Wood working

Entertainment for all

/ Gary Tucker / 1 Comment

My brother and sister in law asked me to build an entertainment center for their house in Burlington Colorado. I immediately said “sure” without really knowing too many of the details that they wanted. I did know the space where the piece would go but I did not know the final dimensions. I drove the two and half hours out to their place and talked design and such. It will be 92″ wide and about that tall. It will consist of four pieces, a base with drawers and doors, two bookcases with adjustable shelving, and a larger cabinet for their television. This cabinet will also have a lighted display shelf above the TV. It will be made from Alder and Cherry and will have a Shaker design. I will also be building this large piece of furniture with only hand tools. I’m inviting my readers along for the journey from the design to the finish.

A few months ago, Pam, my sister in law gave me a wooden jointer plane (see below) that had been her fathers. So I decided that since the piece was for her I would use this plane along with some other wooden body planes for the build. I spent a few hours the other night getting these panes into shape and learning how to tune and adjust them.Tools for cabinet These are some of the tools that I will use for this project. From the left: 1″rabbet plane, smoothing plane, scrub plane, jack plane, jointer plane, plane adjusting hammer, and my new homemade mallet. 223 This is the space where the entertainment center will go. I have already purchased the lumber for this project. It’s in our basement bedroom acclimating to being inside. David and Pam will have the enjoyment of the center and I will have the enjoyment of building it.

Thanks for perusing,

Gary

Pure Freedom

/ Gary Tucker / Leave a comment

So this week I’m out riding my mountain bike instead of the road bike. It had a flat and I didn’t want to take the time to fix it. Anyway, I’m out close to Morrison Colorado and riding up the hill toward I-70 but I’m going to turn right before I get up there. It’s about a 3 mile climb on a narrow rode with plenty of car traffic. Who could not love this scenerio. As I’m pedaling up the hill I’m thinking about this blog post and writing it in my head. I’m thinking that riding my bike is very close to building something with hand tools in my shop. I am providing all of the power, getting stronger and better everyday. It was one of those ah ha moments, not quite a V-8 moment but close. When I’m riding my mountain bike, I’m free to go a lot of places that I can’t go on my road bike. That is freedom. I can do things with my hand tools that I can’t do with power tools. It is also easier to do things in different places with the hand tools. If I want to work on my back porch or out in the yard in the shade, I can just take my portable bench out there and work away. I don’t have to worry about stringing a cord or getting a hernia carrying heavy power tools out there. Then, there is the “green factor”. I had no idea how environmentally friendly I was for all of these years, either by pedalling my bikes or pushing my hand tools across a piece of wood all the while consuming “Little Debbies” oatmeal cookies for fuel.

So not being tied to an extension cord or a gas pump is pure freedom to me.

Thanks for perusing,

Gary

It started with Randolph

/ Gary Tucker / 1 Comment

Sometime during the year 1775 Thomas Jefferson was riding in a coach from his home in Virginia to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. I’m not sure what was going on inside his head during the 260 mile trip. I can envision that his brain power was near overload capacity. Think of all that was going on in the colonies at that time and then there was talk of kicking King George and company off of the continent. The colonists needed a Declaration of Independence and Jefferson was given the task. I can see him on the journey, bouncing around inside the coach, trying to get his homework done and it just wasn’t happening. When he gets to Philly he secures a room with Benjamin Randolph, a cabinet maker. Imagine that, a diplomat renting from a tradesman and probably eating with the family as well. How times have changed. Anyway,  Jefferson gives Randolph a set of drawings for a small lap desk with a drawer for his writing essentials and a fold out writing surface. Randolph builds the desk, the Declaration was written and the world has never been the same. A tradesman saved the world.  At least this is how I think it happened. some details may have been left out, but you get the picture.

