Finishing

Lights, corners, more oil…

Got the LED strip during the week, cut a length off, soldered on the wire, tested it in the lab and it all lit up well, so I pulled off the paper on the back (the strip is self-adhesive) and stuck it in place inside the aluminium extrusion with some heatshrink around the cable end for strain relief and put the diffuser and endcaps in place…

The cable fits in the hole that I drilled for it, so that’s grand, but the connector for the 12V power supply on the other hand, is just a little too big so I’ll have to expand that hole, then cut the wire to length, solder the connector on and then install it. That’s going to be a bit fiddly and I might even wait till it’s indoors before doing that.

So with that checked, I went round the joints with a chisel and a plastic razor and cleaned up the excess glue. The joints under the desk I couldn’t reach, so that might be for the weekend when I can take it out of the shed in the daylight.

Next job was to shape the dovetail joints at the top, which is a damn sight easier when the workpiece is small enough to be able to walk around it. When it’s taking up the entire floor space of the shed and you’re literally climbing on stuff to reach the tools on the wall behind it, not so much. Still, an hour of cursing and swearing and the #04 and two chisels and some 120 grit sandpaper later, and another application of danish oil…

I don’t think I’m completely done with sanding for that shelf and those joints though. But I can’t reach them to work on them properly so I may need to take the desk out of the shed to work on it with the sander, give it another dose of danish oil, let that cure up then do another coat or two of polyx until it looks done. Then I’ll take it indoors, fit the light and that’ll be it done. I hope.

Desk Shelf / Finishing / Woodworking — No Comments
06
Oct 19

Final stretch…

Few hours in the shed this Saturday. Put the inlaid desk to one side, got out the hated router and set it up and dug a shallow trench along the underside of the first shelf.

Next, had to cut the length of aluminium extrusion I had to length, so spent a few fiddly minutes getting the right length including the end caps, and then discovered I didn’t have a hacksaw to hand. The bandsaw might be able to cut aluminium in a pinch, but the throat’s not deep enough to get to where the cut had to be made, so… angle grinder?

Angle grinder. Fiddly to set up, very fast cut.

Almost too fast really. And of course, messy. So time for hand filing. Out with imp to hold it and the files to clean up the cut and deburr everything.

And then test fit. The extrusion has small ribs to act as barbs when you drive it into the slot so I’ve not seated it home yet (plus I need to drill in from the back of the shelf to run the cord in for power and I don’t yet have the LED strip to go into the extrusion, so this is as far as we go with this step for now).

I’ll drill in from here in the middle of this marked channel back to a slightly deeper part of the trench that I’ll cut before drilling and then it’s a wiring job. I was wondering about chasing the cord down the leg of the shelf and having the plug emerge at the base, but I might just have a 12V DC socket at this point and let the plug go directly to it. We’ll see.

Next, planed the surfaces at the rear of the top of the uprights which will actually contact the wall. This is a straightforward, if slightly exact, chamfer with a handplane.

Before and after. Not much to see, but it’s the difference between leaning against the wall and being driven into it like a chisel. I’ll put a leather pad on these surfaces as well (and maybe the back of the top shelf too) after finishing is done.

And now shaping and finish planing. The #04 and my favourite spokeshave come out and all the sharp corners that have been left alone till now go away so every edge is rounded and safe, and the surfaces all get a final planing to take all the pencil lines and dust off, though with this board (you can just about see the worst of it in the photo), there’s been some damage where things have just been banged off the board throughout the last year. Consequences of too large a project in too small a space – it’s not just working on a component that gets affected, storing a component is just as difficult and stuff gets damaged. All the ironing in the world wasn’t making any odds here. Moral of the story: work on smaller projects.

A quick run-over with 240 grit sandpaper later and it’s the last coat of Danish oil (and the first for the uprights). This is the last application of Danish oil for this project, but not the end of the finishing process.

I don’t know why one of these boards is darker than the other. I’m guessing one was on the top of the pack when it was in the timber yard, hence the pale stripe near the top where the strap held the pack together while the UV in daylight tanned the rest of the board. I’m hoping that’s it because if so the wood will naturally equalise in colour over a few months or so.

Next morning rolls around and it’s time for the poly part of the finishing. None of the US brands of wipe-on poly I would know are available here, but Osmo Polyx gets recommended a lot and I used another Osmo finish for other projects before with good results, so we’ll spin the wheel on this one. Instructions are simple: open tin, stir well, apply a very very thin coat, repeat coats after 24 hours, 2-3 coats is all that’s needed.

