Between 485 & 705 SQ/FT Mid-Century Moto Mecca Makeover

[Fandango]

Okay, not too much today but right before I abandoned my vanity drain I was working on the lathe and remembered a great trick that not many people seem to know. Sadly you can't embed video in these posts but click on the photo and you'll go to the video...

Gregor

Which Tool Holder is that in the video? Aloris? Phase II?

I'm looking at getting one soon.

 

[sakurama]

Which Tool Holder is that in the video? Aloris? Phase II?

I'm looking at getting one soon.

It's an Aloris. I was lucky with my lathe as it came with a nice Buck 6-jaw and the Aloris and half dozen Aloris holders. I supplemented this with more holders from Phase. I had a Phase tool holder on my South Bend before and it worked fine but the Aloris is certainly a bit nicer - be sure it's a wedge type, the post versions aren't as tight. For holders the Phase are fine if you replace the cheap set screws.

Gregor

 

[Panel Dan]

Hi Gregor,
Love the work on everything. The attention to detail in your build just boggles my mind.
I've just moved into a new rental with a bunch of really cool mid century fixtures and some almost over the top parts as well.
Not wanting to take up too much space on your wonderful thread, I thought you might dig some of The mid century insanity that I am now renting. Here are some of the highlights of the house:

Bed side light fitting.

Ceiling light

Hall lights

The ridiculous looking light in my bedroom

The doorbell.

The shower screen, complete with frosted mermaid.

Tiles in the laundry area.

Optical illusion tiles in the shower itself.
The house is great, but one day after handing the keys back to the last place I was in, it's still in a state of chaos.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[sakurama]

Love the bath tiles.

I spend an inordinate amount of time looking at midcentury fixtures and details. I'm hoping that once we're in I can relax a bit and work on making some of them and creating some actual furniture. There's certainly no shortage of possible projects.

Gregor

 

[_CY_]

wonderful build!!!

here's a pic of my 74 R90S #0041 found with 7,300 miles after sitting 25+ years. Advrider is also my main forum ..

 

[sakurama]

Thanks!

That R90S brings back memories. Mine was in a similar weather beaten state when I found it leaning against a garage. $950 to buy it was only the tip of the iceberg as it was rebuilt several times. Mine is (was?) #0004 so we're only a few apart. Are you going to restore it or leave it?

Gregor

 

[_CY_]

definitely leave it alone .. restoring it would ruin it as it's all original condition. did go through entire bike replacing service parts to get it back running proper again. it's solid enough to ride anywhere.

this R90S is not weather beaten at all, in minty unrestored condition .. my photos are not nearly nice as yours .. stored inside a shed protected from the elements. the story was told when the baby arrived, wife said the bike or the kid. so R90S was parked with 7,300 miles. it's the only R90S that came with engine painted black that I've seen .. everything is unmolested .. speculating Butler & Smith prepped the bike.

 

[Wanna Ride]

Just spent several hours reading this ENTIRE thread. Wow... very impressive. You're a man of more patience than myself. I'll be watching for more reports of continued progress.

Any updates on Jorge's situation? Such an injustice to someone who really wants to work.

Haven't heard much of the Bart situation - how's that going?

 

[sakurama]

That's funny - I had to go back in my own thread to figure out who Bart was. Sad. Umm, I saw the weed wackier (that was a keyboard slip but I like it) a while back driving by and he waved and smiled so I think we're good. Jorge I can't say - his lawyer hasn't gotten in touch and I can't find him again.

Yes, if that R90S is clean and low mileage you really scored - they're getting to be very rare. Congrats. I wonder about the black engine...

So things are happening but it might take a bit to get around to updating this.

Gregor

 

[paranoid56]

what kinda of finish are you using on your plywood cabinets and furniture? I am building some plywood items (similar to yours) but cant seem to get a finish i like. Trying to go for the mid century modern look with these as well. I love the look of nice plywood lol

 

[Ferrari-lover]

What happened to Jorge?