 

Fast forward to the spring of 2006 and my seventh grade son is on a field trip to Washington DC. He visits the Smithsonian Museum and sees the desk. He comes home and a couple of nights later comes out to the garage where I was trying to build something. I just remember that Kristin’s car was out of the garage and there was an assortment of tools and a lot of sawdust. He politely flashes the lights to let me know that someone has entered my domain. I shut down everything that was making noise and dust so that he could talk with me. He simply said that he would like for me to make him a lap desk. I had never heard of the story above, so I was at a loss as to how to respond. I think I said something like, “Do you have a drawing or a blueprint?” He grabbed my drawing tablet and a thick, dull carpenters pencil and drew me a picture that was about 1″ x 2″. Keep in mind that he had seen the desk but had not mentioned seeing it until this time. I looked at his drawing and told him, “I would have to see what I could do”. He did not know that was code for “Dad doesn’t have a clue about this”. Fortunately, later that year in October, we were on a trip to DC to celebrate my father-in-law’s 80th birthday and I got to see the desk. I knew that I would have to build it now but I also knew that I did not have the skills to build such a desk.

 

Research had to begin. I found a set of plans and also a great little book about the desk. It cost about $8.00 then, now it’s close to a $100.00. I found a beautiful piece of Honduran Mahogany that would work. It measured 1″ x 8″ x 8′ long.  I studied everything I could about how it was built then and some recommendations for how it should have been built, and how to build it today using today’s techniques. Being hardheaded and stubborn I decided to build it just like Benjamin Randolph did, including using hot hide glue from a glue pot. Everything about this desk is small. It measures 14 & 3/4″ long, 9 & 3/8″ wide and 2 &1/2″tall. The drawer sides are 3/16″ thick. The book stand support is a scant 1/8″ thick with a half-lap joint of only 1/16″. So I had to start practicing everything. I learned how to rip a board down the middle to make the 3/8″ leaves. I learned how to sharpen and use  the handplanes and card scrapers. I learned chisel techniques and how to sharpen them for specific purposes. Remember, it’s all about process.

 

Finally after six years of my son waiting for his desk, I was able to present it to him before he left for college. It’s not an exact replica. I left out the space for an ink well and quills and just made a space for pencils and such. I made the paper storage to fit our current size of paper with a relief cut into it in order to get the paper out. I believe it to be the most intimate item that I have built to date with hand tools. I enjoy just holding it and feeling the wood through the simple oil finish.

 

I don’t know if this desk will be used for great writings or not but I do know that it started me on this journey of hand tool woodworking. These are the tools that I used to make the desk:

26″ rip saw, 26″ crosscut saw, 10″ dovetail saw, assorted bench chisels, a  1/16″ dovetail chisel, 3 handplanes, card scrapers and some 400 grit sandpaper. And here is the desk image                                         image

You can see a few more pictures under Stuff I Make.

Thank you Benjamin Randolph and thank you for perusing,

 

Gary

 

I needed a bigger, better hammer

/ Gary Tucker / Leave a comment

So I was watching a woodworking video sometime last year with Roy Underhill. He was ranting about the joiners mallets that are available in the stores these days and how inferior they are compared to a homemade one (sort of reminds me of the salad hands that I mentioned in an earlier post). He went on to show how to build one and even talked about good woods to use for a mallet. He mentioned Osage Orange for folks who live in the midwest. It’s also know as Bois d’arc or Hedge Apple. I remembered that I had seen that wood but could not remember where. This last Christmas, we went to my wife’s family farm and I noticed a broken branch that was in the west wind break. I went out to trim it up and it hit me. This was the famed Osage Orange complete with the “apples”. I used part of the branch to make a small Christmas tree and brought the rest home to dry out.061

A couple of weeks ago, I needed to chop out some deep mortices for a project. I had been using a round carving mallet but it just did not have enough mass. I needed bigger and better. I needed to hit something hard. So being a person of process, I took a couple of hours to stop the other project and build a proper joiners mallet.

It only took a couple of hours and I only messed up one handle. I repurposed some hickory for the handle that I saved from a cabinet. It ended up being a little small for my hand so I wrapped it with some leather lacing. I used it the next day and loved it. It weighs about 14 ounces after letting it soaked for a week in boiled linseed oil.IMAG0059

Osage Orange is a hard, hard wood even in its green state. But it is a joy to carve and to work with. I have enough left over for a couple of spoons. It’s a great day when I can use something that I made to make something else. Try and build something for yourself. I guarantee you will enjoy it.