Cue re-watching several videos on polyx wondering if some joker snuck white paint into my transparent poly finish, but no, it’s just that colour (apparently it’s the waxes in the finish – polyx isn’t exactly a liquid polyurethane finish, it’s a blend of oils, waxes and eleven secret herbs and spices that’s allegedly as durable as wipe-on poly but without looking like you sprayed plastic on wood. I’m dubious, but we’ll see). Okay. Now cue a lot of trial to get that thin coat just right. In the end, I apply a thin but still very white-looking coat with a brush and don’t coat everything; then I use a white scotchbrite pad to rub it smooth over the whole surface by which time it’s pretty thin; and then I give it a last wipe-down with a paper towel to get any excess and ensure the layer is nice and thin (if the layer’s thick, it won’t cure right and now you have a gummy tacky layer of oil and wax that’s hard to remove for a retry).

Not an ideal drying setup, but the best I can manage for now with the size of the shed. It’ll have cured in 24 hours and that’ll be all that I do with it for this stage; next will be drilling the cable route for the light, fitting the LEDs, and when all of that is done, the final assembly and glue-up; and then I’ll do the final two coats of polyx to finish. I might even give an extra coat on top of that to the top of the desk, as it’ll see the most abuse. Hell, I may need to refinish that in a year or two, but I’ll drown that in resin when I get there…

Finishing / Locker / Woodworking — No Comments
24
Jun 18

Done

Time to complete the locker. The door got resawn down from 1″ to about 3/8″ thick using the bowsaw and the large ryoba when I got too annoyed at banging the bowsaw off the wall on every stroke, and resawing remains the most boring annoying thing ever, but you while you can thickness plane 3/4″ off a 1″ board with a scrub plane, it’s a pain in the fundament to do so. Roll on bigger bandsaw.

Once the door was then planed down and fitted, which was mainly just faffing about planing until the edges of the doors matched the doorframe, it was time for the worst part of every project.

I hate hinges. They’re a pain in the backside to get aligned and fitted. Maybe I’m just fitting them at the wrong time, maybe I’m doing something wrong, maybe there’s a trick to it, I don’t know. I’ve read and watched everything on them that I can find and still they’re a pain. And the ones where you have to hammer in tacks instead of using screws are the worst because everything’s tiny and fiddly and you never have the access you need.

So, we cut the mortices. Very shallow ones at least, so much so that the cuts can get done using the marking knife this time. And the #722 router helps to actually cut out the waste.

Really thin material…

It barely looks like anything’s been taken off, but no, that’s cut…

It’s even flush properly.

Making sure the barrels of the hinges are aligned with a straight-edge is fiddly unless you have six hands.

And then cut out the mortices for the door hinge mounts.

Okay, that’s fine. And that’s the last of the work, I don’t want to do the finishing when the door’s attached.

So next…

The lady wants purple, so out with the crimson guitar’s stains, a cloth and some water in a spritz bottle…

Not bad. Trick seems to be to ignore being economical with the stuff, put a drop or two on the cloth directly from the dropper, spritz that a few times with the water, then spritz the wood once, rub it in, then spritz the cloth again and rub again and repeat until the colour is reasonably even.

And maybe I should have sanded the surface back instead of the usual planed finish I have.

It dries much, much lighter than you’d think, but even a spriz with water darkens it back up again. So a top coat is needed (is it really a top coat?) and it’s a toy so it’ll take a few knocks. But I’m out of wipe-on poly, so out with the high gloss lacquer and I happen to have a half-can of this stuff left…

Mind you, the shed is little. Which means not much air. Ever inhaled spray-on lacquer in a confined space? Don’t.

So outdoors we go, and on goes the first coat while I’m wearing a respirator. I wonder what the neighbours think sometimes, but if the choice is looking funny in my back yard or looking funny while being treated for lung cancer or respiratory distress in A&E…

First coat is a bit subtle but I put on three coats (ten minutes drying between each) and brought it back into the shed to dry so leaves wouldn’t fall on it or something…

It’s not too bad with the lacquer on, it darkens the purple nicely.

Next morning, time for hinges to get attached. Been dreading this. That photo took a half hour of fiddling about with hammers, needlenose pliers, nailsets and best yet, cutting nails down in size – the nails that came with the hinges were a good mm or so longer than the wood was thick, and since the spikey look isn’t on for toys, I cut 3mm off the overall length with a snips and then filed a new point on the nail with a diamond file (because the normal files were waaay too big to bite in properly)

And then, after getting them all fitted, the door wouldn’t close. Couldn’t close. The hinges were too deep-set and the door didn’t have clearance on the shelf. So either I carved off a few mm from the shelf edge, exposing the end of the housing joint they were in and then trying to restain the edge to match the rest and re-lacquering it but I’m out of lacquer now so it’d be matt instead of gloss… or I redo the hinges.

I hate hinges.

Take two. Now uncomfortably close to the front edge of the carcass. Note the alignment scratch on the hinge – something I forgot to do during take one. And the vice marred the door’s finish slightly. But…