ShopNotes Podcast Episode 221: The Finest That Only I Will Ever See
The work we do at Woodsmith, PopWood, and ShopNotes involves giving out a lot of advice, suggestions, ideas, and recommendations. In a perfect world, we follow all the advice all the time. A perfect world is not where we live.
Advice: Prefinishing
Our shop time is scattered, intermittent, and sometimes rushed. As a result, some of the great ideas we talk about don't actually get done in the shop. However, Logan is ahead of schedule on his desk project for Popular Woodworking. That measured pace brings clarity and reminds him of steps like prefinishing. This is where portions and components of a project have stain and finish applied before assembly. Working on individual parts allows for smoother application and better-looking final result.
Repairing Furniture
Practically every woodworker has been asked to repair an existing piece of furniture. It's one way for us to give back to the world around us, sharing the skills we've acquired. John fixed a table base he rescued from one of our office moves. The arm was joined to the rest of the base with dowels. In this case, John trimmed the dowels and made a quick jig to redrill the holes in the base and arm. The result is a piece that can live a new life rather than go to the landfill or burn pile.
In another instance, a stool that came with a vanity had a smashed up leg joint during transit or store stocking. Rather than figure out a way to get a replacement, John remade the corner bracket and filled gaps with epoxy and new fasteners. Again, a good fix for a industrially made piece.
Both of these pieces were waiting repair in a room in John's basement. Once cleaned up, the empty space revealed a hastily assembled panel of telecom connections. Not one to leave well enough alone, John remade the panel, cleaning up the appearance of the connections and wires. Success!
Episode Transcript
Phil (00:36.906) Welcome, welcome everybody. It's another episode of the Shop Notes Podcast. I'm your host, Phil, along with John and Logan today. Today is episode number 221. We're going to go through some listener comments and questions. We'll also be talking about following your own advice and why that's sometimes a good idea. We'll discuss fixing and repairing furniture or some other shop updates. As always, thanks for listening.
And also appreciate everybody who subscribes to Woodsmith, popular woodworking and shop notes magazine that helps make this podcast possible. What else makes the podcast possible? A few sponsors. This episode of the shop notes podcast is sponsored by Harvey Industries. When good enough isn't good enough. See all of our new tools at harveywoodworking.com.
Phil (01:37.45) Alright, let's check in on the last episode, which it's been a while, admittedly. But...
Logan (01:43.688) I was getting hate texts this week.
John Doyle (01:46.815) Yeah, me too.
Phil (01:47.038) Yeah, but it's also cold and flu season around here, so you can kind of connect some dots on that.
JerseyCornBoy writes, I don't know what folding measuring stick you have, but Festool makes an awesome one. I never thought I would ever want to use one. And I have a collection of vintage ones. My uncle, an old time boat builder and cabinet maker, that's all he uses is the folding measuring stick and his fingers to measure and measure and cut everything. But I bought Festools and I fell in love with it. It's metric.
and the first fold has degrees, so you can pencil in a 45 or whatever. I also carry a 12 foot retractable, which is a Woodpecker's. Woodpecker's has a very nice one, and it's a half inch wide, so it fits beautifully in your pocket. Floyd Olden says, the height for my 11 inch shop Smith bandsaw is 45 inches from the floor to the tabletop, right about chest height. Table is aluminum, measures 13 by 15, works great for 74 year old eyes and he doesn't build a lot of things. He goes, I'm just putting it out there for those who want to compare shop Smith with others, smiley face.
John Doyle (03:15.817) That's our obligatory shop Smith mentioned for the episode.
Phil (03:19.016) Yep. Check. We were also talking in the last episode about upgrading the planer cutter head on my planer and how about how much quieter in decibels it is.
Logan (03:19.687) No more.
Phil (03:37.124) One listener wrote in and said, a reminder that the decibel scale is logarithmic, not linear. Therefore a hundred decibels versus 90 decibels isn't 10 % louder. It's 10 times as loud. True story. So yes, that's also correct. Russ Wilkin says really enjoy your show. He also remembers watching the router workshop TV show on PBS, which that's definitely a throwback.
Logan (04:07.474) That's my guy Russ. He has the Swingblade sawmill just north of here, Wilkins Tree Farm if anybody needs it.
Phil (04:14.994) Okay, there you go. Driftless Joinery says, transfer punches. We were talking about unusual tools that make you a better woodworker. And I bought them because they were cheap and I thought they, these might come in handy. And I use them all the time. Way more accurate than eyeballing center down a hole with an ice pick center punch or all. Also true.
