We check in on Logan's desk project, discuss a project in for the Woodsmith shop, answer a few listener questions and more.
Phil (00:08.413) Hey, hey everybody. It's the ShopNotes Podcast. I'm Phil with John and Logan today. And this is episode number 222. And today's episode, we'll go through some listener comments. We'll get a wrap up on Logan's desk and see what there is to see on the other side of the mountain.
This episode is brought to you by Harvey Industries. When good enough is not good enough, see all of our new tools at harveywoodworking.com.
Phil (00:48.851) All right. Just a couple of questions that I want to pick up from last week's episode.
Phil (01:00.767) And the first of them is from Ryan McGregor. He wants to know when there's going to be more videos of shop tour of my home shop. And the answer to that is when it's not zero. It's cold out and my shop has no heat. So, and also right now it's a disaster.
John Doyle (01:22.669) Got to clean before company comes.
Logan (01:25.816) Yeah, I feel ya.
Phil (01:26.203) It's, yeah.
It's got one of those like, I've brought stuff into work and to classes and then take it home and sort of just unload it real quick and then go inside because it's cold.
John Doyle (01:39.594) Yep, that's how mine is too. It's like open the garage door, throw out the boxes in the trash into the garage, and then close the door again. Pilot all on the workbench. Deal with it later.
Logan (01:55.556) I have no excuse other than I'm building crap.
John Doyle (01:56.768) Yeah, you're actually getting work done.
Phil (02:05.693) All right. And then the other one that I want to get to is Walter Riggs. He's asking about last week's discussion on pre-finishing. He says, what do do about getting finish sprayed onto your glue surfaces? Sand it off, tape it prior to spraying. If you tape it, it seems like that would take as much time as it would if you just finished the whole piece fully assembled.
Logan (02:15.235) Mm-hmm.
Logan (02:30.884) So I pre-taped everything and it didn't take near as long as you would expect because now I'm going to preface this by saying
I pre-finished in stages. So my panels were pre-finished before the frame and panels were glued up. And then that frame and panel got glued up. And then I took that panel and finished it, if that makes sense. So I wasn't like individually pre-finishing each rail and style. Instead,
I would oil the panels, glue everything up, oil the rails and stiles, and then that entire 26 by 20 panel would go into the spray booth, get hung up, and then oiled and sprayed. Same thing with the legs. The legs, before I glued those onto those framing panels, no, I'm sorry.
Phil (03:24.348) Okay.
Logan (03:33.764) Let me back up a little bit. Oil the panels, glue up the framing panel, glue up the legs. So I had N panels with a leg attached on each end. Sorry, the cat is like rubbing up against my monitor. I'm bouncing. And then the legs with attached panels got sprayed. The...
back panel, I taped off the tenon, I taped off the mortises on those legs. Long story short, it was very little taping. It was maybe a total of five minutes of taping. It wasn't bad. I've heard tricks on using like backer rod that you'd use like in concrete.
And shoving that in the mortises and that would be I think that would work really well My fear was I didn't know if denatured alcohol, which is the solvent for shellac if that would melt it and I'd be stuck with a gooey mess, you know But I did I taped everything off Didn't take hardly any time Yeah, it worked really well
Phil (04:42.663) Okay. I think the level of pre-finishing that you do and can do also depends on the construction method.
Logan (04:53.464) Yes.
Phil (04:55.101) because if you were building, well, like those built-in units that I did last year, those big plywood units, I did a bunch of pre-finishing on those. But because we're dealing with a lot of, if you're dealing with lot of like dados, rabbits kind of thing, that's a lot of taping and precise taping that you need to do.
Logan (05:14.754) Yes.
Phil (05:19.763) And then that was harder to do. But I did a lot of that with biscuits. So I used the biscuits as the joinery method so I could do more pre-finishing.
And I think like you were saying on your desk, with mortise and tenon construction, know, like your panels can float, there's no need for them to have to be glued structurally. So taping off tenons is really easy to do because you have like hard shoulders to go around and that kind of thing.
Logan (06:00.822) It was not a big deal by any means. And it wasn't necessarily that pre-finishing was gonna save me time per se. I mean, maybe a little bit. It was more the quality of finish that I'm getting is much better. Because I think no matter what...
Spraying the insides of cabinets you do not get the same level of finish that you do as spraying a flat panel or spraying the outsides. That's why cabinet makers use UV pre-finished plywood because then they don't have to finish the inside.
Phil (06:40.381) Well, and if you say you were even to have tried to do stain on that desk, like we, you know, when we did that bookcase that's in your office and putting dye and stain on that after it's constructed, all the little nooks and crannies just make it awful to deal with, to get like a decent coat of stain on.
Logan (06:46.884) Yeah.
Logan (07:09.411) and not get it on the back of your shirt.