 

[MSD Shop]

I just enjoyed the last 2 hours a bunch reading this entire thread. Amazing find Gregor, the house is a masterpiece of craftsmanship. As a native Oregonian and born and raised in Portland area, I too know how hard it is to find a diamond in the rough. You have one incredible mid-century house for sure. Subscribed to the build and learning more tips and tricks for my build. Thank you and I will continue to watch.

 

[sakurama]

What happened to Jorge?

To save repeating its a page or two back.

 

[sakurama]

So not much happened last week as I took a quick trip to NYC for a job and spent the weekend with the family. Finally a few clients came through and it was time to get the last few things I'll need to get the place to the livable state. Those of you who lament the "finishing" of this thread or house have absolutely nothing to fear as it will drag on endlessly I fear. Note that I only said "livable" and not finished. Big difference. I'm good at finding projects and enlarging the scope of them. Oh, I shoulda been in government...

So off to the races.

For the price of an average Ikea kitchen you can actually get a much nicer one - but some assembly is required. That seemly small amount of lumber is my entire kitchen; cabinets, drawers, slides, hinges and counter. It's seemingly small but surprisingly heavy. I've been going over how I wanted to do the actual construction for weeks if not months and over the weekend and Friday I tested some of my (new) ideas for it.

I've changed my mind on doing dovetails for the kitchen. Besides being time consuming they look best in solid wood and I'm in the middle of my love affair with Baltic Birch and it's I-don't-need-no-stinking-edge-banding simple good looks. Besides, plywood is period, and while it's not my main concern it's a nice detail and more fitting our house. But, I wanted to come up with a method that was unique, pretty and fitting to the baltic birch but not overly fussy. I think I found it.

Behold the Domidrawer. So called because it's a loose tenon fitted to a mortise machined by the Festool Domino mortiser. It's very fast, very accurate and very strong. This test shows a very deep rabbet in to 18mm BB with a 12mm side. I will glue this joint and then mortise through the 12mm into the end grain of the 18mm. It will be bombproof and slick. The only problem of course is cutting all those complicated rabbets and dados. That is unless...

For those of you who hate Festool **** please ignore the table that the test piece is sitting on. For those that love it it's the CMS router table. I hemmed and hawed over this for months and finally sold one of my lenses to pay for it. Yeah, it was that important to me. I could have made a router table but I didn't want to mess with that, I wanted to just start ripping perfect rabbets and dados and so far this table hasn't disappointed. Since I don't have a table saw this router table, the track saw and the Domino are the holy trinity of my cabinet shop. I am, by far, the weak link in the chain.

It's now up to me to get this done. Time to get my *** in gear and start making sawdust.

Gregor

 

[shift_slide242]

i spent the last two days reading this thread and skimming your ktm build, you sir are a true craftsman! i love that there are so many cool people like you in the pnw and portland in particular.

 

[vagabondmidget]

What was the middle picture taken with? That is a crazy shallow depth of field.

 

[paranoid56]

To save repeating its a page or two back.

awwww you answered him but not me?

 

[sakurama]

i spent the last two days reading this thread and skimming your ktm build, you sir are a true craftsman! i love that there are so many cool people like you in the pnw and portland in particular.

Yes, me too. It was a huge part of the draw to live in this place where I feel like it's such a "maker" culture, to steal from the trendy vernacular.

What was the middle picture taken with? That is a crazy shallow depth of field.

That's my Sony RX-1 which is now my all time favorite camera. I may like it more than my Hasselblad even. Full frame sensor and f2.0 Ziess lens matched to the chip. It's stunning.

awwww you answered him but not me?

That's right and get used to it. If you think for one moment that I'll tell you I'm using a satin oil based polyurethane from Varathane... well, you've got another thing coming.

Umm, sorry. I miss things sometimes. I've had great luck with this finish and in my tests I really wanted to use a water base for the ease of use but in the end the color and depth just weren't there. The oil based poly is rich and warm and the satin has just enough depth to be pretty without any gloss to be gaudy. One important thing I learned late was that it really needs to be stirred up or you'll get an inconsistent sheen as the "satin" agent is heavy and falls out of suspension and you end up with a shiny finish. Sir it up before you use it and it's all good.

