March/April 2012 Archives - Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To

PROJECT: Simple Knife Block

Rob Johnstone — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 16:56:06 +0000

The thought goes through my head on a regular basis: “Why should I buy one of those, when I could make one in a snap?” and that is the reason that I have never owned a knife block. Fortunately, my charter membership in the procrastinator’s club (meeting schedule to be announced later) did not stop me from getting into the shop recently and making this version for my knives. It was fun to make, only took a day to fabricate (even with breaks for glue-up) and works like a charm.

If you are interested in building a knife block, the steps and Drawings we show here will teach you how to make it, but you will need to adjust the slot measurements and placements to accommodate the knives and accessories you own.

This unit is made of four pieces of solid wood. Cut them to length and width and get ready to cut some slots, using a standard full-kerf saw blade. This will leave you with openings that will fit the vast majority of knife blades. As you can see in the Drawings, by matching up the slots cut into piece 1 with the slots cut into the thicker piece 2, you can adjust the size of the knife openings. Align the openings by laying out and cutting all of the slots in piece 1 first and then using that piece to set up the rip fence for each matching cut in piece 2. The small 3/8″ square opening for the honing steel was formed with multiple cuts from the saw blade, versus switching over to a dado head or moving to the router table.

Totally Table Saw

Here, the author is cutting the slots into piece 1. This piece can then be used to set up the rip fence spacing for the matching cuts in piece 2.

Point of fact: I made all the cuts for this project on my table saw. Piece 3 was made in the same manner as piece 1. This section was made to hold a set of steak knives and is an optional feature. You can include it or not, depending on your collection of knives. Piece 4 (which is glued together to make the final roughly triangular “chunk” that forms the base) is made from three pieces of 1-3/4″-thick lumber. To be safe, I used a small sled with fences attached on my table saw to secure them as I cut.

Make yourself a sled, like the one shown above, to safely cut pieces 4. A second cut is then made on each piece, as illustrated at left.

Once I had glued these three pieces together, I added a notch (see Drawings) to hold a scissors — of course, if you don’t have a scissors, don’t make the opening. It would look silly.

Now it’s time to glue the knife-holding pieces together. Careful application of your glue is important; you don’t want globs of it getting into your knife slots. Alignment is important as well. As you can see in the photo (bottom right), I used small slats of 1/8″-thick plywood, well oiled so glue would not stick to them, to help me keep pieces 1 and 2 properly aligned during the glue-up.

To help keep pieces 1 and 2 aligned during the glue-up process, use oiled 1/8” thick pieces of plywood placed into the knife slots.

Once the clamps are tight, pull the strips out. (Be careful; even when they’re oiled, they might want to stay stuck!) Now, once again step to the table saw and cut the 45° angle onto the bottoms of the knife-holding pieces. The glued-up subassembly of pieces 1 and 2 will need to be cut in a two-step process on the table saw because a 10″ table saw blade will not slice through the whole piece on a 45° cut. Cut halfway through it, then flip it to the opposite face to finish the cut. With the blade still set at 45°, cut the chamfers onto the edges of the knife-holding pieces as shown on the Drawings. Then, sand your parts smooth, but be careful not to burn the end grain as you are doing so.

With that done, glue piece 3 to the subassembly (pieces 1 and 2) with their mitered ends aligned. Be sure it’s centered. Once the glue dries, do the same thing with piece 4. Scrape off any excess glue and then apply an oil finish. I used Watco® Natural — three coats and that is it — you’ve got yourself a knife block, and you didn’t resort to buying it retail!

Click Here to Download the Drawings.

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Adjustable Wrench Takes Quick Measurements

Reader Submitted — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 14:54:28 +0000

Have you ever had trouble identifying the correct drill bit size for boring holes for dowels, bolts or pipe? If you don’t own a caliper, all you really need is an adjustable wrench. Close the jaws of the wrench around a dowel or bolt, then match the bit to the jaw opening. While it’s no vernier caliper, the wrench still works quite well.

– Bob Crabb
Chester, New Hampshire

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Thrifty Three-way Edge Clamps

Reader Submitted — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 14:49:10 +0000

Three-way clamps used for gluing shelf lipping or face frames to carcasses are handy, but you tend to need a lot of them, and most of us don’t use them often enough to justify their expense. Here’s a simple alternative that uses the C-clamps or F-style clamps you already own. All you need to do is locate and secure the clamps far enough above the lipping or face frame to slide a shim underneath the clamp body or bar. I create my shims with a gentle taper down to about 3/16″ or 1/4″ thick. Once you’ve got the glue spread between the parts, tap the shim into place under each clamp to apply the necessary lateral pressure.