Logan (04:40.194) I can concur, yeah.
John Doyle (04:40.272) Coincidentally, was my Street Fighter finishing move. Transfer punches.
Phil (04:45.522) Yeah, was the transfer punch? Yeah.
Logan (04:45.968) center button
Phil (04:51.594) Remember that.
Phil (04:55.047) Ryan McGregor says, Logan please explain why there is yet another jointer? White bass, black beds, perhaps a jet?
with the
Logan (05:05.926) Yes, I can explain that. I don't feel like I need to explain it myself to you. Whatever your name was. No, Ryan. Jeez. yes. So there is a jet, JJ eight in my shop right now for a review for the magazine. It will not stay here forever. It is currently, I got rid of the DJ 20 to bring make room for that one. it's not mine. It was on loan for a review.
Phil (05:11.146) Ryan.
Logan (05:35.82) is a Teflon coated one, which is actually really nice. I had a little bit of trouble dialing it in just because it was like put together quickly for a trade show. And when I got it here, I just, I didn't think about checking everything and I should have. So.
John Doyle (05:54.886) Can you cook a fried egg on the top? Is Teflon coated? no. Yeah. You can mix up ice cream or something on top today. Do like the marble slab? Yeah. Do some mixins.
Logan (05:57.224) Yeah, probably not today. You can't, but you know, summer. Yeah. You can put it outside. Yeah, for sure. Cold stone it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Phil (06:00.362) Yeah.
Phil (06:10.184) Okay, yep. Yeah, the second part of his question was what happened to the Delta?
Logan (06:14.744) Delta. Yeah, I sold the Delta. Actually, I kind of passed it on. I bought that one very, I got that one very, very inexpensively and I put a helical head in it. So I kind of just passed that good sale along to our photographer that does all of our woodsmith stuff. So Chris Hennessey now has that.
Phil (06:34.782) Hmm. Lovely.
John Doyle (06:36.517) I think you need to categorize your tools, of like pet adoption. Some you're fostering, some you've rehomed, some are adopted.
Logan (06:49.254) Some are still strays, like I just brought a machine into the shop there and the shop guys are like, what the heck are we gonna do with this thing?
John Doyle (06:51.043) Yeah.
John Doyle (06:56.804) Right.
Phil (07:00.062) Releasing it back to the universe, think, is the word you're looking for there.
Logan (07:02.556) Yeah. Yep.
Phil (07:05.994) Yeah. All right. Segment one here, I think we're going to put the focus on John Doyle right now. Yep. So this was from observational woodworking that I've seen you take part of recently. Is you have had a couple of projects in here that you were doing some repair work on. So I was wondering if you could describe those.
John Doyle (07:12.804) Ooh, spotlight.
Phil (07:35.878) each of them were and why they needed to be fixed.
John Doyle (07:38.561) Yes, we're in that time of year where it's cold outside and I've been in the house too long and there's been some projects that have been sitting around a long time in the utility room that need fixed and I get sick of staring at them. So then I bring them in here and fix them all up. So I had adopted a table from our old HR office. I don't know, several years ago is when we moved into this building.
and the base needed fixed so brought that in and had to do a little dowel joinery to put that back together so that's in finished condition now but still sitting here so we'll see how long it sits in this space until I can find a home for it I think the problem was I didn't really have a need or space for it when I took it on so there wasn't any
Phil (08:22.44) Right.
Logan (08:33.06) No, you just had a lot of lot of fond memories around that table HR office.
John Doyle (08:36.33) Yeah, sitting around the HR office. Yeah. I think I broke under the weight of my permanent file. So I felt the need to fix it. That was my responsibility, my penance. yeah.
Logan (08:44.424) Yeah.
Phil (08:52.04) Yeah, it was kind of a mod table base with kind of angled uprights that support the table. I'll put a photo in the show notes page, but it was doweled together, which makes sense, but I just didn't really think about until you had pulled the one, one of the uprights off the part that was broken.
John Doyle (09:12.469) Yeah, yeah, I'd taken that on thinking like, I've got some nieces and nephews in college that'll need like a table for their apartment. Now all of those nieces and nephews have graduated college. So that's how long I've been been holding that one. So maybe my younger kids will will need it for apartments someday. So so I brought that one in. What else did I had? had a stool that came with
my kids got a vanity for Christmas. It was one of those knock down furniture deals and it came with a stool and the stool was broken. Like in the packaging, but rather than send it back, the whole thing back, decided to fix the stool. So some glue, some screws, some reassembly and that was back together. So that one wasn't too bad.
