Flutterby™! : it came from the scrap bin 2007-02-27 22:41:58.969976+00

it came from the scrap bin

2007-02-27 22:41:58.969976+00 by Dan Lyke 6 comments

#Comment Re: Cord organizer made: 2007-02-28 17:04:32.361455+00 by: m

Nice and neat. The miters look well made. The leg tapers on the legs look great. These are not easy things when using portable tools. Grain use and orientation is well done. You should be extremely pleased with yourself, even without considering that you are using tools that are basically new to you.

Proportion often needs to give way to function, materials available and destination space. Many professional woodworkers make full size cardboard models of a new design before committing to even the first practice piece in wood. Congratulations on a nice design and execution.

I'm struggling with miters on the plywood edging, the best thing I think I've come to so far is to cut the piece just a touch short and plane or sand the inside edge 'til the miters come together. I guess that'd be where a small jointer or a bigger hand plane would come in handy, although sandpaper on a flat surface seems to work too if I can take long strokes and be careful about rocking pressures. I'll have to experiment with contact cement on glass to see if there's something that'll hold the sandpaper without adding lumps or residue.

There's one huge goof and a few small ones on grain orientation, the big one is that somehow, despite my trying to keep everything clear, I got the top on upside down. Not really noticeable in the plywood veneer, but if you look carefully at the edging (and I think the photos don't show this), there's no continuity at the mid-top joint. So the big lesson there is "write all the grain orientation notes in pencil on the outside faces, and do sanding only after all the alignment and attachment holes have been cut".

The leg tapers were easier than I thought, that saw on a rail can do wonderful things, but I do need to experiment with better ways to clamp on rips on thin stock (the oak leg stock and the 1½x¾ birch that I cut in half for the edging). Might just be as easy as getting some of that rubberized carpet gripper and laying that on the table. Or, now that I know I can rip fairly well, buying new materials in wider widths so that I'm not trying to split hairs...

Wait a minute! Most guitarists only have 3. Why would they need to organize them?

And if we let the chords organize, it's only a matter of time before they move against us! There's no point to worrying about the guitarists, however, as they'll never get organized.

No matter how careful you are, glue up errors still occur. Even though I ALWAYS do a dry run, sometimes Murphy has his way with me. Yesterday I was doing a simple five sided box for firewood. Although the dry fit up went fine, as soon as I put the glue on, everything went wrong. I had to abandon the effort when the working time for the glue was up. Five sided boxes are a staple, and I have made many. But sometimes things just don't go the way they are supposed to.

Yeah, I did a number of dry runs on this one, but, as you say, once there's liquid involved all of those things which went so easily before suddenly need a few extra hands. Especially since that shelf and the edge biscuits have to be aligned simultaneously.

On a different note, since you seem to know such things, any suggestions for design parameters for chairs? This one's a few months off, and I grabbed the latest Fine Woodworking because it has a chair design in it, but I'm interested in things like seat angle, how to figure out lumbar support for curved back slats (yes, I know that most dining room style chairs ignore this), and back height and angle.