Furniture Making Tip

 Now I only make furniture for friends and family.  While custom wood working can be profitable, getting a final product that suits the customer can be a challenge sometimes. I found that the finished colour was the issue most often.  Clear varnish was okay and painted pieces were generally okay too, but, stained pieces were nearly always a problem.  Often the piece would not be the colour that the customer thought they wanted.  

  This plant stand I am currently fiddling around on is the perfect example of the what would have been a perfect customer.  I am making the plant stand for my friends David and Elise for whom I have made several things in the past. When they want something they provide an excellent plan, carefully drawn with all necessary measurements. There are no 'about or sort ofs', so the final product will be the correct size and shape. Usually, they do the finishing, so the stain colour never enters into the discussion.  In this case David brought me tin of the stain they want the stand to be.  Perfect. No 'oh!!, that's not what I thought it would look like' at delivery time.

  Not always fool proof, I had a customer a couple of years ago tell me exactly what colour stain he wanted his shelf units. I bought the exact colour from the exact company, I finished the shelves with the stain, it was hideous ( I knew that immediately)  and he was cross with the result.  I got paid but...he wasn't happy, not my fault.

  Dark Walnut stain of a plywood top.

 Dark walnut on legs. It remains for everything to dry.  Once fully dry I'll put it together, after I finish the top.

  You can't possibly guess what this is going to be.  It is glass and weights holding something down while it dries.  Once this is dry I am thinking of adding it to the top for a bit of ornamentation, I know that there will be a plant hiding most of it but...an advantage with working for friends is a flexible timeline and room to experiment.  After all if my idea doesn't work, it will be hidden by a large flower pot.  

cheers ianw

Spring is here? a cold spring, but sunny

 

Another Tote

 I sometimes get side tracked as I work on a project, I'll begin to wonder about history or tradition and when I work on a blog I wonder about words.

 On my bench at this moment is another tote box, and I have discovered that Wikipedia and I don't actually use the word in the same way. Now I wonder why I use the word tote to describe a box with a handle used to carry wood working or gardening tools, or other stuff.  I suppose that tote is quicker and easier than saying a 'wooden box with a handle for carrying miscellaneous stuff'.

 Recently I have made a couple of tote boxes for hauling or organising 'stuff' around our home.  I also made a bunch of 'carrier boxes' to go on the back of bicycles this summer. A they totes without handles? If there is no handle I guess it is just a box. 

the box is carefully designed to carry two Six Packs securely.

  A while ago I made a tote for myself and used it as a practise for cutting dovetails.

tote finished with natural walnut stain.

  
 These projects usually have a simple purpose and are really just boxes, of which I have made 100's.  At this time in my wood working life when I make these boxes I use them to explore or practise a technique, dovetails, or a different finish and so the tote moves from a quick cut and hammer project to something more. I have made a couple with carvings or cut out making the box ornamental as well as useful

  The current wooden box with a handle's simple purpose is to contain shoe polishing related stuff. 

   All these bits and pieces are shoe related.  The bags at the top of the photo are filled with laces, there is a bag of running shoe/boot laces, a bag of pairs of dress shoe laces and a bag of single laces, mostly heavy service type laces that tie up plants and things well.

  When I went to polish my shoes the other day I found a battered card board box and a cookie tie filled with this stuff, very randomly. The cookie tin had a couple of draw backs, first it was with out cookies, second it was round, round stuff does not make efficient use of shelf space. The discovery of the mess was  when I sorted and bagged the laces and decided that a shoe shine box was necessary for further peace of mind.

  

  The box is a nothing, a mere bagatelle, 1/2 plywood with butt joints hammered together with brads. The interesting part of the project is the handle.

  The handle is shaped from basswood and follows a design that I created using a French Curve.  I actually took longer to decide on and design the handle than it did to make the box.

  Basswood is a popular wood for carvers since it has almost no grain and is very easy to work with hand tools.  After I got the design cut out on my band saw and I went to work with shaping tools.