Phil (07:11.891) Right. There is that. Walter has a follow up. said, on Saturday, 2 15, I went out to the wood shop to finish up our bedside tables. The last step, cutting a piece of butcher block off the big slab from the home center. It weighed 100, 125 pounds and I hefted it up. I needed to get another grip with my left hand so I could flip it onto my table saw.
So I put the whole slab's weight on my right arm so that I could move my left. When I did, my right bicep charley-horst itself and it snapped the tendon connecting the bicep to the elbow. Reattachment will take surgery and that's on three six. So everyone get out there and work out. Use yoga and stretching exercises to strengthen your tendons and keep yourself limber. You do not want any part of this.
John Doyle (07:49.074) Peace.
Logan (08:01.508) no, no you do not, yuck.
Phil (08:08.457) So.
There you are.
Phil (08:14.963) Getting old is real people.
Phil (08:23.167) All right. So you are now at your desk in your office.
Logan (08:26.692) I am sitting at my desk, yep. The cats, it's a jungle gym. This is not a desk, it's a jungle gym. Yeah, it doesn't have any drawers or doors on it, but it's in the office sitting here. It's got drawer slides installed. I mounted, used, this is the first time I've really ever used bottom mount drawer slides. Always use side mounts. But.
John Doyle (08:32.674) you
John Doyle (08:39.938) Mm-hmm.
Phil (08:50.056) Okay.
Logan (08:54.436) was like, you know what, I'm gonna use bottom mounts. There's rails that the slides can mount to, so it worked out really nicely. And I like them.
trying to figure out how to size the drawer for the bottom out slides is a little different because the bottom out slides have to fit underneath and inside of the sides, if that makes sense. you know, I started dovetailing the drawers last night. I'll finish those up today and then I got to work on the door. And I've kind of been bouncing back and forth on what I'm doing for this door. You know, and I asked you guys, it's like, I drew up a couple sketches. It's like, do I,
Do I do like a, it needs to have some form of ventilation, because my computer is going to go inside this left-hand cabinet. So I need some form of vent. Is that like a Kumiko panel on the front? Which I have a hard time not making it look like it's a Mike Peckovich piece then. You know what I mean? Right or wrong? Like, and I love Mike to death. I mean, he'll be out here in a couple of weeks filming with us. Like.
I just, it's like, he, that's so iconic of his style. And I'm like, I don't want to do that really. So then I'm like, okay, do I just do like a lattice work front? Like do like an oak half lap lattice work front or, you know, the arts and crafts and, you know, lot of that arts and crafts style stuff has cut out shapes in panels. And there's a lot to choose from there.
So I think I've settled on doing that. So I'm gonna do a frame and panel door, but then we're gonna do a cutout motif on the front. Is it gonna be the white tree of Gondor? Maybe. Cause I mean, that kind of looks like it's an arts and crafts design. So we may roll with that. Yeah, we may roll with that. So it'll be cool.
Phil (10:42.143) All right. I mean.
It does, yeah. Okay.
John Doyle (10:53.545) you
Phil (10:54.113) once coffee.
Logan (10:55.512) He wants attention. And it was 59 degrees when I walked into the shop this morning, so I think he's probably cold and he's just excited to have another living being in here.
Phil (11:05.747) Yeah, another warm body.
Phil (11:12.019) which when we're filming or recording this episode, it is now nine whole degrees outside, which is...
John Doyle (11:20.638) 15 degrees warmer than it was yesterday.
Phil (11:29.117) is what the weather folks said we had a hundred and it was like a hundred and ten hours of windchill below zero.
Phil (11:43.583) So that was a cold snap.
Logan (11:45.356) I've not had the bathroom in the shop turned on in the last month. Yeah, no, I just, mean, the utilities are out in the cold storage side in a little room that's insulated and stuff, but.
Phil (11:49.927) I was wondering about that if you just had that.
John Doyle (11:51.837) You
Phil (11:57.747) Right.
Logan (12:04.616) I also have my air compressor in there. I'm like, well, it takes me 30 seconds to winterize the pipes in here. You know what I mean? Like I just, I disconnect the water feed from the...
frost free hydrant, put the RV blowout on it and just plug it into the air compressor. And then I walk in and just turn all the faucets on and it's winterized. Like it's nothing crazy. And it's just, it's a whole lot less headache until this spring when it does warm up, I am going to pull the steel on the outside of the building off and figure out where the pipes are freezing. I know exactly where it is. And I'm just going to add more insulation to avoid this issue in the future.
Phil (12:47.431) Okay. Yeah, I mean, because you have the bathroom out there and for water running and whatever, so it'd be nice to be able to use it.
Logan (12:51.714) Yeah.
Logan (12:56.184) Yeah, it's a three season bathroom.
Phil (12:59.144) You
It's just that other season when you have to go outside. That's the one that.
Logan (13:05.956) Yeah, and then it's negative 10.
Phil (13:13.065) Phil. Okay. So anything on the drawers? Did you decide what's your joinery on the drawers then? Because you were, they are dubbed.