Thanks for perusing,

Gary

Process

/ Gary Tucker / Leave a comment

This is he day that the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:24

 

We are born and eventually we die. The stuff in between is where and how we live. The time that we have and what to do with it is ours to use how we seem best. Some people are type “A” people who always seem to be in perpetual motion and cannot sit still. The goal (whatever it may be) is always in front of them. Do not get in their way. They cannot help themselves. That is how God wired them and they are of great benefit to the world. There are also people who do not have any focus and cannot spell it. They have a “when the Spirit moves me then I’ll act” mentality. Or we might say that they dance to different drummer. They also drive the type “A” people crazy, especially as employees. Then there are people like me who are what I would call process driven. When I am getting ready to, let’s say build something, I envision it in my head, draw it up and then build it. I enjoy every bit of the process. If I have to stop to sharpen a chisel or a saw, I enjoy that as well. To me, it is all part of the process of living, enjoying the journey all along the way or finishing the product that I may be building.

I cannot imagine hurrying through something just to mark it off my list. I know folks who have long bucket lists. They want to “get er dun” so that they can move on to the next thing. That may be their definition of living life on purpose but not mine. In my mind that never allows a person to master anything except marking off items. I would rather experience a few things in life and enjoy every part of it. One of the things that I am enjoying right now is the planning of our trip to Maine next month. KT (Kristin) and I went out and bought a travel book and have been pouring over it. We found out the best flight for our schedule. We’re researching the different parts of the state and what each has to offer. We are having fun doing the process.

I believe that when we slow down and enjoy the process, it makes the end be even more enjoyable. Just like building something, I enjoy planning it, building it and using it.

Thanks for perusing,

Gary

Enel’s Salad Hands

/ Gary Tucker / Leave a comment

This is a story of beginnings. Both for my family and a young foreign student named Enel. As many of you know, we are the parents of three boys and outside of Kristin, we have never had the experience of a female staying in our home for a long period of time. Enel is the oldest of four daughters and grew up in a small village in Estonia. She came to live with us last August for her last year of college. How she came to live in our home is a subject for another story. She came to us sort of shy, very quiet and with her boyfriend, Sean (but he did not live with us). He did show up at the house a lot and sometimes late at night. Watching the interaction between the two, I could tell that she did not have much experience with boys. Fortunately for Enel, my youngest son Dylan and I had plenty of experience with boys. We showed her how a young man should treat a lady. We gave her lots of privacy, but also how to stand up for herself. We even made sure that when Sean would come to pick her up he always came to the door. I don’t think that we ever left the toilet seat up, at least not on purpose.  I think she learned her lessons well.

It was a fun eleven months watching Enel grow into poised young woman even though she ate some odd things like salads and some kind of smelly fish. She would haul her food up the stairs and lay it all out on the counter and begin to assemble her meals. She loved her salads and would even put salad stuff into the blender for her morning smoothie. And during this time, we watched as Sean and Enel grew in their relationship and got engaged. So now Enel has graduated from college and has thrown herself into full blown wedding mode. There are wedding things (glue guns, craft things, spray paint, table center pieces) everywhere. If it could be associated with the wedding it was in our house. Pressures were mounting, patience was being tested and Enel had to use all that Dylan and I taught her during the last few weeks. It was truly a sight to behold.

Now we come to the next beginning. Sean and Enel had a cool website for their wedding where we found the gift registry pages. As we were looking over the items I saw that they had picked out “salad hands”. The picture was rather small, so we decided to go to the store and look at them. Here is the picture that I took while in the store. A pair of bamboo, machine cut, boring looking hands. There were six pairs on the rack and everyone of them looked the same. I knew that they would work fine, but not for Enel. This was a girl who packed up, left her family, came to America and ate so much salad that she would wear out a pair of these hands in no time. I could not buy them for Sean and Enel.

IMAG0026

These kids needed something just for them.  So I told Kristin that I would make them a pair.

Custom Salad Hands            image

So I did and I’m actually using them as a launching pad for another section of this blog  called “Stuff I build”. Over the next couple of days my middle son, Collin, will be taking pictures of items that I have built over the years and posting them to the site. These are all hand tooled using re-purposed wood. These hands are made from pecan cut out of a headboard  given to me a few years ago. The black wood is Ebony and the white letters are Holly  inlaid into the Ebony. Sean and Enel are currently on their honeymoon and do not have a clue about any of this, but I do hope that they will get many years of salads out of these hands.

Thanks for perusing,

Gary