Above 1200 Sq/FT The Retread Shed

[Gizmosity]

This piece was a bit of a conundrum. Our assignment was literally ‘ a table with a drawer’. Given the definition of a table is ‘ one, two, three or more legs, supporting a surface, not necessarily horizontal’? I had too many options and just vapor locked in the design phase for like a month. By chance, I stumbled onto a virtual tour of Edith Farnsworth House: https://edithfarnsworthhouse.org


My wife and I had toured the home about 5 years ago and the VR Tour reminded me how little storage there was in the living spaces.

So, I designed this to be used in this particular house. Depending on it’s orientation, you can see through it, which to me made sense in this particular house that you can see inside and through much of it, from floor to ceiling. Anyway, that’s the reason this piece exists. The three horizontal spaces make it easy to store a laptop and some books and still have the top open for a lamp and a coaster for some coffee. The quartersawn Red Elm I thought went well with the existing woodwork in the house. For the front of the drawer I used a piece that had just a bit of grain deviation from horizontal or vertical like the rest of the piece. I thought it looked like a smirk.

I also realize after finding these photos that I can’t find the newer photos I took that have the drawer pull installed.


Table with drawer

Red Elm, Rice Paper,Cast Pewter Pull (trust me), Shellac

 

[Gizmosity]

Its actually a pretty comfortable chair. I’m happy with it. The process of making a repeatable, accurate, curved and tapered octagon for the legs was a battle like no other. The color/texture was the main goal of this chair. It was supposed to look like Birch Bark. I think it does.


Chair

Walnut, Milk Paint, Danish Cord

 

[xtremek]

It does look a lot like birch bark. Very interesting pieces.

 

[Gizmosity]

I think I’m current now. I’m working on my final piece. It started off a bit rough with a dive into a piece I had completely designed and was set to start and then I shifted gears completely and went with a curved wall cabinet.

I start with a full size drawing and when I get that where I’m generally happy with it, I go into a digital 3D model. On some things I’ll build an actual full size model out of cardboard or scrap. The curves made that a bit more complex than it was worth.





I decided to move two along rather than just the single piece. Mainly so I had one to practice on and if it turns out, then I have another one to hang up or give away or sell or whatever.

Today I’m getting knife hinges installed on all four doors and get them rough fit and swinging. Then I can install the middle dividers and get the shelf milled and installed and THEN I can start on the drawer bank.

Knife hinges are a bit fussy and you want to install them BEFORE you glue the cabinet together, which makes a large project seem never ending because it doesn’t really ever seem like you’re going to finish until you finally glue it up and then you really are almost done.

I'm also hoping to get the curved drawer fronts material clamping in a vacuum bag and I'm still deciding on the rice paper backing for the backs behind the doors.



Today they look like this.








Go make smart mistakes. Forgive yourself. Repeat.

 

[nicholam77]

Wow, this thread is awesome!! I need to go back and read the beginning, but the furniture you designed and built for your masters program is incredible!

I especially like the "Cabinet on Stand" and "Table with a Drawer". I'm a Modernism enthusiast and that Farnsworth VR tour was really neat, I'd only seen pictures. Feels surprisingly sheltered on the inside for what it is. Definitely an interesting source of design intent for a table haha, but I love it. My dad has a pair of Wassily chairs and has always liked that they are visually lightweight in a room because you can "see through them".

 

[Gizmosity]

Wow, this thread is awesome!! I need to go back and read the beginning, but the furniture you designed and built for your masters program is incredible!

I especially like the "Cabinet on Stand" and "Table with a Drawer". I'm a Modernism enthusiast and that Farnsworth VR tour was really neat, I'd only seen pictures. Feels surprisingly sheltered on the inside for what it is. Definitely an interesting source of design intent for a table haha, but I love it. My dad has a pair of Wassily chairs and has always liked that they are visually lightweight in a room because you can "see through them".

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoy it! The space certainly changed over time. It's still changing.

The cabinet on stand is something I gave to my sister. I finished it on a Friday morning, had our class critique on all our pieces Friday night and then stuffed it in the back of my car and left for Seattle on Sunday morning at about 3:00am. I assume she still likes it. It was an interesting design, where it was to display art from two seperate rooms and house a private collection of stuff.

