Best selling wood projects - Creating a Set of 5 Art Deco style Small Tables

Best selling wood projects

A project I have just completed was to make some small occasional tables, a set of 5, using jarrah removed from a roof during a current renovation. This beautiful house, built around 1930, has the most wonderful Art-Deco ceilings - which tragically were very seriously damaged during the recent storms in Perth... but thats another story. A second storey is being added to the house, and the old roof timbers were thoughtfully saved to be re-cycled. My client is a lover of all things Art-Deco, so my mission was to design and make 5 tables using this timber.

After some research, I submitted the following design and concept drawings which were agreed to by my client:

About the timber.
The timbers saved during the renovation are the classic stuff of jarrah western australian roofing which was pretty standard for over 100 years until the re-structure of the WA native hardwood timber industry which commenced in March 2001. Since that time jarrah stick roofing has been replaced by pine and steel. The old roofs and houses are now a wonderful source of dry jarrah, as well as karri, wandoo, marri and blackbutt. Tragically too much of this timber goes off into land fill as old houses are knocked down in the path of "urban infill" or the spread of McMansions. How did I get myself onto this soapbox again??

This stack of timber pictured here on sawstools on my front lawn was the pile of timber saved from the renovation by my client. It is predominantly 4"x2" timber (rafters) but also includes a few 5"x2" and 4"x3" sticks. There is also a number of 6"x1" and 8"x1" boards (ridge pieces) which are of particular use for the tops of the tables and the legs/ends.
All of this timber in the stack shown was denailed first. A dirty and slow process, but a good opportunity to examine each stick and get a sense of what was available for the project. There is much more timber here than we need - but I am a great recycler of this wonderful stuff!

This picture shows the 6"x1" and 8x1" sticks from that pile, which I have here denailed, scrubbed down with a wire brush, and scanned with a metal detector to ensure there are no nails remaining. Nails are not kind to machinery and cutting tools!
Shown here parked out side my workshop on another pair of sawstools, they are waiting to be cut up ready for dressing.

None of the boards are flat, so one face must be flattened first. These roofs were all built with green (unseasoned)timber, so the timber has dried (seasoned) in the roof. These timbers spent 80 years in the roof, so they are very dry. I find that the heat and dryness of old roofing timbers creates jarrah which is almost "case hardened" sometimes, but the timbers from this roof do not appear to be over-cooked.
Theres some nice stuff in there, though some damage was acquired from the demolition process. Thats not unusual.

Preparing the timber.
Much of the 6"x1" and 8"x1" sticks were cut into shorter lengths ready for making the table tops and the legs/ends. This was done before any dressing of the timber, due to the fact that the timber needed to be flattened. The aim was to try and obtain stock 22mm thick (7/8") which is a wonderful dimension commonly used in the past but no longer commonly available. Hence the need to ensure we lost as little thickness as possible from the timber. The pic here shows the timber after it has been docked into the two different lengths needed.
The flat faces were obtained using two methods. My buzzer only has a 6 inch cutter, so I was able to create the flat face on the 6"x1"s over the buzzer easily enough. The wider boards I had to flatten by hand in the old fashioned method, using my trusty No5 1/2 jack plane and a pair of winding sticks. The pic here shows the plane on a piece I was working on at the time.

Once the flat face is created, the pieces are put through the thicknesser to make the opposite face parallel. The boards are flipped over several times as the thickness is reduced, thus creating two flat dressed wide faces.

Theres a picture which shows the same stack of timber
after it has been dressed to 22mm thick. There is some very nice timber in this pile.

The plan was to leave the nail holes in the wood, as this tells the story of the timbers former life in the house.


Making the Tops.The process for making the tops starts with matching up the machined pieces for colour and grain, and shooting their edges on the buzzer, to create the tops. Some of the boards had splits, so these were sawn down the split lines and the new edges shot.

Therefore some tops were made out of two pieces, and others were made of up to 4 pieces. The picture here shows a couple of the tops set out and prepared ready for preparation of the edges and then gluing up. The visible ones here are both 2-board tops.

The plan is the rip a piece off each side to use to create the under side build-up, and to dock a piece of each end to create the under end build-up.

One of the most effective ways to create good edge joints is to create a "lightning joint" profile. This works like a tongue and groove, and has the advantage of doubling the surface area of glue.

This creates a superior joint. I used a router cutter to cut the profiles on the edges, but back in the Art Deco era, these were cut with spindle moulding machines in the bigger workshops. So the use of this jointing method remains consistent with the period as a technique. It is far superior to a butt joint, and I like it!
There is a photo here which shows the joints cramped up.
Once the edge profiles were prepared, the tops were glued up. There is a pic here showing a pair of tops glued up simultaneously, to save on cramps.

