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mds2
Apr 8, 2004


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A Wizard of Goatse posted:

2x4s are down more or less in Baltimore (not $3 though lmao), processed stuff like plywood certainly isn't. I was looking at getting a couple pieces just a couple days ago and places still wanted $80 for a 4'x8'x1/2" sheet of box store grade junk

My brother is currently building a house. OSB dropped from $50 a sheet to $12 a sheet in the last few weeks in Nebraska.

Hardwood prices went up a little here but much.

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NomNomNom
Jul 20, 2008
Please Work Out
Mdf is nearly $60 for a full sheet here, when last summer (peak covid) was more like $28.

more falafel please
Feb 26, 2005

forums poster

I'm slowly building the Cosman workbench, and it's time to laminate up the trestles and stretchers. He uses 1/4" crown staples to hold it together, is there any reason I can't just use brads? I have a lovely Harbor Freight stapler, but a decent brad nailer. I'd rather not have to deal with pounding half my staples in with a hammer to get them flush.

Kaiser Schnitzel
Mar 29, 2006

Schnitzel mit uns


more falafel please posted:

I'm slowly building the Cosman workbench, and it's time to laminate up the trestles and stretchers. He uses 1/4" crown staples to hold it together, is there any reason I can't just use brads? I have a lovely Harbor Freight stapler, but a decent brad nailer. I'd rather not have to deal with pounding half my staples in with a hammer to get them flush.
I dunno the specifics of that build or anything, but staples definitely hold stuff together a whole lot better than brads. If you’re glueing you could always just use a bunch of clamps. If the staples are just to keep stuff from sliding around when you are gluing/clamping, then brads should be fine. Washerhead screws also make good temporary clamps and they don’t leave your wood full of metal waiting to trash your sawblades etc. (But they do leave holes), and they definitely have more clamping power than either brads or staples.

more falafel please
Feb 26, 2005

forums poster

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

I dunno the specifics of that build or anything, but staples definitely hold stuff together a whole lot better than brads. If you’re glueing you could always just use a bunch of clamps. If the staples are just to keep stuff from sliding around when you are gluing/clamping, then brads should be fine. Washerhead screws also make good temporary clamps and they don’t leave your wood full of metal waiting to trash your sawblades etc. (But they do leave holes), and they definitely have more clamping power than either brads or staples.

Yeah, the staples are used in lieu of clamps around the perimeter to hold the pieces together while they're being glued up. He goes to some lengths to make sure there's no staples anywhere that holes or roundovers need to be cut later. He does use screws and washers that get removed for gluing up the top, since the holes will only be visible on the bottom, but I don't really want to deal with screw holes on the trestles and stretchers.

NomNomNom
Jul 20, 2008
Please Work Out
FWIW I also built the Cosman bench and had every intention of using staples like him, but bought the wrong size and couldn't be assed to go back to home depot. So I just used brads and it's a bench.

more falafel please
Feb 26, 2005

forums poster

NomNomNom posted:

FWIW I also built the Cosman bench and had every intention of using staples like him, but bought the wrong size and couldn't be assed to go back to home depot. So I just used brads and it's a bench.

Good to hear. I figured as much, I can always use more brads. I'm also not gonna try to finish the bench in one day like he does, so I'm fine with shooting some brads into the trestle, taking it off the form, then throwing a few clamps on it to be sure.

Enderzero
Jun 19, 2001

The snowflake button makes it
cold cold cold
Set temperature makes it
hold hold hold
Tool rest turned out pretty good! Hardest part was reverse engineering part sizes from a couple of lumberjocks posts just from a few images. Just need to cut a square of plywood and bolt the grinder and screw down the tool rest. Thanks again for the grinder advice, this Norton 3x stone cuts ridiculously fast and doesn’t heat up much, I flatted a deep Jack camber in about 5 minutes on it, which would have taken hour(s) otherwise! Grabbed the Raptor r3x bearings and it runs very smooth.

