Claremont Designs

Category Archives: WIP

Work in Progress Furniture Pieces


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Setting the Depth of the Top Reveal on an Edison Lamp

Selecting the depth of the reveal is partly for aesthetic reasons and also for a simpler build out process.  I hinted at these reasons in a prior post about updating the Edison lamp prototype.  Probably the first 5 versions of the lamps I built were similar to the prototype.  Since then, I’ve set the Edison lamp top about an 1/8th of an inch lower.  It’s a minor change but it has significantly reduced the number of times that I’ve had to rebuild a lamp – frequently the corner of one of the pins would chip out when routing the channel for the top.

By lowering the top a fraction of an inch, I’m able to route the front and back of the lamp without using a plunge cut.  On the sides the plunge cut is still required.  Basically what I’m doing is dropping the lamp side down on top of the router bit.  The photos below show the result of the plunge cuts.  The first photo shows the result of two plunge cuts and a little clearing between the cuts.  Technically a single cut on each side would be more than enough, but I’ve taken the belt and suspenders approach.  To make sure that I don’t extend my cut too far, I clamp a stop block to the router table fence.

From there I’ve flipped the side over and drawn lines on the top of the lamp sides.  The lines are shown in the second picture below.  I align the marks with router table fence where the cuts start and stop.  In the picture the left side of the piece is complete.  From here I repeated this process of plunge cuts and marking the sides on the right side of the piece.  Finally I remove the stop blocks, plunge the piece over the existing cuts and then route the piece between the plunge cuts on each side.

This whole process takes maybe 15 minutes to complete properly, but any missteps can result in having to start the entire build over again.  Thankfully by dropping the top a fraction of an inch, the number of rebuilds has dropped to zero.  Final picture below shows the end result – the latest single bulb koa Edison lamp to leave the shop.

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Wrapping 8 Legs

A few posts ago, I showed some of the initial prep work to build some legs for a new entertainment stand.  The process started by dimensioning some wall studs and then laminating 2 studs together.  This formed the core of the legs that I was building.

The next step was to prep the walnut veneers that would wrap the legs.  There are 8 legs and 4 faces that need veneer – no need to veneer the tops or bottoms of the legs as neither would ever be seen.  So 8 legs times 4 faces equals 32 veneers needed.  Ideally I would get each leg’s 4 veneers out of the same board, but this isn’t always possible.  The process is involved, but fairly straightforward.  First a face and an edge of a piece of walnut is run over the jointer.  Next it’s over to the band saw.  The goal is to cut an extremely thin piece of walnut from the board (this will become the veneer).  The process of jointer and then band saw is repeated over and over until all 32 veneers are cut.  Unfortunately both faces of the veneer need to be smooth, and they aren’t smooth enough coming off of the band saw.  So the final step to prep the veneers involves a lot of sanding.  I use a wide belt sander (although I think a lot of people call them a drum sander) to smooth the faces and get the veneers to the final thickness.

Now with all of the pieces prepped, it’s time to start gluing on the veneers.  I first begin with the sides of the legs.  As you would imagine, it’s just gluing and clamping.  The veneers are oversized, so once the legs come out of the clamps, there is a need for some hand planing.  With the side veneers flush to the front and back of the leg cores, the front and back veneers can be applied. If you can’t tell by now, it’s a lot of work to build legs this way.  It would be a lot easier to just start with thick lumber and joint and plane it to dimension.  The challenge in that approach (and this specific situation) is that I wanted the walnut to match (in color) the rest of the walnut that would be used on the piece.  And I wanted strong, stable legs.

The photo below shows the top of a leg and one of many mortises.  By the time the piece is finished there will be 60 mortises cut.  Lots of work left to do, but finally making some real progress.

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New Lumber New Edison Lamp

I’ve been working off of the new stack of lumber for a couple of months now. It’s good lumber and I’m happy with the quality of the walnut, but it is definitely different than the last batch of walnut. Not better. Not worse. Just different.

I’ve recently started the 20th lamp of the year (technically it is the 21st since USPS lost one and I had to rebuild it). For those that are interested, this is the 14th out of walnut and the 5th that is of the 3 bulb variety (3 of those 5 have been in walnut). I love the look of walnut and it is my wood of choice, but I’m still surprised that I don’t sell more cherry and maple lamps at the Etsy storefront. I love them all, but sitting on my walnut table I have always found the contrasting maple to be the most striking look.

To “celebrate” the 20th lamp of the year, I’ve gone back to my old format of highlighting the build process of the lamp. To build a 3 bulb lamp I need to shoot for a piece that is 4/4 (this is woodworker talk for a board that is an inch thick; spoken “four quarter”) and at least 4 1/4 inches wide by about 47 inches long. In my last post I wrote about starting the build of leg blanks for a new custom piece. In selecting wood for that piece, I ended up with one extra board (shown in the first picture below). I didn’t end up using that board in that piece, because it had a pretty nasty little bow to it. If you look closely, you’ll see that it isn’t flat on the surface of my table saw.

