Before and After: April 2010

Friday, April 30, 2010

Green Sustainability

Shaklee in the News!!!!

Click HERE to watch a great short video on the GET CLEAN KIT

and……

Wood Turner is showing off products that are green and sustainable. There are things in your everyday life that can help you go green from transportation to food.

Have a great weekend!!!

Bonnie

Please visit my online Shaklee site.

Now that I have had some time in the shop I started working on the Jelly Cupboard Build again. I need to get that out of the shop so I can get reorganized and cleaned up to start the WIWW nightstand/beach house nightstand.

I thought I would post a few pics of that I was able to get done tonight.

This is part of the door frame. It is constructed with a half lap joint. There are a couple of ways to accomplish this joint. There are two ways specifically to accomplish this on a table saw (Well Two ways that I know of I am sure there other ways) one is to use a Dado Set which I have loaned out currently, the second and the way that I accomplished this is to use your regular blade and nibble away that the wood.

Essentially I like to figure out the width of my cut set my fence that width and make my first cut. Now if you do this make sure you use your miter gauge with a sacrificial fence, this does a couple of things. It provides support to the back of the wood as well as giving you some additional support on the board you are cutting. I make my first cut with the wood against the fence just touching not real tight on the fence you don’t want to cause a bind or have it kick on you. Now with the first cut made I move the board just a hair to the left to let the blade nibble away at the next piece and then rinse and repeat until I get to the last cut. You will need to do some clean up.

If you look at the board you probably missed some pieces if they are large pieces you can line them up with the blade and cut them out. If they are just fragments of wood hanging there your best bet is a piece of sand paper a 1/4 sheet sander or even a block plane. I opted for the block plane because I have geeked out on using hand tools as much as I can lately. I guess you could use a chisel as well.

Once you have nibbled away at both the boards you will have a joint that looks similar to the one seen here. Now you can see why it’s called a half lap joint. This is a pretty neat Joint and I can see using this in future projects.

As you can see in the previous picture I also drilled a couple of holes for dowels. They are supposed to help reinforce the joint. With modern glue I don’t really think there is a need for reinforcement however from a cosmetic aspect they fit well with this piece.

Here is a quick shot of the body of the cupboard. I had some time to paint part of the inside. I need to finish that up. Obviously the inside will be white and the outside is going to be a grayish/green color. Should be interesting. I am doing it all with milk paint. I will do a post on that at some point as it is somewhat different than regular paint.

At this point I need to finish up the door frame and cut the hinge mortise and get everything mounted. Mrs. Grover will be doing the punched tin for the door. I’m hoping i can get her setup this weekend and get that knocked out.

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: woodworking,hand tools,jelly cupboard,half lap joint,table saw,block plane

I know it's popular to display scales like this one in kitchens, but I thought it fit in perfectly right here. Love the scalloped base and metal green hand. Aside from Poppy, it's my favorite new addition to the desk space.

Some plain white index cards sit on top and serve as convenient notepads. We can never have enough of those. Same goes for pens... they disappear as fast as socks do around our house. I stock up on cheap clear Bic pens from Target. I like them all matching.

The stone dog wears my watches like a fancy schmansy collar. He looks downright puffed up about it too.

Mr. Man can be found in a variety of unusual poses throughout the day. He's actually a fun accessory to have around.

I borrowed the #7 crock from my kitchen to display a single Clematis bloom. And underneath it sits a box with blooms all it's own.

And these are a few of my favorite desk things.

Miter Saw Tuning

Drum roll please…………

I did it. It’s done all the pictures are done for the Miter Saw tuning post. I can’t believe it.

Okay So here we go.

First and foremost when you start this process :

PLEASE READ, FOLLOW, AND UNDERSTAND THE USE AND SAFETY INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOUR SAW AND ALWAYS WEAR YOUR SAFETY GLASSES AND I RECOMMEND HEARING PROTECTION.

MAKE SURE THAT YOUR SAW IS UNPLUGGED DURING THE FIRST SEVERAL PARTS OF THIS TUTORIAL.

Okay now that I have that out of the way. Seriously please take care of yourself and watch what you are doing.

Squaring the Blade to the Fence:

You will need a speed square or some kind of accurate square that you can check 90° and 45°.

Make sure your saw is set and locked at the 0° take your square and lay it on the table to check for 90° make sure the it is flush against the fence. You are looking to make sure there is no gap between the square and the blade. Make sure that you don’t put to much pressure on the blade as it can cause it to deflect.

Now once you feel that the blade is square find a piece of scrap wood and and make a cut with the widest side laying flat on the table.

