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Nicks Berger Board Part II

The first step of making the Berger Board is to fabricate the two (2) torsion boxes needed for the bent laminated glue up. I made my torsion boxes from plywood and pine.

All torsion boxed up and nowhere to go.

The type of plywood isn’t really important. I bought the 2’ x 4’ ¾” & ½” “sanded” plywood from Lowes. What is important is that the plywood is flat. Take your time and select the flattest sheets they have.

I used clear pine for the ribs. Again, be careful to choose the flattest and truest boards you can.

Its important that the ribs are milled flat and the boxes are assembled on a flat surface.

After milling the boards to 4S I trimmed the plywood to size. Then I assembled to two (2) torsion boxes using my table saw as a flat reference surface.

I then took additional pieces of the pine which I had also milled square and added a fence and riser block to the bottom (larger) torsion box. These will provide a surface to clamp against and create the lift in the tail needed for the proper Berger Board glue up.

Ready for the fence and riser.

The final steps of the Torsion Box construction allowed for an easier glue up. I covered the inside faces with packing tape in order to prevent glue stick. Then I added feet to the bottom torsion box in order to allow the clamps to fit below.

As silly as it may sound, I find building torsion boxes fun, as there is something satisfying about the rigidity of one which is properly constructed.

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Nicks Berger Board Part II

Nicks Berger Board Part I

Back in August of 2014 Matt Berger was a guest on the Modern Woodworkers Association Podcast. We were interviewing him in relation to his book, The HandmadeSkateboard: Design & Build a Custom Longboard, Cruiser, or Street Deck fromScratch. Though I wasn’t able to speak with Matt on the Podcast, I read the book and – though I’ve never skated – I fell in love with the idea of making a skateboard.

The great graphic Matt made to share our interview with him on his site.

When my cousin, Nick – a skater and skateboard enthusiast – announced he was engaged, I knew what I had to build as a wedding present.

Looking though Matt’s book in order to decide which board to make, I vacillated between the Long Board and the Berger Board. The Long Board is what it sounds like, a long skateboard. It is flat and made from multiple strips of hardwood which are laminated to create a pattern. The Berger Board is a little more complicated. It’s made using bent lamination, using two layers of 1/8” Baltic Birch plywood sandwiched by layers of 1/8” shop sawn veneer. The veneer layers are made from multiple strips of contrasting hardwood to create a pattern similar to the longboard.

A photo of a veneer made board being cut to shape from the SK8MAKERS website.

As I only had about 2 weeks to make the board after work and around soccer & Cub Scouts, I was leaning towards the simple and straightforward long board. Then I found myself buying the plywood to make the torsion box used for the bent lamination of the Berger Board, and off I went.

I found the Berger Board an exciting and instructional challenge. It used shop sawn veneer and a bent lamination, both techniques I had never tried.

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Nicks Berger Board Part I

Nicks Berger Board Part III

As building the torsion boxes was an enjoyable task I already knew how to do, they provided an easy transition into the Berger Board construction. Cutting the shop sawn veneer was a new challenge.

These boards will be getting much thinner.

Once I had obtained a piece of purple heart which was actually large enough to use, I set about resawing. Thankfully, my bandsaw was already in tune. It has had a Wood Slicer blade on it since I first set the saw up. In order to resaw I simply set the fence with a clearance of 1/8” between it and the blade (accounting for the set to the blade’s teeth) and used a magnetic finger board to hold the board against the fence. Then I slowly guided the wood through.

I was amazed by my results resawing.

This was my first time resawing. I found that with my properly tuned saw I was able to get a fairly smooth and absolutely drift free cut as long as I kept the feed rate down. I was even able to cut a piece of the maple thin enough to be a commercial veneer.

Good dust collection is very important when resawing.

Once the veneer was cut, I noted that the purpleheart had warped a bit. In order to create the perfectly straight edge I needed I laid a few pieces of the veneer out on a scrap of MDF and then used my track saw to true up one edge. I also used the track saw to cut the narrow ¼” wide center strips of veneer.

The veneer layers need straight edges for glue up.

With the veneer cut and 1/8” Baltic Birch plywood trimmed to rough width, it was time to glue up the board. This proved to be a straightforward, yet nerve racking experience.

The purpleheart veneer, ready for glue up.