Phil (10:08.714) Okay, so it wasn't like it was the connectors that really.
John Doyle (10:12.638) Yeah, like the little angle parts that the legs would bolt into were broken. And they were just pin nailed and glued prior to that. So cleaned them all up, came back with some screws and whatnot on that. So fixed that up, got that in working order. So that was the other project I had in here, I believe.
The third project that I worked on, we joke around that like with the Harvey slogan of just being good enough or whatever. This was, been spending a lot of time in our utility room on the, cause it's that time of year where I got to use the treadmill for a month to six weeks before I get bored with that, like the New Year's thing. So spending time on the treadmill, looking around the utility room and we had a, like the electronics,
Logan (10:50.344) You
John Doyle (11:11.355) router and some other cords and stuff were all routed onto a piece of OSB that had been bolted to the wall attached to that and it was just looked like some piece of OSB they pulled out of the construction scraps and stuck to the wall and so just staring at all of the wiring and and stuff I got kind of sick of looking at that so I came in
found a decent piece of Baltic birch, stained it all up, pulled that OSB off the wall, redid all the wiring so it looked nice, made a little plywood shell for my router. stuff that was fine the way it was, but just I got sick of looking at it. So right, right, the finest that only I will ever see. So.
Logan (11:59.023) Only the best for Parrot Prairie Trail.
Yes. Yeah.
John Doyle (12:07.931) Makes me feel better though.
Logan (12:11.334) That's what we're about.
John Doyle (12:12.997) Yep. So that's been my bored winter projects to keep me sane. But I think we mentioned today the days are getting longer. The Menards rebate will come back soon. Spring is right around the corner. So it's looking up.
Logan (12:28.647) Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Phil (12:38.036) There you go. Wise words from John Doyle today. Just deep, deep, deep wisdom.
John Doyle (12:39.453) Yep, yep.
Logan (12:45.288) Only the wisest.
Phil (12:47.602) Yeah. So when you're fixing stuff like that, how do you, and I'm thinking of the stool and the table base.
John Doyle (12:57.372) Mm-hmm.
Phil (12:59.848) What's your calculus for?
like sticking with what was originally used versus just doing something totally different in order to make this work.
John Doyle (13:10.126) Right. I don't usually my engineering mind goes to redo it to make it the strongest point of the the assembly. So maybe a little overkill. Like I think the table was dowel joinery and I redid that. I think I use bigger dowels, better glue, better connection there. So.
Phil (13:36.138) Yeah.
John Doyle (13:38.203) The other three legs will probably break off and that one will still work, I guess. no, nope. So and then the stool, it was only one corner that was broken and I redid the whole assembly with glue and screws just so none of the connections will break in the future. So I try to go to above and beyond when.
Phil (13:43.71) But that won't be on you then.
John Doyle (14:07.748) going to the trouble to fix them.
So we don't have any problems in the future. But typically, I'm not a big person on like, especially like when it comes to refinishing furniture, I hate like stripping things off, like redoing the finish. Like when it comes to that, I'm usually like start over at that point. But if it's a structural thing that can be fixed without refinishing, I'm down for that.
Logan (14:25.704) Yeah.
Phil (14:37.842) Okay, that makes sense.
Logan (14:38.178) See, it's funny because I literally had this conversation with my wife the other day. We were sitting on the couch and I was doing what I usually do. Just, you know, kind of perusing the Facebook marketplace for crap I don't need. And the one thing I've been looking for is like a Stickley style couch to go in here. and there's a lot of like actual Stickley furniture around Des Moines that pops up for sale.
And they ask absolutely nothing for it. And in the right market, like that stuff's super valuable. Like my guy Willie out on the East or West coast that, um, does a lot of our craftsman stuff. He does a lot of like antique restoration and selling and stuff. And I was like, man, that would be kind of like a fun, like semi retirement gig, just to buy and sell old antique furniture and kind of fix it up. And you know, like I just, I enjoy that. And I liked the history behind it and stuff. But then I told her, was like, I just hate refurbishing.
finishing stuff. I did it to a serpentine front dresser that we got. This was right off college when we had our oldest, we needed a dresser for the nursery. So I found it in an antique store serpentine front. It had been painted with lead paint over the years. I stripped it. I dyed it. I, you know, lacquered it. It looks great. I just hate doing that. Like, man, if I can, like if I knew a repair without refinishing, absolutely. But
Phil (16:05.919) Yeah.
