Wooden Mallet

I suppose you are now wondering what my excuse is this time, considering the last time I posted was last August.  Well, a lot has happened since then and I found that taking the time to sit down and write on this blog with not one but TWO little ones pawing at you to see what you are doing on the "GLOW BOOK!!" is quite challenging. So let me give you a quick summation of the last 9 months:

- Got a new job.
- Moved to Watertown, WI.
- Teaching two wee ones on how to Human.
(That last one actually takes all the time.)

Though with "all the time" taken, I managed to steal some of it back with the help of WIFE POWER. Basically this just means I duck into the garage for a few hours here and there so I can make birthday/Christmas presents, home essentials, and nick-nacks. So allow me to start where I left off.

The actual mallet doesn't look like this, unfortunately.

Last august it was my brother in-law's birthday (who is a wood worker himself) and I decided to make him something that any wood worker needs in his shop: a nice dead-blow hammer. I got the idea from a YouTube series called Wood Working for Mere Mortals. The guy who runs it does a good job on tutorials for simple projects.

The Wood

The head of the mallet was made out of Hard Maple and the stock out of Red Oak. Yet you may be wondering, "How dost though, sir, make a bludgeoning device with sufficient mass out of maple?" Watch and learn Peasant!

I started with a 3X6 inch block of maple and made some measurements. I then drilled two 1 1/2'' holes in the block.

I then cut them into 2 separate "squares" at a 7 degree angle. 

I then positioned and glued them on another 3x6'' block with a second in place for a firm clamping surface. The product looks like this:

Now we fill the holes with "mass." I used small lead fishing sinkers. These worked well and had more weight than sand and were more manageable than molten plutonium. 

Once that is finished, we then finish by topping of the head. 

Once sanded down uniformly...

...we use the table saw at about 12 degrees to give the head some shape by using my 

trusty Tenoning Jig.

"Ooooo!!"

The Handle

I found a nice strip of Red Oak and cut it size. Then I used the jig to cut 3 tenons into the end where 2 wedges will be glued in between to secure the head to the handle.

Tenoning Jig in Action!

Now that the handle can accept the head, shaping the handle is the next step. 

Using my drill press with a sanding drum bit made short work of it. Then I cut the wedges out of maple using the table saw and an angled miter gauge. Again, as I have said before in this blog, some things that I do (particularly on the table saw) are not as they say "couth." There are jigs you can make to make cuts like this safer, ...but who gots time for that!? I want my Hammer NOW!!*

* With all seriousness, always practice safe techniques around power tools. 

The Wedge. One of 2.

HAMMER TIME!

The wedges glued into place open up the tenons and make a pretty tight joint. 

With everything cleaned up and sanded....

...now its time to protect the surface of the head with medium leather I ordered from Amazon. By spreading a layer of Contact Cement on each surface, and letting it dry, setting them together makes a pretty irreversible bond. 

Like So!

Then I trim the edges to the contour of the face and.....

VIOLA!!

I really liked this project because it was fast and simple; and the product is incredibly useful to handymen like myself. 

Well next time I will be scribbling about another gift idea that I also got from the YouTube Channel WoodWorking For Mere Mortals: A marshmellow shooting Cross-bow. You don't want to miss this!

Pax,

Neil

P.S. For those who are wondering, I did make a few reindeer to sell at a local store. They sold about 5 of them. Which is not bad, considering I only had time to make 8. Hopefully in the future I can get better tools in order to speed production a bit for this coming year. 

The Kitchen Cupboard

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

Well if that is true, you all love me a lot!! It has been April since my last post about a project and there are many reasons why (and it's not laziness. ...Ok, maybe 30% laziness...fine 60% but the other 40 possess damn good reasons!).

Life has been pretty crazy over the last couple of months: me with uncertain shifts with current and future jobs, Tess getting ready to quit being a youth minister/associate DRE in order to be a full time mom, Joey learning how to walk and to communicate...sssomewhat, and all of us awaiting the birth of the newest member of the family, David Cyprian John. As of now, I have quit my job making Speed Queen washers and dryers, and have accepted a job in Sales/Customer Service working for a company that supplies electrification and control systems to hoists and cranes; Tess has also quit her job at the parish and is fully recovered from giving birth and having minor surgery due to odd complications; Joey is still the happiest kid ever; and David is doing wonderfully. My wife said this the other day and it is true: "it is hard to fathom just how much more you can love until another comes along" and...yip no problem loving more! We are feeling very rich at the moment and couldn't be happier. We now live in Watertown, WI. in a lovely apartment that God so graciously provided at the last possible minute.

Within all of that, I still found some time to build some crap; a couple things* actually. Last winter, my wife commissioned me to build a pair of freestanding cupboards for the kitchen that would fit in the small kitchen/dining area...we now no longer live in.

