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Lills Quilt Rack Part V The Needed Shelf

Once I had routed all six legs even with the templates I turned to the shelf.

The leg blanks for the left side.

The shelf was made from the same tiger maple stock as the front legs. I milled four (4) pieces S4S and laid then out in different arrangements until I was happy with the pattern made by the grain. I then glued them up as a typical panel glue up.

After glue up the next step was to cut the shelf to size. I made it 24" x 24". As long as youre close the exact size doesnt matter. The cross bars will be relative dimensioned off of the shelf later. The exact size is not critical.

Its a very straightforward panel glue up.

The cuts were made with a track saw and my lovely 26" Woodpeckers try square. I tried to take equal amounts off each side in order to keep the panel seems symmetrical. After cutting to size I set the cutoffs aside, as they will come in handy later.

A big square is big handy.

With the shelf finished, I set it aside on stickers to allow air movement around it. This proved more important that I would have thought as accidentally leaving it directly on my table saw one night resulted in cupping. Luckily once I re-stickered it the sides reached equilibrium again and it flattened out.

Now that my legs and shelf were ready, it was time to begin laying out the joints.

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Lills Quilt Rack Part V The Needed Shelf

Lills Quilt Rack Part IX Its Getting Shapely In Here

With the cross pieces rough shaped and fit to length, I started the shaping of the quilt rack by hand shaping the edge of the maple front legs with my Shinto rasp. This was a little hard to reach due to the shelf being in place and it was also fairly slow. After roughing the curve of one front leg where it met the shelf, I soon switched methods.

The first, tepid shaping.

I dissembled the rack and began the rounding work by addressing the inside edge of each middle and rear leg at the overlap joint. These were the edge which buried into the adjoining, proud leg where they overlapped. Here I wanted a subtle curve, not the large flowing curve I would use elsewhere. When I found that I couldn’t fit my 1/8” round over router bit in because the bearing didn’t clear the leg joint, I used my Lee Valley cornering tool to create a simple 1/8” radius round over. By curving this edge, I not only maintained continuity with the overall curved design, I created a shadow line where the lack of curve could have revealed an uneven joint.

The Lee Valley 1/8" cornering tool worked wonderfully.

it left a softness to the finished joint.

Then I took out my RAS 115. I used a hard platen with 36 grit paper. Used with this setup on speed 1 the RAS is more like a gentle grinder than an aggressive sander. It effectively removes wood. With a little practice it leaves a fairly smooth curve.

Time for fun.

With the grunt work done by the RAS, I ran my hands over the curves. Any spots which were flat or where the curve felt uneven were further rounded and flared with the Shinto Rasp. This was the most important part of the shaping, as an uneven curve at this point would remain through the latter shaping stages. Then I went over the entire edge with my Auriou #9. This is a large, medium toothed rasp which further refined the shape and smoothed the surface. Finally I ran used my Gramercy 5” Cabinet Maker’s rasp over the whole curved surface. The Gramercy leaves a very smooth surface. So smooth, it’s sometimes hard to believe it came from a rasp.

Slowly, each leg went from square to this.

This process of RAS, Shinto, Auriou and Gramercy was repeated over and over and over as I worked my way over almost the entirety of the front and rear faces of each leg, turning the square edge into a flowing curve. The only locations I didn’t round over via this process were the leg-to-leg joints on the front leg. The rounding of these joints would have to wait until after glue up in order to avoid gaps.

This clamping worked, but was less than ideal.

I’ve learned that my face vise is less than ideal for the constant clamping, unclamping and re-clamping necessary for this type of round over work. I’m leaning towards a leg vise on my next bench. If anyone can speak to its utility regarding this task, I’d love to hear it.

Next time Ill get to sanding. For more quilt rack posts, check here.

Dont forget about the +Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We talk woodworking with Guests from around the world of woodworking every other week. Subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes today.

Lills Quilt Rack Part IX Its Getting Shapely In Here

Lills Quilt Rack Part VIII A Cross Piece To Hold A Quilt

With the joints at base of the legs and the shelf done, I once again dry assembled the quilt rack. This time I took blanks for the cross pieces and set them on the shelf, adjacent to their respective legs. By marking the cross pieces directly off the legs at this point I was able to accurately determine the length and ensure that the legs would remain parallel once the cross pieces were installed. I cut the cross pieced to length with my table saw.