Logan (16:06.214) The refinishing, no way, nope.
Phil (16:12.658) Yeah, I did that on a couple of pieces where my in-laws had purchased a dresser from Craigslist or something like that. And some of the innards were coming unglued because it was from like the twenties or something. You know, that, that part's easy where you can, you know, glue on some new drawer runners or, you know, clamp things back together, reglue, freshen up and then...
Logan (16:28.935) Yeah.
Phil (16:40.328) The finish wasn't in too bad a shape so that I could clean it nicely and then I waxed it and then that brought it up to a nice shine so that it still looked like a vintage piece but it wasn't a full thing. Because I have a hard time with...
Logan (16:54.77) Yeah.
Phil (17:01.488) old finish that maybe doesn't need to be stripped down and refinished, but just needs to be touched up. Cause unless you do it a lot and constantly, there is a skill level in touching up finished dings and scratches and whatever that's, that's not easy to, to stay on top of that skill.
Logan (17:22.254) Mm-hmm. Well, I think if you're going to get into doing rehabbing antique furniture like that pretty heavily, I think you're almost better off. I've seen a lot of the laser removal stuff on Facebook and social media, investing in one of those laser removal tools where you can just zap the finish off of it.
Phil (17:40.842) Well.
Logan (17:50.438) That would be, I think, the way that you'd have to go. Like, that would be the only thing for me that would make sense instead of, like, doing chemical strippers or sanding or...
Phil (18:00.21) Yeah. Because I see online periodically, people will do some, you know, DIY transformation of some Goodwill store find or something like that. And it usually involves painting it. You know, like this was just brown furniture, and now I've painted it and look how it's amazing. And it's like, yes, that can look really great. But I think there's an art to painting well that
isn't as easy as just slapping paint on something.
Phil (18:37.994) So, yeah.
We'll stick with the finishing motif and go into the second segment that I had was on following your own advice. And this one is about Logan and your desk project that you're working on.
Logan (18:54.48) Yeah, this is like one of the first projects where I have very, very thoroughly and consciously made an effort to pre-finish everything. And I will tell you, we've said it, we always say it, always pre-finish when you can. Pre-finish, pre-finish, pre-finish. We never do it, A, because we're usually trying to get this done, know, get whatever project done for a magazine article, for a video, for, you know, web posts, whatever it is.
but this one I had such a good start on, like I don't know why, like I didn't start Adderall or anything, but like I had such a focused effort on getting this thing started that I was, I'm ahead enough in the game that I'm like, I have the time and I really do not want, like I hate, I'm spraying shellac. So the entire piece is finished with.
Glancy's number one penetrating oil, number two penetrating oil, whichever Glancy's penetrating oil. and then after 12 hours finished with shellac cut back with sandpaper and then wax with the dark paste wax. It's a, it's a really nice kind of matte look to it. has protection. am on some of the parts I am padding on the shellac. that's actually what I was doing right before we started podcasting.
John Doyle (20:10.322) We.
Logan (20:21.344) And that's cool for small stuff like I was doing the corbels right now. It dries super fast. I could put three coats on in 15 minutes. You know, it dries so fast. But for everything else, I'm spraying it. And I hate nothing more than trying to spray the inside of like cabinets. Like trying to spray the inside of like a dresser or a bookcase or, you know, these desks have frame and panel sides on them.
It sucks because you get all that all that over spray, you get all that blowback, you're you end up wearing all the shellac that gets blown back out. So I have made a conscious effort to. Prefinish parts that make sense to prefinish in the sense that, you know, the panels before they get glued up in the in the frame and panel, I'm pre finishing those.
and then I'm pre-finishing those with oil and then I'm hanging the entire side assembly, which would be two legs and a connecting panel in the spray booth and spraying shellac on it. And my gosh, it just is such a nice feeling to know that as soon as these corbels get glued on, I can carry that base in here and I don't have to do anything else to it.
you know, the next things that happen to that base are I'm putting drawers in place and screwing a top on. So it's like, okay, this makes sense. I wish I had the gumption and the time on every project to a prefinish because I do think it makes the finish appear much better. And it also forces you to get consistent with your finishing.
John Doyle (21:43.287) you
Logan (22:03.676) where it's like, okay, every part is saying that to exactly the same grit. So I'm sanding to 220 wiping it down with denatured alcohol, hitting it with a 320 sponge and then doing the oil steel wool, then shellac. and it just, it just, yeah. Why don't I listen to myself all the time? I'm a smart guy.