Next project is the big one I’ve been working towards for about 2 months. A bathroom cabinet, possibly with a drawer, definitely with a work surface and shelves above it. Anybody ever seen a design for something like this? Most of the cabinet stuff I’ve been finding assumed either no back or a very thin one since it’s against the wall, but I suspect I’ll need a more hardy design since there will be shelves attached to and above the cabinet.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

That Works
Jul 22, 2006

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy


Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

There's some funkier stuff going on in the plywood/MDF world due to shortages of the resins used in the glues. That whole industry is hugely concentrated in Houston/Beaumont/Lake Charles and they've had to deal with major shutdowns from Hurricane Laura last yr and the Texas freeze/power outage on top of all the other regular COVID stuff. My cousin works for a wood glue manufacturer in Norway and he says it has really messed them up halfway across the world and it was a pretty significant chunk of global output that got hosed up.

I just picked something up from one of my distributors this morning and the stacks of plywood that usually go up to the ceiling are like a foot high instead. They actually had Baltic Birch back in stock, but it was like $120/sheet instead of $50.

Also similar things going on in the furniture foam industry (according to the place I bought a couch from ages ago that's still got no ETA). They described the hurricanes and the big winter power outage in TX as huge factors in causing supply issues that still haven't subsided 8 months later.




Somewhat related. I am in the planning stages of some built ins and am debating making custom cabinets, or buying the cheap unpainted HD / Lowes wall cabinets and modifying them. Given plywood costs using the prebuilt ones is a little more attractive than I would have considered before. It's a little easier of course to just make everything in 3/4 ply but it's still about 2.5x more expensive here than it was last year and tbh the stuff on the shelf here looks pretty lovely compared to the few sheets I have at home from 2 yrs back.

That said, I have been wondering if there are any decent frame+panel cabinet designs out there that anyone knows of / can share?

I am thinking of stuff using trimmed up 2x4 and 1/4 ply or something along those lines.

That Works fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Sep 17, 2021

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Enderzero posted:

Tool rest turned out pretty good! Hardest part was reverse engineering part sizes from a couple of lumberjocks posts just from a few images. Just need to cut a square of plywood and bolt the grinder and screw down the tool rest. Thanks again for the grinder advice, this Norton 3x stone cuts ridiculously fast and doesn’t heat up much, I flatted a deep Jack camber in about 5 minutes on it, which would have taken hour(s) otherwise! Grabbed the Raptor r3x bearings and it runs very smooth.

Next project is the big one I’ve been working towards for about 2 months. A bathroom cabinet, possibly with a drawer, definitely with a work surface and shelves above it. Anybody ever seen a design for something like this? Most of the cabinet stuff I’ve been finding assumed either no back or a very thin one since it’s against the wall, but I suspect I’ll need a more hardy design since there will be shelves attached to and above the cabinet.



I'm going to build a similar tool rest based on yours

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
I have a feeling that this is either a very simple question or a complicated one. When dealing with plywood, should I care much about the "grain" of the ply? I have a gut feeling that you shouldn't drill into the sides of plywood or something, but I really have no reasoning for this, and I couldn't articulate why I feel this way. I see youtubey people using it all over the place for pretty much anything that isn't some kind of a display piece though, so I also get the feeling people treat plywood as just like, a strong sheet of wood that you can do whatever with. I keep being surprised by the strength of wood products so I feel like there's something wrong in my brain about this but I don't know what it is. Please educate

Kaiser Schnitzel
Mar 29, 2006

Schnitzel mit uns


signalnoise posted:

I have a feeling that this is either a very simple question or a complicated one. When dealing with plywood, should I care much about the "grain" of the ply? I have a gut feeling that you shouldn't drill into the sides of plywood or something, but I really have no reasoning for this, and I couldn't articulate why I feel this way. I see youtubey people using it all over the place for pretty much anything that isn't some kind of a display piece though, so I also get the feeling people treat plywood as just like, a strong sheet of wood that you can do whatever with. I keep being surprised by the strength of wood products so I feel like there's something wrong in my brain about this but I don't know what it is. Please educate
Simple answer: Plywood is incredibly stiff on edge, and incredibly floppy and saggy on flat, much more so than solid wood in both cases. You can screw into plywood edge grain, but some plywood tends to delaminate if you hit it just wrong. Better plywood like baltic birch with more plies and fewer voids edge-screws better. Pre-drilling helps.