 This is a list of the tools used to shape the handle:

1. sand paper

2. needle files and rasps 

3. 4 in hand rasp/file

4  Fein multimaster.

 Like so many people I came home from a wood show with a MultiMaster kit, amazed at all the things it could do. Then I put it on a shelf and didn't do much at all with it. When I decided to work on the handle I decided to learn what this tool could do for me.  To sand I turn the variable speed way down, the lower speed makes the sanding more manageable and the machine quieter. Once I got the dust collection connected, that involved a couple of adapters, it works very well too.  Having  taken the time to learn to use the tool it will be kept handy and become a 'go to' detail sander.

  The last part of the box will be the finish. The dovetail tote is stained with natural black walnut stain I made my self. The shoe shine box is going to be stained with natural walnut that has been boiled down and concentrated. 

 The basic stain is made by putting black walnuts in their green skin into a bucket of water and being left over winter to rot and leach out colour.  Next I peal the skins off the nuts and crush the pulp from the skins and let it sit some more. After a few more months I strain the lumpy bits out and filter the brown stained water through cheese cloth. I tried coffee filters but they clogged up.

  The dovetail box is stained with the straight brown stained water that was left.  This next box will be stained with concentrated stain, I boiled half the water away and now have a much darker stain with which to work. 

  I expect that staining the box will be a messy business and so have to put it off for a day or two while I go about in public trying to appear civilized. Yes, I know I could wear gloves, and I will, but that never seems to be enough. When I work with glue I get sticky, with paint-coloured, with stain-stained, it is just a gift I guess.

 I'll keep you posted.

cheers, ianw

Walnut Stain- home brewed.

   I have talked about my home made walnut stain before and I am currently using it as part of my most recent project's finish. The amount of colour imparted by one application of the stain is shown in this photo.  The dye (stain) is suspended in water and so I put it on raw wood, and yes, I get a bit of blotching on soft wood.

  Recently I have made a new batch of stain and I will be trying to mix the colour into other mediums, alcohol  and mineral spirits for example.  I am partial to the water based dye (stain) because it is fast drying and easy to clean up.  I am also going to simmer the brown stained goo on a camp stove for a bit to see if the colour can be concentrated more.

walnuts, skin on after soaking for 2 years.

    Lest you forget that home-made can be rough and ready, this is what the stain goo looks like in the container,  trust me, the smell is "earthy", fortunately  the charming smell seems not to linger once the wood is stained.

   When mucking around with stains I like foam disposable brushes.  I am not a throw things out guy, but there is a point where brushes just get too corrupt and you can't be sure you won't pick up colour left on the brush if you use it again.

   I am steadily trying to improve the results of my finishing.  Carpentry is only one part of the equation when you are a wood worker, and usually finishing is the the last part of the equation to receive the dedication that it deserves.

 

  

Little Boot

What do you do when you are waiting for the paint to dry?  I had already cleaned my shop and put my tools away. So, I carved a wee boot.

coffee cup is usual size, the boot is for hard stomping pixies.

  First I cut out the basic shape on the band saw, then I whittled away the parts that didn't look like a boot. Next I wrapped some sand paper around pencil to do the finish sanding then used my home made walnut stain for the colour.


 The boot is scrap pine that was laying around and I wanted it to have some colour when done but was tired of painting.  Besides craft paint does cover anything interesting in the wood's grain. 


  I make the walnut stain by soaking black walnuts, in their green casing in water for a year or so.  Do it out side because it gets pretty stinky. After the long soaking time I strain the liquid ( which is pretty lumpy) through  coffee filters and add a   couple of eye dropper drops of alcohol, to kill the rotten smell and to kill anything growing in the water/stain.  If the object is small, like this I soak the thing and brush off the excess and let it dry.  Once the finish is dry I put a clear oil or wax over top to seal the stain in.


  If you are interested in trying this you will need a couple of gallons of walnuts to get a couple of cups of stain. Walnuts are everywhere here so I don't spend much time trying to mechanically break them down to get the maximum amount of stain.  I am sure that if the nuts were pealed and soaked and mashed and mashed and maybe ground up there would be more colour extracted per gallon of nuts.  Also if the husks were ground up the colour could be extracted with less soaking time, I just haven't bothered to stream line my methods.