John Doyle (22:04.975) Thank you.
John Doyle (22:25.615) Plus it's just nice to sand when everything is flat and a lot of times before it's assembled and you're having to try to sand around details and stuff like that. It's a lot more enjoyable.
Logan (22:32.785) Yes.
Logan (22:39.59) Yeah. Well, and especially when like, yeah, and especially when you have like framing panels where you have parts butting up to each other or you have reveals where it's like, okay, even if, you know, I read, I was reading some of Bob Flexner's book a couple of weeks ago, where he talks about, you know, standing a framing panel, you stand the part that butts into the other part first.
And then you can say in the long grain to say in the scratches out like stuff like that, like that really makes sense. But then when you have a reveal like on a leg where the frame and panel is inset a quarter of an inch or, you know, five sixteenths of an inch, you're something somewhere is going to get scratched, especially if you're power sanding. You know, I don't, I don't care how nice the sander you have the edge of a sanding disc is sharp and it will gouge the edge of a butted up piece. So yeah, just getting it all done. It's just like.
Phil (23:19.465) Right.
Logan (23:30.502) Take your vitamins, get it done, know, eat your vegetables, stay in school, don't do drugs, you know, it's just all that stuff. Makes so much sense.
Phil (23:33.074) Eat your vegetables,
John Doyle (23:34.38) Stay in school.
Phil (23:42.558) Yeah. I had some, no, go ahead.
Logan (23:43.816) And, and, I was saying the other thing I have been pretty consciously doing in this is trying not to be cheap and sand for a couple of minutes with a sheet of paper and then replace the dang paper. And yes, exactly. Yeah. Well, and a lot of the times it's like, I would always like set a sheet off to the side. It's like, okay, use the 120 grit sand for four or five minutes.
John Doyle (24:01.068) So you're not sanding then polishing on the same sheet.
Phil (24:03.658) Ha!
Logan (24:13.596) pull it offset off to the side, get back to it. I'm like, was this a good sheet or not? It kind of feels like a good sheet still. It's like, nope, as soon as it's done, throw it on the floor. Cause that's my, like it's done. It's my done spot. That's the discard pile and I'll sweep it up at end of the day. Yeah, it's just, I've been trying to also do that. Like sandpaper in the grand scheme of things, sandpaper is not that expensive.
Phil (24:24.618) That's the discard pile.
Phil (24:39.38) True story. I will say I had something similar yesterday. I was making props for some video content that we were doing today. And I was trying to glue up like a cabinet top or a small tabletop out of ash that we had here. And my thought was is I was going to get it out of a single board, cut it in half, glue it together so I had nice consistent.
joint line grain matching and then glue it up run it through the planer sander whatever to clean it up as I was cutting it it felt like the piece was not super flat
And I thought, well, I'll just glue it up and then I can run it through the planer and be totally fine. By the time the first glue up got done, I went to run it through the planer and it was, had some like weird twist in it and didn't have a decent surface to use as a reference surface to run through the planer. So you could feel it and hear it like kind of jacking around in the planer. Yeah.
Logan (25:49.198) Rocking. Yep.
Phil (25:53.45) So I thought, well, I could just hit the high spots with a hand plane a little bit, but then it's ash and it took forever. And I ended up just ripping it right down the glue line and then jointing each of the pieces, face jointing each of the pieces, and then regluing it together and while planing it and then regluing it together. And again, it was one of those things where it's like, take care of the fundamentals first.
and it's like, no, I'm in a hurry. I gotta quick do this.
Logan (26:29.02) Yeah. Yup. And I've, you know, I'm kind of doing the same thing with this, the top of this desk. Cause that was, that was like, I've been working through this Baroque. that's what the trim behind me is kind of, you know, it's nice looking. but a lot of character it's, it's a rustic grade Baroque, which all Baroque is. I was worried about finding stuff for my top. Like.
because I want, I need, you know, 72 inches by 28 inches of good clean Baroque. That doesn't exist unless you're doing two inch glue ups, which I don't really want to do. And I finally went out to my lumber pile outside before it snowed the other day and I started digging through it and I knew there was some quarter sawn stuff I could see on the end of the board, but it was quarter sawn. And I'm like, man, perfect fricking boards. And, and I made sure to match up
the three boards I pulled out for the top, they're all from the same cut. They're all from the same tree because there's wildly different grain in it all. And I started pulling them out. I have most of them cut to size. I also started to rough mill them. So it's like, I know this stuff has not been through the kiln, it's been air dried. So I'm going to bring them inside. I'm gonna...