I used Titebond III glue (for it’s longer open time) and carefully spread glue on the sides of the veneer strips then set them next to each other on the bottom of the torsion box press. Then I applied glue to one side of a piece of plywood and set it in. The second piece of plywood was installed the same way. Finally I applied the top sections of veneer, gluing their underside and one edge of each side to side joint.

The top torsion box was set over the board and against the fence. Then I clamped, and clamped, and clamped.

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Nicks Berger Board Part III

A Trophy For Dave Part I

My good friend Dave asked me to make a trophy for his fantasy football league early last year. Never one to rush into things, I flirted with it and thought about it and considered it (and worked on other projects) for about 10 months before finally jumping in with some mock ups earlier this year. Since then I’ve been spending much of the little shop time I’ve had on the trophy.

Dave.

The design Dave and I settled on is a traditional trophy design with multiple tiers supported by three columns each. As I’m a woodworker, I chose a choice walnut board for the tiers. The walnut I’m using has some wild grain running down the middle, so in order to keep it centered I edge glued more walnut to both sides to reach the width I needed. As I’m tacky, I convinced Dave that the only fitting columns would be ones made of a gold painted beer bottle.

I actually began by painting the bottles gold. I used Dos Equis because their bottles have no emblems and once the paper labels are removed, they are perfectly smooth. After a thorough washing and a trip through the dishwasher on sterilize, I used a coat of Krylon Fusion as primer, then a generic Gold colored spray paint to achieve the tacky column finish.

All that glitters is gold.

For the tiers I began with the triangles I has cut by eye for the mock up. I used my compass and laid out an actual equilateral triangle about the same size as the mock up out of ½” plywood. I cut out the triangle on the band saw and then used the compass to mark out rounded ends. These were cut on the band saw and their faired on with a belt sander.

The design we chose.

Finally I used this template to mark out two (2) tiers in Walnut. I cut these on the band saw and faired them on the belt sander too.

One the two (2) big tiers were cut, I went through the same process for the small tier.

Glues up the tier blanks.

The tier blanks off the bandsaw.

The curves are faired.

Then I began to consider how I would seat the columns . . .

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.

You can check out out latest episode with the very cool +Zac Higgins here:

A Trophy For Dave Part I

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.

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 V The Needed Shelf

Dougs Bench Part II Milling the Seat Wide Leg

Milling the seat and wide leg on Doug’s Shoe Bench posed an issue as the boards they’re made from are about 14” wide. While I love my jointer, it is only 8”. In order to mill the seat blank, I headed to the big box and bought a 16” melamine shelf. After ripping the shelf to 15” on my table saw, I sat the seat blank on it and added a few shims to eliminate rocking. Then I hot glued the hell out of the edge.

The bench seat is glued on and ready for milling.

I took the melamine/seat blank combination and ran it through the planer until the top of the seat blank was flat enough to not rack. Then I pulled the seat blank off the melamine off and discovered I had probable used too much hot glue. Luckily the damage was to the melamine and not the seat blank. I put the seat blank face down on the planer and ran it through. After a few minutes of milling and a couple of flips, both sides were glass smooth.

I repeated the same process with a shorter piece of melamine for the leg which was cut from the same blank as the seat.

The wide leg was milled the same way.

With the faces milled, the seat and wide leg were ready for joinery. Because their joint would be visible I decided on dovetails for the visual flair. Using my Keller Dovetail jig, it was a quick and easy procedure to mille the dovetails, though I will say that I wish Keller made bigger bits so that thicker boards could be dovetailed. As just over an inch, the seat and wide leg were boarding on too thick to use the Keller Jig on.

The Keller jig makes quick, messy work of the dovetails.

The finished dovetails left me with an issue. Though the leg looked good, just dovetails and now lower stretcher would not be enough to keep the leg on over any period of use.

the first dry fit.

I went back and forth on this and finally decided on a diagonal stretcher which ran from the leg to the underside of the seat. Ideally, I would have been able to make the bench without this stretcher, but as the leg and seat were only about 1” thick, I didn’t think their dovetail connection would be strong enough. In order to minimize the visual distraction of the stretcher, I made it from the same board as the seat and wide leg. I set it off center, towards the back of the bench and left a live edge along the bottom edge.

Once I had milled and dry fit the diagonal stretcher, I milled for dominos in the seat, wide leg and diagonal stretcher. Then I set the wide leg and diagonal stretcher aside and turned my attention back to the seat.

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.

Dougs Bench Part II Milling the Seat Wide Leg

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