Logan (13:20.27) They're dovetailed boxes. They're just dovetailed boxes. Yep. False fronts. I think that's the, that's going to be the cleanest look. It's going to be the most straightforward. And yeah, yep. Nothing crazy on them. I'm not hand dovetailing them.
You know, I'm leaving late next week, so wife and I are taking a little medication, so I just want to get them done. So I am running the dovetails on the Panto router, which is working really, really nicely for dovetails. Have not dovetailed on it before. I know Colin has. Colin's done them on the Panto router. And it's, mean, again, once you figure it out, once you know that machine, it's like, yeah, like.
Phil (13:55.507) Okay.
Okay.
Logan (14:06.948) no issue. So it just takes a little dialing in. The biggest thing is that the Panto router has a board width capacity of eight inches. And eight inches is not deep enough to do the lower drawer. The lower drawer is think 12 and a half inches tall. It's a double deep drawer.
Phil (14:08.372) Sure.
Logan (14:30.676) there is a way to do them though. You just have to, you have to make registration marks to align every board to, not that big a deal. John Henry and Mack at Pants and Rudder actually have a PDF on their site on dovetailing wider pieces. if you're doing like a, you know, a blanket chest or whatever. so I'm just following that. I mean, no issues. So, yeah, it's just, every time I use it, I'm like, I love this thing. Like not sponsored, but like, love it.
Phil (14:53.715) Okay.
Logan (15:00.362) it. The only problem I was having is it's like and this is more of a me issue than anybody but like it's so hard to take photos on the panto router because you can't really see what's going on because there's a dust shroud around it and then if you take the dust shroud off it's like I can see what's going on but it also really then looks like this thing makes a giant mess in the shop and that's not the case because the dust shroud is removed so yeah.
Yep, that is my day today and probably this weekend is finishing up these drawers. I do have a little finagling to do with this center drawer. The center drawer is a pullout keyboard tray. obviously the front needs to drop down so you can access the keyboard.
So I am doing a, for lack of better term, it's a shallow drawer without any sides, okay? It has a false front, so there's a front and a false front. The false front is bigger, and I am using Butler tray hinges.
Phil (16:07.666) Okay.
Logan (16:21.248) so that that false front and the front will stand up to 90. But then when it lays down, the false front will register against the bottom side of the tray to hold it flat and level, if that makes sense. I think it's gonna work. I haven't built it yet. So this is all theory. I think it will work. I sketched it out of my head on the napkin. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see.
Phil (16:35.497) Okay.
Phil (16:40.255) you
Phil (16:49.087) All right. There you go.
Logan (16:50.948) So this is a modern craftsman desk. So computer cubby, pull out drawer for keyboard.
Phil (17:00.265) That's fine. I think it works. I mean, it wasn't that long ago we were building giant armoires to put TVs in, so.
Logan (17:00.504) Yep. Yeah.
John Doyle (17:05.759) Thank
Logan (17:06.916) That's Whatever happened to those?
Phil (17:15.655) All right, speaking of dovetails, I would like you and John to tell the story of a certain set of sliding dovetails that occurred this week on the set of the Woodsmith Shop TV show.
John Doyle (17:21.492) Ha ha ha.
John Doyle (17:27.635) Yeah.
Logan (17:29.912) Better yet, if we weren't recording right now and it needs to get published today, I would have Nate just grab that video and put it in the podcast. And the sound, I mean, just the sound would be great.
John Doyle (17:37.365) Yes.
Phil (17:38.367) you
John Doyle (17:40.103) Yeah, if you've heard of John Henry versus the steam engine, that's basically the story.
Phil (17:48.736) you
Logan (17:52.036) So we were filming one of our TV show episodes this week and it is a game table designed by Dylan Baker. I don't remember what issue it was, 272?
John Doyle (18:07.412) that range.
Phil (18:08.137) Sure.
Logan (18:09.39) something I don't know yeah somewhere anyways Chris built the frame we're building it out of walnut that I had on hand was the jankiest walnut ever as soon as John and I started cutting into it we should just bailed on it and whatever but we did it so nope it has a lot of character this I don't know what happened to this tree but this tree had some issues anyways Chris did the frame my part was
Phil (18:10.729) Yeah.
John Doyle (18:20.021) We're no quitters.
Phil (18:25.023) You
Logan (18:36.696) the sliding the legs. the legs are.
Think of a mox or a, a rubo bench. Okay. Think of how the legs of a rubo bench go into the top with a dovetail. That's how these are now there's no shoulder on the legs. So they're just straight dovetailed all the way down from top to bottom. So basically they're a trapezoid shape. And yeah, four legs, two stretchers connect each leg one right
underneath the top assembly, one down at the bottom. Got them all glued together. And I'm like, you know what, let's just, let's do this entire glue up at once. these, these dovetails are going to slide in, stretchers are going to be glued in. Once everything's where it needs to go, I wanted to give it a little bit of wiggle room. Then we'll apply the clamps. And as soon as...
