No Comment #2 - Dem Legs

I admit it, I nearly forgot to get back to the remaining build videos of the Tim Burton table! mea culpa...

This episode goes over the legs; not going to go over the actual shaping process as that's just rasping, but do cover how they were designed and laid out and something useful for anyone making a table: how to easily level it.

Next episode will cover the finish as I did that before assembly. Since I'm going to the shop after this post to work on finishing Angle Madness, it shouldn't take forever for the next episode :)

No Comment #2 - Onyx Cap for the Tapered Octagon

Getting back to the Tim Burton table build (No Comment #2), today we'll look at cutting and polishing the piece of Onyx that caps the tapered octagon.  We'll also go over making the molding that became a frame around the bottom.

While I used the Bridge City Jointmaker Pro for cutting the molding, that's actually a pretty trivial use for that tool (but I like to use it and it's right there!)  No Jointmaker?  No problem, I show a technique at the end of the video that you may find useful for cutting miters in small molding without a Jointmaker and without a tablesaw or bandsaw.

As a warning, there's some easy geometry in this episode... bisecting the angles (which are the miters for the frame) can be easily done with a compass.  You learned it in middle school, but in case those neurons were fried in some college hazing incident, we'll go over it quickly.  In the original build video, I used a Bridge City CT-4 (Angle Divider) and BS-5 to do without the geometry, but these nice layout tools are hard to come by.



Have to apologize for going dark for over a month! Life, work, and 120ºF+ heat waves kept me from the shop.  Yes, folks, we have canceled flights on account of heat out here!  That said, though, two other videos are in production with another review being recorded this weekend.  Of what? It makes a cameo in the background near the end of this video :)

No Comment #2 - Bandsawing the Tapered Octagon

Cutting the assembled tapered octagon was a lot of fun during this build because I got to use the bandsaw in a way I hadn't before.  Certainly a technique I'll be exploring more in future builds!

Basically, we built a sacrificial jig to hold the tapered octagon "spatially" in the correct orientation for the bandsaw blade to remove planes.  While we could have computed the compound cut at the top of each triangle for the octagon to get a level top, to do two more cuts on each triangle to then remove the part for the table top would have been a lot of error-prone work... any deviation in length would have to be sanded out later (end grain!).  Then add the work of triple the glue-up.  Cutting the plane on the bandsaw, especially with a smooth-cutting Laguna Resaw King, left nothing to sand (sure there were tool marks, but those surfaces were perfect for gluing in this project).

Ah, the mysterious holes in the jig are explained, too.  Had some questions about those :)

Do remember the design episode where I explained how the top part of the octagon changed.  Originally, I wanted the octagon to continue through the table so the top piece needed to be exactly positioned so Dominos could go through the octagon top, the table, and into the octagon bottom.  In the video flashback, I explain that cut that ultimately we didn't keep (but did use).

However, properly cutting off that top piece does have an importance that we'll see in a future episode on the assembly.  As a spoiler, I'll tell you :)  That top piece was used as a template for where the Domino holes in the table top were needed in order to get them to go smoothly into the octagon bottom.  Without that template, it would have been long and messy to position those Dominos; with that template, it was as simple as tracing the revealed mortises.  But you'll see that in more close-up detail in the assembly episode.

I think the next episode will be another bandsaw episode; editing all this old footage with some new narration mixed in has me busy in the video editor, not in the shop.  Not a good thing.  The next planned episode will at least have me running a tool or two!



Here's a link to the video for my email subscribers: http://youtu.be/-6ID7hQwCHE

No Comment #2 - Tapered Octagon

The tapered octagon piercing through the shaped demi-lune top of the Tim Burton table (formerly known as No Comment #2) involves the nemesis of most woodworkers: compound angles (the stair builders are laughing right now...)

True, compound angles are more complicated than square cuts with a square blade by a square woodworker :) ("triple square cuts"), but some techniques can make them really easy to work with and get great results.

In this episode, a large part deals with cutting and Domino-ing the triangles that make up the tapered octagon along with some tips on eye-balling the cut with an angled fence and how to recover from Dominoing with a less than perfect bevel angle setting.  The Domino trick actually comes in really useful in the triple-square arena as well.

There was a lot of interest in the new-to-me technique of using the Domizilla to mortise through multiple parts simultaneously; the process is really easy (though I over-explain, I know), but saves on a lot of awkward calculation of other compound angles.

Next up will be a short video on how to measure a compound angle off a project; this is really useful when you are making an n-sided object... make n-1 sides according to your formula and tool settings then calculate the last perfect-fitting piece directly off the rest.  The savings in caulk alone make this worthwhile to learn!

The video refers you to the Angle Madness Jigs video if you want to know more about cutting miters with triangles.