After the glue dried overnight, the tops were put back through the thicknesser to clean them up. The finished thickness was 20mm, giving a doubled up edge of 40mm. That was the plan.

There is a pic here showing the stack of tops after they have been cleaned up through the thicknesser. Now it is time to make the rips off the side and dock the ends. Where we were unable to get the side rips wide enough, some of the leftover timber was used, matching the grain and colour as best possible. We needed 30mm wide side rips, and 42mm end rips. The end rips were docked to length in such a way that the lightning joints lined up, top and bottom, making sure that the correct ends were always matched to the correct part and orientation of the top.
There is a pic here showing one of the tops covered in cramps as these underside pieces are all glued to the tops. they will be left overnight to dry before the tops are cleaned up again and the final machining is done to create the final dimensions for the tops - 400 x 240 x 40mm.
Although we only needed 5 tops, I did a 6th one to ensure I had a spare. There are some unknowns with the nail hole positions, though I had been very careful to try and place them off the edges.

Making the Leg Ends.
These were going to be more challenging than the tops, as each one has an inlaid design on the outside face, plus tenons cut on the bottom ends.

First the selected boards were docked to length, and then the taper cut on each side. This was achieved by the use of a purpose made jig on the table saw, as pictured. (The overhead saw blade guard was moved out of the way for the photo). Use of a jig like this enables consistent repetition, so that each component would be exactly identical.

Once these were cut, another jig was used with a router trimmer with a 6mm cutter, to create the grooves to house the WA Blackbutt inlay. While these jigs are time-consuming to create, they end up both saving time and ensuring consistency and accuracy. A fair bit if planning goes into it...

There is a pic here which shows the stack of leg ends part way through the routing process.

The blackbutt strips were machined up, such that they would be a snug fit in the grooves. The corners were all cleaned to make the crisp corners of the grooves, using a sharp chisel.

The tricky part now was to cut the pieces to length accurately. This was done by hand, using a small gents saw with 24teeth to the inch - very fine indeed. Another jig was made to ensure the cuts were always made at the required 7.5 degree angle on each end. Once all of the components were cut to length, the pieces were glued into place and left overnight to dry. The pics here tell the story.

The following day, when the surplus glue and veneer was sanded off, The resulting panel was very pleasing indeed! This pic here shows the cleaned panel. Looks like a winner!

Making the Base.
The bases are made from 4"x2" rafter material.

The rafter material was docked over length and then dressed.

 Once dressed, the pieces were matched up and arranged, 3 pieces selected for each base.

These were glued up, using a double tongue technique in each joint. Once dry, the bases were put back through the thicknesser and then docked and ripped to their final dimensions. Then the edge profiles were cut on the ends and the sides, as shown in the pic with the stack of bases. The mortises were chopped in the bases, all at the required 7.5 degree angle.

 Where did this 7.5 degree angle come from? The best method is to transfer the ideas from the concept drawing to a full sized drawing, on a "set-out board". The angles and dimensions of components can be measured from the full scale drawing on the set-out board. The picture here shows the set-out board, which is a piece of plywood. Being a great recycler, I obtained this piece of ply from an industrial airconditioning crate - good quality ply, too!
Anyway, the waste was removed from the mortises first, using a forstner bit in the drill press at the correct angle. Chisels were used to clean out the holes. The leg/ends would have tenons cut on the bottom ends, two stub tenons with a haunch inbetween, to be inserted snugly into the base mortises.

These pics show the dry fitting of one of the joints in action. The final clean-up and finish sanding of the components will only take place after the joints have been fitted correctly. The trusty Stanley No.140 block plane shown in the pic was made specifically for the trimming of tenons. A little beauty of a tool, long since out of manufacture.

After the finish sanding of the components, the leg/ends joints were glued up. This pic shows the glued up base. The top here is not yet attached, only sitting on top. The next stage was to attach the tops to the leg/ends and make and attach the feet.

The project comes to completion.

The tables were assembled and the polishing process has commenced. This would take several days before they would be ready for the final waxing. The finish used was Cabots Danish Oil, which is a kind of oil/varnish mix. It has the wonderful look of a hand rubbed oil finish with the added benefit of a high solids build, providing an excellent platform for the wax finish. The oil and wax finishes gets better with age, unlike those nasty spray-on polyurethanes which I refuse to use these days.

The completed tables are pictured here during the polishing phase.