More complicated answer:
There's a bunch of different types of plywood and they can be very different from each other. The two big variables for interior stuff are 'how many layers/plies are there' and 'what kind of wood are they.' In general more plies= better, stiffer, more stable plywood. The material for the core veneers can make a big difference too. Most domestic hardwood plywood uses a poplar core which is fairly soft and doesn't always hold screws super well, and some import plywood uses some really really soft tropical stuff, which maybe doesn't hold screws that well, but it has the advantage of being lightweight, and some of it is quite stiff and stable. The face veneer matters quite a bit too, and is usually how plywood is named, even though it doesn't tell you much about the panel itself. For instance, big box store 'birch' plywood has nothing in common with baltic birch, except they both have a birch face veneer. The big box stuff usually has a poplar core, and usually only 3-5 plies and isn't really very stable, vs like 12+ birch plies for baltic birch.

Fancy hardwood plywood with flat cut and matched/spliced veneers of cherry/walnut/mahogany etc (vs. normal rotary cut stuff) will sometimes have layers of MDF right under the face veneer to make sure the face veneer is really nice and smooth and consistent. That fancy face veneer is usually already sanded to 120 grit and because it has been sanded is VERY VERY thin and easy to sand through. IME that stuff with the MDF really likes to split if you screw into the edges, and it's heavy and expensive AF. There's other specialty stuff too like lumber core plywood that combines some of the different qualities of solid wood and plywood. Plywood grades are really confusing and I don't begin to understand or know anything about them except that the grade usually refers to the quality of the face veneer rather than the internal construction of the panel.

Serenade
Nov 5, 2011

"I should really learn to fucking read"


drat, what are they making softwoods out of these days.

tracecomplete
Feb 26, 2017

wood, pretty sure

(i'm helping!)

That Works
Jul 22, 2006

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy


Serenade posted:



drat, what are they making softwoods out of these days.

The wood knows it's value has increased lately and has gained confidence.

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

Simple answer: Plywood is incredibly stiff on edge, and incredibly floppy and saggy on flat, much more so than solid wood in both cases. You can screw into plywood edge grain, but some plywood tends to delaminate if you hit it just wrong. Better plywood like baltic birch with more plies and fewer voids edge-screws better. Pre-drilling helps.

More complicated answer:
There's a bunch of different types of plywood and they can be very different from each other. The two big variables for interior stuff are 'how many layers/plies are there' and 'what kind of wood are they.' In general more plies= better, stiffer, more stable plywood. The material for the core veneers can make a big difference too. Most domestic hardwood plywood uses a poplar core which is fairly soft and doesn't always hold screws super well, and some import plywood uses some really really soft tropical stuff, which maybe doesn't hold screws that well, but it has the advantage of being lightweight, and some of it is quite stiff and stable. The face veneer matters quite a bit too, and is usually how plywood is named, even though it doesn't tell you much about the panel itself. For instance, big box store 'birch' plywood has nothing in common with baltic birch, except they both have a birch face veneer. The big box stuff usually has a poplar core, and usually only 3-5 plies and isn't really very stable, vs like 12+ birch plies for baltic birch.

Fancy hardwood plywood with flat cut and matched/spliced veneers of cherry/walnut/mahogany etc (vs. normal rotary cut stuff) will sometimes have layers of MDF right under the face veneer to make sure the face veneer is really nice and smooth and consistent. That fancy face veneer is usually already sanded to 120 grit and because it has been sanded is VERY VERY thin and easy to sand through. IME that stuff with the MDF really likes to split if you screw into the edges, and it's heavy and expensive AF. There's other specialty stuff too like lumber core plywood that combines some of the different qualities of solid wood and plywood. Plywood grades are really confusing and I don't begin to understand or know anything about them except that the grade usually refers to the quality of the face veneer rather than the internal construction of the panel.