As with most of the projects that we take on, it always becomes a learning experience. This one is no exception. I started to build the cabinet out of 2X4's that I had lying around the basement (hey, it worked for the table!). Instead of having the cabinet components be 2 inches thick, I decided made a make-shift mill out of my teeny bandsaw. Meaning I cut them side-ways half straight down the middle. This was mistake number one. The professionals mill their wood using a very wide blade, say 3-4 inches wide (not thickness). This makes cutting long pieces of wood more precise and it eliminates the wood from "traveling" around imperfections such as knots. My blade is a mere 3/8 of an inch....which means!?!!? That blade traveled all over that mother, making a lovely (@#*&%!!!) wavy surface. So attempting to salvage the boards (I made a few before really realizing my folly), I ran them through my planner to plane them down hopefully making them flat.

"Did it work!?" you may ask. Well...yes and no. It made them flat, but no where near square. The ends differed as much as a 1/8'' in thickness. Now what? Well I told myself, "meh..I'll run with it to see what happens. So I start joining a few of these funkeh boards together with the mantra, "Sanding is my FRIEND!!"

Well....the outcome was as expected (at least what I should have expected): Bubkis. The boards for the moment inexplicably started to bow (a lot) and when joined to another board it only accentuated the bow until it became clear to me: I wasn't making a table, I was making a odd shaped bowl. I don't have a picture of the "bowl" but I do have a few of the boards themselves in all their bowy-ness.

After trying again (glutton for punishment), I decided to do things right and get some real wood. Though you may ask, "Why did you use pine stud boards to begin with?! MORON!" Well the pine actually has a lot of character in it and these particular boards were very colorful and diverse. But what really happened? Why didn't it work?

We see the phenomenon on our old back yard decks. After years of the seasons, even the best treated wood wears out and water and heat take its toll. We see curled ends that crack and bow. When wood comes into contact with water and then dries up it begins to bow. This is why as woodworkers it is SO VERY IMPORTANT to make sure your wood is completely dry. Last thing you want is to finish a project and have it crack and disfigure down the road (This actually happened to the dining room table I made. It still looks good though; gives it a rustic quality). Well of course I knew this, but what I didn't know is that when you buy 2x4's at the store, when it says "kiln dried" it is only about 20-40% dried. Which means it still has quite a bit of moisture in the wood - hence the "bowl".

Now THIS wood I got at an amazing deal. A friend of mine, a former boss' brother, is an amazing furniture maker. And he had this stuff lying around in his shop that he just wanted to get rid of. He got them as an add-on to some auction item he bid on years ago. Hence he was willing to part with them for rather cheap. How cheap!? I received about maybe $200-300 worth of red and white oak. I got it for $35. Me spoiled.
Once I figured out which boards to use for specific things, I started cutting.

I started with the top and joined a few boards together.

From Ben (the carpenter friend) I also received one long board that was about an inch and a half thick. It was perfect to make some legs out of.

Once I had 4 of those, I had to make up the difference with four 3/4'' boards.

Then I glued them together to get a nice set of square gams.











Next was to cut up the pieces for the sides, so I did that and joined them together.

I then decided to do mortise and tenon joints for the sides and legs. The sides as you can see are tenon and the legs will be mortise. (I originally did the tenons with my router table....but my router, in a word....blows giant Orangutan *expletive*. Don't buy any tool that has the word "EZ!" in it or on it to describe any of its features. This really means "EZ-Breakability!" or "EZ-li-Frustrates" or "EZ-Hair-pulling-out-ness.") I moved on to the table saw to essentially "Dado" the ends with the meager kerf of my 1/8'' blade.
For those who don't know, a DADO is a cutting blade or combination of blades that stack together to make the cutting surface wider in order to remove more material at once. The width you can cut varies from 1/4 to about an inch (depending on how many blades will fit on your saw.). Since I don't have any dado blades, I had to do a lot of passes to get the width I needed.

I then put together the rest of the sides for the back and front portions of the cabinet, and then tenoned them as well.

I then used my tapering jig to put a nice taper on only two sides of the legs; the inside sides. In my design I have the taper on the outside and I found it to make the cabinet too fat on the upper half. Having the taper on the inside solves this I think.

All four legs tapered on just two sides.










Next is to start putting the mortises in the legs. I didn't have a fancy mortiser nor did I want to drill it out by hand. I chose the middle ground. I was given a old but sturdy and nice drill press for last Christmas but had no way to power it. The motor died and needed to be replaced. A mere 1/4 hp single phase electric motor new costs well over a $100. A new one was out of the question, so I had to find a used one. Luckily my Father-in-law had a few spare lying around from various applications. I chose the dryer motor because while working at a laundry machine manufacturer for 8 months you pick up a few things; including how to wire it.

I grabbed a 12-15 amp power cord from radio shack, that would normally be for a computer monitor or a printer; spliced it up and began the wonderful game of "Let's find the buzz buzz!" I didn't have a voltage meter....so I had to just plug the cord in and see what did what (and not touch the wires together...which I did on accident...scared the living crap outta me.) After I regained consciousness, I think I finally figured it all out. I wired the terminals permanently and made a mounting bracket for the drill press (dryer mount wasn't compatible with press).