Sorry it's longer than I expected... jeez, it's just a tapered octagon!



As an aside, apparently all my friends had very very bored parents in August because we just had a string of 12 birthdays to celebrate.  Nice full social calendar; completely bumped video editing :)  Hey, at least it was for very pretty, I mean, very good reasons!

No Comment #2 - Table Top

Normally a panel for a table is pretty trivial to put together: surface, joint, glue, done!  While that's not always the case, it would be the Cliff Notes version.

The table top for the Tim Burton table is another story with all the shaping on the underside, scalloped edges, and that it is a demi-lune pattern fanning out from a center.  In this build video, I'll talk about why Dominos were used (not actually needed on a Cliff Note panel), how the ramp for the router works, and some of the aspects of laying out where the wedges come from.

This episode doesn't cover the finishing as that will be covered in another episode.

As always, thanks for watching...

No Comment #2 - Design Overview

In fussing with these design videos, I decided to break them down into small areas of the build so you could surf the ones that are of interest and skip the others... but you won't, right? :)

This first post-build video is of the design and where some of the ideas came from and some of the changes that happened along the way.  Also shows the table where it will go and what the onyx cap is for.

Subsequent build videos will cover each part in more detail, like the table top, the tapered octagon, the legs, a special video on just the stone shaping, coloring and finishing, and ultimately something on assembly since there are some interesting points to that as well.

After putting you through an hour-long video, this one is just a bit over 8 minutes!

Thanks for watching and welcome to the new subscribers... seemed to have gotten a lot lately!

No Comment #2 - Pre-build Videos Odds 'n' Ends

Thanks for the good feedback on No Comment #2, both the video and the project.  It was a fun project and the compliments on the video make that effort worth it.  I've also made a list of things to do better for #3, whenever that happens!

If you haven't watched it yet due to the hour length, most people said it went quickly and didn't feel like an hour.  If you are impatient and want to see the final product, cue it up to get through the 3 minute intro up to where the build starts then jump to the 1 hour mark and watch from there out.

I'm taking this weekend off of video editing and will edit the first design episode next weekend.  Had some parties and hockey this weekend plus if I import more footage into my machine right now, it's so full it'll ooze out!  Friday, though, more storage arrives!  Thank you thank you to the viewer who greatly helped out with that!

The photo above is my 'mission control' desk at home; guess if I wasn't so nocturnal, I could have taken it with daylight lighting it up.  The left is the preview monitor to see what you're doing, the right the timeline.  Usually there's a glass of red wine between the monitors; I need wine to be able to watch myself while editing...

What stole the show for one viewer was that tape dispenser.  I bought it awhile ago to hold 3/4" and 2" rolls of blue tape while doing marquetry because you don't want to drop everything to use two hands to take a bit.  Works great!  When not doing marquetry, I put packing tape in as the second roll.  I use both non-stop it seems.  Very handy and not really expensive.  There are three 1" wide wheels on the back so you can load it up with many combinations of widths.  All metal!

Off in Sweden, a forum thread started wondering why I use the jigsaw upside-down.  Funny to read where the thread wanders through Google Translate :)  (BTW, forum registration is broken! I was going to reply in English but apparently "question #3" is missing!)

So, I'll answer here and later in the build video.  With the jigsaw upside-down, I get these advantages:

• Clearly visible blade for better tracking to a line and safety
• Most blades pull chips into the body of the jigsaw; upside-down, this pulls them away from you and gravity helps with the few chips that try getting away
• If you hang on to the board with fingers below the board, using a jigsaw right-side up risks you clipping your fingers; with the jigsaw upside-down, if you run into those fingers, it is the base of the saw, not the blade.
• As a corollary of the above, I find that I have more control since I can see the blade tracking so easily instead of peering into the chipguard.

Admittedly, the Trion's barrel-grip and knob up front makes this really nice; I often use the knob to pull the jigsaw toward me upside-down under the stock.  If you have a D-handle, I can imagine it would be more awkward.  If you have a barrel grip, draw a curvy line on MDF or other scrap and try it out, twice.  First time to get the feel for it, second to see your accuracy.

Another common question is what type of stone that is (it appeared as the second clue).  It's Onyx, a form of marble.  You'll see more of that in the build videos.

And now, a "forest for the trees" moment while editing the Guitar Edition v11.0 of No Comment #2...

When making the music credits, I took a list of songs by each artist and sorted them alphabetically. Song titles would fade in and out in pairs below the artist name.  Only after re-watching the preview version for the umpteenth time did I notice this ironic pairing of song titles:

If you don't immediately get the joke, uhm, don't google it at work...