Thanks a ton for this. The amount of info you give every time is great. In particular, thinking about what is actually used for the interior and face plies means a lot there. This is definitely one of the better threads I've been in for knowledge

tracecomplete posted:

wood, pretty sure

(i'm helping!)

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

signalnoise posted:

I have a feeling that this is either a very simple question or a complicated one. When dealing with plywood, should I care much about the "grain" of the ply? I have a gut feeling that you shouldn't drill into the sides of plywood or something, but I really have no reasoning for this, and I couldn't articulate why I feel this way. I see youtubey people using it all over the place for pretty much anything that isn't some kind of a display piece though, so I also get the feeling people treat plywood as just like, a strong sheet of wood that you can do whatever with. I keep being surprised by the strength of wood products so I feel like there's something wrong in my brain about this but I don't know what it is. Please educate

yeah it's kinda complicated. The plys reinforce each other, so like the butt-end plys contribute a lot more to the strength of whatever you're doing to the edge than they would on a regular butt joint of an equivalent thickness of poplar or yellow pine or whatever, you can safely hang stuff further out on a sheet of plywood, etc. But it's still usually <1" of kinda crappy wood and like Kaiser Schnitzel says it's all kinda inconsistent and squirrelly unless you're dealing in industrial quantities of stock from the same manufacturer. In general I'd do what I can to put any load on the face of the sheet rather than the edge, use dado joints over edge screws, etc., but I'm usually making something I can take my time on and would be injuring myself with if it failed, not viral Youtube DIY lifehacks.

A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Sep 17, 2021

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

yeah it's kinda complicated. The plys reinforce each other a bit, so like the butt-end plys contribute a lot more to the strength of whatever you're doing to the edge than they would on a regular butt joint of an equivalent thickness of poplar or yellow pine or whatever, you can safely hang stuff further out on a sheet of plywood, etc. But like Kaiser Schnitzel says there's a ton of different kinds of engineered woods that fall under the umbrella of "plywood" and not a whole lot in the way of coherent industry standards where the same language used by different manufacturers means the same thing, and most places you can get plywood by the sheet rather than the pallet are both super unhelpful in clarifying what's inside their stock and offer the cheapest stuff made out of the shittiest materials they can find. In general I'd do what I can to put any load on the face of the sheet rather than the edge, use dado joints over edge screws, etc., but I'm usually making something I can take my time on and would be injuring myself with if it failed, not viral Youtube DIY lifehacks.

Right, the stuff I'm talking about when it comes to Youtuber stuff is more like people making stuff for around their shop. For example, this guy uses plywood all over the place, and here he uses it to make a router table. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhIzJrTYHBc I've also found though that pretty much any time I see a professional using plywood, their plywood looks a hell of a lot nicer than mine, and seems more rigid. So it makes sense to me that there's a lot of variation in quality and composition.

That Works
Jul 22, 2006

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy


signalnoise posted:

Right, the stuff I'm talking about when it comes to Youtuber stuff is more like people making stuff for around their shop. For example, this guy uses plywood all over the place, and here he uses it to make a router table. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhIzJrTYHBc I've also found though that pretty much any time I see a professional using plywood, their plywood looks a hell of a lot nicer than mine, and seems more rigid. So it makes sense to me that there's a lot of variation in quality and composition.

Youtuber stuff can be annoying because it'll start with

"OK so today I am making a cart out of some scrap plywood I have leftover from another project" then they go and use like $400 worth of walnut laminated plywood or some poo poo.

Kaiser Schnitzel
Mar 29, 2006

Schnitzel mit uns


signalnoise posted:

Right, the stuff I'm talking about when it comes to Youtuber stuff is more like people making stuff for around their shop. For example, this guy uses plywood all over the place, and here he uses it to make a router table. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhIzJrTYHBc I've also found though that pretty much any time I see a professional using plywood, their plywood looks a hell of a lot nicer than mine, and seems more rigid. So it makes sense to me that there's a lot of variation in quality and composition.

