Fish Stand

Recently, I was told my work looked cliche, and that I didn't appear to have pushed myself much in the year I've been making furniture.  So I'm trying to branch out, and try out some new techniques.  This aquarium stand, for a 20 gallon 'tall' tank, is one attempt at pushing myself.  This cabinet features cutouts I made on the band saw.  Since it's a fish tank stand, I made a fish motif for the center stile for the door, with some "leafy" accent pieces on the door corner.

The handle was also made on the band saw, with the "finger slot" cut on the band saw with the handle held at an angle with a bench clamp.

The stand is made of ash, with maple veneer plywood panels.  The door rides on Blum soft-close hinges, my first time using this style of hinge.

My next project: a pedestal stand for the Fluval Micro Tank

My next project is a special commission for Skipton Unique Aquaria & Reptiles.  Skipton's sells (among MANY other things) a cool micro setup from Fluval.  The setup consists of a 5.5 gallon acrylic tank, roughly cuboid in shape.  It includes lights, decor, and chemicals for a complete aquarium setup.  Fluval makes three variants on the system: a freshwater, reef, and a "shrimp habitat". 

Brendan from Skipton gave me one of Fluval's micro systems so I could design and build a special stand for the tanks, which are popular with a variety of customers, including those looking for a small and elegant aquarium for their home or condo. 

I am excited to start this project, as it offers me a chance to create a custom design that can be made multiple times, in a variety of finishes.

Mahogany and bamboo stand

I had some extra mahogany and bamboo plywood lying around the shop, so I decided to make a stand for a 40 gallon breeder tank.  This project represents a couple of firsts for me: it's the first time I re-sawed thick stock to make up thinner boards, and the first time I've used curved parts in a design. 

The curves are found on the face of the door.  They were made on the bandsaw by first cutting the curve, then re-sawing the milled part in half the long way, creating two matched pieces. 

The 3/4" frame parts (making up the legs and the door) were all re-sawn from 1 3/4" thick mahogany stock.

The size of the stand was limited by the length of mahogany stock I had available.  The lumber was purchased from my local Rockler store as shorts (4 feet and shorter), and cost a mere $2 per board foot.  I only had one 4' piece, hence the need to re-saw it into thinner boards.  This way, I had enough long boards to make all of the leg components.

Super-sized aquarium stand custom build

This stand is some 36" high, 32" deep, and 82" long.

I have been working on my biggest furniture project yet: a stand & canopy for a 320 gallon reef aquarium.  My customer's tank measures 80" long, 29" tall, and 36" front to back, and the entire setup (with the canopy on top of the tank) will measure some 82" tall.

This project presents some challenges I haven't faced before.  First, as the largest piece I've made, I had to modify my shop layout a bit before I could cut very long stock on my table saw.  Construction is a load-bearing frame built of 2x4 and 2x6 stock, faced with a cabinet frame of hard white maple, making this my first face-frame project.  Finally, the whole thing needs to be disassembled in order to fit through my client's doorway, and then re-assembled on-site.  Needless to say, it's a major undertaking for me, and so far it's taught me many lessons.

My Custom Aquarium Furniture: Now Available at Skipton's Unique Aquaria

My custom aquarium stands, both in standard and non-standard sizes, are now available on the showroom floor at Skipton Unique Aquaria and Reptiles. 

I continue to refine my designs and materials when it comes to aquarium furniture.  Everything from what species of wood I use in the frames, to better looking and more durable finishes, is improved with every iteration.

I am especially excited to make the several custom jobs currently in the queue, including a couple of bow-front stands, which will be my first foray into bent-wood furniture construction.

I have to give special credit to the members of the Boston Reefers Society community, through whose forums I have gleaned lots of useful information.  Thanks BRS!  And thanks to Brendan at Skipton's.

New Discoveries in Blackness

I have been searching for the "perfect" solution to putting a jet-black, satin finish on the aquarium stands I have been building for custom clients and Skipton Unique Aquaria and Reptiles, in Boston, MA. 

I have tried many different finishes and sequences over the past months, but now I have made a major breakthrough that should be helpful to anybody who wants an easy, satin black finish.

My first attempt, several months ago, began with a coat of shellac sanding sealer, then water-borne black stain, followed by a coat of high-end polycrylic.  I was dogged by bruch marks and the constant desire to touch up my work, which inevitably led to another coat of finish, just to make things "right".   The end result was alternating coats of stain and clear coat, and I was exhausted.