You're in Minnesota? Farnsworth house isn't that far away really. A three day weekend and you could hit Taliesin, Unity Chapel, Monona Terrace and Farnsworth house and be back. Frank Lloyd Wright is from where I live and Taliesin is sort of local to me so I consider it a destination and a bit of an inspiration.

The bench project I took some design ideas off of the gate at the entrance to Wintergreen, which is only about 1/4 mile from Taliesin. Wintergreen was designed by Wes Peters, who was a Wright apprentice and if I remember right, Wes was also married to his daughter.

When I toured Farnsworth house, the cabinet seperating the small office area and the bedroom wasn't there. I think it was being restored and as I recall, it wasn't original to the house when she moved in. As I recall, she demanded it be provided and eventually Mies van der Rohe had it constructed and delivered. So, it was a LOT more open and much less storage available to her than when I walked through. They may have left it out just to allow for tours to move through easier, not sure. The thing about that house that most people don't realize is that it was a weekend home, not a full time residence, so it didn't need storage for christmas decor or a 4 season wardrobe. I think she just showed up with some groceries and a couple changes of clothes on weekends.

I have an architect friend who has a Wassily chair and they are really comfortable too.

 

[Gizmosity]

Finally got a first coat of finish on. I’ve never used Osmo before, but so far (knocking on wood) I think it’s going to be my new go-to. I still need to finish rough fitting the doors to get them a bit closer and then after I get two coats of finish on everything, I can glue the cabinet together. There’s a lot of dowels to glue and it’s about 90 degrees in the shop most of the time so I’m going to try using Hide glue whish has a longer open time and it acts more like lube than glue when you’re putting pieces together. Normal wood glue tends to swell the dowels immediately, making them harder to install. Once I have the cabinet glued and the back permanently installed, I can finish the fitment of the doors and then get finish on them. Between coats of finish (8 hours between coats…which is the only downside so far) I’m getting the half blind dovetails done on the curved drawers.

The drawers have been a hang-up for quite a while and I’ve changed the design a few times because of them. They’re asymmetrical so the center line of the arc is not centered, making each end of the drawer a different angle and each side of the drawer a different length. Headache. But, everything is a headache the first time. So, I've gone back to my original design and I'm just figuring it out as I go.

I cobbled together a vacuum bag clamping system for the back rail of my chair and it's coming in really handy for the bent laminations for these drawers. I've been looking at that pump for about 5 years to make one of these with a vacuum pressure switch so the pump cycles on only when the vacuum loss requires it to turn back on. It looks pretty bad but it works and now that I know it works I can design/build something a bit less of a mess. My only real issue with the drawer fronts is that I don't have a drum sander to run them through so the layers are thicker than I want. My planer starts eating everything 1/8" thick and under, so these are about 5/32". A drum sander is something I would really like to buy but I need a new shop roof a bit more.







Go make smart mistakes. Forgive yourself. Repeat.

 

[Gizmosity]

It's been a drawer headscratcher for a while now. Not the most complicated thing in the world, but deadlines are tight and I'd like to not screw this up and start over from scratch.....although it would probably be faster than the glacial pace I'm currently tracking.

A few moments that I thought worthy of 3MB on my phone.


Tails clean up.



The mess-o-clamps required to hold everything 'close' to where they needed to be to mark the dovetails to the drawer fronts for the pins.


For half blind dovetails I like to hog out as much material on the drill press as I can, the curved front didn't really make it as big of a deal as I had assumed it would.



That small flat spot (90 degrees to the outside face) was something I KNEW I needed to do but neglected until almost too late. I eneded up having to shorten the dovetails AFTER I cut them by about 1/8" because the drawer front effectively decreased in thickness afterward and the dovetails would have stuck through the front. Crisis averted....


Pre-finished with Osmo and glued/clamped. I had to use Hide glue due to complexity of the glue up and the 103 degrees effective temperature in the shop at about midnight. If I'd have used yellow glue, this glue up would have failed and I'd have just jumped off the nearest bridge.



In order to cut the bottom groove in the curved drawer front, I needed a curved fence on a router table.



This one turned out pretty good. The others will be fine but don't look this good straight off the handplane.