– John Cusimano
Lansdale, Pennsylvania

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Carving Texture and Patterns into Bowls

Ernie Conover — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 15:45:10 +0000

In their drive for the perfect art form, bowl turners are constantly experimenting with shape. This can range from entirely functional to pure art that is not very usable at all. An artistic technique that I really like is carving designs into the outside or rim of a bowl. You do not have to be an “artist” to do this sort of carving, you just need to be able to lay out a pencil grid and to tap a gouge with a mallet.

Carving breaks the absolutely circular nature of a turning, lending pattern, texture and beauty to the finished vessel. It does not require many fancy tools, carving patterns or textures; all you need is a gouge or two, a veining tool and a mallet. (The mallet you can spindle turn yourself from a piece of firewood!)

The author finds that he does the lion’s share of his bowl carving with a #8 x 1” gouge and a veining tool.

In general, I get by mostly with a #8 x 25mm (1″) gouge and a veining tool. I learned the techniques I outline in this article from Al Stirt of Enosburg, Vermont. Al pioneered the use of carving and texture to accent bowls. If you ever have the chance to take a workshop class with him — do so! His website is: http://alstirt.com

Mark the upper and lower limits of your carving space as well as a center line. Then use the indexing stop to help draw a grid pattern.

For successful carving, you have to think about shape. Traditional half-round bowls do not lend themselves as well to carving, for you have to have a low viewing angle to see the outside wall. Bowls that form a cone have steep, nearly vertical walls or are closed forms (the rim is smaller than the interior), which will display carving much better. Here, I will demonstrate on a closed form, which has a raised doughnut look. The interior under the rim must be scraped, for you cannot get in this area with a bowl gouge. Scraping the area found just under the rim (down to the largest diameter) to a constant wall thickness is challenging. Most beginners leave the wall too thick in this area, giving the bowl a clunky feeling. The wall should be at least 3/8″ thick, with 1/2″ being better for deep carved flutes. Sand the bowl to about 120-grit.

When the grid pattern is completed, use the pattern to form S-shaped curves onto the side of the bowl. Don’t worry about perfect curves — you’ll adjust them as you carve.

Although you can carve dry wood, it is much easier to tap a gouge through green wood. Luckily, many bowl tuners start with green wood. Carving green wood means that you can even carve rock-hard maple with ease. Do not complete the bottom of the bowl; rather, leave the chucking recess or glue block and faceplate you turned it on in place. If your lathe has indexing, draw as many pencil lines vertically up the wall of the bowl as you can. I do this by using the tool-rest as a straightedge at each index point. If your lathe only has 12 index positions, you can lay out more lines by raising or lowering the tool-rest. Next, draw a band by spinning the bowl against a pencil to delineate the point above the base where the carving will start. I also draw a band at the largest diameter and just under the rim. Then use the grid marks to draw an “S” curve. Draw them freehand, and do not worry if things are not perfect. Carving will fix everything.

Shop-made Bowl Vise

This simple setup for holding your bowl while carving is made from a plywood piece with threaded rods going through it, and a smaller board drilled for the rods, as shown above. Squeeze the bowl between the pieces. The plywood extends below the circumference of the bowl so that it can be captured in a vise, securing it for carving.

Holding a bowl during carving is always a challenge. These days I have a patternmaker’s vise at the end of my bench that is well-suited to the task. I cut a board to go against the rim of the bowl and interpose a piece of leather between them before tightening the vise. Previously, I used a right-angle plate built out of veneer-core plywood and held the bowl against it with a wood strip secured by threaded rod and wing nuts. You can see that setup in the top photo on the next page. Note that I have left the faceplate and glue block on the bowl until after carving.

Carving gouges are sold by sweep and width with #1 being straight and a number 10 being a highly dished gouge. As I said earlier, a #8 by 25mm does about 90% of my carving. I make most of my flutes about 3/4″ wide (“about” is the key word here), but don’t be afraid to experiment with other flute widths and gouge sweeps. There is as much room for artistic expression in carving as in the turning process itself!

Keep track of grain direction as you carve. Carve “uphill” and don’’t try to take too much wood off with each cut, refining the shape as you go.

