Will you use this ideas: there

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Wednesday, February 19, 2014

And Lo There Stood a Loom

Tonight there was a little break from the Joinery Bench build. I was a little short on timber and stopped by the store tonight on the way home from work to pick up what was needed, and while I was there I also picked up a board for a small commission piece Ive had sitting in the wings for a little while.

My best friends wife wants to teach herself to weave, so to do this you need a loom. Now looms can get very complicated but they can also be very simple. Thankfully she was looking for the simple kind. She found a set of plans for what she wanted in an old craft book from the late 60s. I tried to ask several questions to refine what she wanted but, the plan in the book was it. Heres the pic I took of the page with the plans.

A very simple plan that is supposed to be joined in the corners with screws. Of course I had to play with that idea a little. At first I was thinking about mortise and tenon, but then I realized that for weaving you would want the elevation difference between the uprights and the top and bottom cross bars. So I decided to remain more faithful to the original plan, only making a small, I guess you could call it a shallow lap joint, to give a small shoulder on the uprights to support the crossbars and help keep the piece square under tension.

This needed the strength of a hard wood, and thought I hate buying my hardwood from retail giants, I only needed a 1x4x8 to pull this off. So I held my nose and searched the stacks. At first I was thinking oak or poplar, but I have used those flavors a lot in the past. So I just browsed to find something different that I hadnt worked with before. The walnut was blotchy looking, and there was something I didnt like about the cherry, finally I stumbled across the mahogany. Ive never had the pleasure before and since Ive been doing a lot of reading about 18th century American furniture lately, and there is a lot of mahogany used in that time period. I decided to give it a try.

I can say that I really understand why. It works with hand tools beautifully and easily. I had to rip the 1x4 in half to get started. I know 1x material is thinner than the 2x pine I hand ripped for bench top but I worked so hard to do just one of those boards. This cut so nicely I didnt even work up a real sweat, and I was done in no time.

Then after crosscutting the boards to length I ganged them together in the vice and joined the edges first with my German horned plane, and smoothed with a #4. This was to make sure the matching boards were all the same width.

Then I set to cut what Im calling a mini lap joint. I started by laying out the boards where they would fit together and marking where they would overlap onto the uprights. Then I took my gents saw and cut a very light, maybe barely an 1/8th inch shoulder.

Then I knocked out some of the waste to come off with a 1" chisel.

Then I used the router plane to get all the depths consistent. Man I have to say that once you start using a router plane, suddenly its easy to find excuses to use it more. Using it to even an end just required me keeping the weight on the side that was sitting on the original height. I think this plane could just be more versatile than most people let on and Im going to have to do some digging and exploration to find some more tricks with that puppy.

At any rate, a little glue and a little clamp and its set. Now I have something to work on in the meantime while glue sets and dries on stages of the joinery bench and with luck, a finished loom will be ready for delivery when I see Thom and Ann this weekend.

Cheers!

Oldwolf

Monday, February 10, 2014

Let There Be Light Part I

A few months ago, my good friend Aristotle Dreher starter Arisitotle Photo. In order to assist with his fancy studio shots, he asked me to make him a light ring. He’s a good friend, who’s done all my shirt and blog design work, so how could I say no (it also seemed like an interesting project)?

The raw materials.

The light ring consists of 12 light sockets arranged in a circle. The middle of the circle is open and the camera is placed there and the photo taken through the ring. This provides balanced light on all sides of the image (or at least this woodworker thinks it does).

Determining the ring layout.

I began the light ring project by buying 12 cheap plastic light sockets. I asembled them in a circle, and used that to determine the size of the ring. I also used the width of their bases to determing the width of the ring. I left about ½” of space between the sockets and on the inside and outside edges.

The ring itself is constructed from two (2) pieces of Baltic Birch plywood. The front piece is ¾” thick. This was the first piece I made. Because all of the circles are referenced off the center, I worked from the outside to the inside so that I didn’t cut out the middle and then realize I still had to reference it.

After determining the outside diameter of the ring, I marked it out and cut close to the line with my jig saw. Then I built a trammel out of scrap Baltic Birch and routed exactly to the line with a fixed base router and ¾” diameter straight bit.

The outside is milled.

Once the outside circle shape was finished, it was time to route the wire trough. This trough is centered on the width of the light ring. I made it using the same ¾” straight bit. I used a small piece of wire to determine the proper depth using relative dimensioning.

When routing with a trammel, plunge routers are more versatile.

That’s when I realized my mistake. You can’t use a fixed base router to plunge a trough into the center of a ring. I switched the trammel setup to a plunge router (this required running out for longer mounting screws), reset the circle diameter and depth and went to town.

The center trough is milled.

I routed the center trough in three (3), roughly equal depth passes. The feed rate was nice and slow and I thoroughly vacuumed between passes. It still resulted in a bit of burn on the wood and on the router bit. Since it’s a functional (rather than aesthetic) piece, I’m not sweating any burn.

Just about done with the front ring.

Once the Center trough was done, I re-set the trammel again and hit the inside of the ring. I paused briefly and considered switching to a narrower bit for the inside (as I only needed to cut through, not create a trough wide enough to house wire), but since the trammel was already set up for the ¾” bit in the router I just went ahead and routed. I again made it though in 3 passes and had about the same level of burning as I did for the trough.

The connecting trough.

I finished the center piece by routing one (1) more trough connecting the center trough to the outside edge at the bottom. This trough will allow access for the power cable. I first made this trough with a pattern bit to keep it straight, but when it proved too shallow, I deepened it with router freehand.

Next, on to the back . . .