Roorkee Build Part 2 - Leather

Pretty much done.

Future Roorkee.
Photo by Daniel Steger

I have never worked leather before.  I probably wouldn't have tried this had Chris Schwarz not done it and said woodworkers can do this easily.  While it wasn't as easy as I hoped, it was something I was able to do learning on my own.

One bit I had to learn, was how to buy leather online.  One can spend an awful lot of money on leather.  Tip:  Don't do that.

I got a side of latigo leather in a burgundy color and about 9-10 oz. weight for about $140 plus shipping.  After I thought about it for a while, I got nervous about the color, and decided to order a side of black, too.  Holy cow!  that's a lot of leather.  This way, however, I was able to look at a couple different sides and decide which one I wanted best.

I finally settled on the black one.  As these sides (that is the leather industry term for a half-a-cow's worth of leather) were economy grade, there were just enough imperfections and parts of the leather that were unsuitable, that I was able to only get enough leather from the side to make one chair.  Perhaps there is enough left over for a camp stool, we'll see.  Unlike Chris, I made all of my straps from this leather, too.  Perhaps that makes a difference.  Regardless, I couldn't figure out how to get my templates on decent looking parts of this cow and leave enough left over for another chair.  Perhaps with a bit of practice, I'll do better next time.

A sharp box cutter is a good tool for cutting out the big parts.  I'll go out on a limb and say if you want nice looking straps, go ahead and spend the extra dough on a strap and belt cutter from Tandy Leather Factory.  This really sped things up and worked like a charm.

I'll not go to in depth what I did for the leather working, as there is already plenty online regarding this.  Read what Chris Schwarz says about the leather, and also use the free instructional videos on the Tandy website.  Do a bit of surfing around, and make sure you know what the plan is before you start.

I finished up the chair this morning, and I am pleased with how it turned out.  It took me a while to warm up to this chair, as when Chris first started writing about it I had never seen one before.  It always takes a while to get used to something new.  Probably the best compliment I could have gotten was when the Frau said, "It's not nearly as hideous as I expected!"  Needless to say, she was not a big fan of the form.  Seeing it in person, it really is a beautiful chair.

All I have left to do is to color the edges of the leather when the edge dye arrives in the mail.

Just in case you want the specs of mine, here they are:

• Pear wood finished with straight beeswax.
• Black latigo 9-10 oz. leather.
• Stainless steel hardware including stainless screws, washers, and carriage bolts for the back.  The buckles are cheap $.96 versions plated with something silver in color.
• Copper rivets.

Enough blather, take a look for yourself.

Fitting the arm straps while it sits on my ATC.

The Frau is pleased enough that it might wind up living in one of our living spaces.

Although I also have brass hardware, I decided stainless was the look I wanted on this chair.

Comfy.  Perhaps I'll have to get a new video game console.

AAR:

• Pear is a beautiful wood.  Not sure if it is known for ease in turning, but I had no problems with it.  This is my first turning for a piece of furniture.
• The leather did take a bit longer than I thought it would.  I suspect that this will be easier next time.  Part of the problem was I didn't have a proper tool to cut the posts of the copper rivets.  I wound up using the snipper on the inside of a cheap pair of Chinese pliers.  Nothing like having the right tool.
• My little eight pound anvil was a nice tool for riveting.
• Luggage in the trunk of the car can shift around during transport.  Do not let the chair parts fall to the surface of the parking lot.  If you do, try to avoid dropping the parts 17 or 18 more times during construction of this project.
• I think another of these will have to be built.  This project was fun!

Roorkee Build Part 1

It has been another of those times where I haven't been able to get enough shop time.  That, and the project I am working on is getting more and more frustrating.

What to do?  Same as I always do.  Start another project!

Last summer Christopher Schwarz taught a couple classes at Dictum here in Germany.  The first was making a bowsaw.  That class I attended and was pleased with.  The other class was building a Roorkee chair.  I was not pleased with this class as I couldn't go.  I had to work.  I did, however, crash a couple of mornings and imposed myself on the group at the Biergarten at the end of a couple days.  That chair looked so fun to build, I knew I just had to do it myself one of these days.

Lost Art Press released Chris' new book a week or two ago, 'Campaign Furniture.'  I bought a copy and also downloaded the ebook.  It seems to be a great book so far.  I have to admit, that I haven't read it all.  I skipped to the chapter about Roorkee chairs and got really excited.  I decided I had to build one.