Carving is pretty straightforward, as long as the tools are razor-sharp. Do not try to take too much material with any pass. Cut a shallow trough up the center of your layout, then deepen and widen it gradually. Final passes may have to be on opposite sides and in opposite directions to get crisp, smooth carving. You must pay careful attention to grain direction, for as you carve around a bowl, you alternate from pure end grain to pure face grain and every combination in between. Carving direction is usually the same as outside faceplate turning: from lesser diameters to greater diameters (uphill).

Sometimes refining the shape requires you to carve on the opposite edges of the same trough from different directions to get a clean cut.

That being said, once a flute is to almost final size, you often have to make a final pass on one side of the flute in one direction and a final pass on the other side of the flute in the opposite direction to get clean cuts. Think of it as shaping the opposite sides of a U shaped trough. To get the best results, you carve one direction on one side of the trough and the other direction on its mate. Stopping the carving just shy of the rim looks really nice and is a good scheme for your first bowl.

Veining Alternative

Adding a simple repetitive texture around the rim of a bowl is an easy thing to do and can be a great first step into the technique of carving turned bowls.

If this sort of carving daunts you, try creating simple texture with a veining tool. Simply take parallel straight cuts to create texture. Start it close to the edge and then continue down for any distance below the rim to create an interesting look. You can even cut across the rim if you wish.

Carving pleasing shapes onto a bowl is a great way to take your pieces to the next level. As with almost all aspects of woodworking, practice will improve your results. Take your time and start with simple forms and experiment. Who knows where you might end up?

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Carving Texture & Patterns into Turned Bowls

Ernie Conover — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:13:24 +0000

Woodturner Ernie Conover shows options for adding decorative carving to turned bowls, including fluted carving and the use of a veining chisel. The Woodworker’s Journal contributor also discusses the best bowl shapes for carving, grain direction concerns, and vise attachment options.

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Sliding Dovetail Joints

Bill Hylton — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:27:33 +0000

For the woodworker building furniture and cabinets, the sliding dovetail is a joint well worth mastering.

Strong and versatile, the sliding dovetail joint has many applications, from case construction to leg-and-rail joinery. You’ve probably seen a drawing of the sliding dovetail joint. It’s a hybrid of the dado and the dovetail, with a groove in one part, a tongue on the other. Because both the groove walls and the tongue sides are angled like a dovetail, the joint has to be assembled by sliding the tongue into the groove from one end.

The inward-slanting walls of the dovetail groove prevent the tail from pulling straight out. To assemble the joint, you slide the tail into the groove from the end.

Those canted walls give the sliding dovetail joint a decided strength advantage over a dado. The joint mechanically resists tension, meaning that the tailboard can’t pull away from the grooved board. Even without glue, the parts stay linked together. The wood must crush or break before the two parts separate.

This characteristic of the joint simplifies assembly routines. You won’t have parts collapse while you’re fumbling with clamps. Two hands usually are sufficient for assembling even multi-part casework, like a chest of drawers. Slightly bowed panels sometimes can be pulled into line without elaborate clamping configurations.

The mechanical lock of the sliding dovetail joint makes it easy to assemble, because the parts won’t fall apart while you look for clamps. You only need two hands. What a concept!

The sliding dovetail joint has another singular advantage: If left unglued, it will allow the parts to move without coming apart. A breadboard end is the obvious example. You apply a narrow strip of wood across the end of a glued-up panel to conceal its end grain and to keep it flat. The joint — unglued — allows the tabletop to expand and shrink across its width, even though the end strip isn’t elongating and shrinking.

A chest lid’s breadboard end, joined to the main panel with a sliding dovetail and glued only at the front, directs the panel’s seasonal movement to the rear and keeps the panel flat to boot.

Other applications of the sliding dovetail abound:
•   Join shelves to bookcase sides.
•   Build drawers, joining the sides to the front and the back to the sides.
•   Join aprons to table legs, and even rails to stiles, in frame-and-panel constructions.
•   Mount moldings and case tops with dovetail keys or butterfly keys, holding them tight to the structure but allowing the wood to move.
•   Mount battens to tabletops, lids, and doors to prevent them from bowing, doing this in the same way you’d mount a breadboard end.
•   Make drawer runners and guides.
•   Construct extension-table slides.

Joined to the underside of a tabletop with an unglued sliding dovetail, a batten keeps the top flat while allowing it to expand and contract seasonally.

Even without a back, bookshelves constructed with tight sliding dovetails are free of wobbling or leaning out of square.

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