Tag Archives: Projects

Toiling away

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The last several weeks have been consumed with building a final batch of folding stools (for now).

This time, I experimented with red and blue aniline dyes on birch since that’s the whitest wood I could find that was reasonably priced and suitable for furniture. Blue was shockingly effective—at getting blue everywhere. This stuff comes as a powder that can be best described as smoke. It’s that fine. Mixing just 2.5 grams into a pint of alcohol gets you the business end of a box of Sharpies in a jar.

The red wasn’t quite as saturated, although it also comes as a very fine powder that, when mixed up, was deep blood red. I was a little less careful with the red, and now my junky workbench (where we do tool cleaning and sharpening) looks like I butchered a large animal or something. Meh. It’s not my good workbench.

After the dye dried, I experimented to find the best next step. I usually start with shellac since it’s so forgiving and nearly non-toxic. But it’s solvated in alcohol, which reactivates the dye and creates a HUGE mess. The best solution turned out to be an oil-based sanding sealer. 

Once the dye is safely sealed, you must sand (duh) because the previous operations have raised the grain. Then, on to a varnish (with a different brush because the one you used for the sanding sealer step will have some dye contamination). When that dries, it will look like shit. That’s OK. It takes more than one coat. So, now we sand and varnish until it stops looking like crap.

Usually, three coats do it. Between coats, there is a 6-8 hour drying time, and since these pieces don’t have an “inside,” that’s six varnishing sessions. Hence, all the whining about my small shop totally blocked up with this.

I made one red and one blue. For some contrast, the top and bottom rails are yellow. That was achieved with a couple of coats of amber shellac and then a top coat of varnish on birch. Maple would also work.

Below are some pictures. The stripy one is not dyed. It is bubinga and curly maple with a varnish top coat. Finishing these dyed stools is way too much work, so I am unlikely to do it again.

 

Tool Reorganization

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Sticking with the tool theme, I recently reorganized my everyday tools in the shop. These are things that get used All The Time and therefore must conform to First Order Retrievability.

Popularized by Adam Savage, First Order Retrievability is the property of an item (tool) that it must be easily accessible and you don’t have to move something to reach it. See this article.

Previously most of these tools hung on a two level shelf contraption above my main work bench. And it was pretty good. I was able to move hooks around and partitions to smooth the workflow. But. It limits the height of projects you can work on top of the bench. That had not been a problem for a long time. Usually, I run out of horizontal space first. For the blanket chest project though, I had a largish carcass on the bench while I reproduced early 19th Century moldings and ogee bracket feet. All I could do was perch it on one end of the bench that didn’t have the hanging tool tray above it. That didn’t fill me with joy. I just pictured this thing getting knocked to the floor, probably by me and smashed. As more and more work went into this, the price of catastrophe rose and I decided it was time to get that crap out of the way so I could use the workbench as intended.

There aren’t many options in a shop as small as mine and it’s already crammed full of tools and supplies. So, I needed something compact yet usable. Originally I had thought to make smaller, denser hanging tool holders that would leave more clearance over the bench.

I build a mock up out of scraps and that just wasn’t going to work. I am tall, the ceiling is 7-1/2 feet, but some items just would be conveniently reachable. Eventually, I split things into 3 areas:

  1. saws and block planes
  2. hammers and levels
  3. measuring/marking tools and chisels

The hammers and levels were hanging from the rafters and will stay that way, though I have reorganized them. The other two required tool…caddies? IDK. H. O. Studley I am not, but these seem to be working out so far, at least until the next great tool reorganization.

First up is a rack for chisels. Big ones hanging to minimize the vertical space they take up, smaller ones in little pigeon holes (some mock-ups at the end). In between I put in a couple of shelves for larger odds and ends. It’s approximately 14″ x 37″.

Tool Organizer
Tool Organizer

Next to it, you can glimpse the edge of the 18″ x 24″ organizer of measuring and marking tools. I’ll get a shot of that next time I take the camera downstairs.

The other organizer is also 14″ x 37″ and started off as a saw nest and grew to include block planes. I find I use hand saws more when they are easy to get to, this was the first thing I built. The old rack had them hanging down in the back and required a bit of effort to lift them out. As a bonus, if you weren’t careful, you could brush by them when going behind the bench to use the miter saw. Something that gets used a lot.

Saw Nest
Saw Nest

Hmm, while looking at the pic library, I remembered a little storage cabinet I made for wrenches. I don’t often need mechanical tools, but I do need them often enough that it’s worth having a set in the shop. I recently sprung for a set of SAE and Metric ratcheting wrenches. Super cool because if I need a ratchet, it’s probably in some horribly constricted space inside a power tool cabinet.

Anyway, I want them handy, but I don’t want my sons “borrowing” them and returning them all greasy (if they come back at all), nor do I want them full of saw dust. So, some scrap plywood became this:

Nest of Wrenches
Nest of Wrenches

And, finally, so shots of mocking up the chisel trays because…I shot them, IDK why, so here they are, haha.

 

Chisel Tray 1
Chisel Tray 1
Chisel Tray 2
Chisel Tray 2