Looking at my available stock, I had plenty of pear that was thick enough for the legs of the project.  This pear was earmarked for another project, but I decided that the other project isn't going anywhere and I want to build a Roorkee, so pear it is.  After all, wood grows on trees.  I can always get some more, right?

The first night of the build I broke down my roughstock and cut out leg blanks by hand.  Not so fun in 2" thick lumber, but good practice.  Once I got them cut out, for good measure I planed reference faces and reference edges.  This whole process took about three hours.

Several hours of work getting these bits cut out of a solid chunk of wood.

I like hand tools, but I'm not a sadist.  The next day, I thought I'd run down the road to the Dictum store and see if I could get into their shtop.

Good news:  the shop is open!

I spent the next 20 minutes running the pear through the machines until I had all of the parts needed for the Roorkee cut out, jointed and planed, and ready to go.

If you have the opportunity to use a machine like this, do it!

While I was there, I decided to turn the parts as there is a lathe, also.  I have no lathe in my 100 square foot shop.  No machines, at all.

I did something a bit outside of my usual philosophy:  I bought an Easy Rougher.  If you were to read my earlier blog posts about what tools you should buy, you might be correct in thinking I would recommend a traditional tool, learning how to sharpen and use it as the skill is something that you'll use forever.  However, I did decide to buy this tool, which has a carbide insert for a blade and works by scraping.  It is very easy to use, and easy to learn.  I justified buying this tool as I just wanted to get the parts turned for this project and get it over with.  I am not really interested in learning to turn much, I just wanted to get the legs for this chair done.

Sue me.

My first real turning project.

I think I need some practice, as I had an awful lot of sanding and scraping to get the tool marks out of the wood, but overall I was pleased with the result.  Every once in a while, donkey work just needs to get out of the way for the fun part.  In three hours, I had processed all of the stock to get parts for my Roorkee, learned to turn and turned all of the legs as well as all four stretchers of this project.

The results of half-a-day's work in a power tool shop.

Next up in the project is laying out the holes for the stretchers and boring them.  I made myself a story stick to assist with the turning layout, and decided to use it again here to lay out the holes.  I drilled three 1/8" holes (big enough to hold a pencil) and used the story stick to mark the points on the legs where the stretchers should go.

"Finger Weg!" is the only German phrase you need to know to get by in Germay other than, "Stimmt."

Only three different measurements for boring stretcher mortices.

In action.  Notice the leg and the story stick are butted (is that a word?) up against my planing stop.

Once the layout is complete, bore away!  I used a 5/8" bit in my brace.  I would recommend practicing a bit first to get good at boring straight holes.  Once you got it, you got it.  I use a single 6" square as an aid when I need them to be dead-nuts perfect.  I am looking at the square from two sides to ensure the bit is straight.

boring...

I usually keep my eyes in front of the bit, which keeps the hole going in straight from that way.  Every once in a while, I peek over to see this, the square and the bit lined up.  At least, hopefully I do.

 Now a quick word on buying more tools.  You really need both Jennings bits as well as Irwins.  Many people would look at the below photo and say the left bit is for hard wood and the right bit for soft, as the left obviously has finer lead-screw threads than the right.

Those people would be wrong.

Jennings on the left, Irwin on the right.

Jennings bit has threads in the lead screw are doubled up, where as the right they are a single screw.  Normally I prefer a Jennings bit, but in pear the lead screw kept clogging up.  After 1/2" to 3/4" of boring, the lead screw would get clogged and the bit would quit cutting.  Once I changed to the Irwin bit, there was no more clogging.  The Irwin bit would consistently drill the entire way with no clogging.  If you are having trouble with your bit clogging, try using the other kind of bit.  It made my boring go four times faster.

The next step is to ream out the 5/8" holes you just bored into tapered mortices.  I again used my brace, and was very careful to ensure everything stayed nice and square.

For some reason, this looks weird to me.

When I get a few turns in, I insert a stretcher and measure.  If I need to make some adjustments, I do, and then I check again when I am almost to the bottom.  Once you are at the bottom, there isn't much room to make corrections.

Checking the stretcher.

 Once this was done, I checked to see if it all fit.

I think I need to adjust some tenons and mortices, but overall I'm happy.

Now we get to the fun part.  How to shape the rounded tops of the legs.  Chris Schwarz recommends in his book to mark it out using a template and using a band saw.  Due to a slight miscalculation, my legs turned out a bit skinnier than he recommends.  To get the top to look round, I used my combination square to mark 45 degree lines from the corners and rounding from that center point with a compass.

The layout for the curved top.  Also, you can see the tools I will use to do it, besides a hand saw.

