New Project - Enjoying Each Step and Happy with My Skills

 I've just started a new project that is on my bucket list - Chrisitan Becksvoort's iconic 15 drawer chest.  Lost Art Press published an awesome Becksvoort book entitled Shaker Inspiration.  In this book, there are a baker's dozen of Becksvoort's pieces with measurements.  If you like his work, I highly recommend the book.  

I have ogled over this piece for quite some time. Finally, finally, finally I am starting on it.  Back in 2020 I had purchased cherry to make Mike Pekovic's Shaker chimney cabinet.  As with any project, I purchase excess, just in case.  The excess just in case cherry is what I am using.  I like the connection between the two with the same cherry.  However, all the best pieces were used on the chimney cabinet.  As such, I am having to make some compromises on what is and isn't the best face.  Such is life; I don't want to waste a nice wood and none of it is horrible.  Back in Nov/Dec I had access to a Powermatic 15" planer and took wood off of each side of the remaining boards to get them to the desired thickness.  They were already dry and by taking off of both sides, I didn't expect any wild movement.  These S3S boards remained flat and I was happy.

In past projects, I have always found myself anxious to move onto the joinery work.  I've noticed that now, I enjoy each aspect of the build.  Right now, I'm in the very early stages of breaking down the lumber, figuring which piece out of what wood goes where, hand planeing the boards, ensuring they are twist free, etc.  Each aspect is important (said by Captain Obvious) so I want to get each phase of the build its due.  Wasn't always the case but now I am aligned with this.  Feels good.

What also feels good is when I see an issue with the wood, I don't panic.  I know how to fix it.  In fact, I had a pretty big oops moment.  To get the width I needed, I had to glue up some wood.  I got a good glue joint and that went fine.  What I noticed was that there was a fairly significant hump on what would be the face edge of these pieces.  It was a long board and the hump was significant.  Given I am going to cross cut these up, I realized that I didn't need to remove the hump from the entire boad, just enough to cross cut out the first three pieces.  The worse of the hump was in the fourth piece.  In doing this, it made the job much easier.  After cross cutting them down, that one board took less than a minute to fix.  It would have taken significantly longer to fix if I had tried to do it on the whole board.  I was just happy that I didn't panic, saw this easier way to do it, and was able to execute to plan.  There were a few surprises along the way (not worth elaborating upon) but I easily handled these as well.  It just feels nice to feel comfortable and confident that I can fix things and to get to where i need to be.  I still have lots to learn and still consider myself a beginner woodworker.  I'm just happy I can see progress over time.

I've got a long way to go on this project (guessing it will take me 250 hours of work) and mistakes will be made.  There will be some gaps that annoy me. In the end, I will have a nice piece of furniture and a lot of fun in the process.  Life is good.

"Scottie, we need more power"

 As is often said by Captain Kirk and most woodworkers when it comes to power in the garage.  Actually, I find it funny/ironic that as primarily a hand tool woodworker, I need more power in the garage.  When I remodeled the garage in 2013, I put in many 120 V outlets (on multiple circuits).  I only put in one 240 V outlet.  Mostly I was ignorant of what power requirements I would have for woodworking machines back then.  The bandsaw I've chosen (PowerMatic PM1500) I need 240 V.  For the eventual dust collector, I will need an additional 240 V outlet.  Not to mention that ductless AC I installed in the garage needed 240 V.  That's a lot of juice for someone who mostly uses hand planes.  Such is life.

The scope of work was to get both a new 240 volt line and then an extension to a 120 V near the 240 V.  Based on where I wanted the dust collector to sit, I figured out the best location for the plugs.  The initial 240 V I had installed was back when I thought I would work like Norm Abrams and it was in a poor location (now that I work with hand tools primarily) so I wanted that moved down the wall closer to where the bandsaw will sit and be used when it is rolled away from the wall.  While I have electricians there, I want more light above the workbench.  

I had planned to use the ones who did the initial electrical work in 2013 as I was happy with their work.  The only downside was that I had used all of the breaker locations in the sub-panel and needed a new sub-panel which was going to greatly increase the cost.  The electrical work was going to run $2K (about what I had expected) and the new sub-panel was going to run $4K (ouch!).  The good news was that I had saved up the cash.  The bad news is that this is going to delay when I can get my dust collector.  Patience is a virtue.  I saved some money by pulling the permit myself.  My local city has a great city hall and all the departments have reps sitting at a long counter when you come in.  It really helps if there needs to be cross talk or questions.  The permit ran several hundred dollars.

