWW several years ago. Right now looking at elm, yellow cedar, catalpa, cherry and walnut for the sides. Lids and bottoms still TBD. The sliding table saw is nice for cutting stock to a precise length.

Fall Startup

Things were even slower than usual over the summer and early fall here at the Slow Woodworker. I am thinking of changing the name of my blog to The Almost Ground to A Halt Woodworker!

A summer of family activities, including some travel and working with my son on rebuilding a 1971 Austin Mini took priority over the woodworking.

One small woodworking activity I did manage to accomplish over the summer was levelling an elm slab that was too big for my planer by using a router jig. I have no idea what I will use the slab for, but at least it is flat and level now!

I still have the yellow cedar Japanese style lamp and the oak slab small table that I want to complete. I also would like to make a couple of simple boxes to give out as Christmas presents.

The chainsawing season has started up at the local log dump area. There are quite a few nice logs down there that I hope to get to over the course of the winter. Unfortunately it started up a month later than it normally does, then just before it opened I broke a finger. I still have four more weeks in a splint, but it is feeling good and I am hopeful that chainsawing will not be too hard on it!

One thing I did manage to do was get a couple loads of wood through the kiln. These were all slabs that I milled up at least two years ago. I think two years ago was when a lot of cherry stated appearing at the log dump, so most of these slabs were cherry. Also a bit of Monterey cypress and some elm. Probably have enough slabs for two more kiln loads over the next couple of months. However, since my woodworking output is so fantastically mismatched with the amount of wood slabs I am sawing and drying, a huge surplus of slabs has once again built up. So rather than resolve the problem, I have elected to create more storage space by sellilng off some of my old woodworking machinery that I purchased with the intention of restoring and then using.

Here is a picture of my woodpile on the side of the house, in the middle of me pulling out slabs to put in the kiln. Everything I mill up goes in this pile for two years to dry out to about 12%, before I put it in the kiln, which takes it down to about 8%.

Getting Jiggy

Was able to spend a few hours on the Japanese lamp project recently. Each of the four faces of the lamp has a grid on it with 3 vertical pieces and 7 horizontal pieces. The horizontal grid pieces will terminate on the 4 vertical posts, while the vertical grid pieces will terminate on the upper and lower tie rings.

So recent work was to make the bridle joints in the tie rings where the vertical grid pieces will terminate. There are 24 joints in total, and each one looks like this:

The first step was to set up my shaper table (which I have converted to use router bits) to do a cut on one face, then do a cut on the second face. I did a cut for the middle joint first, then used that cut to register the cut for the two outer joints. This pic shows the crazy jig I set up to do the cuts on the second face.

The  next thing was to square up the ends of each of the cuts. First I lined up a nice square block of scrap with the leading edge of the cut.

Then I used the face of the scrap to register a couple of setup blocks.

Next I registered a larger setup block against the previous two. This gives me the edge I am going to trim to.

Not sure why this next picture got flipped 180 degrees, but this shows the block in place and ready to trim the back of the small mortice. Notice too that I had to gang the tie ring pieces together with a spacer so that the block I use to trim the mortices will have something to rest on.

And voila! All the mortices are squared up.

Next was to cut the last part of the joint, the 0.25" groove. I decided to use my trusty old horizontal morticer. It doesn't see much action, but when I need it it is sure great to have! First I set the height of the cut using a couple set up blocks. A bit of tweaking ensured but soon it was set right.

Then I set up a couple stop block and a block at each end of the tie ring piece being drilled.

After that I held my breath and drilled the first 1/4" deep mortice. It worked great! 1 down, 23 more to go! Then I will need to trim each of them by hand.

The next thing will be the horizontal and vertical grid pieces. Those will be super picky too!

Lamping Along

Finally making some serious headway on the Japanese shoji-style lamp! Love working with the yellow cedar.

Milling Maple

Milled up some maple with a friend the other day.  Usually I am milling up urban trees. It was nice to pick up some wood from a tree grown in the forest. 

Some progress on the Japanese style lamp, but a couple setbacks have cost me some time so no new pictures. Really trying hard to focus on this project.

Also had to order some new knives for my 14" General planer.

Milling

I did have a day of milling at the beach last week, Port Orford cedar and some crappy cherry.

Progress and a Visit

I completed the conversion of my printer's tablesaw to inches. The last step was to trim and drill an off-the-shelf ruler to fit where the old one was. Since I didn't want to cut any aluminum in the house, I clamped the ruler between a couple blocks of wood and trimmed it out in the lane using a sawzall, followed by an end mill in a router to clean it up. Worked very well.

Next, a psuedo-success.  I got all the insulation installed in my dust cyclone baffle. I used acoustic tiles, along with some eggcrate foam. Unexpectedly, or more properly due to lack of foresight on my part, the acoustic tile made the thing too heavy for me to manage. Luckily my son was home from school one weekend and I recruited him to help me maneuver it into place. Here is a shot of it before I sealed it up and put it in place.

The square hole at the top left is where the cyclone exhausts into the baffle. I was disappointed that noise level was not significantly reduced with the addition of the insulating material. I am pretty sure that I  made an error with my previous measurement which showed the baffle without any insulation causing a 20 dB drop from the unmuffled noise level. I found that adding the insulated baffle only yielded a 5 dB drop from the unmuffled! So I'm scratching my head on that one, but really, there isn't much more I can do, other than maybe seal up a few cracks.

Also made some decent progress on the long delayed Japanese style lamp. I got the base pieces cut out and did a first test fitting on it. Still a bit of tweaking to go to close up the cracks, then onto the posts. Hard to envision the finished piece from this I know! It will be about 3' high and a foot square, shoji style.

Also managed to get out and mill up some cherry. You can see the full report here, but this is what we cut by the end of the day. Not huge logs, but it was very nice material, I have high hopes for it.

Finally, I managed a trip to Los Angeles for the first time in many years. The highlight for me was the Gamble House in Pasadena. What a stunning monument to the Craftsman style. And what a shame that Vancouver cannot find the willpower to preserve its heritage houses.