No Comment #2 - The Full Build

Finally!  There, thought I'd say it for you since I've been saying it all week :)

I had a lot of fun with No Comment #1.  Enough that I'd thought to continue the series with a small but fun build aptly named No Comment #2 (clever, no?).  Like No Comment #1, I won't tell you what I'm building.  This video is a full project build from start to finish in high-speed sections and multi-cams to keep you busy watching instead of snoozing!  Guess as you watch it what I'm making.  Some clues have appeared on this blog to, you know, build intrigue.  My version of foreshadowing!

Unlike No Comment #1, I'll be following up this initial build video with videos detailing different aspects of the build.  There were some interesting techniques used in this build that can be applied to many of your projects.

If you write a comment on this video here or on YouTube (which I'd appreciate!), please don't put a spoiler in there as to what the project was.  Latest comments appear on the homepage so someone not trying to see the comments may see "hey, nice grain elevator!" and it'll just ruin the effect :)

The video is an hour long although my test victims who previewed many early versions never thought it too long; hopefully it'll be as interesting for you.  Maybe go pee before you hit play!


There are two versions of the video!  It wasn't enough to drive myself batty with all this video editing that I mixed two soundtracks.  One uses the songs you've heard many times on previous podcasts.  The second uses new music!  It's all progressive guitar and rock instrumentals.  It is very much what you'd hear in my shop, especially the newly-found favorite Daniel Bautista.

Since the video is all music between a short introduction and final conclusion, you could always hit mute and play your favorite hair bands if you prefer.

I shook the dust off the walls listening to the guitar edition after rendering it tonight; the middle three songs might be a bit much if you're not into the guitar as much but fear not as the songs after those three are very melodic; modulate with the volume control!

Here's the version with the sounds you've often heard on this podcast:



Here's the guitar version: version 11.0!




While sometimes the scene is messy in the video, what's behind the camera is usually piles of whatever I wanted out of the scene.  Here's a panorama of the shop during some of the shooting (the project was in the house so no spoiler here):

A secondary goal of this video was to get better at video editing, lighting, etc.  The biggest thing I learned is that for the total time of this project, easily 9/10th (or more!) of it was video work, whether it was setting up cameras, correcting clips, editing clips, or figuring out some silly thing I wanted in the video for no other reason than I didn't know how (at the time!) to do it!  This really wasn't that long of a build if you don't have red record lights pointing at you :)

For the curious, here's the info for my dedicated video drives:

Crazy that two 4Tb drives are full of the raw and optimized footage for this thing.  As I render the build videos to follow this one, I'll get to delete some footage.  At one point, I found myself drooling over an 18Tb raid stack.  Someday... (no, Friday! :)

Angle Madness, my other project in process, will continue, too, while I put out detail videos for No Comment #2, as I've recorded a lot of the content for those videos already.  The slow pace of Angle Madness needed an intervention for myself and for you.  Now you know why I was in the dark for so long :)

No Comment #2 - Clue #2

This week had many unexpected fires... none of them mine, but people I know like to share their fires :)  What's the quote?  "Your lack of planning doesn't constitute an emergency on my part"?  Something like that!

Anyway, someone made an interesting guess as to what No Comment #2 is based on the first clue: something to do with the TV sci-fi "Stargate".  Guess it looks like the chevrons from the show.  Hey, I'd probably like that show; I may see if it is available on download.

It reminded me that I took a clue photo earlier this week (pre-fires...), but I needed to wait to post it in case it wouldn't get used in the project.  No need for red herrings!

It's getting used and it looks fantastic.  If you guess the material (not too difficult), the obvious use isn't how it is getting used.  The piece was actually a lucky find and changed the design of the project.  The commentary videos after the initial build video will describe the other options; the build video will only include this piece.  I learned a lot working with it, too.

At this point, everything is ready for stain and finish before final assembly.  Spraying some of the components outside wouldn't have been possible the past two weeks as our highs were just 47ºF.  Hard to believe that today the high was 74ºF... I guess the past two weeks were our winter.  -groan- need more winter... (send some! please!)

Clue #2:

I'm eager to release this video!  I hit a major road block on it: I ran out of royalty-free music!  Yes, the same instrumentals you've heard in other episodes except with the video at 40 minutes currently, that's a lot of music to find.  Found a nice source tonight; not cheap, but not too expensive either.  Will post details with No Comment #2 if it works out that I use it.

No Comment #2 - Clue #1

Did a very interesting cut for No Comment #2 today; at the risk of completely giving away what it is I make in that video, here's a photo of the offcut:

How that cut is made and how you can easily alter it will definitely become part of future projects I've jotted down since this afternoon.  The accompanying video that explains the cut should give you ideas for your own project.