The cross piece blanks are ready
to be marked.

I then took the cross pieces and fit them between the top of the legs, making a simple pencil mark spanning the legs and cross pieces at each of the six points where they met. These marks were centered across the cross piece by eye and served as the reference points off of which I milled the dominos. I used the Domino fence to reference off the front of the legs and the cross pieces, adjusting the depth to the middle of the legs (again by eye, this needn’t be perfect).

To mill the dominos I simply took out the cross pieces. I domioed them on the bench and dominoed the legs as they stood, dry fit to the shelf.

I had forgotten to mention, I miss milled a domino.
I plugged it and later cut it flush.

Using the domino mortises to determine the center line, I marked out lines down the length of each leg 1” wide (1/2” on each side of the center). These lines would indicate the width of the cross pieces along most of their length. The ends would flair, so I used a French curve to mark a large concave curve extending from each corner of the cross piece to the center line.

The french curve was used to flair from the 1" line to the corner.

I used a thick pencil mark to indicate the cut line, which running from corner to corner was French curve to straight line at 1” width back to French curve. I cut these line on the band saw. Because they would all receive major shaping, I cut close to or on the line and didn’t worry about going back with a template and router. Each cross piece was different and they need not perfectly match each other. I took the rough cut cross pieces and dry assembled once again.

Cross piece blanks, fresh off the saw.

The dominos hold the cross pieces flush with the face of the legs. Because the legs curved back and the cross pieces were milled square, this left the cross piece proud of the front of the legs at the top and bottom of the cross piece and proud of the back of the legs along the entire length of the cross piece. I marked the line of the back of the legs onto the cross pieces and pull them off once again.

The line is scribed even with the back of the legs.

I used two (2) drops of NexaBond glue to re-attach the cross piece cutouts. Because the tips of the cross pieces were now a bandsaw blade kerf proud of the glued in cutout, I trimmed the proud edges flush with my block plane (yes, a plane!). Using the table saw, I ripped the back of each cross piece just proud of the line I had marked. The leg curve was subtle enough that the straight table saw rip was pretty damn close. I used a heavy rubber mallet to knock off the off cuts and dry fit the cross pieces yet again.

Nice & flush with the face of the legs.

During this dry assembly I took my Shinto Rasp and shaped the front and back faces of the cross pieces flush with the legs. The quilt rack was now dry fit with everything cut to size. It was time to begin the shaping.

Next time, well begin the shaping. For all the Lills Quilt Rack Posts, click here.

Dont forget about the +Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We talk woodworking with Guests from around the world of woodworking every other week. Subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes today.

Lills Quilt Rack Part VIII A Cross Piece To Hold A Quilt

Lills Quilt Rack Part XI Assembly

I assembled Lill’s Quilt Rack in stages. I began by gluing the rear and middle legs together for each side. With this dry I glued the front leg to the rear/middle combo. The assembled sides were then glued to the shelf and cross pieces.

Step 1: I began by gluing up the rear leg assemblies.

Step Two: The right side legs, post glue up.

Step Three: The sides were glued to the shelf and cross pieces.

With those simple steps the quilt rack was assembled. For as many challenges as this project had, the glue up was not one of them.

To reinforce the leg to shelf joints, I installed one (1) Miller dowel through each leg into the base. Though made from the same wood as the legs, these dowels are clearly visible. I’m not sure if they add or detract from the aesthetics. Regardless, I feel that the strength they add makes them well worth installing.

Miller Dowels reinforce the leg-to-shelf joint.

Now it was time to finish flaring the legs.

First I flared the front (Tiger Maple) legs where they had been left square to fit in the joints cut in the middle and rear legs. Due to space restrictions I couldn’t use the RAS 115 in these joints. All the work had to be done with the Shinto, Auriou and Gramercy rasps. Where the rounded section of the leg transition to the square section in the joint I used my Gramercy rat tail rasp to create a tight curving transition. After finishing the first joint I began covering the adjoining Walnut leg with blue tape to minimize scratching.

It was only after they were glued together that I could
shape the leg-to-leg joints.

