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Harry Potter on Ice posted:I love playing with wood I sourced myself. New thread title plz
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May 9, 2019 23:04
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Speaking of sourcing your own wood, how do I know when a tree I had slabbed is dry enough to work with? I've had it stickered, in a shed drying for about 3 years with the end grain sealed. For at least a year if not 1.5 years I had a fan on a time in circulating air through it. I know that it is in no way humidity controlled. Where can I go from here? Would I still need to rent some time in a kiln to finish or prepare it for milling? Speaking of milling, I'll need to strip the bark and flatten it. If I have 3 slabs about 8' in length and 18" wide at most, and about 3" thick at the time of slabbing, would y'all have any opinions about DIY flattening with a router sled, vs taking it to a shop that offers slab flattening services on a CNC mill? Obviously one is much easier than the other, but never having done this before I'd like to be involved but not totally screw it up. My final intention is to edge join the three slabs (undecided if I will keep a live edge or trim them flat) to make a dining table.
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May 9, 2019 23:25
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Made babby's first homemade gigantic tapering jig for a pencil post bed today.  83" x 2.75" sq Dougfir test piece. Don't want to ruin any mahogany!  After the saw I cut a lambs tongue on the diagonal faces to ease the transition back to square and then it gets sanded and sanded.  MetaJew posted:Speaking of sourcing your own wood, how do I know when a tree I had slabbed is dry enough to work with? I've never flattened slabs with a router before, but it seems like it would take forever and make an enormous mess. There are 20" jointers in the world, and 16" ones are fairly common-call around some local millwork/commercial woodwork shops and you can probably find someone that could face join and plane it. That's gonna be an hour on normal machines which is probably going to be a whoooole lot cheaper than having it done on a CNC. If it's fairly straight, 20 and 24" thickness planers are fairly common in bigger shops, and would save you more. You might want to think about getting one edge straight line ripped or edge jointed while you're there too so you have a nice straight edge to work off of if you don't leave both sides live. z0331 posted:I'm leaning toward a carcass saw. There's a guy who sometimes appears at a local flea market who collects/sells restored planes. I bought my Stanley from him and can probably get a block plane off him at some point to replace the one I have. (And I can't really justify spending that much on the Veritas.) Good backsaws are a lot harder to find used. I'm no good at sharpening saws, and have consequently always been scared of restoring old saws. I really really love my Lie Nielsen saws, and haven't needed to sharpen them so far.
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May 9, 2019 23:57
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:The general rule is a year of drying per inch of thickness, but it varies alot. What species are the slabs and how thick are they? The only way to really know is test with a moisture meter, but I would bet they are pretty dry. It doesn't need to be kiln dried, but if you don't kiln dry it I would bring it into conditioned space for a few weeks before you mill it. Yeah moisture meters are really cheap. Just buy one and stab it into the wood in a few places and you'll find out if you're in the right range of moisture to start work. quote:I've never flattened slabs with a router before, but it seems like it would take forever and make an enormous mess. This seems to be the standard way everyone is flattening slabs now. You build yourself a router slider thingy, like this:  The advantage over planing or jointing is that there's little or no tear-out, and given that usually the reason you're doing a big slab is usually because it has some complex figure, knots, etc., you really don't want to have any tearout at all. The disadvantage is that you need a flat surface larger than the slab, a good router, build the sled thing, and then yeah produce a load of sawdust. Nick Offerman designed this one:  His shop does a ton of slab work, so if it's good enough for him...
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May 10, 2019 00:05
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:The general rule is a year of drying per inch of thickness, but it varies alot. What species are the slabs and how thick are they? The only way to really know is test with a moisture meter, but I would bet they are pretty dry. It doesn't need to be kiln dried, but if you don't kiln dry it I would bring it into conditioned space for a few weeks before you mill it. It's a cedar elm. At the time of slabbing them, they were ~3" thick. Finding a shop to do the joining/planing and straight line ripped sounds like it would be awesome and a huge time saver. Any ideas or suggestions on how to locate a place to do that work, or what it might cost? This is the only shop I've located the explicitly states they do slab flattening and have a 40" wide belt or drum sander. Although they don't list a price online. They mention that they do panel cutting, but also no comment about edge jointing or straight line ripping: https://www.finelumber.com/ Ninja Edit: Leperflesh posted:Yeah moisture meters are really cheap. Just buy one and stab it into the wood in a few places and you'll find out if you're in the right range of moisture to start work. Yeah I saw Nick's sled years ago-- and that's sort of what I had in mind, but I'd definitely have to do it on my garage floor-- is that flat enough, and do I want to deal with the mess? Unsure.