Part of the reason I included a video here was to show some safety precautions. When you are making your cut you want to start the saw close to the the material make a slow and steady cut through the wood. Once you have made the cut leave the blade in the down position and let the blade come to a complete stop. This does a couple of things. It reduces the risk of you sticking your hand in there and trying to grab the wood. It also keeps you from possibly causing the blade to catch the wood and at best chipping at worst possibly throwing the piece at you or across the shop. You will also notice that I keep my hand on the piece through the entire cut, I also as the blade is slowing slide the “non waste” side away from the blade. I don’t know if this is good or not it’s just something that I gave gotten in the habit of doing. In my mind it helps keep the blade from catching the piece as well.

Now once you have made your cut get your straight edge out and align the two pieces against the straight edge.

You will notice that I have labeled one part with a T(top) this is just for orientation. Now take the one piece and flip it over 180° on its top.

Now you want to check for any kind of gap between the two pieces.

Fortunately for me I don’t have any gaps in my pieces so I don’t need to adjust the saw. For this cut. If you do need to adjust this please refer to the manual for your saw. Typically there are bolts that will allow you to adjust where the saw stops.

Checking the 45° Miter Setting:

Just as we did with the 0° setting take your square and set it to check for 45°. Again make sure not to press to hard against the blade and keep the square flush to the fence.

Take a try square or a combination square and check the miter for square also check to see there there are no gaps in the miter itself. We are looking good here no adjustments needed. If you need to make adjustments refer to the manual for your particular saw for adjustment details.

Checking Bevel

Like checking for square set the saw to 0° and make sure you are still square. Now take another piece of scrap and place it on edge and make your cut. Once again take those pieces and align them against a straight edge and the flip one piece like you did before and check for a gap.

Hey guess what. I have a gap. I will be spending a little time adjusting this. Again if you have a gap here refer to your manual to on resolving this issue. Now I need to go find my manual.

You will want to perform a similar cut when you put the blade on a 45° Bevel.

Take your piece on edge and cut a 45° in this piece and another and set up the miter similar to what we did here:

Again make sure to check for square and gaps and refer to your manual.

Sorry to keep telling you refer to your manual but each saw is just enough different that it is important to refer to yours so you can adjust your saw accurately.

I hope this helps you in setting up your saw and providing a little bit of safety and usage guidance. Please feel free to ask me any questions or if you would like to see any other photos please feel free to let me know.

After making the adjustment needed you should have a very accurate saw that will allow you to make nice square cuts and will allow you make the nightstand with ease.

Have a Great Day!

Technorati Tags: Woodworking,miter saw,tuning,tutorial

April's Bird(s)

Can you spot any changes to my office below? One of them is standing on the edge of my desk.

Meet Poppy.

He's only been with us for a couple of weeks,

and already he thinks this desk belongs to him.

Remember my bird calendar? This month's parakeet is strikingly beautiful.

And, well, poor Poppy is a wee bit jealous...

and tries to vie for April's slot.

What am I doing?

I am currently reading Make Your Own Guitar by Melvyn Hiscock. I am prepping myself as best I can for my first guitar build. This is hopefully the start of a Career. I’m hoping that over the next 10 years I can develop my skill at building guitars and make a Full Time career of it. It’s a tough business to get into especially competing with the Big dogs out there but I still believe there is a good market for Custom Built and Hand Built Guitars both Acoustic and electric. Like most things I have decided to just teach myself at least in the beginning. I’m sure I will take some classes down the road but for now it’s full steam ahead.

Tomorrow night I plan to go into the shop and finally knock out the post on Tuning a Miter Saw. I hope to have that up tomorrow night or Thursday. Once that post is done I will start on the WIWW Nightstand build and start the post with that. I want to break up each section into it’s own post so you have a step by step guide to building the nightstand. Sorry it has been taking so long on this. I know I got everyone all excited with the Series. I had some really great responses. April is about over and all of my commitments are mostly taken care of so I can spend some time focusing on the series and getting it done right for you.

On a side note…. In a jonesing for something woodworking I tackled a new type of woodworking tonight. Well not so much new as it was adapting some current skills into producing something else. I am excited about it and will post about that as well in the future but for now it is going to be a closely held secret. I think you will find it interesting as well. Tonight was mostly prototyping and figuring out how I wanted to do things. I still have a lot of figuring out to do on the project but think I am well on my way.

I also got to spend sometime in the shop with Grover Jr. tonight. We had a Parent/Child Project that we completed tonight from Home Depot. It was a little shelf kit with the number 20 Home Depot Car. Pretty neat. If you want to spend some quality time with you son or daughter I highly HIGHLY recommend the Lowes Build And Grow Program. I took Grover Jr. to one a few weeks back and we built a Kaleidoscope. There was just something very cool about spending sometime with him just the two of us sharing something that I love with him and seeing him enjoy it.

Here are some pictures after a successful morning of building.