That’s Baltic birch in that video. It’s The Good Plywood.

Buncha plywood with approximate wholesale pre-covid prices for comparison:
3/4” Home Depot domestic Birch, 5 ply poplar core ~$40:



3/4” Baltic Birch, 13 ply birch $60/sht:



3/4” Import (usually from Vietnam, sometimes Indonesia, China before the tariffs) birch, 11 ply core. The Chinese stuff did have a birch core but was even worse with voids/overlapped plies, no idea what this core actually is. Some tropical hardwood. $40/sht. This stuff is pretty much cabinet shop standard. Notice how uneven/voidy the plies are and how thin the face veneer is vs. Baltic. It’s still better than the domestic poplar core IMO because it has so many more plies.



3/4” Mahogany veneer with MDF outer core, 5 ply, poplar? Birch? core. $120/sht:



3/4” AC Structural plywood. 5 yellow pine plies $40/sheet:



1/2” solid sapele marine plywood. 9 ply, all sapele. Nicest plywood I’ve ever used and stiff AF. Priced to match at $300/sht, lol

Danhenge
Dec 16, 2005

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

1/2” solid sapele marine plywood. 9 ply, all sapele. Nicest plywood I’ve ever used and stiff AF. Priced to match at $300/sht, lol


The bourbon moth guy did a video where they just completely nuts with that marine plywood lmao. Presumably they were comped by the distributor or whatever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL42mx58ISM

Rufio
Feb 6, 2003

I'm smart! Not like everybody says... like dumb... I'm smart and I want respect!

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

That’s Baltic birch in that video. It’s The Good Plywood.

Buncha plywood with approximate wholesale pre-covid prices for comparison:
3/4” Home Depot domestic Birch, 5 ply poplar core ~$40:



3/4” Baltic Birch, 13 ply birch $60/sht:



3/4” Import (usually from Vietnam, sometimes Indonesia, China before the tariffs) birch, 11 ply core. The Chinese stuff did have a birch core but was even worse with voids/overlapped plies, no idea what this core actually is. Some tropical hardwood. $40/sht. This stuff is pretty much cabinet shop standard. Notice how uneven/voidy the plies are and how thin the face veneer is vs. Baltic. It’s still better than the domestic poplar core IMO because it has so many more plies.



3/4” Mahogany veneer with MDF outer core, 5 ply, poplar? Birch? core. $120/sht:



3/4” AC Structural plywood. 5 yellow pine plies $40/sheet:



1/2” solid sapele marine plywood. 9 ply, all sapele. Nicest plywood I’ve ever used and stiff AF. Priced to match at $300/sht, lol



This is a great post. Seeing the difference in the ply edge right next to one another is great. My lumber yard will sell me "China birch" if I ask for birch plywood unless I specify Baltic birch and the difference in quality is huge.

Enderzero
Jun 19, 2001

The snowflake button makes it
cold cold cold
Set temperature makes it
hold hold hold

CommonShore posted:

I'm going to build a similar tool rest based on yours

Hey, cool! Let me know if you’d like to know the dimensions if it would help. I was trying to guess from pictures and then did some guessing and trig work to confirm and it took more time than I would have liked.

This plywood info is great. Wondering - those sheet prices, a sheet depends on the type right? Like Home Depot sheet is 4x8 vs 5x5 for Baltic birch, yeah? A scrap of that is what I made the tool rest from, other than the arms which were left over maple runners from my sleds. It drilled very nicely.

Enderzero fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Sep 18, 2021

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

That’s Baltic birch in that video. It’s The Good Plywood.

good pictures and good text

Ya know, I'd never really noticed it before but now that you've pointed it out, I went back and skipped around in that video looking at the edges and whaddaya know



The difference between the good stuff and the sacrificial stuff really is a world apart.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Enderzero posted:

Hey, cool! Let me know if you’d like to know the dimensions if it would help. I was trying to guess from pictures and then did some guessing and trig work to confirm and it took more time than I would have liked.