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May 10, 2019 00:08
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MetaJew posted:Ninja Edit: IMO if it's not totally flat, and/or you can't construct a very rigid sled, you're better off just using a great big sander because all the router jig will do is reproduce the nonflatness into the surface. Or of course hand-jointing/planing, if you can do that without too much tearout, and that probably depends on the exact slab, species, etc. If you have an offcut you can test on definitely do that first. A big shop's drum sander is likely to leave parallel lines down the wood that you'll need to work out with a random orbital, so keep that in mind, but if it's not too expensive, that's probably by far the lowest-effort highest-speed approach.
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May 10, 2019 00:18
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Leperflesh posted:IMO if it's not totally flat, and/or you can't construct a very rigid sled, you're better off just using a great big sander because all the router jig will do is reproduce the nonflatness into the surface. Or of course hand-jointing/planing, if you can do that without too much tearout, and that probably depends on the exact slab, species, etc. If you have an offcut you can test on definitely do that first. What if you built the rails onto a big piece of MDF on the floor?
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May 10, 2019 00:19
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MetaJew posted:It's a cedar elm. At the time of slabbing them, they were ~3" thick. The place you linked seems well equipped to handle all that. If they make moldings and hardwood laminations like they say, they definitely have a straight line rip saw too, or could probably even do that on the CNC. I'm sure if you call them and tell them what you have and what you're trying to do, they can give you some guidance. They may even have a connection to a kiln operator or something if you want to go that route. I'd just google around 'custom millwork' or 'custom furniture' places-spiral heads are becoming pretty common and waaaay cheaper so it's possible you may find someone who has one and could do the work.
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May 10, 2019 00:23
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That Works posted:What if you built the rails onto a big piece of MDF on the floor? It's all about rigidity. If you can get that MDF properly flat, then sure, I'm sure that'd work. It just has to stay flat when it has the slab on it. A three inch slab could weigh a lot...
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May 10, 2019 00:25
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I don't know about cedar elm specifically, but most elms have interlocked grain that tears out really bad, so unless you find someone with a spiral/helix head on their planer its probably going to tear out badly and make a mess. Some sort of router setup would probably be your best bet. Great! Thanks for the info. I'll do some more digging and call this shop. I also have a friend who comes from a wealthy family who apparently has a "wood" guy for custom furniture making and stuff. Apparently they might be able to connect me with him to place them in his kiln, or something along those lines. Any suggestions on a particular brand of moisture meter? Edit: Here some pictures from when I had it slabbed:      
MetaJew fucked around with this message at 00:30 on May 10, 2019 |
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May 10, 2019 00:27
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Leperflesh posted:It's all about rigidity. If you can get that MDF properly flat, then sure, I'm sure that'd work. It just has to stay flat when it has the slab on it. A three inch slab could weigh a lot...
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May 10, 2019 00:30
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I bought one a few weeks ago. It's cheap but works: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XGJDVFV Make sure you get one specifically for wood; they make these for e.g. testing drywall and stuff too, and those tend to not be very accurate. This one had reasonable reviews and I figured for $30 it was worth a stab. It's rated as measuring wood between 5% and 50% moisture; if you're below 5% something's wrong, and above 50 it's "way too wet" so you don't really need more range than that. Definitely test in multiple spots, including ends and along the grain, and keep in mind any bark will tend to hold a lot more moisture than the wood itself.
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May 10, 2019 00:31
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Re: router flattening sleds, if you want to go the cheap and quick route you could just cobble one together, carry your kitchen table into the garage and clamp it on there after you shim the legs to be stable. Do not do this with a spouse around or if you have money/time to have it done for you, but it worked for my monkey rear end with a 7x3 oak slab and a free afternoon.
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May 10, 2019 02:34
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I'm in that situation of building a dining table because I don't own a dining table. And also, I have a tiny knockdown workbench, but nothing really sizable or solid enough to do any heavy work. I wish my house had a bigger garage or a separate workshop.  I have no illusions that I could build attractive joinery for the legs on the table. But I did take a welding class, and a friend purchased a TIG/stick welder and metal miter saw. How played out are some sort of trapezoidal legs made out of steel rectangular tube? I assume without some sort of skirt or runner you're at a risk for this type of leg racking on a table. Is that just the nature of these types of dining tables, or is there a good/attractive solution for this sort of design?
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May 10, 2019 03:18
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I flattened a slab with my router on the garage floor. You're all overthinking it. I put up two rails taller than the slab's thickness, and leveled them so the plane between them is now flat. They were probably made of OSB because I only planned to do this once. My traveler was just some plywood and scrapwood to make a U-shaped box with a bit slot down the middle. Then, I blocked up the slab and used shims at three points to bring it up more-or-less evenly. Once the slab is off the floor and shimmed, it doesn't really matter how un-level the floor is because you've already leveled the guide rails. It's a mess, and it's tedious, but that's all part of the fun.
