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Rubbing out a satin finish

Right: sanded flat to 220; Left: rubbed with pumice & oil

Thank god I purchased Michael Dresdner's "The New Wood Finishing Book"!  As a self-taught woodworker, I rely on books and practice to learn the ropes of this ancient and expansive art.  My first finishing book, called simply "Finishes", was a collection of articles from a woodworking magazine.  It covered the basics, but in a haphazard way, and it was filled with conflicting information between the different chapters, which were written by different authors. 

Compound You, Angles!

It was bound to happen.  Sure, most furniture is made exclusively with right-angles.  But I knew that some day I would have to face compound angles.  I thought it might be while fitting crown molding, or cutting raised-panel frames.  Turns out, my first experience with compound angles was tougher and more complicated than either of these two brain-busting tasks.  What's a compound angle, you ask?  Take a look at this image:

Notice how the piece of purple heart on the left has slanted edges, AND is shaped roughly like a trapezoid?  Those are compound angles. 

Kris V: The Casemaster

My friend Kris is a seasoned carpenter who has also been joining me on my joinery journey.  I'm sure he won't be embarrassed or angry if I publish some pictures of him here.... ;-)

In these photos, Kris is putting glue into a groove, as we go through the tense and time-sensitive process of "gluing-up" a cabinet case.   This particular case was a seven-foot long terrarium stand for a mutual friend of ours.

Although many furniture makers work alone, there are some cases where an extra pair of hands is helpful or even absolutely necessary.  With Kris, I benefit from the extra eyes and brain as well.  Sure, I have to split the money, but I make half the mistakes, so it works out well in the end.

90 Gallon Aquarium Stand Doing its Thing!

Supporting nearly 1400 pounds of rock and water, one of my aquarium stands is home to a 90-gallon reef aquarium that's just getting started.  It's a snug fit in a small room, but the owner of the tank is moving in a couple of months, where the 90 gallon tank will be in an appropriately-sized viewing room.

In the Design Phase: My "Wrap 270" Aquarium Cabinet

designed in the free version of Google Sketchup

It's only fitting that so many of my custom furniture commissions are aquarium cabinets.  I'm an aquarist myself: as a young teen I volunteered at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's coral reef exhibit, a leading light in reef-keeping technology and methodology, which were poorly developed at the time.   In high school, my friends and I founded an official Aquarium Club,  and I bred South American Convict and Oscar Cichlids.  Today, I'm caretaker to a 55-gallon reef with a pair of clown fish and a pair of watchman gobies, both of which spawn once a month or so.

Most aquarium people find the cabinet stand a source of annoyance, sticker shock, and even disaster.  The stand is the LAST thing an aquarist wants to spend money on.  They're usually finished in black, to make them as invisible as possible.  In fact, if there were a way to eliminate the cabinet stand altogether, I think most aquarists would rejoice.  

And yet, the bane of the aquarist must be of high quality, and of sufficient internal volume, and be finished to a level equal to that of the other furniture in the viewing room.  The whole reason people come to me for cabinet stands is because when you've got fifteen-hundred pounds of water suspended above your living room floor, you really can't skimp on quality.

Seven-foot cabinet stand success!

In my previous post, I discussed a project for a friend: a seven-foot-long cabinet stand for his 250-gallon glass terrarium, which is home to two tortoises.  Now that the project is completed, I thought I'd post some pictures of the stand in use.

The cabinet has a 1" lip to hold the tank, with 1/8" gap

This particular project was special because my friend Kris helped me.  Kris is an experienced carpenter but - like me - new to furniture making.  We both learned a lot on this project.  I think I can speak for Kris when I say that one thing he learned (and I continue to marvel about) is how much better it is to use traditional cabinet making techniques when making a cabinet, as opposed to making a box as a contractor might build a temporary work bench.

Another frame-and-panel cabinet stand...

First coat: cherry stain on the birch case

Seems like my journey into woodworking is leading me through a series of aquarium/terrarium cabinet stands!  Stands to reason, I guess, my being an aquarium aficionado.  Cabinet stands also allow me to practice frame-and-panel case-making using tongue-and-groove joinery.

Laminated scrap table project

The Wine on Deck shop creates very little scrap these days.  But this wasn't always true, and so there was a box full of laminated off-cuts in the corner of the shop for months.  I decided to make some table tops out of the scraps.  i got three tops out of the scraps, and decided to tackle each on individually, in order to learn as much as I could about apron & leg design while making three different tables. 

FedEx is great!

I bemoaned UPS in a recent post.  Just to show I'm not a bad customer, I'd like to take the time to praise FedEx for their service.  Easy to do online, easy to have picked up, easy to pay.  Packages are getting to clients without trouble.  I'm in love.  Thanks, FedEx.

When it absoutely, positively, has to be black...