John Doyle (19:32.347) And I heard it was a little tight when we were fitting it. But what I heard was that the glue will act as a lubricant to get it together. The famous line. Yep.
Logan (19:43.266) I did say this.
Phil (19:43.325) Yes, because we were using liquid hide glue.
Logan (19:49.034) I did say this. So I started putting it together and it was one of those, John come help me, because it was tight. Well, okay. I don't know that the glue was sticking necessarily. I think they were just cut perfectly. They were at machine tolerances, not woodworking tolerances. Yes.
Phil (19:50.558) You
John Doyle (19:53.872) Yeah, yeah. And the camera's rolling and the glue is sticking. It's like, we gotta get this together.
Right.
John Doyle (20:08.604) Yeah, compression fit.
Logan (20:14.404) So we're, John and I are trying to get these legs in.
Upside down so we're on sawhorses legs are going in from the top down into the frame and John was on a clamp on one side. I had the world's smallest wooden mallet on the other and I am beating the ever loving **** out of this thing like and we are I hope Nate does not bleep that out because I was like just walloping this thing I think I compressed half inch plywood down to quarter inch plywood as I was pounding this thing together
John Doyle (20:36.785) You
Logan (20:51.27) And it worked! Like, I don't know what the big deal is. It worked. It just, we were... It was comical because it was a very tight fit.
John Doyle (20:52.495) Mm hmm. Right.
Phil (21:02.889) Yeah. Well, and then when you have an assembly that's essentially three feet wide,
those two legs need to go in roughly at the same pace. Otherwise you're torquing the whole assembly, which makes the fit even tighter because now the legs are, you know, like tilting one way or the other and even binding even more. So.
Logan (21:29.314) Yeah, yeah. And you know, let's be fair, me being John Henry, because I'm the one hammering it, right? I started to make some good progress once Phil walked over and handed me a three pound ball peen hammer. Or cross peen hammer. And at that point, at that point, I started making up ground, because John had the mechanical advantage with the the parallel clamp and just tightening it. But it was it was they were tight.
John Doyle (21:32.835) Right.
Phil (21:40.593) You
Phil (21:55.357) Yep. You can easily see on camera which one of those two went to engineering school and which one was in graphic arts.
Logan (22:04.42) Hahaha
Logan (22:08.392) Now, to be fair, the second set of legs, which I'm hoping is not what they use on the show, I they use that first set of video clip on the show, I was like, let's loosen these up a little bit. And I just took like three swipes of a smoothing plane and they slipped right in.
John Doyle (22:26.607) Mm-hmm.
Logan (22:31.592) But man, it was awesome.
Phil (22:33.791) Yeah, it was still a really nice fit on those other ones, but it was amazing how just a small number of hand plane passes were required in order to change that whole dynamic.
Logan (22:38.7) Yeah! yeah!
Logan (22:46.873) Yeah.
Logan (22:52.664) Yep. Yeah, was, it it was fun. I don't think I could have gotten those together by myself. I mean, maybe, but man, my right arm would be massive compared to my left because there was a lot of, there was a lot of hammering that had to happen for that one leg to go in. Yeah. So, janky Walnut aside,
John Doyle (23:07.937) Yeah, it took some cranking.
Logan (23:21.198) Tight dovetails aside, that's looking pretty good.
John Doyle (23:23.031) Yeah, it's coming together.
Phil (23:27.579) It is, and it's amazing to me, even after the fact that I should know this after as many projects as I build, there is a hard middle in a project where it just kind of looks tough. You know, there's little bits that just need to be cleaned up or squeeze out or things look gappy or whatever.
But as you start going over it with a, you know, like I cleaned up the top surface with a block plane and leveled out the legs and, you know, sanding and filling, and all of a sudden it's starting to come together and be a more of a cohesive piece instead of like a bunch of photo props that got stuck together.
Logan (24:17.538) Yeah, well, yeah, and to be fair, so I'm not a huge fan.
of the construction of this thing. I'll be the first one to say it because it has basically three inch thick walnut. That's the frame. That's the top. That's like the body of, yep, yep. The body of it is glued together, inch and a half thick walnut. The ends are mitered and I'm not a huge fan of that construction method because that leaves it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that leaves a lot of room for stuff to go wrong.
Phil (24:35.539) top frame, yeah.
John Doyle (24:44.841) You lost me at Miters.
Phil (24:49.055) You
Logan (24:54.182) And what happened with this walnut is a giant we're cutting around a lot of cracks and stuff this tree had some it must have some really bad wind shake or something
but we're also cutting it when it is negative eight degrees outside. There is 0 % humidity right now. And as soon as we start cutting it and you join it and you plan it, let it sit for an hour, it's moved all over because it's losing moisture still. So.