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May 10, 2019 03:30
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Dielectric posted:It's a mess, and it's tedious, but that's all part of the fun. Preach it brother
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May 10, 2019 03:35
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This which I showed earlier, is the coolest sled IMO. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2819334&pagenumber=551&perpage=40#post491360873
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May 10, 2019 08:54
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What’s the difference between Baltic and Finnish birch plywood? Is it something that would be noticeable for carving?
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May 10, 2019 14:02
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mikeycp posted:i think it's probably this. haven't made horses yet so i'm working nearly entirely on the ground rn. Are you in Japan? If so, might as well practice doing everything from seiza anyway.
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May 10, 2019 14:52
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MetaJew posted:I'm in that situation of building a dining table because I don't own a dining table. And also, I have a tiny knockdown workbench, but nothing really sizable or solid enough to do any heavy work. I wish my house had a bigger garage or a separate workshop. Yuck, imo, ymmv, goonspeed. Look up some trestle table designs. With wood.
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May 10, 2019 15:48
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dupersaurus posted:What’s the difference between Baltic and Finnish birch plywood? Is it something that would be noticeable for carving? About 300km. The baltic states are three countries south of Finland and/or the sea around the south of Finland. I can't speak to whether the different countries produce significantly different wood but I'm guessing it's much the same. Edit: my understanding about the use of "baltic" or similar birch plywood is that the further north you go the shorter the growth year on the trees so you get smaller knots and tighter grain, producing a more solid and "better" material. Whether that changes significantly between wherever in finland the finnish stuff is sourced from vs wherever in "the baltics" the other is sourced is what I don't know. Jaded Burnout fucked around with this message at 17:35 on May 10, 2019 |
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May 10, 2019 17:33
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dupersaurus posted:What’s the difference between Baltic and Finnish birch plywood? Is it something that would be noticeable for carving?
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May 10, 2019 18:12
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Mr. Mambold posted:Yuck, imo, ymmv, goonspeed. Look up some trestle table designs. With wood. Are you talking about some Anna White "farm table" trestle, or something else really heavy looking? This is bad:  These are good:   But I'm working with a Dewalt contractor saw, a Kobalt miter saw, and I've been having a hell of a time trying to achieve precise cuts. I think these are outside my current ability. Although, I don't see why you couldn't update the legs/base at a later date.
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May 10, 2019 18:51
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You're having a hard time getting precise cuts on construction lumber with a miter saw?
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May 10, 2019 19:02
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Finnish birch is a Baltic birch product, it’s just (as I understand it) usually a bit higher grade (and price) and is available much thinner. What I usually get comes from Russia (or at least it has Cyrillic on the crate) and it’s very good as well. If you’re carving it are you doing wood cuts or something? I think either would work fine as both have thick (1/16”?) face veneers. Stay away from Chinese birch. It is some poo poo and the face veneers are really thin. Yeah. I’ve used baltic, then saw Finnish on woodcraft for more and wondered.
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May 10, 2019 19:26
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z0331 posted:Are you in Japan? If so, might as well practice doing everything from seiza anyway. i wish. one day i will be and then i won't have the room to do any of this stuff
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May 10, 2019 19:29
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Huxley posted:You're having a hard time getting precise cuts on construction lumber with a miter saw? Pretty much everything I've built has been with some big box store 3/4" maple veneer plywood, and the occasional S4S lumber from woodcraft (some ash to make edge trim for plywood) or some pine or poplar to make some pocket hole joined door frames for a cabinet. In the case of the table saw, I think I need to get some sort of micrometer and figure out if the blade is truly parallel to the fence and miter slot. An outfeed table would be a great addition, but I don't have room to store one. For breaking down sheet goods, I bought the two kreg jigs for ripping and simulating a track saw. I've encountered a few limitations with both. In the case of the Accu-Cut track, I've found that for whatever reason, initiating the cut doesn't always seem super precise. If I'm cutting sheet good on the floor, on top of some thick styrofoam sheet, initiating the cut with a circular saw is cumbersome because you have to plunge the blade to get it to sit on the track. In addition, when i first cut the sacrificial edge on the guide, I had a little bit of a wiggle so it's not a true zero clearance edge. I should probably buy a replacement strip and try again. It's probably inexperience and just not having a great workspace. My kitchen remodel is finally wrapping up now that my tile has finally arrived, so once this is done I think I will focus on organizing my garage, and trying to get a clean work space.
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May 10, 2019 19:37
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MetaJew posted:
Ok, that's reasonable. I reckon if you could do that with some sort of brushed metal, it would look good.
