Innehållsförteckning för August 2019 från Woodworker's Journal

It’s the heart of summer, which for many of us means outdoor project season. I’m talking about those fun projects that make your backyard a great place to hang out. Things like Adirondack chairs, patio sets, porch swings and even bird feeders. This month we pulled together more than 25 of our favorite outdoor plans and put them in a new Outdoor Project Plan category on WoodworkersJournal.com. So, if you’re looking for something new to spruce up your deck, patio, porch or garden, go to www.woodworkersjournal.com/outdoor-project-plans and find your next outdoor project.…

Stick a Pin In It I’ve tried all kinds of ways to prevent the tips of CA glue bottles from clogging up or becoming encrusted with dried glue inside the cap. My best solution is this: just use a pushpin instead of the glue bottle cap. It works so much better that I’ll bet you never go back to using the cap again. Charles Mak Calgary, Alberta Sneaking Up on Crosscuts When crosscutting at the miter saw, here’s an easy way to trim off as little as 1/32" or even less. Set the end of the workpiece against the side of one of the blade teeth, and gently press the wood against the blade to deflect it slightly. Now hold the workpiece where it is, with your hand a safe…

My friend Ken Zahka’s son, Alex, married a German woman, Anna, who grew up on a farm on Lake Constance (Bodensee). Fifty-plus years ago, Anna’s mother, Silvi, had planted a fast-growing Carpathian walnut tree on this farm, right next to the house. In 2014, the tree was cut down because it had grown large enough to threaten the house and block their view of the Alps. On a visit to Germany, Ken admired the stem of the recently felled walnut and remarked to Silvi that he would love to build a table for Alex and Anna out of it. Silvi then had the walnut milled into 2⅜" slabs, kiln-dried, stamped bug-free for export and shipped to my shop. I opened the crate and stickered the live-edge slabs in my woodshed,…

Libraries are cool — both big and small! The little lending library trend in neighborhoods, and the access they provide to free books, has continued to grow over the years. I’ve had several opportunities to design and build different lending libraries. My favorite is a large sculptural design located in White River State Park in Indianapolis. Others include a live roof design for the Little Free Library nonprofit organization: my college sculpture students started with a base design and went wild with the concepts. For another one, the kids of a local elementary school helped me build a medium-sized lending library for their outdoor classroom. All of those designs required quite a bit of experience and a significant amount of tools. However, the design for the project you see here,…

Are you ready to give your table saw a rigorous workout? Standing behind that machine is where you will spend the majority of your time if you decide to build this beauty of a coffee table. Getting it Going We chose black walnut wood, but cherry would be another good choice. Bring your lumber into your shop several days in advance, and procure at least 30% more than you think you’ll need. This is a project where it makes good sense to buy the stock in the rough and surface it in your own shop. That is because you will be able to mill it to exactly the same thickness — which, if you are making all these cross-lap joints (also known as half-lap joints), is an important consideration for…

While few of us look forward to the dusty, slow and often tedious process of sanding, that “sweat” investment can be even greater if you’re trying to shape the wood with abrasives and not just smooth it for a finish. By this, I’m talking about fairing curves, enlarging cutouts and holes, flattening edges, flushing up protrusions and refining joint angles. When you’ve got 1/16" of oak to remove from a long, curved workpiece, that’s a LOT of back-and-forth with a hand-sanding block. If hand planes or spokeshaves aren’t your fancy, three different styles of benchtop sanders — disc, spindle and combination belt/disc — can knock these sorts of tasks down to size quickly and accurately. They can economize your efforts so much that you might even (gasp!) enjoy the process!…