After I purchased a used HVLP system (3M Accuspray), I was able to spray on my finishes, which helped a lot.  My first attempt with the sprayers consisted of grey gripper primer, followed by latex interior black paint, followed by polycrylic clear coat.  The paint stayed soft for a long time, and picked up smudges easily.  Not good for salt water tank stands!

90 gallon aquarium stand build

I am developing a basic aquarium stand design to compete price-wise with the basic factory stands, such as those from All-Glass (AGA).  This post documents one prototype I made for this project. 

Fostex Open Baffle Speaker Project Complete!

I had "finished" these open baffle speakers some time ago.  But it wasn't until last week that I was able to rub out the lacquer finish, install the Fostex FE206e full range drivers, and power them up.

Overall I am very happy.  I took the new speakers home, and switched them with a pair of Snell Type K/IIIs I had as my main left/right speakers.

Ok - here's my miter secret.

Ok everybody - I am going to reveal a secret technique for perfect miters, which I have devised.  I have searched around a while on line, and couldn't find any examples of this technique in use.  I also asked several professional cabinet makers about how they accomplish perfect miters, and most just said "I don't".  The others offered up ideas that looked good on paper, but had failed me in practice.

So, here it is, my big secret.  I am re-publishing a post I made on the Boston Reefers DIY Forum.

Mitered doors and other "external" miter joints: made to fail?

Illustrated Mitered Door Frame

Last week, a customer asked me to outfit his aquarium stand with mitered doors.  For the uninitiated, a mitered door is a door with a frame made from two vertical "stiles" and two horizontal "rails", joined at the corners with miter joints.  Miters are diagonal cuts in the end of a board - usually cut at 45 degrees - allowing two mitered boards to meet at the ends and form a 90 degree corner (see pic at left).

People like mitered door frames, I suspect, because they look cool.  They're also hard to make, and may therefore be a sign of the cabinet-maker's skill. 

Ask a cabinet maker, however, and he or she may well tell you to NEVER buy or make a mitered door.  See this link for responses to the "miter question" on Woodweb.com.  The reason isn't just because of how hard it is to find a well-made mitered door frame.  It's because the miter joint is a natural candidate for opening over time, due to the way wood moves.

Klipsch Heresy Rebuild

Klipsch.  The name is well known among audiophiles, for it's the name of one of the greatest U.S. speaker design companies ever known.  The Company made its name on four classic speaker models  - La Scala, Heresy, Cornwall, and Klipschorn - and the signature horn-loaded tweeters and mid-range drivers used in those models. 

These four "heritage" designs made their debuts in the early 1960's, and the designs haven't changed much since.  And while Klipsch is now a mass-market company, with manufacturing operations in China, they still offer these four flagship speakers for sale to discriminating listeners.  Unlike other Klipsch-branded speakers, the Heresy, La Scala, Cornwall, and Klipschorn are made to order in Klipsch's original plant, located in Hope, Arkansas. 

The Heresy is the smallest of the four speakers, sporting a 12" woofer, a mid-range horn, and a tweeter horn.  If you want Klipsch to make you a pair of Heresies today, it'll set you back around $1,500. 

Essential Table Saw Tune-Up

Tuning the table saw: it's something my friend Dave - a carpenter - never really did.  But over my last ten months of woodworking, I've come to realize how important it is when making furniture.  That's because, unlike in carpentry, where poorly-fitting joints can be saved by screws, nails, and shims, perfect angles are critical to good furniture.

I use my table saw for many joinery operations.  Not only do I use my table saw to rip stock (after jointing and planing the other three faces), it's also my go-to choice for cutting square ends and miters.  the table saw excels at these tasks because it's possible to tune the saw to within 1/100 of a degree of accuracy, unlike other power tools, such as the miter saw (the best of which, by the way, could never be relied upon to cut miters for furniture). 

Wait...Paint?!?!?

I am taking the plunge and painting some furniture.  I had to do it.  I know my "rep" (such as it is) as a furniture maker may suffer as a result, but I was left with no choice. 

Here's the thing:  I have been trying to get a good black finish on my aquarium stands for a few months now.  I also have a few striped table tops that almost surely would look best with black bases.  But no matter what I try, I can't get a good black finish that goes on easily without re-work. 

My Bamboo Chest, in its Home

I recently got some pictures from my clients, of a bamboo chest I made for them around Christmas time.  Here they are:

The All-Important Right Angle

A great jig for fast, square frames

Everybody knows that 90-degree right angles are a big part of architecture, furniture, and design.  But many have never experienced the difficult process of trying to make a perfect right angle.  No, I'm not talking about drawing one on a page, I'm talking about making a right angle out of something.  Doing that is no mean feat.  In fact, a good right angle is both an essential, and difficult-to-achieve, fundamental of quality furniture making.  When I first began making furniture, I thought I could rely on the accuracy of my power tools to achieve good right angles.  Almost a year later, I'm coming to terms with the fact that this is not a good way to make an accurate right angle.