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May 10, 2019 20:02
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I figured out the problem with my mortise and tenon joints. My miter saw wasn't cutting at 90 degrees, and since the tenons were using the same angle that the end of the board did, they weren't aligned with the mortise. After recalibrating the miter saw, things look much better: Not perfect, but I think I'd chalk up the remaining gap to the fact that it's really hard to precisely move the end of a 7'-long board through a router table. This is good enough for me. It's a good thing I didn't cut the boards to exactly the length I wanted, so I could re-do the tenons without screwing up my measurements.
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May 12, 2019 03:08
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MetaJew posted:In the case of the table saw, I think I need to get some sort of micrometer and figure out if the blade is truly parallel to the fence and miter slot. An outfeed table would be a great addition, but I don't have room to store one. I'm pretty sure if they weren't parallel you'd either be getting kickback all the time, or not even notice. As long as the material moves into the saw blade in a straight line the cut will be a straight line?
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May 12, 2019 08:22
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It's a good feeling when you go from feeling lukewarm about something and then putting a coat of finish on it and it totally pops. That'll do.
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May 13, 2019 01:30
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I think I need to buy a plane or two - but I'm not sure which ones. I'm building a plywood desk top (to go on top of an Ikea drawer unit and legs) as babby's first woodworking project. It doesn't need to be fancy, but since I only need it for about a year until we move into a bigger place I'm viewing it as a good opportunity to practice without worrying too much if I screw up. The core of the desktop is some 3/4" birch plywood left over from when my parents had their cabinets redone. It's ugly due to some water damage/sitting in their garage collecting spider poop and I need at least 1" of thickness to screw in the legs, so I am laminating 1/4" maple plywood on both sides. I want to attach some solid maple trim around the edges. My plan is to to build a track jig for my circular saw for ripping some 1x4 maple in half to make my edging. Once that is done and glued up, what's the best way to even out any areas where the edging isn't flush to the top, without damaging the veneer on the plywood? Smooth plane, jack plane, belt sander and prayer?
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May 13, 2019 16:24
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Discussion Quorum posted:I think I need to buy a plane or two - but I'm not sure which ones. I'm not picturing how this is going to work, exactly, but to answer the question- Router with flush trimming bit and a steady hand. No to the belt sander unless you can do it in your sleep.
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May 13, 2019 16:57
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Mr. Mambold posted:I'm not picturing how this is going to work, exactly, but to answer the question- Router with flush trimming bit and a steady hand. No to the belt sander unless you can do it in your sleep. they just want to track saw rip it to 1x2 for a picture frame border around the table
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May 13, 2019 17:09
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:they just want to track saw rip it to 1x2 for a picture frame border around the table Ah. That's much better than the 1/4" edging I was picturing. I mean in terms of readable. 1/4" edging would work fine. You get 1x4, 1/4 all of a sudden it's all metric.
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May 13, 2019 17:23
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Yes, that's exactly it. Although I may end up with access to a table saw, if I can snag a spot in my local maker space's woodworking orientation. Last time I had checked it was booked out for months, but there appear to be openings later this month 
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May 13, 2019 17:36
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Discussion Quorum posted:Yes, that's exactly it. Although I may end up with access to a table saw, if I can snag a spot in my local maker space's woodworking orientation. Last time I had checked it was booked out for months, but there appear to be openings later this month Which Makerspace? I like to look at what spaces have to offer around the country 
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May 13, 2019 20:09
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Discussion Quorum posted:I think I need to buy a plane or two - but I'm not sure which ones. You don’t really need a plane to do all that, a random orbital sander should be all you need to sand the edge banglding flush if you’re careful when you put it on. You’re also much less likely to sand through the veneer on the plywood with one vs. a belt sander.
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May 13, 2019 20:22
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Also, if you've never done it, you'd be surprised how smooth you can sand the edges of good plywood. If you want the edging for aesthetics, that's fair, but if you just want something to be functional, the orbital at 80 then 220 will be smooth to the touch. Not as pretty but you're not going to get snags or splinters off it.
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May 13, 2019 20:44
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JEEVES420 posted:Which Makerspace? I like to look at what spaces have to offer around the country TXRX Labs in Houston. I've started messing around with electronics too and they seem to have a pretty well-appointed lab. Thanks for the advice. I glued up the plywood yesterday so this goon is already in the well  The edging is just something I want to do as a bit of a challenge. If it turns out badly, I'm only out about $25 in material. I don't yet own any of the tools mentioned (router, planes, random orbit sander), but I have another project for the sander so I might as well buy one. Next to a drill and circular saw it seems like one of those tools basically everyone should have.
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May 13, 2019 22:02
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