I'll get a bit specific with this.  This technique will be handy for the folks at William Ng's this week.  If you find yourself 12th in line to use the band saw, try this and get on with it.  The whole process took me less than ten minutes each to go to a finished surface.

I first sawed off the corner at about 45 degrees.

A closer look.

I can't pass up an opportunity to point out my DICK saw!

Just pare away the sharp corners with a chisel.  Take light cuts and go down to the line.

Notice the grip:  No flesh is in front of the blade.  If I slip, the tip just goes into my backer board, not a vital artery.

A little more progress...

I think this is smoother than I could do with a bandsaw.  Now for the rasp:

Some light rolling cuts with the rasp down to the line and Voila!

I could have done this in about a half an hour if I didn't continually stop to take pictures.

Now to drill a hole on the back legs to hold the back pieces.  More precision boring, I go in a few turns on one side, flip it over and drill all the way through from the back.  This prevents blowout, and also helps match up the hole in the middle.  It does need to be perfect for a bolt to fit in.

Same drill, different bit...

First from one side, then the other.  Notice the nice long shavings one gets with a sharp bit.

Not too shabby.  But the real test...

Does a bolt fit?  Yes!

Pretty much now all I have to do is finish.  I decided to go with one of my stand-byes:  polissoir the crap out of it, then finish with straight beeswax with more polissoiring.

This is as far as I got tonight.  I'll finish the waxing in the morning.

If you're still reading this enormously long post, congratulations!  You are one of my hard-core fans!

Next time - Leather!

My Evil Plan

I introduced John in my last post.  Remember, he is getting some inherited hand tools from his neighbor, and would like me to teach him and his children some woodworking.  This sounds like a fun and interesting challenge.

Talk about cool old tools:  I have a 1960s era King Silver Sonic 2B, John has a New York Bach Model 6 from the 1930s.  Photo courtesy Jens Mueller.

One easy part of this idea is that John will get pretty much everything he needs for a hand tool wood shop from these donated tools.  The accompanying challenge will be to help him rehab the tools in order that he and his family have the best opportunity for success.  Tools in good shape will make this much easier than struggling along with junkers.  Having previously inspected the tools, there are some fine examples to work with.

Another easy part is that John and a few of his children seem eager to learn.  The accompanying challenge here is that I am pretty sure John and his kids have exactly zero experience with hand tools, and very little woodworking experience in general.  John mentioned something about Junior High Woodshop, but I think that is about all he knows.  Here is where we get to test the theory if truly anyone who might not think they have talent in that area can learn woodworking.  My thought is that if you can learn to play trombone, woodworking is not so hard in comparison.

Until we are able to clear a space and set up a wood shop, I have been looking for some appropriate projects for John and his kids.  I was thinking some projects that could teach some fundamental skills yet not be too difficult to finish in a relatively short time.  Also, I thought projects that could be easily looked up online or in a book to assist in self-learning.

Here is what I came up with:

1. Some basic tools.  Either examples from Robert Lang, Christopher Schwarz, Jim Tolpin, Paul Sellers, Roy Underhill, or elements from all of the above.  A straight edge, a square, perhaps some winding sticks, and maybe a bench hook and a shooting board.  Not necessarily in that order, and perhaps we'll build them as we need them.
2. A diagonal Chinese cross puzzle from William Fairham's Woodwork Joints.  This is a fun afternoon project that requires precision squaring of stock and paring.  
3. The bible-box project from Peter Follansbee.  Except I think perhaps built in pine instead of green oak and without the carving.  At least for now.  This looks like a good, first project build.  Plenty of good skills on this one like rabbets, nails and hinges.  Using pine will make processing the stock a bit less traumatic for the kids.
4. Richard Maguire's Hanging Wall Cupboard.  Another great project with a brilliant video showing how-to.  Some of the earlier projects may need a bit more one-on-one instruction, but with the video John and Sons should be able to do a few of these operations on their own.  Skills like a housed dado, toe-nailed pins, and clinched nails are something that will come in handy.  Another pine project that looks like real furniture should build confidence.
5. Christopher Schwarz' Shaker Side Table.  This one has a DVD with more than four hours of instruction by someone who actually teaches woodworking.  I think it is a fantastic beginner's graduation project as it covers skills to build about 99% of all basic furniture joints:  tapered legs, mortise and tenons, gluing up panels, and constructing drawers with half-blind dovetails, all without being a year long project.  That reminds me, I should probably finish the Shaker side table I started last year!

John, I'd love to hear what you think of this list.  I would also love to hear from any other readers about what they think of my list of beginner's projects and what other projects might be suitable.