To curve and flair the cross pieces into the legs I used my Foredom rotary tool with a medium grit Kutzall head. I used this to create the rough curve on the flaring sections. Then, as I’ve said so many times before, I used my Shinto, Auriou and Gramercy rasps to ease and further flare the curve. For the cross pieces, this was especially important where the flaring sections met the previously shaped sections of the legs and cross pieces.

The cross piece faired into the leg.

The rough work of the cross piece to leg fairing was done
with my Foredom and a Kutzall bit.

Now that the rack is assembled and the shaping is complete, next time well sand. And then, sand some more.

See all of the quilt rack posts here.

Dont forget about the +Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We talk woodworking with Guests from around the world of woodworking every other week. Subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes today.

Lills Quilt Rack Part XI Assembly

Lills Quilt Rack Part III Lumber Selection and Re Selection

With the design finalized and the templates made it was time to choose the lumber I would use.

Paduk in my lumber rack.

Intending to use them on this project, I had picked up two (2) large pieces of 6/4 lumber at the Woodworking Shows when they visited New Jersey in February. One (1) piece of walnut and another of paduk. Yet, when I looked at the boards next to each other in my lumber rack, I couldn’t see the Walnut and paduk playing well together. I decided to reconsider my lumber selection.

Which to choose?

In order to work out the wood types I would use I took a photo of the full sized drawing and made some black and white copies of it. Then I used crayons matching the basic shades to play with different woods and different wood-to-leg combinations. I settled on using walnut for the back and middle legs and a blond wood I believe to be apple for the front legs and the shelf.

With wood selected it was now time to finally start milling. I began with the blond wood. I have a stack of beautiful rough sawn blond wood about 5/4 thick and between 6” and 10” wide which was in the pile Kari Hultman generously gave me a few years ago. I believe it’s apple. I’m no arborist though and to be honest, I really have no idea. I’ve used in the past and found small insect holes in it. I found them to add character and in previous pieces they were always small holes.

These large voids were what I uncovered.

When I began milling this batch, I found the inset holes were much bigger in the pieces I’d selected. Large recess were revealed in a few pieces as I jointed them. I considered these pieces and was disappointed by the size of the insect holes. I was also unsure how the gaps would impact later construction when I needed reference surfaces that might have large voids in them.

I slept on it and ultimately decided to abandon the blond wood. After taking inventory of my lumber rack I settled on tiger maple as a replacement. I had enough of it and it would provide a beautiful contrast to the walnut.

Square and ready to go.

At this point I milled all the tiger maple square using my jointer and planer. The single walnut board I was using for the four (4) walnut legs had been surfaced S2S before I bought it. I hastily examined it, considered that it was wider than my 8” jointer and decided that it was flat enough.

Its almost flat and square.

It was flat “enough” . . . but it should have been flatter.

You can the previous Lills Quilt Rack posts here.

Dont forget about the +Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We talk woodworking with Guests from around the world of woodworking every other week. Subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes today.

Lills Quilt Rack Part III Lumber Selection and Re Selection

Lills Quilt Rack Part I The Inspiration

Quilt racks have become a specialty of mine. I was first assigned to make one for my Mother-In-Law in 2012. Since then I’ve also built Katie’s Quilt Rack. Over both builds I’ve found that working within the parameters of a quilt rack (two or three horizontal bars about 30” off the ground about 24” wide) allowed for lots of freedom with the overall form. From the beginning I’ve gone with curved quilt racks as I find the typical rectilinear ones boring.

Cathys Quilt Rack

Katies Quilt Rack

Earlier this year I was tasked with making my third quilt rack. This one is for my Wife’s Aunt Lill’s 90^th birthday. It’s made extra special by the fact that Lill is the first real quilter I’ve made a rack for. She’s been making quilts for every newborn in the family for the last five or six decades (my wife and three sons all have them). I’d say she’s probably made over 100 quilts.

For this rack I wanted to push the design even further than I have with my last two. Rather than simply starting with curves, I looked for design inspiration.

This inspiration originally came with a quilt rack I found on Pinterest. While I would always have made it of wood, the crossing legs caught my attention as I felt the forward and rear sweeping legs could be made from contrasting woods for visual contrast.

