Rough Wood

Hi folks! Sincerest apologies for not having posted much lately. Lots of stuff has been getting in the way of woodworking lately. I have several things in the oven and will get back to the regularly scheduled programming asap.

One of those things has been the next version of The Woodshop Widget, and I’m very happy to say that it’s live! What’s new, you ask? I seriously have to go look at my list. It’s massive.

First off, the database has been expanded to 288 species. This now includes “common names,” specific gravity (density), Janka (hardness) and shrinkage information in varying amounts. This information comes from verifiable sources, primarily the USDA Forest Service. So you might find some holes here and there, and that generally means that the information only showed up in one place, and is not verifiable. There’s a lot of misinformation out there folks, be careful!

Comparison
Thanks to the new range of info, there’s a fun new tool for comparing species of wood based on these attributes. You can walk through sets of wood in 2 selectors that live side-by-side, and let the Widget tell you which is “better” based on hardness, shrinkage, etc. It’s fun too! As with everything else in the Widget, in the web version you can copy a URL for specific comparisons, and share that with others.

The image shows the iOS version.

Species
A new tool for walking through all of the species in the database, which also lists the common names and the technical info in plain English.

Updates
- The design of Decimal to Fraction has been reworked to be cleaner and clearer, and it now translates whole numbers in both directions
- “Board Feet” is now “Board Volume” and works in metric!
- Squareness has much greater precision
- Various visual design improvements

iOS
All of this stuff has been added to the iOS version, and some deep design changes in that flavor make it much more efficient for walking through lots of different variations of wood. The new wood selector is much more useful, showing scientific names and common names. The graphics have been updated to work with high-resolution displays, and I am told that it looks “sick!” It still works on older iOS devices as well.

The image show the new Wood Picker in use.

There are more details on the iOS-specific changes in the iTunes store. Due to its hugeness, the iOS version is now $3.99. The iOS update is free to paid users, so have fun!

The Wood Whisperer
After discussion of the past and future of the Widget as it relates to TWW, we have decided to remove this stuff from the Widget. I am still a Guild member, a TWW fan, and an admirer of Marc’s impressive t-shirt collection… and Marc will still be using the Widget. It just made sense for both of us; all is well.

All that said, have fun and let me know if you have any questions or issues. There’s more in the works!

I worked the Harry Potter angle for Halloween. Yeah, that’s me.

People have told me that I look like him for years, and I had an occasion to change up my costume this year. I bought the robe, a tie and some glasses. I considered buying the wand. After shopping around I saw that most of them are really cheapo plastic things, the others expensive and overkill for something that would only see the light of day once a year.

Now, I’m no Harry Potter geek, but steps had to be taken. I mean really, a woodworker bringing more plastic into the world, plastic that’s molded and shaped to look like wood. That’s just crazy.

So I decided to make one. During a work crunch. With a $15 set of cheap carving tools that I had originally bought to carve pumpkins.

Questionable judgment aside, it turned out reasonably well for my first carving project. I used some thick avocado dowel that I had bought for something else. I sat on the floor in my office and started hacking away during renders. Unfortunately I didn’t get any shots of the process. I only had a little time to stop and tinker, and just dove in. I referenced photos of props to get the size and general shape of the thing. The original design involved 2 different woods, so there was some delineation to imply.

I learned a lot about carving in those hours of chopping at this rod of avocado. Most importantly, that I was afraid of the grain. I have spent so much energy and effort avoiding tear-out in unsupported grain while working on furniture and other construction-type projects that I spent several hours trying to not carve. I nibbled little hints of twists and and tweaks in the supposedly knotty old wood that made up the handle. I was satisfied enough at the time, but looking at it the next day, I realized that I had made a wooden version of the cheapo plastic wands…

So I got cocky the next day, as it seemed at the time, and just started going at it. I dug deeper and deeper into the wood. I felt reckless and irresponsible; I was crossing the streams.

But it looked a lot better.

After a few more hours I had a much better approximation of the 2 woods that were used in the original wand design. As I erased the tiny scribbles that I had sheepishly scratched into the wood before, I began to feel happier with the results. It was not a work of art by any stretch, but at least it was deliberate.

Now, here’s what I got really wrong. This was also my first time using shellac, and as an experiment I counted on the shellac for the coloration. I knew better, but was in a hurry and powered through it. So I had to use a lot of shellac. The result? Two different colors, neither of which is quite right, and a lot of shine. I will knock it down some day, and might even refinish it with some stain. Also, I have to give The Woodshop Widget another shout, because I was able to mix very small amounts of shellac for this small project. Good times.

As for the potential refinish, I feel like I’m a few steps ahead, having gone through the process in the first place, so I’ll see how much energy I have when Halloween rolls around next year and I dust it off.

Life has really gotten in the way of woodworking in the last month, but will give way to much more woodworking in the coming months. I suddenly find myself with some temporary “shop” space (a small room), no car, and some energy/creativity/angst/brain juice to burn. As you may have noticed by now, no obstacle is too great for me when I am determined.