You combine that with trying to laminate stuff and get miters to fit. know Chris fought it. But then to the day, it looks pretty good. You know, hindsight, this tree would have been much better cut into small chair parts or something, you know, like small box parts. But it is what it is. Walnut has different grades than everything. So we had some knots we were fighting around, you know, trying to avoid and stuff. But, you know, she'll she'll end up pretty cool.
I think.
Phil (25:59.273) Yeah. I mean, the other thing on this table is we took a different approach than what the plans. Well, then what Mark talked about when he built it for the magazine. Cause like you said, the, the top layer or the top frame is a double layer inch and a half. Mark ended up making the inside layer inch and a half first and then
adding wrapping miters around the outer layer. Whereas if you glue those pieces up first and then miter it, now all of a sudden, instead of cutting miters in inch and a half pieces, you cutting miters on three inch pieces. And that's a much harder proposition in terms of work piece control. You know, like if you're going to do that on the table saw, you know, like you
Logan (26:28.982) scabbing on the rest, yep.
Phil (26:56.087) You almost can't make that cut in a single pass on the table saw. And if you're at a miter saw, again, you you, you got to have the right blade set up and the type of cut, because it's very easy for, you know, the blade to wander a little bit in the cut or the head on the miter saw to shift a little bit just because of how much material you're trying to remove.
and how much surface area that miter has. So, you know, it's...
one of those things where it's.
Phil (27:39.773) what is your level of comfort in making those kinds of cuts? what, do you want to make twice as many miter cuts or fewer miter cuts, but in much thicker parts?
Phil (27:56.639) So, you know, Chris spent less time than I thought in fine tuning those miters and getting them to fit and they're tight. So.
Logan (28:07.202) I mean, 20 years of knowing him, Phil, come on. less time than I thought. What do mean?
Phil (28:10.227) You
Yeah. So although it did kind of have me flashing back to that giant dining table that you did for somebody, right? But those were flat miters, right?
Logan (28:23.236) Yeah.
Logan (28:29.604) That was a poker table.
Phil (28:31.765) poker table, that's right.
Logan (28:33.508) that and they were 22 and a half degree. That was an octagon. And yeah, that would turn out fine. It just that was yeah, that was. Those are like four inch thick by eight inch wide. Pieces they were that was big. It was just a terrible idea. Me hating me hating construction methods is not only limited to Dylan designs. It also is my designs included.
Phil (28:59.665) no, no, that's true. I will say I do like the dovetailed leg construction. I think that adds a really cool look to it.
Logan (29:10.444) Yeah, I'm, I would prefer I think a square leg down the bottom, but that's because I like that look in like a bench or a table. A little too modern for me, but that's just because I like traditional stuff, so.
Phil (29:22.876) sure.
Okay.
Phil (29:33.247) So yeah, so we're probably three quarter of the way done on the project. Like yesterday in my filming, did the playing, the recessed playing surface and made some cleats that will support the upper surface. And by me, I mean, John mostly, let's be fair there. Yeah, and then he and I were, he and I were working on the panels.
John Doyle (29:51.398) It was a team effort.
Logan (29:56.452) How did that walnut match?
John Doyle (29:58.82) It looks fine. Yeah.
Phil (30:02.515) Yeah, it looks good. Yeah.
Logan (30:02.616) Does it? I mean, so the original stock we used was air dried. Very beautiful color, purpley, know, just kind of that air dried walnut. The material I brought in yesterday for those cleats needed to be longer and all I had was kiln dried stock. So I didn't know if it was gonna be a little more brown or if it ended up about the same color.
John Doyle (30:24.246) I it's within reason.
Phil (30:26.503) I think it's about the same color. Not enough where we've done some other stuff where we've had air dried stuff and then the kiln dried and steamed stuff. And that's pretty stark.
Logan (30:30.423) cool. You'd notice it.
Logan (30:40.632) just like our veneer is gonna be.
Phil (30:42.729) Yeah.
Phil (30:46.259) But at least those will be separate pieces. that's not a... Yeah. We'll see.
John Doyle (30:50.642) I'll have to say too that we were trying to get the legs out of what wood we had here and we ended up with one leg that had a bark inclusion in it, it was cracked and we ended up filling it with black super glue and different things and I think that's the coolest looking leg after it all said and done.
Logan (31:16.77) Which is saying something, because John is usually like, hide those, hide them wherever you can.
John Doyle (31:18.21) Right. Yeah. Well, it's usually that it's like you get 90 % is like premium looking and then you get like one little nine that just doesn't look right when it's all kind of like rustic and then it's like, it's cool. Or you get one little piece of sapwood or something is like, where did that come from? But if you kind of mix it throughout the whole project, it's like, that's kind of cool. So
Phil (31:20.927) Ha
Logan (31:30.532) What me?
Logan (31:36.342) Okay, that's fair. Yeah, that's fair.
Logan (31:44.226) Yeah.
