woodwork

woodwork

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Colgate EALL (19)

This is the final post depicting the construction of an interior for the East Asian Language department at Colgate University in upstate New York. While this concludes my scope of work, additional plastering and painting are yet to come, and once these are done I’ll share ‘final’ pics here on the Carpentry Way.

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The final push took place over a day and a half, with the first day being rather a long one. I work without breaks pretty much, barely stopping to even eat, so by the end of the day I am a bit strung out. I work like that more or less at the shop too, though I will occasionally take a lunch break.

Things went well. The tasks I looked after included:

• complete rough framing and install sheetrock
• align the Japanese room entry post and transom to plumb and anchor the upper portion to the wall
• install a magnetically secured access cover to cusped window in Chinese room
• complete wainscot
• install 3 pieces of baseboard
• install frieze rail (nageshi)
• install plugs in the few countersunk (and screwed) holes
• install hook for hanging scroll in tokonoma
• hang kake-shōji on walls
• adjust feet of small table to floor

There were a few minor tasks as well not worth enumerating (or which I have forgotten about already). It was a full slate of work for the time I had.

I didn’t take any ‘in-process’ pics, however Dr. Hirata, the department chair, took loads of video and photos, and at some future point there will be a video produced I’m sure. All I’ve got for now are some pictures of the space as I left it.

The first two are a panorama of the Japanese room:

On the left wall of the picture you can see the kake-shōji. It was supposed to be easy to hang, as I had purchased special fasteners from Lee Valley:

The installation instructions were simple enough: drill a 1/4″ hole in the wall, through the steel stud, and then use a #3 Phillips bit to drive the 1-Shot anchor right in. After that a wood screw can be driven in to the end of the fastener to hang whatever it is you want to hang. I followed the instructions, and when I tried to drive the anchor in, it got partway in and then the thread stripped out. I tried a second brand new fastener in the same hole, and the same result was obtained. I drilled the hole bigger. Same result. Drilled bigger yet. Same result. It simply would not work.

I suspect that the steel studs behind the wall at Colgate are significantly heavier duty than the ones pictured in the Lee Valley product page, but I have no way of knowing.

I had to go to a plan ‘B’, and it was 8:00 at night so there was no opportunity to run to the hardware store. I drilled pilot holes with some self-drilling drywall screws intended for metal studs, and then threaded in a couple of Tapcon anchor screws to those holes, fasteners which are otherwise designed for masonry walls. Those worked perfectly.

On the other wall, you can see the kake-shōji also hung, and that wall is concrete blocks behind the plaster board. Fortunately I had brought 4 of the Tapcon Screws with me, all of which had been slightly modified at my shop to fit in the concealed brass hanger cups epoxied into the backs of the kake-shōji frames:

It’s funny how seemingly minor things can suddenly become big time-consuming dramas sometimes.

An overview of the space through a professor’s office door:

Looking back the other way, showing the wainscot, door casings, and run of nageshi above that:

I suggested that at some point they may wish to consider replacing the doors with something (which I build) that goes better with the new woodwork.

Another view:

Another view:

Obviously the ceiling needs to be tidied up, and some painting work remains. However, some electrical work remains too, so that will be done in the near future and then the paint and plaster can be finished.

I’m pleased with the appearance of the new room, and especially like the shimmer of the figured avodire in view everywhere. There were loads of frustrations in terms of getting the new woodwork to fit against walls which were anything but flat or plumb, or which had square corners. While anything can be solved given enough time and scribing, etc., the constraints of the budget did not allow for this (it would have added at least a week to the job I’m sure) so in the end I simply did the best I could. The other alternative would have been to gut the rooms completely and fix the framing before applying new sheetrock, etc., however, again, budget constraint kept that out of the range of possibility. You have to cut your coat according to your cloth, as they used to say.

One bright spot to be sure was that the adhesive I brought this time actually lived up to its billing: Titebond’s Titegrab. There is none of it in New England for some unknown reason, so I had to obtain it from a Lowes down in Pennsylvania, and have it expedited up to me. An excellent product, though not without a certain learning curve.

All for this round, and all for this project. I hope you enjoyed the account of the build and installation.