This plywood info is great. Wondering - those sheet prices, a sheet depends on the type right? Like Home Depot sheet is 4x8 vs 5x5 for Baltic birch, yeah? A scrap of that is what I made the tool rest from, other than the arms which were left over maple runners from my sleds. It drilled very nicely.

How wide is your rest?

I did one tonight and I slightly misjudged and made the rest/base like 1/2 inch too wide to get the wing nuts onto the 4" bolts I bought with the side runners on :doh: I did some hand saw work to adjust it but it looks like rear end now so... gonna redo it.

The hard part was making the side runners anyway, and they're still good. Just need to rip some new pieces tomorrow..

Enderzero
Jun 19, 2001

The snowflake button makes it
cold cold cold
Set temperature makes it
hold hold hold

CommonShore posted:

How wide is your rest?

I did one tonight and I slightly misjudged and made the rest/base like 1/2 inch too wide to get the wing nuts onto the 4" bolts I bought with the side runners on :doh: I did some hand saw work to adjust it but it looks like rear end now so... gonna redo it.

The hard part was making the side runners anyway, and they're still good. Just need to rip some new pieces tomorrow..

The rest is 3”x3”, the notch is about 1”x1” - my grinding wheel is 3/4” wide so I left about an 1/8 on each side. I think that should be sufficient to rest my jointer iron on it with more than half on the rest at the extreme ends so it’s stable and doesn’t want to tip. I think the runners are ~3/8” - the bolt shoulder side I drilled a lovely square mortise the depth of the shoulder that the bolt head sits in, about 3/16” so it all fit on a 4” bolt. The rest, vertical part and base were all cut to 3” wide (so the arms sit outside and can shift lower until they hit the bench - probably overengineered a bit but I wasn’t sure if I made the parts long enough so I made the slot quite long) with the vertical part standing 2” tall and the base is 3” deep. I think the arms are 4” long, the slot is about 2/3 of the length.

I haven’t done a through mortise yet and didn’t want to try on this project so I taped the arms together and used a clamped scrap as a straight edge on my drill press and just slid the arms and drilled holes next to each other and then used a file to even it out (poorly - but it works!).

Enderzero fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Sep 18, 2021

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Enderzero posted:

The rest is 3”x3”, the notch is about 1”x1” - my grinding wheel is 3/4” wide so I left about an 1/8 on each side. I think that should be sufficient to rest my jointer iron on it with more than half on the rest at the extreme ends so it’s stable and doesn’t want to tip. I think the runners are ~3/8” - the bolt shoulder side I drilled a lovely square mortise the depth of the shoulder that the boot head sits in, about 3/16” so it all fit on a 4” bolt. The rest, vertical part and base were all cut to 3” wide (so the arms sit outside and can shift lower until they hit the bench - probably overengineered a bit but I wasn’t sure if I made the parts long enough so I made the slot quite long) with the vertical part standing 2” tall and the base is 3” deep. I think the arms are 4” long, the slot is about 2/3 of the length.

Thanks - that's actually exactly what I guessed from looking at it! The only difference is that my arms were made of scrap maple of a non-standard thickness, so I couldn't get the stupid bolt on the stupid thing.

Gonna go down to 2.5 inches tomorrow.

Enderzero
Jun 19, 2001

The snowflake button makes it
cold cold cold
Set temperature makes it
hold hold hold

CommonShore posted:

Thanks - that's actually exactly what I guessed from looking at it! The only difference is that my arms were made of scrap maple of a non-standard thickness, so I couldn't get the stupid bolt on the stupid thing.

Gonna go down to 2.5 inches tomorrow.

That should work! My jointer iron is 2 5/8” so the rest needs to be that wide to be able to put the absolute edge of the iron against the center of the wheel while the center of gravity is still on the rest, so you’re only off by 1/16” on each side. That seems workable, assuming you even have something that wide to grind. Good luck finishing it.

Stultus Maximus
Dec 21, 2009

USPOL May

mds2 posted:

This is pretty much dead on. I use BLO a shitload. If it smells, it aint fully cured. Let it sit for a week or two.

