Laptop Desk

I'm convinced that calling portable computers laptops is a marketing ploy, since the last place you want to put one of these nuclear fusion engines is anywhere on your body.  Some of them run hot enough to double as a shop heater in a pinch.  So, when you have one of these electric heaters and no desk or table available what do you do?  Well you head down to the shop of course and create a laptop desk!

Step one was to lay out some bits and bobs I had in the scrap bin.  A few pieces of cedar fencing and a 12" wide piece of pine should work.

The only real trick in this project was ripping the sides on an angle without going to Lee Valley for an expensive adjustable jig.  I screwed some spacers that would give me the slope I wanted to one corner of the boards.

Then I ran the desk's sides along the table saw fence which gave a nice gentle angle.

Two dados and some glue later:

Here we have one space heater on a laptop desk:

Entryway Bench - Part 3 - Channel your inner flannel!

Time to channel my inner flannel!  Instead of hand cutting eight more mortises over the next 2 or three nights I got my Norm Abrams on and made a jig for the router.  The jig allows me to cut a mortise from the top of the leg and stop at the exact same point on every cut using a 3/8" slot cutting bit with a bearing.

Clamped up and ready to be cut.

The end result, all eight mortises look exactly like this.

Then all that was required was to square up the curved end of the mortise.

I didn't screw up any measurements while cutting the sides this time so they went together like a charm.

I haven't decided which part is going to be next.  My choices are the bottom shelf rails or the front and back of the storage area.  I'm also temped to get started gluing up the top panel that makes up the seat so it'll be ready to go when I'm ready to cut it to size.

Cheers!

Entryway Bench - Part 2 - Amateur Hour

Hand cut mortises.  Guess which one I started on.  Things got better as I learned some technique.

I've cut out the side rails and shaped the tenons for the bottom shelf.  Anyone see a problem here?

The right rail was done by eyeballing the pencil lines on the table saw's dado blade.  For the left side I took the total length of the board and subtracted the length of one tenon.  I then set the fence to this point being sure to account for the width of the stop block.

What I forgot to account for was the width of the dado blade.  The ruler for the fence is set to the edge of an 1/8" kerf blade.  I had a 1/4" dado stack in the saw.  So the tenons are both 1/8" too long and when the extra is trimmed off the board is 1/4" too short.

Repeat!

Much better!

Lastly here's an idea of where we're going to end up.  I dry fitted the legs and added the templates for the rails and the curved top.

Cheers!

Entryway Bench

The Entryway bench project is well underway and it's time to share some of the progress.

Our front entryway has an alcove where shoes, boots, the weekly junk flyers and the occasional snow shovel get dumped in a haphazard pile of soggy chaos.  There are hooks too...I think there's a pair of gym shoes hanging from those.

We need some proper storage to help us keep the area clean.  The bench we've decided to go with is similar in size to a piano bench.  It has a compartment at the top that will open for storage and a slotted rack on the bottom to allow wet footwear to dry.

The SketchUp drawing was psoted here: http://gswoodshop.blogspot.com/2011/08/entry-way-bench.html

There are some minor modifications to the published SketchUp drawing that are worth mentioning and I'll go back and do an update at some point.

1. The bottom shelf would have only stuck out as far as the outside edge of the legs.  The plan has been changed to make the bottom shelf as wide as the top.  They should stand about an inch proud of the legs now.
2. The mortise and tenons for the storage area are now 3/8" thick and go all the way to the top of the legs.  After hand cutting the bottom mortises I decided a router with a slot cutter would be a better approach for the top.  I'll post some pictures of that process at some point.

Ok got some wood out for a template.  Got my plans printed out.  Time for a coffee break.

Rough layout and grain matching: 3 hours.  Sawing: 15 minutes.  Redoing boards that didn't come off of the tablesaw straight and square: 0 minutes.

This is the template for the bottom shelf.  It will be used with a pattern router bit to cut the actual pieces.

These are the legs being glued together.  They are all oversized at this point so they can be trimmed to exact size.

To make the legs two strips of wood are laminated together and all four legs are ganged together in the clamps while the glue dries.

The legs were cut about a half inch too wide so the sides could be be trimmed to size on the tablesaw.  First the saw was set up to take a quarter inch from one side.  Then the saw was set to the final width of the legs and the freshly cut side was run down the fence giving nice square legs.

Now I spend the next few nights chiseling out mortises.

Cheers!

Finishing a Throne

 To protect the maple from water and the bunny from chemicals only safe finishes were used.  First a layer of Bulls Eye clear shellac to seal the maple and prevent blotching.  Then a layer of boiled linseed oil to liven up the grain.  Finally another layer of shellac to harden up the outside.