Gregor

 

[RKA]

I'd love your thoughts on the CMS once you have some time with it. I've considered it but the limited utility bugs me (for the US market). I too don't have a real table saw, though I'm questioning how long that will continue. If I do get a table saw I would probably try to integrate the router table to it. So I'm curious how well this fits into your workflow. I too have more than a few lenses that I could unload since I just don't seem to use them as much as I used to. Sometimes I overlook the cash just sitting in the drawer, so thanks for the reminder.

 

[TimRaleigh]

Behold the Domidrawer. So called because it's a loose tenon fitted to a mortise machined by the Festool Domino mortiser

Gregor:
The domiono drawer sample looks good. You might want to round over the edges if you like that softer look, it's a bit easier on the hands.

I've had great luck with this finish and in my tests I really wanted to use a water base for the ease of use but in the end the color and depth just weren't there.

Try General Finishes Enduro Var or Target's EM 2000. Both have a nice amber color reminiscent of a oil based varnish.

Tim

 

[paranoid56]

That's right and get used to it. If you think for one moment that I'll tell you I'm using a satin oil based polyurethane from Varathane... well, you've got another thing coming.

Umm, sorry. I miss things sometimes. I've had great luck with this finish and in my tests I really wanted to use a water base for the ease of use but in the end the color and depth just weren't there. The oil based poly is rich and warm and the satin has just enough depth to be pretty without any gloss to be gaudy. One important thing I learned late was that it really needs to be stirred up or you'll get an inconsistent sheen as the "satin" agent is heavy and falls out of suspension and you end up with a shiny finish. Sir it up before you use it and it's all good.

Gregor

thanks, i was also using a few different water based stains and maybe thats why they just dont look "right" will pick up some other stuff this weekend and try again.

Try General Finishes Enduro Var or Target's EM 2000. Both have a nice amber color reminiscent of a oil based varnish.

Tim

I will also look into this.


as i built this but super unhappy with the end result. wile its functional, its not pleasing to the eye. the wife is fine with it, but still bugs me. still need to build two more so will try on those .

 

[aggierailroad]

I really like the drawer joint but am worried about the two plies left in your rabbet delaminating. Especially with the humidity that you experience. I'd hate to see your drawer fronts and backs bust apart on you.

Please know I'm not trying to be negative, just playing the devil's advocate.

I just did a pinned box joint today, I'll try to get a pic up soon!

 

[rvieceli]

Two suggestions.

Are you going to put a front on the drawer box? If not, then you need the rabbet front to hide the ply edge. If you put a front piece on the drawer, then I don't think that the rabbet does much more than complicate the build. Maybe try one with a simple **** joint and the dominoes. Then the applied drawer front hides the front edges.

You might want to soak the exposed ends of the dominoes in a dark stain before installing to add some extra contrast.

 

[sakurama]

I'd love your thoughts on the CMS once you have some time with it.

Yes. I need to really understand it before I pass judgement. One thing I don't like right now is the lack of a fine feed adjustment for the whole fence. I think I have an idea on how to fabricate a fine feed but I'm learning to work with it.

I really like the drawer joint but am worried about the two plies left in your rabbet delaminating.

No worries, I appreciate suggestions and insights. I think for my future ones I'll go just a bit shallower. I try to match the rabbet to the depth of the dado for the drawer bottom so that the dado is then hidden. I don't think it will delaminate - certainly not at the glue joint (waterproof glue) and it's unlikely it will after the drawers have been polyurethaned.

TAre you going to put a front on the drawer box?

You might want to soak the exposed ends of the dominoes in a dark stain before installing to add some extra contrast.

Why yes I am. And I did think of that and was considering actually milling my own dominos (I have a kickass router table now) but I think you need to draw a line in the sand and milling my own dominos is that line. You can buy Sipo ones which are darker but I don't know that I want to do it yet. I'm still thinking about it.

_ _ _ _____________________________________________ _ _ _
​

It feels like it was a very productive day and yet it seems like things took forever. Today was all about the drawers for the upstairs bath. While I could have started on the cabinet boxes I felt that finishing the bath drawers might inform me on things I could learn for the kitchen.