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BCM Maker Faire (follow up)

I spent 10~5 yesterday on the boardwalk in front of the Boston Children’s Museum with a table presenting samples of Japanese joinery and my woodwork, most of which could easily be assembled and disassembled by small children. Here’s a snap of my table:

It was in the 90s (˚F) yesterday, so I drank a lot of water and was at least in some shade under a large tent with many other exhibitors. The vast majority of exhibits concerned robotics, battlebots, R2D2 controlled by joysticks, and the like. Booths devoted to more old fashioned things, like mine, were rather few and far between. Across from me were two others with old school stuff, one dealing with Japanese looms and weaving, and the other a project to teach poor urban Junior High kids how to make a plywood skiff in 11 sessions.

I had a lot of kids come by with their parents and it was a pleasure to watch them discover something about joinery as they took the models apart and put them together. Some kids were quite entranced and I had a few return visitors. Some parents knew a little something about the subject area of joinery, though many were as uninformed as their kids. Probably the two most interested kids that stopped by were a pair of 12 year old girls who asked me a great number of questions and were quite fascinated by the whole thing. That was rewarding.

I certainly got a lot of questions, and some, interestingly, cropped up time and again.

Here are the top 3 questions I received on the day of the Maker Faire, in order of frequency:

• “Did you use a laser to cut that?”
• “Are these puzzles?”
• “What is all this?”

I heard each of the above questions at least a dozen times, from both children and adults. One adult, of Indian background, came upon my table with his young daughter and, scanning the scene, asked, “what is all this?”. After starting to hear my answer, he snorted that, “there’s nothing here for my daughter to interact with.” As he started to move off, I said, “well, actually…”, and I showed his daughter who stood in front of him, around 8 years old if I were to guess, how to take apart one of the joints. As soon as she began to play with it, he pulled her away. Off to the next thing.

It is interesting to see how people’s preconceptions and snap judgments color how they perceive reality.

The questions about using a laser were humorous if it weren’t for the fact of their frequency and that adults were usually the ones asking that question. A lot of people just don’t have any familiarity with wood joinery, so I was able to at least introduce something new to them, but, it is a little sad to me all the same. Many, upon seeing an assembled joints, assumed that the parts were cut in the same manner as a jigsaw puzzle, and were flummoxed as to how I had made the cuts with, to them, nearly invisible lines. So I did a lot of explaining about that.

One fellow, a Chinese guy who I think was from MIT’s robotics lab, seemed dumbstruck that wood could be cut to fit tightly together without the aid of CNC equipment. He kept smiling in puzzlement and seemed at a loss for words. That was a curious moment.

Quite a few adults asked me if I used CNC, and when I told them I used rather more mundane tools to make the joints, were almost in disbelief or astonishment. Then I told them that the joints were deliberately made a little loose to aid in being interactive, and some had trouble taking this in. It’s as if they no longer imagine humans can do close-tolerance work. I pointed out to one person that the most perfectly round sphere ever created, was polished to final roundness by hand by Achim Leistner, as “his precision in handcrafting spheres was [found to be] superior to any machine”.

It was a long day, starting for me at 6:00 am, and I was pretty much on my last legs when I got home, a 2-hour drive. I think if I participate next year I can find a few ways to improve my presentation. It seems that joinery remains outside the scope of a lot of people’s awareness, so working to improve that is certainly worthwhile I think.

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Colgate EALL (2)

Design work on the remodel of the Colgate East Asian Language Laboratory is getting closer to the finish line. I thought I’d share some sketches I’ve come up with for the space, though keep in mind this is not completely finalized as of yet.

The space consists of a pair of small rooms linked by a hallway, and along the hallway are faculty offices. The first space I worked on was the Japanese room, occupying a relatively small niche of space. From the hallway, the entry to the space is indicated by a small hanging panel, reminiscent of a ranma:

I’ve applied some ‘plant on’ posts, and nageshi, with a form of wainscot on the wall which looks similar to a exterior wall treatment seen on many Japanese structures.

Upon crossing under the ranma, a turn to the left gives a view of the alcove, with tokonoma (right) and toko-waki (left):

The benches are unusual for a Japanese traditional space of course, but in this situation the people coming into the space and sitting will be wearing, as per usual in the west, their street shoes and won’t be parking themselves on tatami on the floor. So, some compromise was needed to make the alcove work with a sitting viewer, in a rather cramped space. The department head, who is Japanese, was pleased with the arrangement.

There are three simple benches and a small table with splayed legs. The benches can be pulled out of the way to reveal sliding doors under the alcove, where items for display in the alcove and on the chigai-dana (staggered shelves) will be stored.