John Doyle (27:34.927) Thank you.
Phil (27:45.576) Yeah.
Logan (27:48.454) Go three quarters of the way with them and then let them sit for a week and see what they do. See if they twist, see if they move and then come back and do it again. It's just, yes. Do the fundamentals right.
Phil (27:57.163) Right.
John Doyle (28:02.279) you
Phil (28:05.064) Yeah. It's easy to really get caught up in the moment of building a project where you just want to keep going. Even though you know that, and especially in our position where we've all talked about in different videos about do X, Y, or Z first and everything will go easier. And it's like, yeah, that doesn't work for everybody. Actually it does. You just got to take the time to do it.
Logan (28:32.134) Yeah, yeah. And that's the, you know, on the same note, I have the same thing with, because I don't always model out my projects in SketchUp or draw them out, you know? Like the shop guys at least are usually working from plans.
A lot of the stuff I'm doing, I'm just doing it up by the seat of my pants, then I'll make this sketchup model on how it actually comes out, right? This one in particular, I started going through everything. Like I'm, I had it all drawn up and sketch up and then it didn't save and long story short, I'm still bitter about that. But I got...
everything glued up and I'm like, all right, cool. This base is pretty much ready to, you know, move into the office to just get out of my way for right now. And I'm like, I never routed grooves for the corbels to sit in. So it's like this entire desk is glued up. Dividers are in and I'm like, I need to put grooves on the outside of the legs for these corbels. But then it's like, do I just like pin nail the corbels on? Like that's going to be ghetto.
Now, I don't need, like in reality, I should have done those grooves while I was routing all the grooves for the frame and panel tongues. It's the exact same setup at the router table. So it's like, I didn't need to go back and do any photos. know, when I'm writing this article, it's just gonna be, you hey, route grooves for the frame and panels and route grooves on the outside of legs for the corbel to mount into.
Phil (29:48.329) Ha ha ha!
Logan (30:15.226) I don't need another photo of it, but in reality, I forgot. Like I straight up forgot. And then it's like, okay, I sure hope I don't screw this up at this point, because if that router grabs and zips off the line, I'm going to have a sketchy patch job.
John Doyle (30:19.812) Thanks.
Logan (30:34.45) So it's just like think it through, take your time, do it right, make sure if you have a setup all dialed in, do everything you need with that setup right now.
Phil (30:53.642) All right, I'm to pause real quick here and do the second read through for the sponsor.
Phil (31:01.128) Hey, this episode of the Shop Notes podcast is brought to you by Grizzly Industrial, purveyors of fine woodworking machinery since 1983. Buy, direct and save at grizzly.com.
Phil (31:17.354) There we go. Nate, you can drop that in wherever in the middle of this that it works out.
John Doyle (31:22.22) the thing.
Phil (31:32.267) Let's see.
Phil (31:39.86) feel like there was something I was going to say and I can't remember what it is now.
Phil (32:01.928) Alright, so what's left on your desk then is you were talking about doing the top, rough milling the pieces down. Are you going to do anything to join the boards on the top, like other than just a straight up glue joint?
Logan (32:06.855) Yeah.
Logan (32:18.832) So what I am thinking is I'm going to domino. So I'm going to do it in two halves because it is a 28 inch wide panel. And Ryan, I do not have a giant planer yet since listeners are calling me out. Yes, I said my planer is 18 inches wide. So I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to do it in a four board glue up.
Okay, so seven inch boards. That'll leave me with two sections that are 14 inches. I'm gonna glue those up without anything, because those I can run through the planer, right? The center joint where those two panels are gonna get glued, I am going to domino those. I mean, I could biscuit them, I could domino them. I feel like the domino, if there's any twist, the domino's a little stronger and will pull out the twist, but I don't.
At that point, it's just a registration tool at that point. Um, and I was always, I've always been under the mentality that, know, if you have a panel, the best case scenario is get it glued up and then run the third planer to flatten it all out. But in reality, none of us have a planer that big for the most part. So it's like, okay, hand plane it. Yeah, you could do that. Um, belt sand it. Yeah, I've done that. And I've twisted some tops doing that. Um,
I saw Steve Johnson, one of our shop craftsmen, gluing up a cherry top the other day. And he had all the boards glued up all at the same time, all milled the final thickness. And he just had calls across both ends and it was perfect. And I'm like, okay, first of all, screw you, Johnson. Second,
John Doyle (34:02.207) you
Phil (34:08.746) Ha
Logan (34:09.83) Like if Steve could do it, I could do it too, right? I'm still gonna glue it up in two sections and then do that final third glue up. But yeah, and found some really nice, beautiful Coruscant stuff. What's been interesting to me about this entire build is that I'm building this, and this doesn't always happen, but sometimes it does, where...
