As many of you know I had tennis elbow & nerve surgery & it has kept me out of the woodworking game for the past couple of months.
Now that I’m brace free & doing physical therapy I’m slowly inching my way back in.
Prior to my surgery I was working like a mad man to get as far as I could on the federal card table project I was working on.
The man reason of this was I knew once I was out of the brace I had to go six weeks with out lifting or moving more than 5 lbs with my right arm. After that I had another 6 weeks at no more than 10 lbs. From there who knows.
Any way, I pretty much got everything routed into the table top before I went under the knife. By getting this far it would allow me to start working on the stringing & veneering once I was up for getting back into the shop.
So this week I started by cutting out 1/8” x 1/8″ strips of tiger maple for stringing so I could fit & glue them in. (I used the exact same methods to make this as I did the 1/16” stringing I covered in an earlier post.)
After that I had to size, cut & glue in a piece of burl for the semicircle.
That left cutting the veneer for the edge banding.
Cutting it for the back straight piece is straight forward but to go around the circular part of the table will take a bit more. The first step is to cut some strips of veneer into 4” wide strips.
Next I had to make a jig. To build this I took a piece of plywood & cut it to be 4 1/2” x 20” in size. From there I drilled a 1/8” diameter hole centered but up an inch from one end. (This becomes my pivot point for the jig.)
From there I set up my band saw circle cutting jig for 18” from the blade. With the plywood in place I cut it to final length I laid a strip of my veneer on top of the plywood but overhanging about an inch.
Then using a scrap piece of plywood to sandwich the veneer in between, I proceeded to swing the jig through the blade. After each pass I set just pulled the veneer to overhang an inch and cut again. (This method was super simple & was first shown to me by Glen Huey years ago.)
After I had several pieces cut I headed over to my table to look at the layout. My next step will be to trip each piece to mate up to each other & then glue them up.
Then I’ll add some 1/16″ maple stringing to the outside edge.
But that’s another post since I need some aspirin due to my arm being in pain. It’s a slow healing process but I’m glade to be back in the shop!
Saturday I got to spend some time in the shop so I took advantage of it by installing the legs on the federal card table I’m building.
I made bridal joints for the front two legs in addition to mortise & tenon joints for the back to. (Back legs are attached to swing arms.) Then I assembled the pieces together.
Here are a few random photos from the install.
Marking Out Mortise Location
Installing Spacer & Brace For Swing Arms
Gluing Mortise & Tenons
Cutting Pins for Swing Arms
Test Fit Prior To Assembly
Next I’m going to have to mill the lumber for tops…
Today I got another chance to get into the garage for a bit so I could work on the inlay table. (That seems I’ll never finish!)
Lucky for me today’s task was short & sweet so there was no excuses for not completing the install of the pateraes into the 2 front legs.
Now the pateraes I’m cheating on. They’re store bought so all I had to do was pop them out.
From there I centered them on my leg & using a small spacer block (to protect the paterae I clamped them to my leg.
From here I used my xacto knife to cut a groove around the paterae. Then after I removed the clamp & cut the line deeper into the leg.
Next I set the depth of my small router plan (I love this tool BTW!) to a bit stronger than the paterae thickness & started plowing out the material.
Using some sandpaper & a small chisel I test fit the piece into the hole. Making sure to keep a nice tight fit.
Then using liquid hide glue, I glue the pateraes in & set a pressure block (with tape on it to make sure the glue doesn’t stick) on top of them & clamp for 24 hours.
Tomorrow when I get home from work I’ll sand everything down & start marking the parts for installation.
Hopefully I also get to spend a bit more time both in the shop & on this project…
When I made my first federal card table I used power everything on it. If it was in the shop and had a power cord attached, it got used!
I think I can honestly say the ONLY hand tool I used building it was sand paper. (For a few touch ups.)
With this project I’ve tried to gear myself to using more hand tools. Part because the inlay design requires it & part because I thought I’d see how peaceful it could be to work in a shop where, outside of lights and a radio, the power it off.
With that, today I got to spend a little bit of time in the shop cutting in the inlay cuffs & the upper edge banding by hand.
Listed below is a step x step account of how I tackled what last only required a jig & tablesaw. (But I’m not complaining!)
Step 1: Make where you want the bottom of the banding to start. I chose 4″ simply because it was a round number and looked good to my eye.
Step 2: Using a bevel gauge set the the correct angle & an xacto knife, gently score across the grain at your mark.
Step 3: Using a scrap piece of inlay banding for a spacer, place your bevel gauge to the exact location.
Step 4: Use the xacto again to score the upper line.
Step 5: Using a chisel, pear up to the line but draw the curled up piece back towards you to avoid tear out.
