woodshop

[Turtle]

YouTube - Stanley No. 80 Scraper on Yew

[Turtle]

Alder wood body & base, with Maple dowel wheels & axles. I'm leavin' the elephant unglued from the pins to add play value. (pins are glued into base) Finish will be rubbed mineral oil.

[Turtle]

new project:

YouTube - oregon ash spoon

[Turtle]

comes a chair to my bench today. new construction, break on back leg 6" from floor, back of break not complete. discuss.

[Turtle]

ok ok; quiet down now and i'll tell some more of the story. first, i no longer have clamps big enough for this job so i had to wait to borrow some. ironically, they're new construction but that's another story.

when i earlier noted "new construction" i meant "won't notice the flaws going by on a galloping horse". the leg is cut from a blank made up of no less than 3 pieces of wood edge-joined with only glue. the break broke across one board at one of the splices. the intact "hinge" is actually the thinnest part of the splice & illustrates the old adage that a good glue joint is always stronger than the wood. i have added a red arrow to the photo that points to, and is at right angles to, the splice.

it is because the grain direction in the upper (upper in the photo) piece of the splice is so skewed from vertical and skewed from the more vertical grain direction of the lower piece, that it broke. hidden under the clamp board on top is a void i'll have to fill, but on the downward edge and interior to the void is about 1/8" of stain which indicates to me the board was already cracked when the piece was finished. giddyup!

well, i'll leave off & let y'all chat it up some more. always wear ANSI approved eye protection when working with tools and equipment.

[modest]

Were you planning on sanding and refinishing the whole chair?

~modest

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by modest

Were you planning on sanding and refinishing the whole chair?

~modest

Oh hell no! Erhm...I mean, no Sir; I don't think that will be necessary. I did do a lot of planning over the two weeks while waiting for the clamps, but once I got them & started applying them I found that a certain premise of my planning was false and so it be for naught. I thought the hinge was flexible and was thinking of using some steam to soften it before clamping. Thinking further on this false premise, I was concerned that if I used steam the wood would swell and I wouldn't get the joint to close well. Anyway, I got the clamps & having made up my clamp boards earlier, I used one 4" C clamp & clamped them firm, but not tight, on the upper part of the leg above the break. Before adding other clamps I decided to push on the lower leg against the break to test how springy the hinge was and a firm, but gentle, push was all it took to pop what was a locked, not sprung, hinge and the break closed up 70%.

But I digress. I'm planning to not sand any of the intact finish, but fill the void(s) with common wood filler, sand the filler , and then use artist's acrylic paint to disguise the breach. I won't add any doweling, or nails, or screws as I think the glue is adequate. The chair was apparently upside down and on a table when the owner leaned against the leg & broke it and in normal use i don't think enough sideways force gets applied to break it in the same area.

It's worth noting that some reasons for using this construction method include economy, as it is cheaper to use smaller pieces that wouldn't normally be of use, and ecology, as you must needs cut down big trees to get big pieces and using big pieces to make intricate smaller pieces makes a lot of wasted small intricate pieces.

Now there is...nothing but laughter gurgling up in me, if not you too, so I better stop before I snork some hot coffee up my nasallities then cough and choke a sparay of it back out onto this monitor which is not mine.

[modest]

Originally Posted by Turtle

I'm planning to not sand any of the intact finish, but fill the void(s) with common wood filler, sand the filler , and then use artist's acrylic paint to disguise the breach.

Yeah. I've tried that previously—not on wood, but ceramic. With a whole arsenal of paints at my disposal and a good eye for that sort of thing, and a good amount of effort I might add, I still came up with something less than ascetically pleasing on close (or fairly-moderate) inspection.

But....

Originally Posted by Turtle

when i earlier noted "new construction" i meant "won't notice the flaws going by on a galloping horse".

I think we're on the same page

~modest

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by modest

Yeah. I've tried that previously—not on wood, but ceramic. With a whole arsenal of paints at my disposal and a good eye for that sort of thing, and a good amount of effort I might add, I still came up with something less than ascetically pleasing on close (or fairly-moderate) inspection.

But....

I think we're on the same page

~modest

or in the same saddle? we'll have to see if i have a "good eye" or not, but i have the arsenal of paints. the chair is just one of a set and the biggy for the owner is just to get this one back in sittable service.

as to the C-clamps, all that paint pretty well covers the half-assed grinding of the seams left after casting and even slowing a steed to a walk, they're tough to see. then there is the fact that the screws on all of them don't quite center their swivels on their base-pads. i didn't have any yellow glue so used white, and as the weather has turned cool & rainy today i plan on leaving the clamps on another full day. ah well; gotta just make do with what one has.

[modest]

Originally Posted by Turtle

or in the same saddle? we'll have to see if i have a "good eye" or not

Yep, in the same saddle. And I'm quite sure you've got a good eye and a good hand... and this paragraph is starting to sound creepy... moving on...

Originally Posted by Turtle

the chair is just one of a set and the biggy for the owner is just to get this one back in sittable service.

Yeah, I should have guessed it was one in a set making refinishing even more impractical. Interesting how chairs always come in sets. You never see a single chair doing its own thing. Well... except for rocking chairs. Rocking chairs are the loners of the chair community. You can't put two of them side by side. I tried it once—went to bed with two rocking chairs sitting side by side on the porch and woke the next morning with a rocking bench fit for two. Of course, I didn't want a rocking bench so I cut the rockers off the feet and settled on having a normal bench. Sure enough, the next morning the bench was hanging from the ceiling, rocking in the wind.

~modest