John Doyle (34:12.681) Great.
Logan (34:34.745) I'm building this for a very particular space and how it's going to sit in that space. And I think I've talked about this before. It's like, so if there's like a bad panel, I put that on the side that's going up against the wall. Cause I know it's in my office. It's always going to be up against the wall, you know, screw whoever's 50 years down the road. That's trying to put this somewhere, you know, they're going to look at ugly panel. you know, the same thing with, you know, I have these dividers in the center, kind of where your legs go, left and right to create those cubbies.
I'm like, okay, how do I attach those to that back? Do I run a groove or a dado along that back panel and glue it into that? Do I do a, you know, loose tenon in there? I'm like, nope, it's going up against the wall. I'm running screws from the backside, straight into it.
John Doyle (35:21.769) you
Logan (35:22.928) because it's sitting up against the wall. Like if somebody wanted to, that's, know, this is part of where I try to give people their liberty. It's like, Hey, I drove screws in the backside because this is always going to be up against the wall. If you're not, if you're going put it in the middle of your room, use loose tendons or run a dado or groove for that panel to sit in and just increase the size of the panel a little bit. Which leads me into this, this top that I'm getting ready to glue up.
I have three boards that are absolutely beautiful. Beautiful quarter sawn, not a not a lick of cathedral flat sawn grain. And then I have one board that has a little bit of cathedral on it. And part of me is like, okay, do I go out and I have, have one more board in the shop. Do I go out and just cut into that board to use that instead? Because I know then it will be all quarter sawn or
do I use that board that is partially flat sawn, put that along the back edge, most up against the wall, because at some point in the near future, I'm probably going to build a desktop organizer that runs that entire length, and then it will be buried underneath it, which I think I'm kind of leaning that way to save that other really nice board maybe for my drawer fronts, but.
Phil (36:39.025) yeah.
Logan (36:49.608) Yeah, it's just a very different experience building it for a very particular place instead of, you know, like a dining table that's going to be seen all over. everything needs to look good.
Phil (37:05.768) I mean, those same kind of lessons though apply almost anywhere because say you're going out to like you have a lumber pile that you're drawing these from. But if you were going to a lumber yard or something to pick out boards, like you only have the ability to pick out a certain number of boards. It's not, you know, whether it's by budget or
Logan (37:18.865) Yep.
John Doyle (37:29.21) Thank
Logan (37:29.447) Yeah.
Phil (37:33.54) need or whatever, like we can't all buy double the amount of wood in order to be able to pick and choose the most perfectest ones there. It's like that you might have to settle for boards in order to be able to get the project done.
Logan (37:38.364) There's gonna be, yeah.
Logan (37:50.022) Yeah. And it's fine. And there's no, there's no, there's nothing wrong with that. You know, we did videos this morning for Durham's rock hard water putty. They're a local company. We love their product and we did videos for them. And I was showing in my video, filling in some knots and stuff on, some of this burroke.
Phil (37:53.96) Yeah.
Logan (38:13.288) Um, there's a few knots that I just left, like I left completely open in the finished piece because honestly, why? Like it doesn't matter. like would I have loved to have perfectly quarters on everywhere? Yeah, absolutely. But you know what? I'm using what I have and it kind of has a charm. Like it's, it's tucked in the back and you don't really see it unless you're looking for it, but it's kind of cool. So yeah, you know, and even, I think most of us have an idea where our furniture is going when we build it and.
I think you always have that show face, like that face that you see as you walk up to the piece. And that's what you try to make look the best. but yeah, it's, just, it's, it's kind of fun. And I love like, this is, that's the part of, that I really enjoy about a project, you know, John and I did it this week with, some of that Walnut where it's like, okay, you have this material, not the perfect.
It's not, it's not perfect. Walnut. It's not perfect. Baroque. You're cutting around stuff. You're trying to figure out how to make it work. love that problem solving of like, okay, this crack goes here, but if we put that on the bottom side, you don't see it and structurally it doesn't matter. it's, it's, I love that. I'm going to oddity. I it's like the treasure hunt. Like, like your, your field is the boards and the treasures, the parts you get out.
Phil (39:22.793) Right.
John Doyle (39:31.18) Yeah.