The install work itself was uneventful.  The only minor hiccup was the wrong color of light was installed I wanted 6,500 K (very white) rather than the 4,000 Kish (yellow) they had brought.  No problem at all and they installed a new fixture.  As I had expected based on prior experience this was easy and hassle free to get corrected.  The one upside was that instead of two 4' two bulb fixtures, I was able to get two 4' four bulb fixtures.  I didn't know those had existed and I was quite happy when I heard about them.

All in all, I'm very happy with the work done.  The inspection was straightforward.  I had thought I was going to be able to purchase the dust collector this summer as well but it looks like I will likely need to wait until late 2023/early 2024.  I really don't need to use the bandsaw until early 2024 so it will be ok.  While I was at it, I swapped out the original fluorescent bulbs for LED drop ins.  That added a bit of brightness as well.  Even found a local woodworker who was happy to have the still functioning fluorescent bulbs to reuse in their shop.

Since I needed to move things off the walls and out of the way, this also resulted in an opportunity to do some reorganization in the shop.  I did that and my next post will focus on the shop reorganization.  My shop has come a long way since I did the initial remodel in 2013.  I've never blogged about the initial 2013 work (I think).  Below are the photos of the 2013 work just to document it.  I don't want to delve into detail.  I upgraded electrical and more lighting, insulated wall (really hot where I live), put new garage doors which had insulation, hung cabinets, overhead storage racks, and had the floors done.  Much later 2021 came the ductless AC.  The worry in 2013 (a year into my living in the home) was whether or not woodworking would really be a hobby I spent a lot of time doing.  I thought so but only time would tell.  I can confidently say that I spend a lot of time in the garage woodworking 10-20 hours a week.  As such, I feel that the money was well spend.  Sure, I'd like a 1,000 square foot outbuilding but I don't have room for that and the shop is very nice the way it is and I am quite happy with and content with what I have.

Marking My Workbench Taller (41" vs. conventional bend at wrist ca. 35")

When I started woodworking in 2015, I lacked the confidence to make my own workbench.  As such, I spent a small fortune and bought one from Lie Nielsen.  I've been happy with it with one exception, it's 35" height is lower than I would like; I am 6' tall.  Works fine for hand plane work but not so good for cutting fine joinery and dovetails.  My back will ache a bit so I often will sit when working.  Though I discovered Paul Sellers very early on, it wasn't until a year or three into woodworking I discovered that he recommended a height of 40"; he's 5'10".  That is the height he has used for 50+ years and one of the reasons he cites is back issues that can develop from lower benches.  LieNielsen must have received enough calls from folks wanting their benches taller in that they had leg extensions you can purchase.  In 2018 or 2019 I purchased them; technically LieNielsen provided them for free and I was grateful for that.  As part of shop reorganization (a future blog will be about that), I have gotten around to installing the leg extensions.

LieNielsen provided them long so that the end user could cut to desired length.  In 1Q23, I took a woodworking class in which I was able to work at a 39" tall bench and I really liked that extra height as compared to my 35" bench at home.  Paul Sellers recommended 40" and I'm slightly taller than him.  As such, I settled on 41".  I will work on it for a while and if I want it lower, I will cut it down in 1/2" increments.

Cutting the legs extensions to length was straightforward though I spent a lot of time checking my measurements as many ways as possible.  After carefully and slowly cutting to length, I used a block plane to flush the bottom a bit.  I didn't go crazy (it's on the floor after all) but I wanted to make sure there wasn't any weird high spots (there wasn't - in fact it was a great saw job).  Then, I put a heavy chamfer as it will be dragged, and I didn't want to fracture the edges.

For the install, my next-door neighbor came over to help tilt the bench and we put the leg extensions in place. Though I only needed his help for about 5 minutes, I greatly appreciated it as it was a bit too much for my wife and I do to by ourselves.  From there, I used the offcuts of the leg extensions to make shims to get a tight fit in the plywood "boxing".  Then, I clamped in several axis and used the holes in the plywood as guides to drill from both sides through the legs.  Then, tightened the carriage bolts.  

When all was said and done, it took about half a day's work to do it.  I hadn't done it sooner because I knew this would result in moving the low items from the peg board in front of the bench and that would result in a shop reorganization.  What little work I've done on it so far (just cutting out the shims) confirmed I like the increased height.  Time will tell if 41" is the final number.  It definitely is a good place to start with my height of 6'.   I know all of the conventional wisdom about knuckle height.  I just think that is a bad idea as a starting point and higher is likely better for most people.  Plus, it's not that hard to make a bench sorter.