Get Woodworking - Better Late than Never!

I have some cool friends.

One of my cool friends, John, happens to have even cooler friends than I do.

My friend John is not a woodworker, but a family man who shares my hobby of playing trombone in a local big band.

As a good friend, he subscribes to my woodworking blog and claims he enjoys reading it.  Indeed, we often discuss my latest posts on the way to band practice.

A few months ago, one of his neighbors asked him if he had any ideas on what to do with her father's old woodworking tools.   John suggested I go and take a look.

I was in heaven.  There was a well used and maintained basement shop.  It was like a German woodworking time capsule.  The most important find in my opinion was a complete Ulmia hanging wall cabinet complete with all of the original tools.

A whole collection of planes, braces, chisels, clamps, and everything needed collected over many years.

During 'Get Woodworking Week' a small idea began to germinate.  Why not talk John into taking up woodworking as something he can do with his own kids?

What a perfect storm.  All the hand tools one needs for a hand tool shop including a couple of Swedish benches that will work perfectly for kids.

My plan is to be available to John to help him learn woodworking with his kids.

With any luck, some of the journey will be documented here.  I am hoping I can even get him to write a blog post or two about the progress.

I sent him a note today instructing him to think about where he wants his shop:  a spare bedroom, the basement, or the garage.  I know he doesn't want to invest a lot of square footage of his available space, as most of his space is already spoken for.

I have plans to help him design his shop, move the tools over and set up (including rehabbing and sharpening them), and even a couple of projects designed to achieve success and accomplishment for beginners and children.  From there, we will see what happens.  Whatever happens,  I think it is fantastic that he wants to give this a go.

Using Veneer to Improve Laminated Table Legs

Two years is a long time to be working on a simple dining table.  This project technically does not have so many steps that it should take so long.

Why is it that it is still under the "in-progress" heading, you ask?

The answer is, I have no idea. This is just one of those projects that is taking me forever, mostly because this project really hasn't excited me yet.

No reason, just 'cause.

We are really getting tired of using an old, borrowed, ugly, flimsy dining table in our Garmisch apartment, though. That means it is time to light the fire under this table.

I mean - light the fire under me to finish this table. Lighting an actual fire under this table would be a perfectly good waste of lumber.

Ahem.

Moving on.

Here is the state of this project at the moment:

• The top is glued up and partially flattened
• All of the legs are laminated together - I used the same 8/4 stock that was used for the top.
• The legs were flattened on a face and one edge squared up by hand before I took them to Dictum to finish the milling using their power planer.
• Stock for the aprons has been chosen.

What is left to do:

• Make the legs look pretty.
• Smooth the table top after cutting to finish size.
• Cut the aprons to size and smooth them.
• Cut mortise and tenons.
• Glue-up the base using drawbore pegs.
• Attach the top with shop-made buttons.
• Finish.

I thought I didn't really have that much left to do, but now that I am looking at this list, it appears I haven't really started yet.  So much for two years worth of work on this thing.

Let's move on.

First on the list is making the legs look pretty.  I made the legs by laminating two pieces of 8/4 lumber together and milling square.

I did the best I could to match color and grain up, but while a couple looked OK, the others just wound up with so obvious a glue line that there is no way these legs would look anything but "jarring."

My solution was to pull a trick I used on a quarter sawn oak arts & crafts dining table I built for my in-laws a while back: veneer used to give the appearance of quarter sawn grain on all four faces of the leg.

Here's my process: My cousin lives near a veneer factory, so I sent him over to get me about a square meter of veneer for this project.  They just laughed, as usually the smallest they would sell is about a billion square meters of something.  They gave him this roll of walnut veneer, probably about ten square meters, and charged him ten Euros.  I think this was probably for their coffee money while they were able to get rid of some scrap or a sample or something.

What I got was a nice roll of veneer with about a dozen pieces from the same flitch.

The table legs in need along with the veneer I had to work with.

It is perfect having so much for this project, as I can really be picky in picking the perfect part of a piece of veneer to match the leg I want to put it on.

I decided to do the ugliest leg first, one which had a nice dark piece laminated to a board that showed sapwood.  What I needed to do here was find a section of the veneer that had no flatsawn grain, and which had sapwood all along one edge.

Although these sheets of veneer all came from the same part of the same log, they were not all exactly the same.  The ones closer to the bark side of the tree had a little more sapwood than the others.  I chose one of these and went to work.

The unrolled veneer.