Heading the other way down the hall, bring the viewer to the 'Chinese’ room, which, like the Japanese space, is an area defined by a hanging piece of joined woodwork:

In the room proper is an insert window frame with a lattice echoing that of the one at the room’s entry:

It is likely that some changes may yet be made to this lattice so that it conforms better with the existing sash window mullions to the rear. Possibly the entry hanging lattice might recieve a backing solid wood panel as well. As it is, we’ve been through several design iterations with the lattice arrangement, of which, or course, there are innumerable possible variations.

Turning the corner of the Chinese room and one sees a small table with a set of Chinese-style chairs, along with a bumped-out section with a framework with re-entrant corners, which will serve as a window to a series of interchangeable images behind:

The design phase is drawing near to a conclusion, it would appear, so I am probably about 6~8 weeks out from getting started on fabrication, which will need to be scheduled in with the other cabinet build with which I am currently occupied.

That’s it for this juncture, thanks for visiting!

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Colgate EALL (9)

With the benches out of the way, I have a couple of items to finish up for the Japanese room before turning to the Chinese room and its woodwork.

One task that presented itself was to create the crossbeam which supports the alcove post, toko-bashira, and serves double duty as the upper sliding track, or kamo-i for a pair of sliding doors below. For those door, a sill, or shiki-i, also needed to be fabricated.

I cannot obtain avodire, at least not in the US, in the thickness required, so laminated some pieces together:

There’s more than meets the eye here, as the lower portion of the beam is in fact a piece of black cherry:

You may wonder, why is he doing this? As mentioned in the video which accompanied the preceding blog post, I find avodire to have a quality of having rather high surface friction when you are fitting things together. It is not a wood which slides around easily, so I think it would be a poor choice for the sliding tracks and the frames for the sliding doors. Black cherry, on the other hand has much more suitable characteristics, and is beautiful to boot, however this aspect will be largely out of view.

I used my portable grooving machine to rough out the tracks in the beam:

And with a change in the depth setting, the sill-piece was similarly roughed out:

Then I used a router with edge guide to trim the grooves to a more exact width:

The top of the beam is formed into a tongue which will carry some spacing pieces that support both the alcove floor panel, toko-ita, as well as the floor panel under the staggered shelf assembly. I roughed out the tongue on the table saw, then cleaned up on the shaper:

The result:

A few more steps remain on this beam, however my attention next turned to the spacing pieces which attach to that newly-formed tongue on the topside:

The alcove post, toko-bashira, will sit on the beam in the divide between the two spacers. The fit of the t&g joints, though not too tight, is sufficiently snug that with the high sliding friction of avodire I am disinclined to fully put the parts together at this time, not wanting disassembly struggles.

Another view:

All for this round - thanks for tuning it to my site. Comments most welcome.

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Colgate EALL (13)

Well, though this video covers ground already detailed in the last two posts, being at last edited and narrated, it seemed worth sharing:

I did my first trip out to Colgate this past few days to install some woodwork. I got into ‘worker bee’ mode while there and didn’t take a lot of photos, but I hope a few is better than nothing.

Here, in the Japanese room, I’ve mocked up the arrangement of the wainscot panel with some plant-on inside corner posts, and a piece of baseboard:

There’s a 2-piece cap to be fitted to the baseboard yet of course.

I’m using 1/4″ (actually measures 0.2″) plywood with one side faced with VG fir. I hesitated to employ plywood, but it was the best option it seemed to me for an appliqué which needs to be thin, and given the difficulty/expense of obtaining VG fir at this time. As you can see, the bamboo floor laminate has been installed in that room and the upper portion of wall has been painted.

My main task in the Japanese room was fitting the various plant-on posts – here’s a look at another area of the same room:

Excuse the dust spots on the lens. The posts, now that they have been trimmed to length, were taken back to my shop afterward, to have yet more cut out done upon them.

The Chinese space at the other end of the connecting hallway saw the installation of the framed bump-out which in turn will later receive a cusped window:

The framing had been largely done in my shop ahead of time, save for final length. I used 2×6 spruce studs, and sheetrock. Not materials I would normally want to use, but they make sense when you are affixing to that same sort of wall system, though the existing framing uses steel studs not wood. I put some drywall compound on the exposed screw holes, and will leave the rest of that work to Colgate’s plastering/painting workers.

Speaking of attaching the framing, I had brought some Spax screws with me for the task, which are advertised on the box as being for various materials, including steel, however I only had luck getting them into the steel framing studs at the bottom of the wall. Of course, when I was atop a ladder and struggling to get the screws in, they stubbornly refused to do their job. I ended up having to go out to a building supply and obtain some self-drilling drywall screws. That really was the only hiccup during this install.

