A Thankful If Meandering Post

As part of his day job at an information officer for Penalla County, Tom Iovino of tomsworkbench.com has been in Brooklyn for the past week and a half helping to manage the logistics of the Citys response to Hurricane Sandy. When they finally changed from 12 to 8 hour shifts, Tom and I met up when he got off work and made a trip to Tools for Working Wood (just to find it closed). We then headed back to Long Island to have some dinner, provide Tom some respite from the City and hang out the Penultimate Woodshop. We finished the night with a jaunt to Tim Hortons for a double double and a cruller before I dropped Tom back off at his hotel.

A closed Tools for Working Wood makes for a sad shop monkey.

This was a fun night, because Ive become friends with Tom since first meeting him at Woodworking in America 2009.

Nights like this (& the ones weve had at Woodworking in America and Fine Woodworking Live) have truly developed my passion for woodworking. Its one thing to sit alone in your shop and build something. Its something entirely different to sit around with fellow woodworkers and discuss the craft you love. Combining them is what has turned woodworking from a hobby to a passion for me.

Meeting and getting to know other woodworkers is what makes
woodworking events special.

As I meet more and more woodworkers, I feel confident saying that this is true for most (if not all). Its not about the wood, its about the community. Meet other woodworkers. Ultimately, thats just as important as the woodworking itself.

This Thanksgiving lets be thankful not just for the big things (like making it through Sandy) and the small things (like a four day weekend), but also for the now routine things (like interacting with other woodworkers online) that werent possible just a few years ago.

A few years ago, whod have imagined a dinner of readers, Fine Woodworking
editors and Lie-Nielsen staff.

Personally, I’m thankful to Chris Adkins for starting the Modern Woodworkers Association. It’s been great to play the supporting role I’ve been able to play and help spread our love of woodworking to others. Hopefully we’re helping to spread the craft and community we’re all so thankful for.

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Its Wanderful Part 6

To make the stands for the Harry Potter wands I began with wood from my scrap pile. I took lengths of walnut which were left over from my Sawdust Chronicles Fall Build Challenge project and thin strips of curly maple left over from my Shaker Table Guild Build.

I created the curve with my oscillating spindle sander.

I milled the walnut flat and square and ripped the maple to an equal width. Then I took the maple, and using a block of wood clamped to the base as a fence, I sanded out shallow curves on the end of each piece with a 2” diameter drum in my oscillating spindle sander.

I set the bevel angle my eye, as it only had to look good and not match any specific angle.

Next I set my table saw to about 10° and made a cut across each end of the walnut, about 1” from the end. I used my Lee Valley Stop Rule to mark down about 1” from the top of each maple piece. I used this line to reference the top surface of the walnut and glued on the maple pieces to the center walnut piece.

Since the maple had been left long on its bottom end, I needed to create a custom caul that would have space for the long maple ends while still providing a reference for the walnut ends to be glued coplanar with the walnut center piece. To do this I laid out the wand stands along a piece of Timberstrand, marked out the recesses and then removed the wood with successive cuts from my miter saw.

The wand stand on the custom caul.

Though this notched caul worked great for alignment of the center and end pieces of walnut, I wasn’t thinking when I laid out the notches and there wasn’t enough room to allow clamping of adjoining pieces. Once I covered the caul in packing tape to prevent the glue from sticking to it, I then had to clamp the stands in two (2) alternating groups.

In clamp up.

Because the walnut was cut at a 10° angle, the maple-to-walnut glue joints were essentially end grain to side grain. Though I don’t expect much abuse, I wasn’t comfortable with this joint. Luckily (it was luck as no forethought went into it), standard sized Miller Dowels were long enough that they projected about ½” passed the walnut end/maple leg section and into the walnut center. I installed one (1) Miller Dowel in each end in order to reinforce the joint.

Though I assumed the stepped design of the Miller Dowel would make their installation easy, I found that the only choice to properly seat them was to compress the entire wand stand in a parallel clamp and crush the dowels into submission. Once I figured out to use the parallel clamp, the dowels went in without much trouble.

Sanding the ends so the Miller Dowels are flush with the ends.

After leaving the dowels overnight to dry, I was able to cut off the excess dowel and the long bottom sections of the maple. The stands returned to my Ridgid orbital sander, this time with the belt set up in place of the drum. A few minutes of sanding on each stand, and the sides, ends and bottoms were left perfectly flat between the walnut, maple and dowels.

The constructed want stands go for a dry run.

To catch up on the want build (it was August of 2011), check out these posts.

Also, sorry for the blurry photos. Ill blame the crappy camera in my old Motorola Droid X.

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