But accuracy isn't the only imperative in a wood shop: speed is of equal importance.  Making accurate right angles quickly is essential to making a living in wood. 

A new outfeed table...

Outfeed support: essential for crosscuts

For some time now, it's been clear that my over-stuffed studio needs a re-design.  Among the many changes due is the building of outfeed tables for my table saws (we have a 10" 1.75HP contractor saw and a 12" 5HP cabinet saw).  Outfeed tables are important for certain table saw operations, most notably ripping long stock, and crosscutting wide stock.  The inability to crosscut 4' x 8' plywood sheets has forced me to use my circular saw...never a good option for furniture building, even when using Festool's over-hyped guide rails (which I do use, reluctantly). 

But life goes on, and making an income has taken the front seat and put my improvement project on hold.  To that end, I have been making aquarium stands for the local aquarium installer/retailer. 

But when one of my stand went horribly wrong, I got a chance to take a step in the right direction and install an outfeed table for my 12" cabinet saw. 

DIY Open Baffle Speaker Project

Readers of this blog may remember a project I began a few months ago: my first loudspeaker.  Progress has been slow; as a personal project I have to fit in the work when I don't have anything better to do.  But my first pair of speakers is almost finished, and the project represents more than one "first" for me:

Lacquer: one tough cookie
My open baffle speakers use one Fostex FE207E 8" full-range driver in each tower, and are made from purple heart and curly maple.  Since I used such nice lumber for the project, I wanted to finish the baffles in the glossiest, deepest finish possible.  And that means good ole lacquer: the smelly, flammable, brain cell - killing gloss finish of yesteryear.  Lacquer is fast-drying, thick, and volatile, making its application a challenge.  But the result - a glossy, rich finish - is impossible to replicate.  I brushed on four coats of lacquer before rubbing it out.  But before I rubbed it out, I had to wait a full ten days after the last coat.  That's ten days after the lacquer was hard to the touch.  But lacquer isn't fully hardened until at least seven days after application, and a gloss finish isn't possible until full hardness is reached.

New Pages on the Blog

purple heart & mixed hardwood coffee table, made 12/20/2010

Blogger now offers "Pages" on its blogs.  This is an excellent feature of Blogger, as it allows users to easily create static pages and link to them from a navigation menu generated automatically by Blogger.  This can make a blog act much like a website.  Unlike most website hosting platforms, however, a Blogger blog is free.

I have made use of the new pages feature by creating two new pages: "Tools of the Trade" and "Custom Commissions".

"Tools of the Trade" is a description of the "big" tools we have in our shop, so visitors can get a sense of how furniture is made, and see for themselves the difference between furniture-making tools, and the tools used by a carpenter who comes to your house.

Have You Heard of a Manta Board?

I find few things in life more gratifying than discovery: learning, exploring, and even creating exciting new vistas.  It's no lofty concept: the new is always presenting itself to us.  Take, for example, a recent favor I did for my friend, an aquatic biologist: helping him create a manta board.

What's a manta board?  It's for scuba diving, of course!  But when my friend first asked me to help him make a manta board, for an upcoming trip to Haiti's coral reef, I thought he wanted it to scare predators (or attract them...).

Re-Saw Magic

By replacing the motor, I can re-saw 12" of maple

The band saw is regarded by many woodworkers as "the most important saw in the shop", due in no small part its unique capabilities.  Band saws can cut curves - unlike a table saw, chop saw, or hand saw - and with a thinner kerf than a router, and with no need for a special fence or guides.  Band saws can also perform the initial milling of raw timber: turning a tree trunk into boards.  And band saws can "re-saw".

Re-sawing is splitting a board in two...the hard way.  Take a look at the picture on the left and you'll see what I mean.  What you see in that pic is a piece of 3" thick hard curly maple, standing on edge roughly 12" high, and 20" long.  You also see a re-sawed slice.  The slice is 1/16" thick, and was peeled off of the block of maple on my band saw.

Unlike a table saw's disc-shaped blade, a band saw blade is a giant hoop, drawn tight between two cast-iron wheels.  And unlike a basic, 10" table saw blade, which can get bogged down trying to cut through 3" of hard maple, even a small band saw can easily go through 6" or 7" of the same hardwood.