Scribed bottom for the curve. Drawers are usually kind of a PITA. These took the cake. Now that I've done them once I'm looking forward to doing it all over for the second one and seeing if I can improve my time/techniques.




I went with Walnut to tie the doors into the drawers but have now changed my plan for the doors so there won't be any walnut in them at all. I'm on the fence about them. But, for the most part, the drawers are fit side to side. Now I can install the runner for the bottom drawer, establish a 1/16" gap and cut a corresponding groove in the drawer side and repeat as I work my way up. That's today.



Go make smart mistakes. Forgive yourself. Repeat.

 

[xtremek]

That's some crazy stuff. Very nice.

 

[wasfast]

That's super good craftsmanship. Asymmetrical curved front is excellent and your dovetail work is as well. Very nice work!

 

[Gizmosity]

The drawers are finally about done.







I started casting my own pulls out of pewter a few years ago. I sculpt them in clay, let the clay cure, then create a mold out of high temp silicone. I think these look OK. It's not what my initial plan was, but I needed to tie the doors to the drawers and a curved pull seems to do the trick. I still think they're a little bit too large for the drawers, but it'll grow on me.

I am working on a lot of little things today, getting the doors totally fit is first on the list. With knife hinges, you want to mortise the doors and the case and get the door rough fit before you glue the case together......it's a whole thing. Fitting curved doors makes it more difficult than a flat door so I'm taking my time.


It's a trick to the eyes, but the doors are nearly the same width, but they are in a different area of the arc. The cabinet is much deeper on the right side than the left. The centerline of the radius is just to the right of the handles. So, while the opening on the left is narrower, the door has to be wider because of the arc. I played with it for quite a while to get the doors close to the same size but ended up running into issues with the left side being so shallow that it wouldn't support a shelf. If I added width on the right side, it made the drawers too narrow. I made the drawer section just BARELY wide enough to get my drill in there to drill holes for the screws holding the drawer runners.



I'm also tidying up the back of the cabinet. The center section will get some small sections of narrow ship lap. The areas behind the doors will have a Kumiko panel installed in front of some rice paper backing. I got the rice paper backing glued up and sized early this morning. I wasn't sure about the yellow, but I think it'll brighten up the area behind the door a little. You won't really be able to see it as well when it's covered with the Kumiko.



Go make smart mistakes. Forgive yourself. Repeat.

 

[jbmatth]

This is very cool and would take a huge amount of skill and time to accomplish.

JB

 

[Gizmosity]

I’ve mentioned that this piece has sort of given me a run for my money. But it’s finally done. I can’t find the image I originally saw that derived a little notebook thumbnail sketch randomly while in a zoom meeting. My initial reaction to that sketch was a smiley face with a straight line for a smile…..not super impressed with the initial idea. However, that progressed into another slightly more detailed quick sketch that I kept looking at and coming back to. If I go back over the last year, I can also find about 10 other quick sketches that had some sort of slight arc to a door. If I sit down to sketch without a specific idea in mind, I tend to start with another rendition of the last idea on the page just to get started.





Both of those sketches were based on symmetry of the piece about the center. What I ended up doing, and it’s hard to see in the photos, is moving that center of the arc to the right, making the right side of the cabinet much deeper than the left and creating those complex asymmetrical drawers.

Tonight is the final critique of our ‘Signature Pieces’ for my fellow members of the first group of the Online Mastery Program. I HIGHLY recommend anyone who has a passion for designing/making furniture to check it out. I’ve learned more and branched out further in the last two years than in the previous 10. My focus is sharper and the focus on my space is more defined (and much better equipped).

Online Mastery – Northwest Woodworking Studio

northwestwoodworking.com

This will probably be the last 'project' type of post on this page. If I feel the urge, I'll create a new thread in Fab&Techniques. I'll be back to focusing more on the space itself. It's going to be changing pretty drastically over the next year.



Go make smart mistakes. Forgive yourself. Repeat.

 

[jbmatth]

That piece is stunning, well done all around!

JB

 

[xtremek]

I love the last line. IT's better than the piece itself, which is gorgeous.

 

[Gizmosity]

Time goes by too damn fast.

I had huge plans. Huge. Gargantuan plans.