BLO and Shellac is my favorite finish. Shellac is great because you can re-coat in about 10-15 minutes.

Here is my current project. An urn for my mother (she's fine). The woods are some incredible curly maple and cocobolo legs.
I started applying Formby's "Tung Oil Finish" last night. I chose tung oil over BLO in this case because BLO will turn maple yellow. I wanted the maple to stay as white as possible.






Hey, unfortunate question: I thought I had a few years to consider this but my father is probably a few days from dying of unexpected cancer. How did you do the no visible fastener lid for the urn?

Huxley
Oct 10, 2012



Grimey Drawer
Sorry for your anticipated loss.

Sliding bottom?

e, we cremated our pup last year and she came back in a thick plastic zip bag inside a pretty box with a hidden sliding bottom held by a screw on its open end.

Huxley fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Sep 18, 2021

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
I was requested a long time ago to post prototypes

I believe this is the first time I can say honestly I can see the end of this tunnel. I know how to do it, but this isn't as good as it could be, obviously

This is much more simple than the original idea, but I learned a lot with it anyway



I've tried the roundover stuff with a palm router, as you can see from the burn marks, and I'll need to give it a go with a hand plane but I think it's fine. A little sanding should make it ready for a finish, and I can do a better job with the router and everything next time



I used acrylic just to see how hard it would be to use it, but I didn't have a piece long enough to span the entire bottom. I don't really know what I would do to bridge the gap from here, but I suppose it's doable, but I'll probably just use those pieces of acrylic to make router jigs or something. The main point of this was to be sure that when the lever is installed, the bottom of it does not touch the "floor" of the case, which it doesn't. So I have the measurements good for that, anyway. At this point I could just use whatever else for the bottom and then wire it up, but of course it needs some decoration.

In any case, functional prototype, and I learned a lot! Thanks for answering all my newbie questions with so much detail, this has been great!

signalnoise fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Sep 21, 2021

Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

signalnoise posted:

This is much more simple than the original idea, but I learned a lot with it anyway



I've tried the roundover stuff with a palm router, as you can see from the burn marks, and I'll need to give it a go with a hand plane but I think it's fine. A little sanding should make it ready for a finish, and I can do a better job with the router and everything next time



Very nice! are you going to wire it up, or are you going to use your new skills to make something closer to the original idea?

Do you have a disk sander? Its what I would have used to shape that round edge, give it a more organic look than a router. You can find cheap ones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UQGikBrJuI

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

Rutibex posted:

Very nice! are you going to wire it up, or are you going to use your new skills to make something closer to the original idea?

Do you have a disk sander? Its what I would have used to shape that round edge, give it a more organic look than a router. You can find cheap ones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UQGikBrJuI

The only stuff I have in terms of power tools are a circular saw, power drill, and palm router (all cordless bright green ryobis) and a corded dewalt rotary tool. I only used the power drill and palm router for this though, and I could have gotten away with not having the router, honestly. Most of this, even cutting the acrylic, was done with hand tools.

I will probably finish this thing out, at least to get the experience all the way through, wire it up, and play with it for a while. One of the great things about this kind of stuff is that when you feel like it, you can just strip the parts and put them in something else. In the meantime, what I *really* need to build is a workbench. I don't have one, and figuring out how to get things flat without being able to hold things very still has been kind of a

it's been a thing

Rutibex
Sep 9, 2001

by Fluffdaddy

signalnoise posted:

The only stuff I have in terms of power tools are a circular saw, power drill, and palm router (all cordless bright green ryobis) and a corded dewalt rotary tool. I only used the power drill and palm router for this though, and I could have gotten away with not having the router, honestly. Most of this, even cutting the acrylic, was done with hand tools.

I will probably finish this thing out, at least to get the experience all the way through, wire it up, and play with it for a while. One of the great things about this kind of stuff is that when you feel like it, you can just strip the parts and put them in something else. In the meantime, what I *really* need to build is a workbench. I don't have one, and figuring out how to get things flat without being able to hold things very still has been kind of a

it's been a thing

:hmmyes:
A work bench should be your first priority! You should learn how to do tight fitting joinery if you are making a work bench. I can see you have butt joints on your fight stick, and thats fine for a video game controller but you need proper mortise and tenon for a bench you are going to be hammering on.