I was very pleased with the way they have come together, and am sure they will fit beautifully into the art deco surroundings of my clientss home.

For me the aim to achieve a high level of authenticity in their construction, such that a casual observer would not be aware that they were not made in the 1920s or 30s. The construction techniques are true to the era as are the fixings - no philips head screws, only slotted head wood screws and small bullet head nails were used.

 

This pic shows one of the tables after the polishing was completed.

I am very pleased to have contributed to sustainable timber usage by recycling and giving new life to beautiful timber which had previously spent 80 years supporting a roof. A credit to my client, for not wanting to see the old roofing timbers thrown in the skip bin bound for landfill. After these tables have been passed down the line many times as family heirlooms, there is no reason why this same timber cant again be used and re-used for centuries to come.  

I love this stuff... It is such a priveledge to be making family heirlooms.

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Best selling wood projects - Eco Woodworking at the Great Re Skilling

Best selling wood projects

I recently spent a whole Sunday doing woodwork with both kids and adults concurrently at "The Great Re-skilling" which was held at CityFarm in Perth Western Australia. It was a big day, and heaps of fun.
Organised jointly by Permaculture WA, Transition Towns WA and Perth City Farm, the Great Re-Skilling was a day dedicated to reclaiming sustainable lifestyles, creating resourcefulness for a low carbon future, building community and shared vision and celebrating 30-plus years of Permaculture in WA.

Why “Eco-woodwork”? (not my term, but it fitted pretty well.) I guess it relates to the fact that all of the timber we used was waste – recycled and pre-used, offcuts from building sites (the pine), plywood from old drawer bottoms and packing boxes, jarrah from old pergolas and wall framing, etc. Also most of my benches are made from recycled materials (mostly jarrah), and all of the work at the event was done using hand tools and good old fashioned hand skills. No electricity, just muscle combined with a few tool techniques I passed on to the participants. It was a real hit. I had all my benches there and one volunteer helper. Thanks Liam!We were flat out, with 12 kids vices and 12 adult vices, but often more than 12 kids on the go at any one time. A very popular corner of the gathering...


   

Most adults made wooden spoons, while learning to use a range of traditional hand tools including gouges, spokeshaves, rasps, english bowsaws, coping saws, scrapers, mallet, panel saws and saw stools. The kids mostly used hammers and nails, though many also used tenon saws, and some even  used hand drills and a brace and bit.

I love these pics of a couple of kids using tenon saws with bench hooks. Great technique!
While the adults made wooden spoons at their benches, and the kids made whatever took their fancy from the pieces of wood available to them. I had a mountain of bits of timber for them to chose from... Pieces of pine, pieces of ply, bits of broom handles, etc. Fortunately I managed to take a few pics with my mobile phone amid the chaos.

There were so many wonderful parent/children moments throughout the day. It was delightful. Some parents held stuff for their kids, others succumbed to the temptation to take over!
It was the first time my new small kids benches have been road tested (other than by my grandkids Ronnie and Katana), and these proved to be a real winner from my perspective. It was also the first time I had used my short legs on my normal benches. They went very well too. It was a good opportunity to learn a few more things about doing this stuff with young kids - which is something I am hoping to do a lot more.

There seemed to be a theme of airplanes and spaceships amongst the creations made my the kids.

The smile tells it all...

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Best selling wood projects - Slide out Shelves PDF

Best selling wood projects

Slide out Shelves PDF - free plans update.

Scroll down the list at the link and click on the Sliding Cupboard Storage to find the free downloadable plans to build this.

Link Type : free plans for woodworkers

There are other related woodworking free plans bits of information found at our web site woodworking category Kitchen Accessories

Woodwork Safely, Jim Barry Affiliate Program - Earn 10% on anything sold in our store http://www.woodworkersworkshop.com/affiliates

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Best selling wood projects - Getting started on a break fronted Art Deco style bookcase

Best selling wood projects

A customer has being doing a big renovation to her house, which dates from the end of the Art-Deco era. Tragically, too often these days the timbers removed from these older houses are disposed of, going into landfill - a terrible waste. This is Western Australia, so the timber in these older houses is almost all jarrah (Eucalytpus marginata). Fortunately, my customer Norelle had the sense and foresight to tell the builder she wanted to keep the timbers, in order to use them for other projects around the home. I count it a privilege to have been entrusted with the job of using these timbers to create a big break-fronted Art-Deco style book case for the new living room in the old house.  Nice.