The next step was to actually glue everything up.  I decided to do one face of two legs at a time, clamping them both up together with some termite poop for clamping cauls.

Here is a photo of everything set up.  I have just poured glue on both of the legs.

Notice I'm working at the kitchen table.

I used a purpose-made glue roller to even out everything for a nice glue up.

This shot shows most of the tools I used.

I couldn't photo the process, but all I did was place the veneer in the orientation I wanted on the table leg.  I used that yellow roller (not a paint roller, it has a harder rubber surface) to flatten everything the best I could.  Sometimes the veneer shifts around at this point, so one must be careful it doesn't move too far out of position.

I found out that the veneer can curl up when you just place it on the glue dry.  No biggie, as it will be flattened down again when clamped up, but it makes it hard to tell if it is in the right place or if it shifted.  To fix this I just wiped the dry side of the veneer with a damp cloth.

Once that was done, I stacked them up so the two veneer faces faced each other, separated by some termite poop and wax paper.

The whole glue up.

Here is a shot of this table leg in it's eventual intended location.  How ironic!

The legs only required being in the clamps for an hour or so, according to the veneer glue I used.  I then repeated the process on the opposite faces of these two legs.

Here is the result:

fresh out of the clamps

No more ugly laminating lines!  Looking at these legs, it really is hard to tell which faces are veneered and which ones are solid wood.  You really have to look at the end grain to tell.

So far, so good.  We'll have to wait until the finish goes on to really be sure everything matches, but to my eye right now it appears to be a perfect match.

Two more table legs to veneer up in this way and I'll be ready to move on with this project.  Another two years and maybe the table will be done!

How To Clean Up Glue Squeeze-Out

It's easy.  Here's my secret:

Use hide glue.

photo courtesy titebond.com

Any hide glue does the same, but I had recently used this Titebond product, which I have had excellent results with. 

Today I had to clean up some leg blanks I laminated together for my walnut dining table.

Stop laughing, YES... this is the same table I have been working on for about two years.

Normally when I clamp something up, I use a wet rag to wipe off as much squeeze out as I can.  I can not remember having had any trouble doing this with hide glue.  I have heard some have had troubles with PVA glue showing up during finishing when wiped off this way, though.

When I did these legs, I must have been inattentive for this step, as they all dried with lots of sloppy squeeze out.  In fact, one leg looked like it had been painted with glue.

What to do?  I thought about scraping it with a chisel or some other tool, but I hate using my sharp tools for this.

Instead, I got a bucket of hot water and a rag.  I would have used my heat gun, but couldn't find it.  I realized that using it with a bucket of water might not be such a good idea anyway.

Duh.

But the hot water worked way better than I thought.  I just squeezed enough water out of the rag so it wouldn't drip everywhere, and laid it over the dried squeeze-out.  After a few seconds I just started scrubbing away.

Hide glue is reversible with heat and water, so it doesn't take much to clean it up in this manner.  That one board that was completely caked with hide glue was cleaned up in less than a minute.

Water will raise the grain, but after a glue up my work needs to be planed anyway.  After cleaning up this dried squeeze-out I planed a reference face and an edge with a handplane on each of the legs, then drove them over to Dictum to dimension in their power planer. 

Perhaps in another two years this stupid table will be done!

Stool Build - Complete

After the first day, I spent a couple hours cleaning up everything, and applying a final coat of Dick wax to the legs and a coat of beeswax to the seat.

Trimming the legs in the seat.

A final scrape before finish.

Working on the stretchers.  I forgot to mention that the through-dowels were used instead of my intended mortise and tenon stretchers to save a bit of time.  I'm glad I did.

The through dowels were a design modification I decided to incorporate part way through the build.  I could see that processing rough stock to appropriate dimensions, cutting and fitting tenons and pounding mortices (considering the noise-making stipulations in our building), was a lot to expect for this one-day build.

I realized I had some store-bought 16mm beech dowels that would work perfectly with a 5/8" hole drilled with my brace.  No shoulders, no nothing else.  Just glue and a wedge, easy peasy.  We'll see over time if this joint is strong enough.  Had I all the time in the world, I would prefer drawbored tenons for this step, but I totally leapfrogged all of the time required for that joint in using the dowels instead.

Final trim on the stretchers.  After trying other tools, I decided the best tool for the job is a chisel.

This is a three-in-one shop appliance.  Besides sitting on it, it makes a fine extension to my sawbench...

And my tool chest.

Behold:  Stoolerable!

Thanks to Flair Woodworks for organizing this build.  It was a total blast!

View the rest of my Stoolerable build here.