And then.....I got covid, then my wife got it. Not a huge deal really, but because of my lack of a portion of a lung we have been pretty careful over the last couple of years. I felt like death for about a week but tested positive for another week. My wife sneezed three times, took a nap and felt fine, but still tested positive for almost 3 weeks.
Then, my folks showed up and we had a great time for about 4 days, then my brother flew in for a bit, went to the Badgers/Cougers game to witness the biggest football upset of WSU in his lifetime and consume more cheesecurds than I thought humanly possible. Fall semester also started right in there too.
Plans were dashed. I'm still slowly making dents in projects I thought I'd be done with over a month ago.

I did get a little office set up with my new drafting table that I'm still giddy over. I've been looking for the right deal the right distance away and the two streams finally crossed. I need to get a docking station and a couple monitors still. I got spoiled having my teaching set up at home for over a year.


I finally located a silicone tray to keep the water contained when I sharpen and sort of gussied up the area after about 20 years of giving zero f*cks. During my Covid time I spent an hour a day in the shop and managed to throw together a clamp rack that isn't constructed of garbage. Now that Baltic Birch is priced insanely, this could be the most expensive clamp rack in history.


I moved a bunch of stuff around, then put it back, then moved it around again, then rotated some stuff 90 degrees, then put it back. This is where everything is now. I'm going to leave it where it is until I spend some time at the bench and see how I like it.

It took me 6 years, but I finally took a #7 jointer plane and flattened that aircraft carrier sized benchtop. I even put a coat of Osmo on it. It looks horrible without a coffee ring on it. Soon enough.



The other half of the shop has turned once again into a rats nest. I moved my big bandsaw over there last year when I got a new bandsaw. Long story, but blades are much cheaper on a 17" saw than a 36" one and it takes up WAY less space. That said, I ain't getting rid of this beast. That table seats three for lunch comfortably. Well....when it's not full of junk.


My new saw has actual dust collection too. This thing pukes sawdust everywhere.

Most of my time has been spent moving lumber around. I have a problem with lumber: I keep buying it.
I have a source of lumber that I get at a very friendly price. I have 1,000bf of 9/4 White Oak I had milled last October coming out of his solar kiln any day and I need to make some room for it. I have a pile of poplar on the floor that I've been using to make models and mock ups and it needs to find a home so the oak can live there for a while.

He has various species, but I tend to focus on his walnut and white oak. I might grab a pile of Ash when I'm there too.

I decided a while ago that I am going to sign up for a third year at The Northwest Woodworking Studio in the Online Mastery Program. The upcoming year should be fun. I'll only be building two pieces over the next year but spending a lot of time designing and making models.

Should be interesting anyway.


Go make smart mistakes, forgive yourself quickly, repeat.

 

[wasfast]

It's cool to see the drafting table and machine. I worked on a board for 4-5 years when I first started engineering then switched to CAD. The fundamentals of how to do drawings are still very valuable. The one thing I didn't miss was my poor lettering skills CAD fixed that for good, minus any typos

 

[Gizmosity]

It's cool to see the drafting table and machine. I worked on a board for 4-5 years when I first started engineering then switched to CAD. The fundamentals of how to do drawings are still very valuable. The one thing I didn't miss was my poor lettering skills CAD fixed that for good, minus any typos

Ive taught CAD for about 20 years, Autocad, Rhino but mostly Solidworks. When I'm not teaching I'd much rather use paper. I will still do a quick solid to check my proportions from different views.

I've found that for design it's nice to flush out an idea from my sketchbook directly to the board. I can hang up a drawing on the wall and look at it for a couple weeks as I work on other things and make notes directly on it.

There's advantages to both but for what I do now at home CAD doesn't have a drastic advantage over paper.

Also.....my hand lettering is miserable.

 

[wasfast]

Sketching is a fundamental of design. The drawing on napkins is universal.

 

[Gizmosity]

Sketching is a fundamental of design. The drawing on napkins is universal.

I just had a lecture in several CAD and Design for Production courses on this exact topic. The person who can communicate effectively on a napkin at some random lunch spot or can throw down a quick/dirty hand drawn iso view of a detail on a muddy 2x6 offcut at a jobsite wins.

 

[xtremek]

Any lasting side effects from the ugly C?

 

[Gizmosity]

Any lasting side effects from the ugly C?

Not that I can tell. Knock on belly fat.