I think in the future I'd thin out the first layer of shellac by mixing it about 50/50 with some thinner.  Denatured alcohol isn't available in Canada anymore so there's no cheap way to thin out the shellac.  Bulls Eye comes as a 2 pound cut and for that first sealing layer I feel like I'd prefer a one pound cut.

Cheers!

Super Pooper Part 2

I was going to start this post with something along the lines of here's the carrot top and put in a picture of the comedian... but wow... I couldn't handle logging in to finish writing the post.  So I sacrified the really bad joke for my stomach's sake.

This is the top of the carrot in the various stages of it's evolution:

Fresh from the bandsaw.

After doing some carving with a Dremel.  The smoother groove on the left has been cleaned up with a chisel.

These grooves on the carrot have been shaped freehand with a core box bit. 

Carrot and top after being cleaned up with a chisel.

Glue up!

After sanding.

A dowel is added so the insert can't slide off

On to finishing.

Cheers!

Super Pooper

This weekend between bandsaw attacks a tonne of progress was made on the bunny box.

The mortise and tenons for the carrot were cut last week but I was too lazy didn't get a chance to post the pictures.  The tenon to join the carrot was done on the old table saw with a dado blade and could be cleaner.  The mortise was 100% hand cut with a few chisels.

The little piece pictured below is intended to hold the bottom of the water bottle.  While the prototype was in use Mr. BunBun was pulling on the straw to the water bottle in the middle of the night with such gusto that rabbit stew was going to be the breakfast special.  This piece should stop the water bottle from snapping back against the carrot when bunny goes for a nightcap. Here's how it was made:

1. Square off tenon side on the miter saw.
2. Hand cut tenon using chisels since the old table saw made a rotten carrot.
3. Drill a pilot hole that will allow a #8 woodscrew enough room to pivot.
4. Screw the piece loosely to another piece of scrap.
5. Clamp the scrap to the bandsaw.
6. Turn on the bandsaw.  Watch out for low flying bandsaw blades.
7. Change underwear should you encounter a low flying bandsaw blade.
8. Pivot the piece 180 degrees on the screw to create the round end of the piece.
9. Drill the hole to full size.
10. Spend an hour rounding off the edges with a random orbit sander.  Do not put a piece this size any where near a router...If you do refer to step 7.

Dry fit #172!

Next post we'll look at the parts that did get put near the router.

Cheers!

Sawstop and Irony

Irony: The day after I finished assembling and tuning my sexy new Sawstop, the bandsaw got jealous and threw a fit!  The blade snapped a tried to bite me.

Here's some more pictures of the fully assembled table saw.  Hopefully they don't make the drill angry or the router pout.

G builds a Vacation home for Bunnies

Every so often G's Wood Shop has a furry visitor named Bun Bun.  The bunny likes to travel light and recently showed up with just his "pooper" and a new water bottle.

A prototype vacation home was quickly assembled using scrap from around the shop to accommodate the marble making machine for the weekend.

Bun Bun took it upon himself give his new condo some curves so this was incorporated into the design.

Softwood apparently isn't particularly good for bunnies due to the resins so a quick trip to Home Depot for a 6' maple board provided materials for the project.  Home depot had a lot of Oak in the maple stack, they should look into that.  There were only 2 actual maple boards on the rack at a 6' length and although beat up the one I took had some figure to it so I wasn't entirely unhappy.  It also came with free cupping, scuffs and a few smears of paint.  That's what I get for being too lazy to drive over to Exotic Wood in Burlington.  I'll have to spend some extra time sanding so Bun Bun doesn't complain.

The "pooper" is a quarter circle shape and during the night it got pushed around the room a lot.  The final design will hold the litter box in place with walls on two sides and a couple of dowel posts on the front edge.

Three pieces of the 6" wide maple were glued together to form the floor.

While the glue dried a template was cut out to help with the sizing and shape of the floor.  This 1/4" ply doesn't sand too well so I won't use the router and a template bit to cut the floor.  Instead I will cut the floor out on the bandsaw and sand it curve smooth.

To draw the curve I placed the piece of plywood on the work bench and clamped a wood screw into the vice.  I then put the hole that's used to hang my ruler over the screw, held a sharpie at 18.5 inches and traced a curve.  The curve radius is 18.5" but the length of each side is more like 13 1/2".

Rabbits (intentional bad pun) were cut into two side walls. 

The post supporting the water bottle is going to be carrot shaped.  Bun Bun's house keeper gets credit for drawing the carrot.

Clamping 2 sides to a circle presents a challenge!  The trick was to use the ratcheting strap around the sides which wanted to pull the angle out of square.  The clamp that goes from the corner to the curved edge forces the corner back to 90 degrees.

I got distracted and missed cleaning up the glue squeeze out after 20 minutes so I've created even more sanding for myself.