Q Do you have a recommended finishing method for marquetry pictures, given that they typically incorporate a variety of wood types, wood grains, grain directions, etc.? Would you have any pro or con comments about the idea of finishing a marquetry picture with several coats (eight to 10) of Zinsser SealCoat™ Sanding Sealer, sanding between every two or three coats? I find that this product goes on rather easily and, since a marquetry picture doesn’t experience any appreciable wear, I thought it would be an acceptable alternative to the much “smellier” Deft® lacquer that I’ve been using for a number of years now. — Robert Swanson Wichita, Kansas A You chose wisely. Zinsser SealCoat Universal Sanding Sealer is pure, dewaxed shellac, and that is an excellent finish for a marquetry…

Mid-Century … Why Yes I Am! PROJECTS GO BACK TO THE FUTURE! If you check out our projects in this issue, you will find two that are clearly in the Mid-Century Modern style. The Tambour Console would look completely at home on a “Mad Men” set, and the Modern Coffee Table is clearly inspired by George Nelson designs. The Mid-Century school is continuing to gain in popularity — and that is good news to me. Why? Because I was born square in the middle of the 20th century and hence consider myself a prime example of Mid-Century design at its finest (although I will admit that both of the projects are more handsome than I am). Even so, we are not mired in the past when it comes to our…

As I was growing up, the furniture in our home was Mid-Century Modern style. Of course, then it was just furniture …period. So that may be one reason that I am drawn to the style. Not everything Mid-Century Modern strikes my fancy, but this console certainly does. When you first look at the piece, it is easy to miss many of the fine details. And that is one of the truly pleasurable things about this console — the more you look, the more you like. The wood grain of the solid walnut flows around the carcass. The tambour doors provide excellent access to the interior and are a stunning collection of vertical lines when closed. The angled and tapered legs (also of solid walnut) have the mass to balance the…

Narrow, flat areas need sanding, too. Imagine being able to put some power behind those tasks where you might otherwise reach for a file — smoothing tenon faces, touching up dovetail tails or sanding the inside corners of a hinge mortise template. RIKON’s 1" x 30" Belt/5" Disc Sander (model 50-151; around $99) can do those jobs affordably in a compact footprint. Or, switch to silicon carbide abrasives (they’re widely available online) and use the belt for metalworking to regrind nicked plane irons, shorten screws or sharpen a rouging gouge.…

Jewelry Armoire I searched for a long time to come up with plans for a jewelry armoire. [Eventually], I got inspired by reading the Journal and how your writers work out the plans in the magazine, so I gave it a try. I made three of these for Christmas: two for my daughters and one for my wife (bonus points, LOL). Anyway, I drew up detailed plans along with a cut guide just like the pros! Two are made out of ash and the other, cherry. All wood was purchased from a sawmill and milled to working dimension. Thanks again for the inspiration and excellent magazine. Stan Kowalczyk Riceville, Tennessee Nook Table Here is a nook table for three I built over a summer. The sapele table is 30" high…

Waterfall joints are a subtle but lovely design feature that has gained popularity lately. Featured on kitchen islands in cable TV home improvement shows, this particular type of mitered corner has become nearly ubiquitous. That's really what we are talking about: mitered corners, conceived in such a way as to allow the grain of your panel to "flow” around the corner. So, what are the details to keep in mind when you are considering a waterfall joint? Let's start with the most obvious: the panel from which you’ll cut your corners has to be long enough to have continuous grain — in our example here, the “waterfall” flows between the sides and the top. Our bottom panel does not have continuous grain. Next, if you are using a solid wood…

Now that it’s high summer, you might have an outdoor project or two on your “short list” of things to make before the temps start to chill down again. But, whether it’s a picnic table, planter, a suntanning lounger or an arbor to hardscape the garden, it pays to give some careful thought to what wood you build it from. That can make the difference between it lasting one year or 10. Here are some things to keep in mind. 1. Let’s cut right to the chase! While redwood or teak certainly qualify, five more common lumber species that also stand up well to sunlight, moisture and wood-boring insects are Western red cedar, Spanish cedar, cypress, white oak and mahogany. Red cedar tends to be knotty, but it’s affordable and…