Phil (31:45.267) Yeah. Well, you were talking about that with your desk, about trying to find and arrange parts.
so that they looked good where they needed to look good. then like crappier surfaces can be at the back or whatever. And then you and John were talking about this in the leg or in making the table here about a similar process of trying to find the pieces that we need for the project out of what's available.
Logan (31:58.712) Yeah.
Logan (32:18.308) Yeah, and I've said it before and I said it when we were doing that. Like that's the part of this entire process that I really like. It's just like, it's maybe it's a little bit of the treasure hunter in me, but it's like, I know I can get this out of here. How do I make the most out of it? How do I make it look the best with what I have sitting here? And I really, yeah, I do. I like that.
John Doyle (32:37.897) Yeah, there's a lot of satisfaction to that process of putting all the pieces together and getting the most out of it.
Logan (32:49.632) It makes a frickin' mess. I'm sure Steve Johnson was having an aneurysm with all the bark and walnut dust in the shop and stuff. man.
John Doyle (32:51.776) Yeah.
Phil (32:54.023) you
Phil (33:02.161) It does, but it like, I think that's
That's a hidden part of woodworking that people don't realize a lot. Especially if you're buying stuff, just that home center, you know, forest kind of materials where you're just getting boards from it. You get it a little bit when you start buying random width boards and you're trying to come up with the best yield and best look at the same time. But there is a, there is a delight. It is like treasure hunting of.
taking like, can I do to make these pieces look the best that they can?
Logan (33:39.608) Yeah, yeah. there's the thing that always, and I know everybody that works with rough sound material knows this. You get to a point where it's like, I'm throwing so much material away, but.
As long as it's rough saw material, you're paying a lot less. Like at the home center, you might not throw that much away, but you're also paying $19 a board foot versus 350 a board foot. So you're still saving a ton of money and you have more control, but like we filled up Chris Fitch's truck with heating material for the next month.
Phil (34:07.741) Yeah.
John Doyle (34:16.177) Yep. And the thing is you buy that that lumber at the you know, that surface four sides at the the home centers and it's like you didn't waste that but somebody else did and they're making you pay and you're paying for it. You're paying for the waste that they that they use to cut that that word out of so
Logan (34:32.098) Somebody somewhere did, yeah. Yep.
Phil (34:41.117) Yeah. But I mean, out of those boards, like there's still some good sized pieces back in the shop that could very easily still be chair parts or boxes or custom pulls or trays or, whatever.
Logan (34:53.088) yeah, 100%.
Logan (34:58.884) Yeah, 100%, yeah. Which, I mean, it's kind of funny because it hasn't been very often. That was an entire tree. So that was every slice out of this walnut tree that was probably 18 inches in diameter. Wasn't a huge walnut tree by any means. But like, it's not often that you say, okay, here's the entire tree that's been cut up into boards.
This is what we got out it and this is what we have left. It's kind of cool to see that. Usually it's pieces here, pieces there.
Phil (35:41.567) Anyway, so you'll be able to see that game table later on this fall on season 19 of the Woodsmith Shop. It's kind of fun to think about, you know, we're working on these and then it's going to be months and months later and all of a people will be asking about it and talking about it and be like, oh yeah, that's right, I totally forgot about that.
Phil (36:04.959) Let's see what else we got going on. Woodworking in America. Logan and I will be diving into deep meetings on that one starting next week already.
Logan (36:19.572) see already
Phil (36:21.085) Yep. So that's October 10 and 11. Everybody block it out on your calendar. you want to make time to come, come to fabulous Des Moines, Iowa for that. We had a blast last year doing it. And I think this year is going to be bigger and better. We got a better venue or a bigger venue space that'll have its own unique charm to it. And, you
some returning speakers, some new speakers, more vendors, all that kind of stuff.
Phil (37:00.083) I think we're even toying with the idea of a parking lot boot sale.
John Doyle (37:04.922) swap meet.
Logan (37:09.804) Yeah, I think that'd be cool. I know my buddy Bobby Three Fingers wants to come out and sell some lumber, which I think he absolutely should. Maybe send out a notification to the MWTCA, Midwest Tool Collector Association, say, hey, this is going on. We want to open it up for a swap meet Saturday morning. I think that'd be cool. Send everybody home with crap they don't need so you know how I feel.
Phil (37:24.351) Sure. Yeah.
Phil (37:29.79) Yeah.
John Doyle (37:34.234) When you say Bobby Three Fingers, sounds like you're getting lumber from the mafia.
Logan (37:40.054) I know, that's the point. That's the point.
Phil (37:40.255) Ha
Logan (37:47.352) Yeah, that's funny. Maybe, we'll see, we'll see. I'm not gonna cut into Bobby's territory though. Made that mistake once. No. Yeah. That's right, that's right. These are all the businesses that we have not started yet. That's funny. Yep.
Phil (37:48.051) Maybe Chunkatrunc will be there, we don't know.
Phil (37:55.071) We don't need another turf war.