I nailed my first work bench together with simple nails and its wobbly as heck. Don't make my mistake, do it solid the first time :v:

Deteriorata
Feb 6, 2005

signalnoise posted:

I was requested a long time ago to post prototypes

I believe this is the first time I can say honestly I can see the end of this tunnel. I know how to do it, but this isn't as good as it could be, obviously

This is much more simple than the original idea, but I learned a lot with it anyway



I've tried the roundover stuff with a palm router, as you can see from the burn marks, and I'll need to give it a go with a hand plane but I think it's fine. A little sanding should make it ready for a finish, and I can do a better job with the router and everything next time



I used acrylic just to see how hard it would be to use it, but I didn't have a piece long enough to span the entire bottom. I don't really know what I would do to bridge the gap from here, but I suppose it's doable, but I'll probably just use those pieces of acrylic to make router jigs or something. The main point of this was to be sure that when the lever is installed, the bottom of it does not touch the "floor" of the case, which it doesn't. So I have the measurements good for that, anyway. At this point I could just use whatever else for the bottom and then wire it up, but of course it needs some decoration.

In any case, functional prototype, and I learned a lot! Thanks for answering all my newbie questions with so much detail, this has been great!

Looks great! Congrats on seeing it through to the end - that's often the hardest part.

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

Rutibex posted:

:hmmyes:
A work bench should be your first priority! You should learn how to do tight fitting joinery if you are making a work bench. I can see you have butt joints on your fight stick, and thats fine for a video game controller but you need proper mortise and tenon for a bench you are going to be hammering on.

I nailed my first work bench together with simple nails and its wobbly as heck. Don't make my mistake, do it solid the first time :v:

Absolutely, and honestly, this project and all the problems I encountered where I couldn't do one thing or another has given me a much better sense of how to make a workbench that suits me.

Deteriorata posted:

Looks great! Congrats on seeing it through to the end - that's often the hardest part.

Hell yeah, step one

Uthor
Jul 9, 2006

Gummy Bear Heaven ... It's where I go when the world is too mean.
My cousin asked if I could make her a hexagonal base for her fish tank, 16” across the flats, 20” tall. Something like this quick sketch.



Would I just glue the vertical slats together or do I want some sort of mechanical fasteners?

For the top and bottom, I figure just glue and pocket hole screws to pull it tight.

Uthor
Jul 9, 2006

Gummy Bear Heaven ... It's where I go when the world is too mean.
Also, the joystick looks cool. I wanna do something like that with a Raspberry Pi built in.

Deteriorata
Feb 6, 2005

Uthor posted:

My cousin asked if I could make her a hexagonal base for her fish tank, 16” across the flats, 20” tall. Something like this quick sketch.



Would I just glue the vertical slats together or do I want some sort of mechanical fasteners?

For the top and bottom, I figure just glue and pocket hole screws to pull it tight.

Glue will be plenty strong, particularly since the loading will be vertical. The wood will break along the grain before the glue joint fails.

Pocket holes and glue should be fine for the top and bottom, too. Looks like a good basic plan to me.

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mds2
Apr 8, 2004


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Stultus Maximus posted:

Hey, unfortunate question: I thought I had a few years to consider this but my father is probably a few days from dying of unexpected cancer. How did you do the no visible fastener lid for the urn?

I'm very sorry as well. :(

The bottom of this is removable with a couple screws. The "lid" doesn't actually come off.

Edit: similar to what Huxley described.
Human remains basically come the same way from the funeral home, in a plastic bag. Most funeral homes will put the cremated remains in the urn for you so you never have to deal with it.

And not to be insensitive but you may want to know, If you are making an urn you need 1/cubic inch of volume for each pound of body weight. I always make sure there is plenty of extra space.

mds2 fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Sep 21, 2021

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