As I mulled that design over in preparation for Lill’s quilt rack I realized that it was similar to blades of grass crossing each other. As grass blades were more organic that chromed steel tubes, I kept looking along those lines and found this repeating grass blade pattern cut in the back of the benches outside my local library.

The grass blade pattern I found inspiring.

With the inspiration down, it was now time to translate the bench photo into a quilt rack.

Dont forget about the +Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We talk woodworking with Guests from around the world of woodworking every other week. Subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes today.

Lills Quilt Rack Part I The Inspiration

Lills Quilt Rack Part X Shaping the Cross Pieces

The shaping was done! Almost.

Even after shaping the bulk of the legs with an aggressive sander, coarse, medium and fine rasps there was still much shaping to be done.

Unlike the legs, the rounding of the cross pieces began on the router.

Because the cross pieces are a consistent width (once past the flairs at the end) I was able to rough shape their curves on the router table. Then I switched to the same RAS, Shinto, Auriou, and Gramercy shaping routine.

The final bit of shaping before glue up was to the shelf. While I wanted a strong, square shelf to juxtapose against the organic curves of the legs I did east the edges with a 1/8” round over. I did this with a router and kept far away from the four locations where the legs meet the shelf since rounding them over would leave voids in the joints.

With a simple 1/8" round over the shelf was done. I wanted its square
shape to juxtapose against the curved shape of the legs.

With initial shaping done, it was time to sand. While I knew there would be much more sanding to do after glue up and final shaping, sanding the loose pieces now was relatively easy, allowing me to sand with a machine before the assembly would create spots too small to fit the sander.

I made pencil marks on the legs between each grit
and sanded until they were gone.

I sanded each leg and cross rail the same way. I would mark them with a pencil and sand the pencil marks off using my RO 90 sander with a soft platen and 80 grit paper, set to speed 1. Then I marked them with pencil again and sanded it off with the RO 90 with a soft platen, interface pad and 120 grit paper set to speed 2. I marked them with pencil a third time, this time sanding the pencil marks off with the RO 90 sander with a soft platen, interface pad and 180 grit sand paper set to speed 2. For all of this sanding, the RO 90 was set to Rotex mode. Because the rails are so narrow and don’t offer a flat surface the pressure on the sanding pad is very uneven and as a result the pad doesn’t spin properly in random orbit mode.

I also used my 6” random orbit sander to sand the shelf from 80 through 220 grit.

My what shapely legs the quilt rack has.

After this initial sanding it was finally time to begin the glue up.

In the next post, it will finally be time to assemble. For more quilt rack posts, check here.

Dont forget about the +Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We talk woodworking with Guests from around the world of woodworking every other week. Subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes today.

Lills Quilt Rack Part X Shaping the Cross Pieces

Lills Quilt Rack Part VI Those Pesky Leg Joints

Before I rounded over the quilt rack legs, I cut the joinery on them.

It was critical to hold the legs in place when marking the joints.

To do this, I began by laying out a set of legs on the full size drawing. I used a sharp pencil to mark the locations. Once I had one set marked, I took the matching set and transferred the marks from each leg on the first side to its corresponding leg on the other side.

For the laps at the top of the legs, where the front legs weave between the rear legs, I started by determining how deep I wanted the front leg to run into the rear legs. I settled on a depth about ¾ the width of the front legs (the actual width of the legs and depth of the joint doesn’t really matter. Just use what works for you). I marked the depths with a combination square.

Before cutting the joints I ran around the markings with my marking knife to score the grain and define the joint. As with most of my joints and cuts, I used relative dimensioning. The first side was done running the knife against a ruler. Then I took the front leg and set it against the knife line. I then ran the knife against the leg to score the second side of the joint. The sides of the leg were scored running the knife along the combination square.

One of the top leg joints after routing.

From there I laid the legs in pairs on my bench. I routed out the joint in the front leg using an 1/8" spiral upcut bit in my palm router. The rear leg provided support for the router base. I did the routing by eye, cutting the joint half its depth at a time and running about 1/8" away from the knife mark.

Test fitting a front leg in the joint after chiseling to the line.