Phil (38:02.451) what the duck farm fresh eggs might even be there.
John Doyle (38:09.978) Project 2025. This is the year.
Phil (38:11.814) you
Ha ha ha ha.
Logan (38:16.77) That's funny.
You know, it's funny. So Phil, you've been working on a door for your house and you decided to use loose tenants for that.
Phil (38:27.261) Yes.
Phil (38:32.062) I did.
Logan (38:34.658) The after this desk is wrapped up this weekend. My next project is building a set of church doors. from the panel church doors, mahogany. I ordered the mahogany and then it had a lot of issues in it. So I had to return it. and they ordered new stock for it. the, what, why did you choose to do loose tenants versus like stub tenant and then groove?
Phil (38:40.563) Okay.
Phil (39:05.311) well, the door is going to end up being a sliding door for a guest room in our basement. yeah, yeah, it's not going to be a pocket door. it's going to be like a sliding barn door just to increase the amount of usable space in that room. the reason that I did loose tendon joinery is.
Logan (39:13.476) So like a barn door style. Got it.
Phil (39:33.471) Probably 75 % personal preference.
In the sense that, I've made an entry door for my brother and sister-in-law out of cherry and did conventional mortise and tenon joinery on it. It's fine. The issue that I had with it, and this is where personal preference comes into play is.
Two things, one is you start sizing parts, but some of the parts you really don't know the size of them because they have tenons on.
So it's like, need my door to be X inches wide overall. You know, the styles are five and a half inches wide. Now the rails are how long? I don't know. It depends on how deep I cut the mortises and how much, you know, I don't want those tenants to bottom out in the mortises. So they're X amount deep, but it's really the shoulder to shoulder length. That is the key driver there.
So in my head, Loose Tenon makes more sense because I can just cut parts to size, you know, and focus on making
Phil (41:00.047) nicely accurately sized styles and rails. And I can lay that out and dry clamp it and it'd be like, that's the size of the door that I need and still allow for, you know, final trimming or whatever I need to do at the end. And then in the second step, I can do the joinery and then the joinery is only one setup. It's just mortises. And I don't have to do a joint, a mortising setup.
and then a separate tenoning setup and have to get both of those right. Instead, I can just do mortises and get that right. It's the same operation, essentially on both pieces. I double the amount of mortises that I need to cut, but you know, with a router and a spiral bit, it goes pretty quickly. You know, I know
John Doyle (41:55.155) Thank
Phil (41:56.307) Technically, the making of the Tenon stock is a separate step, but...
Making tenon stock is much easier than making tenons because I can just rip pieces on the bandsaw and then either hand plane them or make skim cuts through a thickness planer until it matches the thickness. And then I have like big long sticks of tenon stock that I can just lop off to length.
John Doyle (42:23.655) then you're taking out the step of either chiseling the mortise square or rounding a tenon as well. So it's nice.
Phil (42:33.127) Right. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, like when you cut tenons on the end of a piece,
Phil (42:47.355) It always seems like somewhere in there, a shoulder gets offset.
you know, where there's a little bit of a step when you, you know, are cutting like the edge of it versus the face of it. I don't know. And then now you're fine tuning that with chisels, but then if you do that on two of the rails, are you taking off the same amount so that they're now not quite the same length shoulder to shoulder? It's probably not a huge deal, but like I said, for me, it's about
being able to just focus on one thing at a time, like just making parts and now just doing the joinery.
Phil (43:35.967) has a really long answer. Yeah.
Logan (43:37.924) That's right. I was just wondering because I am planning. Like a door is a, it's a big project, but it's not a big project, if that makes sense. Stuff has to be right, but there aren't that many parts and they're very simple. So it's like two 80 inch long rails. You got, or.
Phil (43:48.99) Yeah.
Phil (43:56.03) Mm-hmm.
Logan (44:04.118) styles you got three or four rails that are you know maybe 24 inches long if you're making a 36 inch wide door
And then panels. Now these ones I'm working on are a little, they're going to be a little bit more complicated because they have the Serbian Orthodox cross built into the frame and panel. So you have a rail that is at like a 30 degree angle, which again, not that crazy. It's just making sure that everything is right. And you know, you're building an interior door out of pine.
Phil (44:33.076) Right.
Logan (44:43.35) I'm, these are exterior double doors for the church. and the, I know many people build doors out of solid wood. Technically the, North America building association only allows solid wood doors to be made out of, oak. No mahogany.
mahogany is the only thing that solid doors can be made out of. Everything else needs to be a veneered, like a core, like a laminated core door. Now don't think that's code or anything, but that's just their standard is mahogany is fine for a front door. Everything else needs to have a core that is then veneered with the wood species of choice. Which I, you know, I had thought about for a hot second, like, should I do that? Like I could use the white oak I have.
Phil (45:19.913) Right.