John Doyle (39:36.535) you
Logan (39:38.216) But you also, at that point, what I'm finding is you have to not be afraid to throw stuff away from the stack where like the burrow, I'm cutting a lot of stuff up. there's a lot of waste on it and that's fine because instead of going into the garbage, it's going into the fireplace in the house. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's getting put to use still, but that's a little bit harder to swallow if you paid 11 or $12 a board foot for.
Phil (39:48.073) Yes.
John Doyle (40:01.674) Yeah.
Logan (40:06.184) quarters on white oak than it is if it's in your lumber pile.
John Doyle (40:06.313) Right.
John Doyle (40:11.381) But if you're buying fully milled boards from a store, they threw way, they were way more away than what we did. I mean, we're, you know, working around what we have and getting a pretty good yield.
Logan (40:15.984) You're paying, yeah.
Logan (40:20.367) yeah. yeah.
Logan (40:25.542) Yeah. And it's, funny. It's funny because I know, one of my tree guys that I mill with a lot, we had, so actually some of that walnut I brought in this week, we had milled at his shop, a bunch of stuff. And this was half of, basically split the pile in half, not on purpose, but that's what we could fit in the dump trailer. And he kept half of it at his shop. I brought the other half here to dry.
And he had brought it to Bobby three fingers, our buddy to mill it down for him. And he texted me, he's like, dude, I never realized how much waste there is. And I'm like, that's, that's what I've been trying to tell you tree guys that I work with, like just because a tree might theoretically yield 400 board feet, you might get 200 out of it. Once you mill through all the drying defects or you're planing it down to whatever thickness you actually need. Like the yield is
significantly smaller than what that tree is.
Phil (41:27.668) But like you said, I think there's a lot of...
fully understanding that it's more work and not everybody either wants to or has the inclination to, but being able to start with, let's just say eight quarter rough sawn boards.
even if you're gonna end up throwing a bunch of it away because you're cutting around stuff or cutting to line up grain or whatever, it's nice to be able to make those decisions yourself rather than having those decisions made for you in the carefully sized pieces that you find in the lumber rack.
Logan (42:01.884) Yes.
Logan (42:12.552) Yeah, yeah. It would be interesting to know, and I haven't really measured how much of this white oak I've used, or this bur oak I've used on this desk, but it would be interesting just to know what the difference in waste and cost would be if I'm costing it with my roughsawn versus going to Liberty and saying, hey, I need 95 board feet of,
quarter sawn white oak and knowing full well that whatever I get from Liberty, I might have to order more and I don't have any control over what is there.
Phil (42:50.696) Right. Yeah. Cause I was thinking one of our e-learning courses is where I'm building a desk that was originally featured in American Woodworker. A Pullman style desk is what Mario Rodriguez designed it as. And so it's convertible. So it's looks like a dresser, but then it folds out and has a pullout work surface on it. And I built that from white pine that I got from you. And it was all eight quarter.
basically rough sawn white pine boards. And I think I was just looking at the desk the other night. Like it looks really cool. You know, that we're almost two years. It's almost two years old now. And part of the reason that it looks so cool is that I was able to choose my pieces out of those rough sawn boards to get exactly what I wanted in order to have nice show faces or
Logan (43:42.108) Yeah.
Phil (43:49.716) cool looking ends or whatever and that I had that ability to control that. So even though you're working within some limitations on it, like there's, it's a weird tension of freedom and limitation on knowing like these, I have to get that out of these boards. So how am I going to do that?
Logan (43:51.206) Mm-hmm.
Logan (44:08.604) Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Logan (44:13.692) Yep. Yeah. I think that I probably would have had a whole lot less of an issue getting my parts out. And I didn't really have an issue getting my parts out, but it's just the fact that it's so cold outside. The saw mill is in front of the lumber rack. I'm trying to pull boards out of the lumber rack with a sawmill in the way. Like it's been a, yeah, it's been fun and it's really cold out there. Did I say it was cold? It's been cold. So yeah, but no, was, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's cool.
Phil (44:45.642) So, all right, there you have it. think that wraps up another episode of the Shop Notes podcast. What's your philosophy on choosing lumber and getting the parts that you want out of there? Where does the line, where's the line for you between thriftiness and extravagance on finding and choosing the best boards? Love to hear your thoughts on that. You can send us an email, woodsmith at woodsmith.com.
or put something in the comments section on our YouTube channel and there you go.
I think that wraps it up. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week. Bye.
Logan (45:25.756) Bye.
