Friday, April 27, 2018

Colgate EALL (6)

Work continues on various components.

Here I’ve made a packing piece by gluing a piece of Port Orford Cedar to a stick of iroko, so as to enable the feeder to be used for chamfering three corners of each of the corner plant-on ‘posts’:


There are two plant-on posts for the Japanese room which are not corners, and these were also run through the shaper to chamfer the exposed arrises:


The mill was my choice for routing the 5/8" mortises on the bench rails for the leg tenons, with some jury-rigging needed on the two long rails:


The 5/8" end mill is four flute:


A quick check of the fit of a leg to a rail after cleaning the mortises out with a chisel:


Closer view:


After what seemed like endless mortising, the rails were all mortised, save for a last step of cleaning out the mortises and flaring them by chisel:


At this stage the two shorter rail pairs are cleaned up, but not yet chamfered:


The pile of tenoned pieces awaits a chance for fitting:


The first, and shortest bench frame came together without issue:


Another view:


A closer look:


It took a full day just to clean the mortises out, process the dadoes for the floor boards on the inside faces using the milling machine, and then fit each of the joints. The joints are all a tight interference fit so clamping and mallet taps are required to get the parts together.

It took another full day to do the same with the medium-size bench:
 

This one also went together without any issues:


A look at some kerfs on one of the end rails:


I cut the wedge kerfs on the smaller bandsaw.

That’s two frames down, and one to go:


I’ve also finished off the parts of the leg assemblies, and have dry-fit the first pair:


The lower crosspiece is through-tenoned, while the upper crosspiece is fitted to blind mortises. The post tenons are yet to be kerfed for wedges.

A look at the tenons poking out:


Another day and a half I guess to complete the long bench rails to the same stage and fit the joints, then another day to prepare the floor boards and fit them, and start final assembly. Oh yes, and I’ll need to make a bunch of wedges, of various lengths and tapers. It will be nice to get the benches done, hopefully this will happen by the middle of next week. Once those are done, I can complete the table for the space, then work on the tracks and sliding doors for the alcove. I have another shipment of avodire coming to the shop early next week, a mix of 4/4 and 8/4 stock, 12’~13’ long, which should see me through the rest of the fabrication.

All for this time - thanks for your visit.

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Thursday, April 19, 2018

Colgate EALL (5)

I’ve been working on the plant-on corners for the Japanese room, and that work forms the focus of this posting.

This week I took a trip to Colgate to check the room out, meet the parties involved, and take some measurements. I found that none of the room corners where the plant-on posts would be located had square corner. Not even close in fact - the angles were on the order of 86˚. i’m glad i waited to check this aspect before I had put the corner boards together at the shop.

The boards have a simple rebated and glued joint, which is configured so as to make the join between the boards disappear at the chamfer between the pieces:


To rebate the corner boards, I first used my table saw to remove most of the material, then set up the shaper with a Zuani ‘jolly’ multi-purpose cutter, here configured for rebating:


The cutter is surrounded by the Integral fence and is ready for cutting after some calibration cuts on a scrap piece have been completed:


One the rebates were done, using a climbing cut with aid of the stock feeder, I had a further cut to make to remove an approximate 4˚ slice off of the inside faces of the rebated sticks. The bandsaw table was tilted accordingly and I got to work:



Clamp-a-thon (donations now accepted!), corner #1:


Here’s a square in place to show how far out of square I have made the interior of the corner after the parts are glued up:


After a couple of days, the four corners were glued up:


A little hard to see them, as placed side by side they look very much like a large avodire accordion.

In the above picture you can see a piece of cherry too, one of the recent stock arrivals for this project. it’s the largest chunk of cherry I’ve bought, at 20/4 (5", 127mm) thick, and about 11’ long. After an initial cut to bring it closer to finish length, I hoisted it onto the jointer:



Once jointed, a little trimming followed on the bandsaw:


And then it was planed, with a second jointing operation in the middle of that, followed by planing to near finish size.

A 4.75" (120mm) square was produced, and I was pleased to find it has some figure too:


I think the cherry and avodire will look great together.

Besides the cherry post, I also obtained this cherry slab, which will be used for the toko-ita and the chigai-dana, or staggered shelves:


I like how the wood seller gives some of the boards names, like 'Enoch’. That’s a name you don’t come across too often.

Next step is to chamfer the post glue ups, and for this I have obtained a set of chamfer knives for the corrugated knife head, a CGG Schmidt product. I’ll detail more about that in a subsequent post. Thanks for visiting this time, hope you enjoyed the pictures.

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Friday, April 13, 2018

Colgate EALL (4)

My focus so far on this job has been in building the furniture for the Japanese space. That furniture consists of three benches, of varying lengths, and a small table with compound splayed posts. This form of construction is near and dear to me, forming the contents of TAJCD Volume IV, however it had been more than a year since I last tackled this sort of work. With a relatively complex topic like that, the challenge upon revisiting is to see how much of previous study has stuck and how much needs a little re-study.

So far so good in that respect. The table top is a glue up using tongue and groove joints, exposed at the end grain surfaces. Once the top was trimmed to size, I laid out the mortises for the post tenons and got to work:


That’s the new CNC chisel you’re seeing there folks. I just position it and it works automatically, sorta.