Planning the job.
Having met with Norelle, and checked out the huge pile of timber under plastic in her front yard, we discussed ideas for the design and other important matters, like the dimensions and how to make the piece of furniture fit in with the rest of the house. I went home, did some research and drawing work, and a few days later presented the drawing to Norelle. She was pleased with the drawings, and gave me the go-ahead to proceed when ready. A couple of months later, I was ready to get started.
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The concept plan with suggested measurements.

?? Getting started.
I began by doing the sorting, docking, and de-nailing of the timbers in the front yard of Norelles house, as I ratted through the timber pile.

The larger of the two piles of timber. My resource to work from...

The timbers are predominantly a mixture of: floor joists (4"x2"s), rafters (4"x2"s), heavier floor joists and verandah top plates (mostly 8"x2"s), and hanger beams (9"x1 1/2"). Working off a few sets of saw stools (have I ever mentioned how valuable these are?!), I did all the docking of the sticks just oversize, using a trusty panel saw. This would make the handling and machining of the timbers easier once I got the material back to my workshop.

Some of the nails and other metalwork removed from the timbers.

There was a lot of de-nailing of the docked timbers to do also. A wide variety of nails, mostly - plus some screws, bolts and coach-screws. Once back at my workshop, the sticks would be scrubbed down with a wire brush and checked for any further nails with my trusty metal detector - before being machined. This was not the straightest bunch of sticks I have encountered, telling me the timber had come from trees which where not the straightest trees in the forest. The bends and turns in the trunks of the trees, as reflected in the grain, is apparent in the timber which has seasoned over many years after construction, and dried with corresponding echos of those original twists and turns. Machining these was not going to be much fun.

The 8" x 2"s and 9" x1 1/2"s are far too wide for me to flatten over my beautiful old Woodfast 6 inch buzzer. While I have a 15 inch Thicknesser, the creation of the first flat side on these wider sticks has to be done by hand in the absence of a big buzzer. My trusty Stanley No.5 1/2 jack plane and I were working hard on the long 3.0m sticks, with the aid of a pair of winding sticks - but it worked a treat. Mind you, some of the more badly distorted sticks felt the bite of my old electric plane when I had to remove a serious amount of waste! The 9" x 1 1/2" sticks were so badly distorted, I would be unable to get a flat 3.0m length at 25mm thick, the required thickness pre-glue-up. So I had previously docked these into 1.2m lengths, ready to make into shelving. They were still really wild sticks! So to flatten them I made a cradle to which I attached by screws the ends of the short wild sticks, such that the twists and bows were suspended on the average. Creating a sort of lowest common denominator. The whole cradle was then passed through the thicknesser until a flat face was created. After being unscrewed from the cradle, each stick was then put through the thicknesser to the required 25mm. Most of these sticks made it, too. Their previous wild behaviour revealed the most beautiful figure and grain patterns in these nice boards. The cradle method was good for the wide 1.2m sticks, but would be no good for the 3.0m sticks. These would require lots of grunt with the jack plane and or the electric plane in order to establish that first flat face. Thankyou winding sticks! One thing about old painted timbers - its hell on the machines knives. After I had put all the big sticks through the thicknesser, its knives were pretty shot! Time to sharpen those and the buzzer knives again.

Making the vertical ends panels.
Firstly the timber for each of the four end panels was selected, and the edges prepared ready for jointing. The front edge piece on each panel is a heavier section than the panel behind it, as these front edges are to have a nice art-deco type rounded profile shawed from them. All the edge butt joints were to be strengthened by the use of a 1/4" x 1" plywood tongue, with the grooves cut by a slot cutter bit in the router. They were then glued up using a heap of sash cramps and with the wonderful Titebond 3 glue.

One of the narrower end panels cramped up.

With the panels glued up, the next thing to do would be to create the nice curved front edges. With this done, the next step was to dock the end panels to length. The shaping of the rounded edges, with a 40mm raduis curve, is a story in itself, told previously in this post: Several steps to create nice a nice curved edge.

Some of the end panel off-cuts, showing the curved built-up front edges and the tongues.

The end panels were docked at 2665mm long - just under 9 feet long each.?
Making the shelving. 
Meanwhile, the timber for the shelf panels were being made. The timber was selected with the aim being to match the colour, grain and figure as much as possible. Using the same tongue and groove method using those beautiful 1/4" ply tongues, the shelves were glued up.
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Selecting the timber for similar colour, grain and figure. 

Three of the glued up shelves. Awesome timber, eh? Such nice wood!

The shelves are now glued up, ready for ripping to final width and docking to length. However, first the end panels would need to have their housings cut ready to take the tops, bottoms, and fixed shelves. That story will be told in a future post.

Keep an eye out for further posts as this project unfolds...?
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