Something I'd picked up from TimTool on the Festool forum was his very simple approach to drawing lines. Since I knew I was going to have to notch the back of the drawers to allow for the drains I decided to make it a "detail" by creating a nice symmetrical cut that would work on both sides. I traced the 150mm sanding disk and then used the width of a handy ruler to set the taper.

In order to not have to cut off 8mm of extra tenon I cut them a bit shorter. After doing this once I realized the easiest way to do it was to simply clamp them in a Bessey clamp and lop off the ends.

I've also gotten the hang of how much glue to use so I'm getting very little squeeze out. As I finish one drawer I clamp it up and then build the next one.

Once I'm done with building the next drawer I go back to the clamped one which has had enough time to dry and I bore the mortises with the domino, glue up the domino and tap it home and wipe off the glue. While that's setting up I run the small trim router all around the inside and out of the drawer edges with a 3mm roundover bit (like an 1/8) and then I run a sander over the edges and the dominos to flush them out.

All the drawers installed fine (and yes, one is slightly larger to account for the lack of plumbing on that side) but these fancy pants Grass soft close under mount slides are taking a bit to figure out. Thank god I only got the 2D versions. It still took most of the afternoon to build the drawers and get them in. This was 3pm but I wanted to get more done.

_ _ _ ____________________ Intermission ____________________ _ _ _
​

Since people seem to enjoy my random tips here's one for the truly OCD crowd...

Washers have a front and a back. Yeah, didn't know that either when I was learning my fabrication chops but much like when I was learning to be a photo assistant and I was stopped for coiling a flash cord the wrong way my friends tipped me that all washers have a front and a back and they should be installed correctly. Obviously you don't have to do this - you'll never know but if you're a particular ******* you might like to know the "right" way as it was taught to me. Asleep yet?

So the one on the right is "front" up. It has a rounded edge from the stamp pressing down. The one on the left is the back as the edge is sharper from being sheered. The way to install them is with the rounded edge facing out so the sharper edge is in contact with the material. This comes from the tradition of chamfering all outside edges since that edge is softer and looks better facing out. It's like the way that top level machining always chamfers the edges - even though that's mostly done for stress reduction. Installed it's like this:

Note that the Kreg delrin washer is chamfered as well.

I took this to heart and have always done it since. I think it's a detail that one ace fabricator does for the benefit of another ace fabricator to appreciate but that no one else notices. I like details so it appeals to me.

_ _ _ _________________ Back to our Build _________________ _ _ _
​

Instead of edge banding the drawers I decided to try to edge them in solid walnut to see if I liked it. I do like it but it was a tedious pain in the *** that took almost an hour a drawer to do for some reason.

I'm unsure if I'll do that on the kitchen as it was time consuming and I don't know if it adds anything to the whole. I may go back to traditional edge banding and then trim down the bevel to be less conspicuous. Or possibly do it another way that I haven't considered yet.

Either way I'm done with the bath. Sure it needs to be poly'd but I can do that when we've moved in - right now I'm going as fast as I can to just get to the "livable" stage. New projected move in date is now Valentines day!

Gregor

 

[myamoto1]

Glad to know I'm not the only OCD washer nut. Don't even get me started on indexing the screws on switches and outlets. Although I'm slowly solving that issue by switching to Lutron Maestro face plates. OK, truth be told, the screws behind the faceplates are still indexed.

I'm just on the other side of the Columbia from you in WA. If you ever need an extra hand, let me know. Based on your well planned approach to everything and your attention to detail, I'll probably only be able to provide a spare set of hands to your project. I'm quite envious of your skills (need a weekend intern?).

 

[YoungMedic]

Love the back detail nice!

 

[Killa Meter]

Sometimes i put the sharp edge up and the chamfered side down when using them on aluminium surfaces that i don't want grooves cut on. thats when the OCD really kicks in !

 

[OHSCrifle]

Fantastic. Great tip on the washers. I love Baltic birch plywood.

A few years back, I made some stackable 12x12x24 crates out of BB, with dovetail joinery. They looked amazing until I butchered the finish with some one-step stain/poly product. That decision still haunts me but they have made it through several moves and still make great bookshelves, despite the **** finish.