A paring block helps ensure accurate results:


 A completed mortise - not so easy to photograph, but you get the idea:


A while later, the mortises were done, leaving finish planing and chamfering for a final step to be tackled later on:


I’ve made progress also with the stretchers for the benches, which come in two sizes, one set with through tenons and the other with blind tenons:


I chamfer tenons using the Zimmermann Profile sander:


The rails for the ends of the benches, 6 pieces total, have also had their haunched tenons cut out:


Tenoning of parts for the benches being more or less done, so I could move onto mortising of the rails after their layout was complete:


Ah, the Powermatic 719 - what can you say about such a crudely made machine? I have nicknamed it “better than nothing”. It oozes features which prove annoying over time.

With through tenons in particular, I do not use a hollow chisel mortiser for anything other than rough hogging out of the mortises, as that is all I have come to trust such a machine to do. I use chisels which are 1/8" (about 3m) undersize as this leaves 1/16" (1mm) on the mortise flanks to trim out later, which I will do using a combination of the milling machine and manual chisel work.

It didn’t take too long to work my way through the rough mortising of the rails for the two smaller benches:


I did not layout or mortise the rails for the long bench as there was a discrepancy on the drawings I had as to what the length should be, and that was important as the long bench fully occupies the width of the space. That discrepancy has now been resolved, with the added discovery that the room narrows in width as you draw back into the hallway, which means I should make the bench a little shorter than originally planned to ensure it can be moved in and out readily.

All for this time - thanks for your visit, and comments are most welcome.

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Sunday, April 8, 2018

Colgate EALL (3)

Have been working on the stock for the plant-on posts the past few days, and those are now fully dimensioned and finish planed, with just a few steps remaining. No pics though - sorry!

Today I’d like to share a bit about working on the benches for the Japanese room, the particular task needing completion being that of tenoning the leg stock. There are sixteen legs, and the tenons are 4.125" (105mm) deep, so this was a perfect task for my shaper and one of the two large tenoning heads I have in the, uh, vault.

The first step towards tenoning was to take the machine out of its current configuration with 1.25" spindle and fence mounted. I thought it might be of interest to some readers to show the steps in getting the machine ready for tenoning, followed by some tenoning work. So, here’s a short video, sans narration and background music:



Not shown in the video is that once the machine was set, I placed a piece of scrap off-cut of the leg stock, and did a test cut to see how the tenon thickness came out:


The first pass by the post left a tenon which was too fat.

The tenoning head was disassembled, in place on the spindle, and some shims were removed.

The next test cut got me to the target of 5/8" - it’s nice when you get there in one move:


All that remained was then to adjust the spindle height until the tenon was centered, and then to adjust the depth stop so as to produce a tenon of the required length.

The nature of shaper work in general is this: after a couple of hours of set up, the parts are processed in a matter of minutes. It’s worth it when many parts are involved, though it is hard to say at what number of parts exactly one might select the shaper option versus other methods.

These tenons are also set back a little on each of the narrow faces, so, after using the sliding table saw to crosscut the narrow faces of the tenons a slight amount, I rough cut the tenons to width on the bandsaw:


Then a router table set up using the old model of Jessem Mitr-slide (cross-cut fence) in a fixed position, got the tenon width to the mark in short order. Here the cut is started:


The cut finishes once the part meets the fence, followed by a quick lateral motion of the sliding fence to clean the shoulder:


Sixteen tenons are thereby done, save for entry chamfers:


Love that shaper!

All for this round - thanks for visiting the Carpentry Way.

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Colgate EALL (2)

Design work on the remodel of the Colgate East Asian Language Laboratory is getting closer to the finish line. I thought I’d share some sketches I’ve come up with for the space, though keep in mind this is not completely finalized as of yet.

The space consists of a pair of small rooms linked by a hallway, and along the hallway are faculty offices. The first space I worked on was the Japanese room, occupying a relatively small niche of space. From the hallway, the entry to the space is indicated by a small hanging panel, reminiscent of a ranma:


I’ve applied some ‘plant on’ posts, and nageshi, with a form of wainscot on the wall which looks similar to a exterior wall treatment seen on many Japanese structures.

Upon crossing under the ranma, a turn to the left gives a view of the alcove, with tokonoma (right) and toko-waki (left):


The benches are unusual for a Japanese traditional space of course, but in this situation the people coming into the space and sitting will be wearing, as per usual in the west, their street shoes and won’t be parking themselves on tatami on the floor. So, some compromise was needed to make the alcove work with a sitting viewer, in a rather cramped space. The department head, who is Japanese, was pleased with the arrangement.

There are three simple benches and a small table with splayed legs. The benches can be pulled out of the way to reveal sliding doors under the alcove, where items for display in the alcove and on the chigai-dana (staggered shelves) will be stored.

Heading the other way down the hall, bring the viewer to the 'Chinese’ room, which, like the Japanese space, is an area defined by a hanging piece of joined woodwork:


In the room proper is an insert window frame with a lattice echoing that of the one at the room’s entry:


It is likely that some changes may yet be made to this lattice so that it conforms better with the existing sash window mullions to the rear. Possibly the entry hanging lattice might receive a backing solid wood panel as well. As it is, we’ve been through several design iterations with the lattice arrangement, of which, of course, there are innumerable possible variations.

Turning the corner of the Chinese room and one sees a small table with a set of Chinese-style chairs, along with a bumped-out section with a framework with re-entrant corners, which will serve as a window to a series of interchangeable images behind:


The design phase is drawing near to a conclusion, it would appear, so I am probably about 6~8 weeks out from getting started on fabrication, which will need to be scheduled in with the other cabinet build with which I am currently occupied.

That’s it for this juncture, thanks for visiting! Post 3 is next in this series.

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