 I had to make a piece of board that I could bolt the motor into and likewise with the press. I cut around the top to allow for the belt to pass through when in a lower (or is it higher?) speed.

 Here is the entire drill press set up and ready to go! It works great and the man who gave it to me, I am eternally grateful.

With the drill press set up I can start to drill out the mortises.











 Then I chisel out the excess and dry fit the corresponding piece to it. It took some trial and error but I made it work.

The finished mortise looks like this.

I also mortised the legs where the
bottom shelf will fit into; which
you can see finished on
the left picture. 

Then I join together the sides.

 Again like with any project I do, I try something new. The "new" here is a style called Bevel Shaker. I made a frame like a picture frame and rabbeted the inside for the bevel piece to fit inside.

 I then made the board that would be the beveled piece...


(To be fancy, I decided to integrate some white oak into the scheme. I used white oak for the "picture frame" pieces.)

 ...and then beveled that mother up. The question of how is a little more risky and I probably shouldn't have done it that way, for purely safety reasons. I turned the wood on end and used the table saw with the blade set to 15 degrees. The risky part was cutting it without any real support or bracing. Something could have slipped or knicked wrong and I would be without a few digits. Needless to say I won't do that again.
...On the UP side! It looked pretty good!

And after some finagling (a lot actually [I was having trouble making it fit right and some of the 90 degree angles were funky]), I glued it down.

....now...REPEAT.

 Next I notched the tenons for the rails for the bottom shelf of with my dovetail saw.

So they look like this. (I did this a couple of times also.
Getting that angle right wasn't the difficult thing; it was making
sure the two sides were clamped down, as if glued, and
measuring the length of the pieces in the right position.) Gah....

...and they fit in to the legs like so.











Then it was time to install the bottom panel in the cupboard itself. I had to notch the corners to fit around the legs.

The bottom of the cupboard.

 I then needed a way to secure the bottom piece on without any evidence of fasteners. So I came up with some cleats out of some scrap to nail on the inside, all the way round the cupboard, for the bottom to rest on.

Cleats nailed to back and sides.

NOW!

Once that was accomplished, I could finally start putting this thing together. Up until now it wasn't possible until I had all the parts made and ready. With this kind of glue-up I couldn't do it in stages; I had to do it all at once.

 Once that was dried, I started on the bottom shelf. I installed "equal" pieces of white oak equally spaced (pretty sure) as slats for the bottom shelf. I glued them in with dowels that I would later finish off with small oak plugs.

The bottom shelf in all of its bottom-ness.

Now for a fun part: This is something I have also never done before on a project. The top that I used had a lot of character, which I like. Yet some of the knots were a bit unstable and it had a few raised splitted sections that won't go away with sanding. So instead of living with it or starting over, I used Bar-Top Epoxy to fill in the holes so the surface was flat but still visible to admire.

It is a two part epoxy that is normally used for bar-tops. The routine was to seal off the bottom the best you can with tape, so nothing leaks out; mix up a batch; pour it in until it pools on top; and then use a propane torch to lift out the bubbles.

Issues: Sealing the bottom didn't work sometimes - I had to mix and pour a few more times to get a pooled surface on top on those areas. Epoxy can be a big mess if you don't know what you are doing. I didn't know what I was doing - so hence it was a mess. But in the end it worked very well.

Once it cured, I sanded it down nice and smooth using 320 grit sandpaper. Then when all was said and done, I simply put a few coats of poly on it and it looked awesome. I could still see all the way through the epoxy. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Next I had to mount the top on to the body. I set the body upside-down on to the top and traced where i needed to drill some dowel holes.

I used a nail punch to make drilling the holes a little more accurate.
(Even though in the end it doesn't matter. The drill still trails off as if a drunk
person drilled them.)

I needed to compensate the holes a little. No, I wasn't drunk.

Here the dowels are set in and gluing begins.

Everything is now glued up! Now on to the finishing touches!!!

Since our basement has a nice open draft all the way up to the upstairs, I had to stain outside. Luckily the weather cooperated.

"No JOEY NO!...DON'T!!.....touch it....sigh."

I had a wee helper that day.

Now posed with the problem of needing to finish the project outside, I needed a dust and debris free environment to do my poly coats. The camping tent fit the bill just fine! Even over night, all I had to do is make sure that if rain was coming,  I would just close the windows.

Lastly, was to put the hardware on and hang the doors. The wee one was enthralled by this process.

He even wanted to help.


















Finally, after 2-3 months of on and off fiddling, I finished the product!

...and new game was created.

FYI: I think there is something in his mouth at this point, possibly a screw. He doesn't really have fangs
as this photo would suggest.

Well there you have it! One kitchen cupboard for the wife! She of course loves it. Hope you enjoyed listening to me rant about its making.

The next project will probably be getting my shop ready for mass production of reindeer.

Till next time!

PAX

*After the Cupboard, I built another Baby Bunk that was adjustable for my brother and sister in-law as they
too were expecting a little one shortly before Tess and I. Needless to say, I hauled ass to get it done. Not bad work though.