Keep up the good work.

 

[sakurama]

A few years back, I made some stackable 12x12x24 crates out of BB, with dovetail joinery. They looked amazing until I butchered the finish with some one-step stain/poly product. That decision still haunts me...

That's the worst! All that work ruined at the end. That's the reason I test my finishes and techniques to avoid as many surprises as possible.

Gregor

 

[paranoid56]

have you ever tried using prefinished Baltic birch plywood? and with that the nice clear pvc edgebanding for cabinet cases? I saw some the other day and was thinking of picking that up as i liked the finish.

 

[sakurama]

have you ever tried using prefinished Baltic birch plywood?

Never seen it. My lumber supplier doesn't have it and I didn't know it existed but I'd consider it as finishing is something low on my list. I would much rather have the edge of baltic birch show than edge banding though. I love the look.

Gregor

 

[Evan K.]

Glad to know I'm not the only OCD washer nut. Don't even get me started on indexing the screws on switches and outlets. Although I'm slowly solving that issue by switching to Lutron Maestro face plates. OK, truth be told, the screws behind the faceplates are still indexed.

That's not OCD that's common sense

 

[paranoid56]

Never seen it. My lumber supplier doesn't have it and I didn't know it existed but I'd consider it as finishing is something low on my list. I would much rather have the edge of baltic birch show than edge banding though. I love the look.

Gregor

I saw it when i was at a cabinet shop yesterday. and the edge banding is clear so you get the nice looking edge (i also love the look) the edge banding was a nice matt/satin finish that made it match the rest of the panel. It looked like a clear coat, but easy and quick to apply

 

[964haus]

Gregor,
Your updates are the daily start to my day - really great work. I sit here in awe of your skills (and your tools - love that you have the right tool for each job) and also in envy of your abilities. To restore such a classic house too is inspiring. Your details and sketches are top notch.

Would love to get any updates too on your 950 - do you have it here with your or is it still east? I've had mine for nearly 3 years and doing my first major surgery now (water pump seal - not major, but for a new wrencher like me it sure feels like it!). Can't imagine the level of detail you've got in that!

Thanks too for sharing - i know it adds valuable time to your work, but I for one really do appreciate you taking that extra efforts. I especially loved the washer discussion - I'm fairly OCD and have been doing washers like that for years....

Kudos.

Matthew.

 

[nguyenctx]

Sorry for asking this, but what OCD stands for?

 

[paranoid56]

Sorry for asking this, but what OCD stands for?

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

 

[polexican23]

right now I'm going as fast as I can to just get to the "livable" stage. New projected move in date is now Valentines day!

Gregor

2014 or 2015??

 

[YoungMedic]

Sorry for asking this, but what OCD stands for?

"detail oriented"

 

[JasonJ]

OCD is spelled wrong, it should be CDO so it's alphabetical... Exactly like it should be.

 

[sakurama]

Gregor,
Your updates are the daily start to my day - really great work...

Would love to get any updates too on your 950 - do you have it here with your or is it still east? I've had mine for nearly 3 years and doing my first major surgery now.

Thanks too for sharing
Matthew.

My friend Ben has a 990 also and he's recently done his water pump and was remarking what a pain it is to work on. I've said it before but KTM's are like ****** strippers with a coke habit - huge fun to ride but no fun to take care of.
The house and my frenzy to get in have waylaid my plan to bring it out for the One Motorcycle show so I'll bring my 990 out in the spring sometime. Let's get a GJ KTM ride planned. I want people to ride my bike to see what it's like - it's silly fun with AWD and those honking flatslides.

2014 or 2015??

Oooooh, that hurts. More so because I'm not sure.

"detail oriented"

OCD is spelled wrong, it should be CDO so it's alphabetical... Exactly like it should be.

Yeah, you guys are "my people". Crazy obsessed garage nuts. I wish that everyone whose offered me some kind words and encouragement here could come over for my eventual garage warming. I'll be sure to post it here so if anyone is close enough they can come say hi. Believe me when I say that I get more from your support than I'm giving - I assure you.

Gregor