But not until the project is complete and No Comment #2 is released :)

No Comment #1 - Follow-up

Voilà, the bombe box I made for my mom in the first "No Comment" build.  If you didn't watch the video yet, well, sorry, that picture is a spoiler for what was built, but it was a fun video to watch.  I thought so, anyway, and the comments were all in line with that.

So the future will see more No Comment builds for smaller projects with the blog posting at least pointing out some techniques you can watch for in the video.

I filmed the video while working on the project; although I say "I just flipped on the camera and worked", there's always a fair amount of time thinking of some angles you want to take and monkeying with the camera and your work pieces to accomplish it.  And the lights, good grief, the lights.  Three tripods in a shop take a surprising amount of space!!  Definitely still impacts your speed on a project.  But it's true that I'd finally hit record and go...

That meant a lot of footage on my iMac for processing.  Would you believe 10 hours 7 minutes and 15 seconds worth of raw footage coming in at 156 Gb.  ...and I didn't import at full resolution!  While a totally worthless statistic these days, that would work out to 111,000 floppy disks... which is a stack as tall as a 173-story sky-scraper (with a 4' antennae on the top :)

...all that reduced to 26 minutes.

The original design came from Charles Neil as part of a Lumberjocks challenge.  All of us in his guild liked it enough to bug him into interrupting the table series going on in order to do this box.  So in December, his  guild members got around 6 hours of video.  That's nuts!  Not complaining :)

I used his guild videos to learn how to make this box; it was the first guild-build of any kind I've built with few modifications.  Loved the results.  If the techniques in the video are familiar to you, you could likely watch it a time or three to draft up a build plan if you wanted to build your own.  If not, the video series that was on the guild is now on a DVD in his store; since the whole Lumberjocks challenge tried to raise money for charity, the sale of this DVD benefits the Wounded Warriors Project charity.

Someone asked me how long the whole build took.  It took about 11-12 hours including the filming, which adds significantly.  That includes finishing since I did the finish as much as possible along the way.  Naturally the "middle-ing" (what I call finishing since it's about the midway point...) takes a fair amount of extended time because you spend 15-20 minutes wiping on a finish then ignoring it for 10 hours.  I only counted the 20 minutes.

Another viewer asked about the tool I used for routing out the recess for the hatch pull.  That's a Foredom rotary tool and a William Ng router base.  Also use his bits since they come with a collar so you can easily set your routing depth and swap between bits and the depth is the same; very nice feature.  This is a pretty new tool for me, but I'm loving it.  Thing is, I picked that pull because my mom would have a very difficult time with the holders in Charles' version (very bad arthritis).  The pull is much easier for her to use, but I got it after I had the panel done.  Loved the precision of the tool: the wood behind the pull's bowl-shaped bottom is less than 1/32" thick.  It was prefinished plus I had wiped some thinned epoxy on the wood earlier in the process.  Actually had to sand the back of the bowl a bit to seat it correctly.  A bit of epoxy on that thin wood on the inside reinforces it.

Bob Kloes sold me some fantastic Tiger Maple for the box; the Walnut I had here in the offcut bin :)  Just tonight a fellow woodworker came over to see the rest of the wood I got from Bob... the 8/4 bird's eye is amazing and it isn't planed yet!  Nice stuff.  I have to re-air dry that board cuz of drool.  I don't normally find stuff like this around here; maybe in your area, selection is better (bravo for you!)

He also has some special boards so call him to see what else he has; I got some Maple with knot inclusions... not something everybody would want, but I definitely wanted it.  Also, for this box, it turns out he has a kit of all the right stock; if doing the cove on the table saw and all the ensuing clean-up turns you off, have Bob run it through his molder for you.

Great project; thanks for putting that together, Charles!

(Extra note: I recently did a blog entry on other uses of the Domino; give it a look again as I've added additional uses like a laptop stand in the shop and using Dominos to hold mirrors in place)

No Comment #1

For a fun, more visual way to start the New Year, I produced this video while preparing a Christmas present for my mom.  I had no time for a regular build video with commentary, technique explanations, and all that, so I thought to make a video of just the "action" parts.  This isn't where my project builds are going; this is just a fun interlude until I start the next project.

The idea is that I don't tell you what I'm building, there is no commentary, no captions, nothing!  Watch as the build goes along and guess what I'm making or, if you're pretty certain what it is, where the part I'm building at that moment will go.

There are things to pick up on as you watch, though.  For example, shaping something with a 1.25" bandsaw blade isn't easy with tight curves, but using the back of the teeth, you can finesse a curve pretty quickly and cleanly so watch for that.  Using MagBlocks as stop blocks on the table saw; watch to see how multiple blocks can be used at the same time as multiple stops.  Using an RS2e quarter-sheet sander for small parts or leveling across parts.

Happy New Year!

(Note: Monday January 9th I'll post a follow-up with more details of this build)