Step 6: Once you’ve pared back both sides to the line, use a small router plane set to the depth of the inlay banding to blow out the rest of the material.
Step 7: Test fit the piece.
Going through the exact same steps I also cut in the grooves for the upper edge banding.
A few months ago Chuck Bender of Acanthus Workshop posted a video of how he makes his stringing. (See below)
Well I tried that out and it worked like a charm. I even posted something on the blog about it and I’ve used the heck out of the stringing I made.
Then I needed more. (Seems I didn’t make enough!) So I decided to take a few minutes this weekend to cut some. The only thing is while Chucks way works, it’s a bit to set up and I’ll admit I’m lazy!
So knowing I was going to make my string Sunday afternoon, I went out in the shop around 10pm Saturday night and built a quick jig. This jig is really nothing more than a wide push stick that keeps my hands away from the blade and pushes both my string and cut off away from the blade.
Now all I do is clamp on an auxiliary fence so the stringing wont get caught in under my stock fence. Then set my fence up for a 1/16″ and cut away using my new jig.
I’m not going to say that I’m converting to into a hand tool guy but damn it was nice and relaxing with just the radio running tonight!
Here I’m grooving out the top and bottom arch of one side. The middle is lightly grooved out for reference at this point. (I need to do this for each leg.)
And here is all that that i glue up in this first step. Once it dries it gets trimmed flush and the middle piece cut in.
Then I get to switch sides and after I cut in the straight lines in. (But for 3 sides of the front two legs and 2 sides of the back two.)
Sunday I decided to start working on the back rails for my table so when I headed out to the shop I I milled up the following parts to size.
1 – Spacer 3/4″” x 3.5″ x 5″
1 – Middle Stretcher 3/4″ x 3.5″ x 9″
2 – Swing Stretchers 3/4″ x 3.5″ x 14″
The length of the swing stretchers didn’t really matter I just knew 14″ was long enough for this stage of the game. Later I’ll need to cut them down and mill a tenon on each to attach to the legs.
With my parts milled it was time to start doing some layout work. The swings stretchers work by the way of hinged fingers so I marked a line 1 1/4″ from the edge of boards & laid out 5 equal spaces at 11/16″. (Click the photo for a better view)
From here I raised my table saw blade to 1 1/4″. Using an extended fence on my miter gauge, I nibbled away the slots in between the fingers making note to cut on the waste side of the line.
(Note: Depending on the type of blade you have in your table saw, you may need to go back with a chisel and do some clean up to the top of the spaces.)
After doing a dry fit I dug a penny out & used it to layout a round over on the ends of the fingers & using the spindle sander I rounded the corners.
I then did another dry fit but this time I clamped the 3 pieces to an auxiliary board (to keep the pieces from moving) & made my way over to the drill press it to bore 2 holes for the 1/4″ dia. steel rod that holds the parts together but also lets them swing open when needed.
Then using 2 drill bits as pins I did another test fit and found that when I tried to swing out my stretcher they were rubbing against the middle stretcher.
So using a carving chisel I cut out some relief for the fingers so they could swing open.
At this point I realized that I didn’t have the steal rod. So now I have to head out to Home Depot to pick one up but here’s a pic of the pre-assembly.
The next step for me is going to be working on the inlay in the legs but that’s for another post…
This past weekend I was on eBay bidding for a Bridge City Tools CS-1 center scribe. (The CS-2 has been sold out so my only hope is eBay) So while I set a high bid I found out I lost anyway by $2.50. Sometimes it just isn’t meant to be I guess.
Anyway, the reason for this tool was so I could use it on the federal card table I’m currently building. I wanted to mark the center of the tapered legs so I could start laying out for the inlay.
Knowing that I could simply mark a few center points and play connect the dots I opted to build something instead.
My first go around was slim and easy to hold with threaded inserts and all kinds of fancyness that didn’t work worth a damn!
After a few more goofy attempts I told myself “Dude; you’re making this waaaayy to difficult!”
So with that I grabbed a piece of scrap measure out two holes for dowels and one the size of a pencil and glued it together.
With this I simply straddle the leg between the dowels and twisted till one each dowel touched a side. This centered the pencil down the leg and from there I started laying out centerlines.
Once that was completed, I set out to make another jig to hold the legs so I could start drawing the layout of inlay design I’m going to use.
It’s simply 2 pieces of 8/4 poplar screwed to a piece of 3/4″ MDF that wedges the leg in between. I have a registration mark on the jig that lines up with the bottom of the apron banding. From there I start plotting dimensions and using the compass to lay out the design I’m looking for.
When I actually start cutting out the groove for the inlay I’ll need to apply a clamp to the jig so the leg won’t slip but it’s tight enough for compass layout.