I was recently asked to make some custom aquarium cabinet stands.  Apart from having to support over 1,000 pounds, my customer also wanted one of the stands in black.  Needless to say, I was more concerned about the weight-bearing capability of my cabinet design than I was about the finish.  Turns out, getting a good black on wood is more difficult than it seemed at first.  After a few failures and a lot of experimenting, I have a few methods for getting a deep, rich black.  I also have a few general tips on finishing in black in general. 

Aquarium Stands: Cabinetmaking under Pressure!

I was recently asked by my to build some custom aquarium stands for people with unusually large or odd-shaped aquariums.  Since I'm a long-time fish enthusiast and owner of a 55-gallon reef aquarium, I loved the idea of building the "ultimate" cabinet stand.  A good tank stand, by the way, is hard to come by.  Manufacturers of these stands use the cheapest possible materials.  Who can blame them?  Most customers, myself included, are already reeling from the unexpectedly high cost of setting up a large aquarium.  When it comes to stands, it's a race to the bottom.

Experienced aquarists, however, know the value of a well-made stand that won't turn to mush if soaked with water for a day or two.  Advanced aquarists, such as my potential customers, require custom dimensions and other features to allow them to use sophisticated sump systems. 

Building the first of these stands was a great chance for me to hone my custom cabinetry skills - under the pressure, literally, of hundreds of gallons of water.

the front frame of a 90-gallon stand

My first commission was a frame-and-panel cabinet stand for a 90-gallon tank.  That's about 1,400 pounds of water and rocks.  As it turns out, the standard frame-and-panel design seen in almost all cabinets is perfectly capable of holding this weight.  The key to ensuring this load-bearing capacity over long periods of time is preventing racking of the case.

Oh UPS, I tried to give you money for SO LONG!!!

I tried to set up an account with UPS to ship packages from my company Wine on Deck.  But there were so many technical problems, multiple accounts created, blah, blah, blah.  It was too hard.  Then I tried the same thing with FedEx.  here is my "farewell" letter to my local UPS Business rep:

Festool Review: Rotex RO 150 FEQ

The Back Story
The Rotex 150 FEQ is a $500 hand-held orbital sander. With a 6" diameter pad, it's the same size as dozens of other orbital sanders on the market - all of which are half the price (or less) than the "150 FEQ". What, I asked my friend and (Rockler Cambridge Assistant Manager) Pete, could make this sander twice as good as the rest? After all, I already own a 5" orbital sander - a Festool ETS 150.

Tormek vs. Vintage Wet Wheel Bench Grinder

To call them bench grinders is, I have discovered, an offense to owners of wet-wheel tool-sharpening rigs.  A grinder, you see, hogs metal off of a blade.  A wet-wheel, on the other hand, is a precision machine capable of sharpening tool steel that only honing with a leather strop could sharpen it further.  The differences between "grinders" and "wet wheels" range from

The Collectors

Who are the collectors? Collectors are everywhere, of course. You have your stamp collectors, the baseball card collectors, the (lucky few) car collectors...pretty much anything that's ever been made has been - or is currently - collected. I'm something of a collector myself, boasting a stereo that is way too big for my living room, and a basement piled with vintage speakers and tube amps in various states of repair. In general, I have no problem with collectors. I even admire those collectors who find and repair older items so that future generations can enjoy their (often superior) quality.

But there is one type of collector I'm really starting to dislike:

Rockler: my go-to Woodworking Store

I love my local woodworking store.  It's called Rockler, and it's in Porter Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  There are, apparently, Rockler stores throughout the U.S., and they have an online store as well.  Rockler's closest competition is a chain called Woodcraft, and another competitor is the online retailer Lee Valley.  But so long as Rockler carries what I want to buy (they occasionally don't), I will always go to them.  Why? Read on:

Festool's Proprietary Bench Dogs: a Step too Far

Engineered Incompatibility: a Festool Core Design Principle

Anybody familiar with Festool probably also knows that the company's tools tend to not fit industry standard accessories.  For example, Festool's TS-series plunge-cut saws ride on a guide rail, but won't fit into rails that fit most other circular saws.

Festool's Not Just for The Pros: Quality Tools are even More Critical to the Inexperienced User

Festool from a Novice's Perspective
The first time I walked into my local woodworker's store, I was seeing most of the power tools on the market for the first time.  I had never used a router or band saw, and had never heard of a jointer or thickness planer.  Until that day, my only exposure to woodcraft was through my contractor friends (who also hadn't heard of a jointer) and memories of my dad's hobbyist hand tools.

Ikea Expedit Clone - From Reclaimed Heart Pine

My girlfriend and love of my life (xoxo MyMy :-) has been in need of shelving. And she was getting tired of waiting for my cabinetry skills to improve beyond bookshelves. So when she pointed to the Ikea Expedit shelf and said "We need this for our daughter's toys...NOW" - I figured it was time to leave the world of bookshelves and tables and make a proper case.

Luckily, I didn't end up trying to make a real cabinet, carcase and all.  Instead, I decided to build a clone of the Ikea piece.  With a couple of tweaks, of course.