Logan (45:41.958) You know, it might be kind of cool. It'd be a good technique to show in the magazine, you know, building cores and then using a vacuum press. I'm like, man, this sounds like a lot of work. Like at the end of the day, I still have to build these damn things. like, you know, doing that sounds like a lot of work. If I was doing it for my house, I might if I wanted to build something else. But instead, I'm going to use the...
Phil (45:52.511) Yeah.
Logan (46:09.228) I'm gonna use solid mahogany. Pricing's a little bit more expensive, but I'm saving a lot of labor.
Logan (46:19.918) So everything's gonna be, I'm gonna do grooves and stub tenons on everything, I think. I might chop the mortises a little deeper on the...
Phil (46:25.801) Okay.
Logan (46:37.604) for the the rails we'll see so that was part of the reason I'm the shaper was to do to do the grooves and stuff on this so
Phil (46:48.204) yeah. Yeah. Yeah, which I think that plays a role in it too is like, what's your, what are your tooling options?
Logan (46:59.064) Yes, yeah, yep. And I mean, you surely could do doors without a Shaper. We've talked about Shapers on the...
Phil (47:00.573) you
Phil (47:08.254) Right.
Logan (47:11.692) on the podcast before and that was, you I want to do some articles on them as well because I think they are a really good option. This Harvey one's been fantastic. That's how I built this entire desk. And there are some good options to like, you know what, you need a half inch wide groove that's two inches deep. Yup, there's a helicopter blade for that. So it's got to turn the speed down and let her eat. So.
Phil (47:32.063) Ha
Logan (47:39.908) That'd be cool. I'm going to, I'm going to try to pair up that door project with the Shaper article, the first Shaper article.
Phil (47:46.417) Okay. Yeah.
Phil (47:52.873) Cool. That'll be fun to see come together.
Phil (47:58.239) I'm waiting for the weather to warm up a little bit because I'm going to pre-finish panels before gluing up the door. I just don't want it to be 0.065 % humidity before that happens.
Logan (48:13.208) Yeah. What, what finish are you going use on?
Phil (48:16.54) I think I'm going to do a water-based finish just to give it a little some protection, but I don't think I'm going to paint it per se, but...
I had thought about that though too, but I just don't like... I have enough painted stuff in my house.
Logan (48:37.56) You know something that just dawned on me?
Phil (48:40.639) What's that?
Logan (48:41.39) John makes a lot of parts for us. I've seen John do a lot of woodworking and he's very, very good at it. I don't know if I've ever seen him finishing something. Like, like I don't know if I've ever seen John in the spray booth.
John Doyle (48:49.8) I don't. I don't finish anything.
Phil (48:53.19) Hahaha
John Doyle (48:57.194) Yeah. Yep. Yep. Somebody else can do the other 5%. That's the hardest part. The last 5 % is the 95%.
Phil (48:57.907) That's his thing, is he is a, he's a part maker.
Logan (49:01.976) He's a 95 % guy, he doesn't do the final five.
Phil (49:04.536) He's like... He's like middle-
John Doyle (49:10.344) all the sanding and finishing.
Logan (49:10.916) you
John Doyle (49:15.048) Yeah. Trying to think of the last thing that I put a finish on. It's been a while.
Logan (49:15.364) Oh, I've seen you sand plenty of parts. just haven't. I don't know if I've ever seen you put a finish on something.
Phil (49:25.736) You did that door threshold.
John Doyle (49:26.466) yeah.
Phil (49:30.079) And I mean, this goes back a little bit, but there was the like loft bed jungle gym set.
John Doyle (49:35.336) Oh yeah, but that, I mean that was, I don't know, a while ago. But yeah, it's usually just go in the spray booth real quick, throw a couple coats of lacquer on there, call it good. Keep it simple.
Phil (49:51.177) Mm-hmm.
Phil (49:57.087) I mean, we were thrown around some shade earlier this week about Logan and his desk doors and drawers for the inside office and John's cabinet parts that he's still letting acclimate in the photo studio.
John Doyle (50:04.05) Mm-hmm.
John Doyle (50:12.456) 2008
Logan (50:16.324) Is that because all is the only thing they need finish?
John Doyle (50:19.624) basically like yeah assembled and finished but then once once I get that done then what am I gonna do I'll have no purpose
Phil (50:24.915) Yeah, because they're all rounded over and
Logan (50:26.51) awesome.
John Doyle (50:32.69) Someday. It's long-term project.
Phil (50:36.221) Yep. Yep. I mean, I still have my case clock over there that we did for the TV show that I still need to make a face for, so.
and get glass.
Phil (50:55.071) All right. There's the question. What project is hanging out in your shop that just needs to get finished, but you're not doing that. Let me know. You can send that to woodsmith at woodsmith.com or leave it in the comment section for the whole world to read over on our YouTube channel. Want to give a special shout out here to Grizzly Industrial. 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. Thanks for listening to the Shop Notes podcast, everybody, and we'll see you next week. Bye.