Today marked my first trip to my hardwood dealer to get stock for small projects that will help to keep me occupied as I gear up to finally tackle my tool cabinet project. The good news is that I will also be networked in my “shop” and will be streaming my progress, if anyone’s interested. I’ll set up a link here in case anyone wants to pop in.

Back to the quickie, an example of determination follows: If you suddenly find yourself without a car, without a real shop, without a pep squad, and with a deep need to make some stuff, what do you do? Do you give up and sit around and watch TV? Do you complain that it’s too much trouble? Do you *assume* that it’s too much trouble? Or do you cowboy up and make it happen? I generally choose to cowboy up.

Here I am getting ready to hop on my bike to go get some walnut, complete with a ryoba sticking out of my bike courier bag. I call this “urban samurai woodworker.”

I managed to get 10′ of rough-cut walnut back home on my bike:

Incidentally, the walnut is for some small speaker stands, which may or may not double as floor lamps. Maybe there’s another post in that, but I’m still tinkering.

The point is: soldier on, friends. Life is unpredictable. Find your center, find your way, and don’t let anyone or anything get in your way.

Side note: I got a chance to use The Woodshop Widget for the first time at the hardwood dealer where I was originally inspired to build it, and it was pretty awesome…

I’m breaking from my normal routine of posting about hand tools and shoplessness to talk about something that is burning up the Interwebs at the moment. I’m jumping the gun by posting about it here, but I figure that the traffic here is low enough that I’ll barely scratch the surface.

I’ve been working on a widget that’s absolutely crammed with woodworking utilities, with Marc Spagnulo, for about 8 months now. There are two flavors: an iPhone/iPod/iPad app version and a web version.

It has everything from shellac mixing and dilution (in Imperial and Metric) to a wood movement calculator with data for 230+ species of wood. The iPhone flavor even knows what your local number formatting system is, and uses your local currency for calculations, so it will automatically work for anyone who can read English, anywhere!

It’s an ongoing project, with live tips updated by Marc and more functionality already in the works. You can copy links directly in the widget and share your calculations and other information with others by pasting the links elsewhere. Lots of stuff going on here, and it’s finally live! Here are a couple of grabs from the app version. The web version has all of the same functionality, with a different interface.

You’ll be hearing a lot more about this in the next few weeks. You can check out the web version at woodshopwidget.com, and grab the iOS app here. If you have any questions or comments please let us know!

18 mortises, 24 rabbets, 16 grooves for paneling, 4 tongue-and-grooves, a lot of sawing, and we have ourselves a giant planter. Done by hand, it was a lot more work than it looks. It was good practice though, and a great workout for my bench. I mentioned this project a few months ago.

It turned out almost as I had planned, with a few minor modifications along the way. The joinery was a bit more complicated than expected.

At the junctures of all of the rails, there are stopped grooves that open to mortises from 2 directions. Since the legs are relatively thin, the tenons are trimmed at an angle to allow them to mate with the tenons sharing most of the mortise. Lots of geometry in these corners, and in something like chunky and irregular redwood there’s a major risk of blowing structure out. On more than one occasion I found myself right on the edge of peeling entire layers of this wood apart like an onion. I had to glue a chunk of one of my tenons back together when half of it peeled right off. Be careful with this stuff.

There are a few things I would do differently. First off, I’m glad that I went all-in with the hand-cutting of all of that joinery. It was good practice. I was in a weird headspace the whole time though. I chose fencing materials since I could get stock in sizes that were close to what I need. This material is cut to size, but warps and bows quite a bit. So while intending to do this precise joinery, that little voice kept saying: “It’s just fencing, and it’s just a planter, so I won’t bother planing this…” In the end my joinery was a bit less precise than I had wanted, partially because redwood compresses so much that even with a good fit, it won’t be a good fit for long if you’re not very careful.

My angles were slightly off due to slight warping in various pieces, but with slightly rounded edges on the fence stock, I couldn’t plane down much. I used the softness of the wood to my advantage and coaxed things into place when necessary. It all came together though, at about 4mm off square.

One thing that I was particularly cautious about was guarding against water pooling and wicking. For the tongue and groove joints I angled the shoulders of the tongues down slightly to encourage water to run out. I sealed the ends of the tenon shoulders with glue so they wouldn’t absorb so much water. Those shoulders are partially exposed to the elements due to rounding of the stock. I also applied some thinned glue as a sizing to the bottom of the feet, then a coat of full-strength glue over that while it was still wet. The intention here is to get some glue soaked into the fibers where the feet will be in constant contact with the ground.

This project also served as a testbed for some theories about building outdoor furniture. I’ll revisit this in a few years and see what’s still intact. I think having done it all with waterproof glue, mortise and tenons, floating panels, and liberal amounts of sealing should mean that this thing will be around longer than me.

Once the glue dries I’ll put mountains of soil into it and start planting things in my new mini herb farm. It’s Dogfish Head time.

Also, major carnage…