Once Id routed the four (4) rear legs in this manner I was left with full depth, flat bottomed joints which were about 1/8" too narrow. I used a chisel to get right to the knife lines as cleanly as possible.

With the leg intersect joints done it I was then able to determine the joints for the lap of the middle and rear legs at their bases. Because the notches already cut in the middle and rear legs needed to both meet the front leg, I set the middle and rear legs on each other, lining up the notches. I slid in a front leg and then determined the remaining gap using a setup block.

The setup block indicated the TOTAL amount the legs needed
to overlap at their base.

That gap was the total I would need to remove from the bottom of the legs so that when they lapped each other they would also fit around the front leg properly. These joints were milled in the same manner as the upper joints. I routed out most of the waste (this time with a ¼” spiral upcut bit) and then chiseled to the line. Unfortunately, I miscalculated and took the whole amount off each leg – essentially making each recess twice as deep as needed. I quickly realized this, milled up spacers and glued them in.

At their base the middle are rear leg overlap each other. With the
middle leg coming up between them all 3 leges are on slightly different planes.

After all this joint cutting the legs now fit into each other as intended. I was able to clamp them in place and start working out where they should be cut at the bottom and exactly where the shelf would fit.

Dont forget about the +Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We talk woodworking with Guests from around the world of woodworking every other week. Subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes today.

Lills Quilt Rack Part VI Those Pesky Leg Joints

Lills Quilt Rack Part II The Design Templates

With the inspiration worked out and a concept of the design in my head, I set to work creating the actual design for Lill’s Quilt Rack.

I did this by sketching a full size profile of the side on a piece of MDF. This is the same method I’ve used on earlier quilt racks. I find the full size sketch the best way to work out the curves and how they work in relation to each other. My sketches don’t get as formal as George Walkers ratios. I just keep sketching, erasing and re-sketching until it looks right.

The completed full sized sketch.

I use my Lee Valley Asymmetric Drawing Bow to lay out the basic curves, opening and closing the curve slightly between each leg. This part of the process is very subjective. It’s basically just draw until you’re happy.

Typically the full size sketch becomes the template for routing the legs. This is how Cathy’s and Katie’s quilt racks were made. With Cathy’s I used ¼” hardboard for the template. I found that the ¼” board wasn’t quite thick enough to run a guide bushing along comfortably, so for Katie’s I used ¾” MDF. Out of habit, I used ¾” MDF for Lill’s quilt rack too.

It wasn’t until I was done with the sketch that I realized the intercrossing legs would prevent me from cutting up the template and using it as a guide. I had to use a roll of tracing paper to trace each leg individually. Then I attached the traced legs to individual pieces of ¾” MDF with spray adhesive. About this time I realized that the original full size drawing could have been on ¼” hardboard. The ¾” MDF works. It’s just a wee bit heavy.

Tracing each leg by itself.

With the traced legs on the template stock I cut them out on the bandsaw. I cut near the line by eye. I know you should aim to be as close as possible when cutting the templates. As I was paranoid about cutting into the shape of the legs my cuts ranged from right on to about ¼”+ away from the line.

The tracings, glued to the template stock.

For the final shaping of the leg templates I began with my oscillating spindle sander on the concave face. This did not work. Even with my largest diameter spindle (about 1½” or 2”) I wasn’t able to achieve a flowing curve. The spindle would dig in, leaving a surface with lots of small indents.

After fighting with this for a few minutes I resorted to hand sanding. I used 80 grit paper and two (2) composite shims as a flexible backer. This was a slow process and it did round over the edges a bit. I’ll use it again though, as it resulted in a very smooth and flowing curve along the concave face of all three (3) leg templates.

For the convex face, I swapped out the spindle for the belt in my oscillating sander and used flowing sweeps of the templates over the belt to achieve a flowing convex curve.

For both the concave and convex curves, I let my hands tell me just as much as my eyes. I wanted curves that felt smooth. It was more important it felt and looked good than that it followed the line perfectly.

The templates, laid out on the full sized sketch.

Once the templates were complete it was time to move on to the actual legs.

Dont forget about the +Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We talk woodworking with Guests from around the world of woodworking every other week. Subscribe to the RSS feed or iTunes today.

Lills Quilt Rack Part II The Design Templates