Leaving the site work for the moment, as regards the cusped window, it is made. I elected to use a chunk of bubinga that I had for that. The sides of the frame were made with a pair of pieces joined at a slight mitre angle, with a glued spline joint inside. Here’s my glue-up fixture for that task:

A pair of wedges at each end pushed the two segments together. It worked well.

Once the gluing was done, the parts were marked out in preparation for band-sawing to shape:

Here’s a look at the cusped window frame about halfway along the course of fabrication:

Not yet fitted in the above photo is the face frame portion, now glued on, which gives it the final appearance at the front. That’s almost done, not photographed though, and into its third coat of finish. Also completed is a framed glass panel that attaches to the back of the window via 4 magnets. a sliding panel goes behind that. I’ll install the window frame and associated parts into the opening on my next trip out to Colgate.

Also installed during the visit was the transom at the entrance to the Chinese room, which went in with a little planing and coaxing:

I did end up scratching the wall on the right and some fresh paint was removed, however there will be a bunch of electrical work done in that space and the adjacent hallway, involving cutting into the sheetrock in several places, so further plastering and painting is needed in the space regardless. I felt like I should have left a little apology note for the painters though!

I now have a slate of tasks for the next two weeks before the second installation visit. Hopefully I can complete everything in that timeframe.

Thanks for coming by the Carpentry Way.

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A Ming-inspired Cabinet (25)

Post 25, not even half way there yet in this series.

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Now working on the connection between the cornice rail assembly and the inverted ’T’ form beam assembly. There the parts connect with a tongue and groove, the groove having sloped abutments which are chopped out by chisel.

The dado is cut largely by router:

Lots of time spent kneeling on the floor and sliding around. That’s why they call it ‘knuckle dragging’.

I’ll jump ahead a little to show the result of the tongue and groove joints reaching completion with this first set of parts:

A closer look at one corner:

A flipped-over view:

The Sharpie lines on the edge of the cornice sticks indicate where the molded profile will be taken (later on).

A look at the interface between the two assemblies, where the hope is (after all the parts are together) that I can convince the viewer (who would have to get real close and personal with the parts to check the seams) that these two items are all of one piece:

Another view:

Working now on fitting together the two assemblies for the other cabinet-  the dadoes have been cut on the underside of the cornice pieces and I’m ready to try the fit:

The pillow block pairs also require a little additional tuning in this round of fitting, their location guided by aluminum locating pins which were also machined to specific dimensions:

Together, and aligned:

Assembly of cornice to inverted ’T’ beams is now complete for the second set of parts:

Another view:

These two assemblies were then set to one side - banished to Waddie land as it were:

Another view:

To mix things up a bit, I decided to carry on with a bit of red bronze machining before I tackled any more woodwork.

Here, I’m checking to see that I have reached target dimension, 1.000", for the length of the 'tenon’:

I found I was able to complete the milling work on the 1"x1"x1’ tenons a bit faster than I had expected:

It’s nice to have some spares, as screw ups remain always a possibility when there are some many steps involved.

Another view:

I took the opportunity to then dress the bottoms of the leveler feet, though these will not actually be the finished surfaces:

The sharp end of the stick, as they say:

Bronze - this type of bronze at least - doesn’t seem to bad to work at all.

The legs slope at a compound angle, so the feet will also need to be milled eventually at a compound angle - an 'entertaining’ bit of work that I shall be content to visualize for the time being. For now, dressing the bottom of the feet to a flat surface makes for more predictable work in the steps immediately downstream. At least that’s what I tell myself as they fit the straight jacket….

The feet can now be set aside. I milled the legs down 0.1" in dimension, and tomorrow I’ll fabricate a jig to allow me to mortise the leg ends to accept the tenons from the bronze feet.

All for today, thanks for visiting the Carpentry Way. Comments always welcome.

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@Regrann from @palle

@Regrann from @palletlifeaustralia - Another set of giant Dominoes off to their forever home in Sydney. Check us out at: Etsy - Pallet Life Australia. ift.tt/1mC2ZvD or at our gallery and garden food market on Maple Street in Maleny QLD. We are a cute little artisan food market garden cafe pallet gallery and coffee shack on the Main Street of Maleny. #palletlifeaustralia#palletlife#pallet#recycle#reclaim#repurpose#reuse#sustainable#recycledwood#rustic#vintage#woodworking#woodwork#ti…..

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