Fortunately correcting that type of issue is pretty easy for this style build. I’m not going to go into every detail of how I correct the issue because there are numerous posts on this site that talk about the build process for an Edison lamp. Basically it involves cutting the board at a strategic location and then working the jointer, band saw and planer until I get the four boards shown in the second picture. One of the 4 boards there becomes scrap (or turned into coasters), but the rest are destined for dimensioning, time in the dovetail jig and then a pass through the router table. This results in the 5 boards shown in the final picture. From here it is a pretty straightforward build process. The next post related to this build will be for the final “glamour” shots.
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No Wonder Walls Are Never Straight

Shop work finally shifted away from Edison lamps this past weekend.  Step 1 of the new project is to build some legs.  Ultimately, I’m hoping that the legs will be 2″ x 2″ x 30″.  The first challenge I have is that I don’t have any boards thick enough to get a 2″ x 2″ leg.  I could go and buy some 8/4 walnut, but still challenges…  By the time I get the boards flat and square I’m unlikely to still get 2″ x 2″.  Beyond the size issues, it is unlikely that I would get 4 good looking faces to the legs.

The approach I like to take is to build a core out of cheaper lumber and veneer the blank with the same lumber that will be used for the rest of the piece.  The process started by laminating together 2 pieces of lumber.  I like to just use 2″ x 4″ studs available at the local home store.  In this case, I used the highest quality studs available.  Even still, none of the boards were flat / straight (no wonder walls are never straight).  As a result, a significant portion of day 1 was spent jointing, planing, and dimensioning the lumber (the photo below shows the blanks marked up so I can make sure that I’m getting completely surfaced lumber).  This step is important as it both helps to keep the legs straight and it gives me a good flat surface to glue together.

Next posting (if it isn’t another Edison lamp post) will discuss cutting the walnut veneers for the legs…

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Doubling Down on Edison Lamps

This update is coming from the Acela en route to NYC.  It’s been ages since I last posted a meaningful update to the blog, and trips like this are primarily to blame.  I targeted this update a few weeks back, but it’s not until today that I can make an entry.

The orders from Etsy still come in.  And when I’m lucky they come in at the same time, so I can be as efficient as possible with shop time.  In this case, I had two orders for 3 bulb lamps.  I thought that the build was going great.  I was so proud of my progress that I took the first photo below to show the nice looking grooves for the top panel in each piece.  From there I worked to get each lamp glued up.  What I didn’t mention, until now, is the process of cutting the dovetails.  It appears that I grabbed the wrong piece for my jig.  I’m guessing I grabbed a 9 degree instead of an 11 degree piece.  The result is that I have 2 lamp boxes that can’t be used.

So it was off to round 2 of the build.  Trust me that I was considerably more careful this time around.  Everything turned out as planned and I had 2 unfinished lamps; one in cherry and one in walnut.

In the spirit of doing everything a second time, I also decided to revisit the first lamp I ever built.  It was minor, but I must have been too aggressive with my sanding of the top front edge of the lamp.  The result was a little “dip” on the top.  Well that lamp was back in the shop to correct that mistake.  While I was tackling that issue, I decided it was time to upgrade the lamp to a full dimmer switch and some higher quality light sockets.  In the second picture below, the original prototype lamp is sitting on top of the new unfinished lamps.

So doubling down on Edison lamps…  lots of multiples this time (2 lamps, built them twice due to my error, and bringing the original prototype into the shop for a tune up).  Ultimately, the 2 unfinished lamps will be off to NYC and Canada; the improved prototype should be destined for Etsy.

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Fitting Non-Mortise Hinges to a Sideboard

I’m finally getting to some of the final steps of finishing off the sideboard base that has been occupying one of my workbenches for the better part of a year. In the previous post, I described how I wrapped the doors with a thin strip of walnut to improve the gap that surrounds the doors on either side of the buffet. The last challenging step in the build is to align the hinges. I almost always use non-mortise hinges, so the only real challenge is to locate the screw holes as perfectly as possible – easier said written than done. I start by installing the hinges to the base of the cabinet, and then I transfer reference marks to the door. The marks don’t go directly where I will drill a pilot hole, so it is a little more complex.

To start the process I locate the door in the opening, with the hinges completely open. I also make sure to use a spacer, so that there is a gap at the bottom of the door. I then “close” the hinges so they rest against the face of the door frame. From here, I mark the holes in the hinge. Next it is a lot of work with a square and a depth gauge. First I mark the top and bottom of the hole and then I transfer those reference marks to the side of the door. I then go back to the hinge and use a sliding depth gauge to determine the front and back reference mark for the hinge hole opening. Because the hinge allows for a little adjustment, I should be good as long as I get the pilot hole somewhere within the opening, but I take an extra step. I connect the corners and draw an X to locate the center of the hole. Ultimately this is where I will drill my pilot hole for the screw.

The photos below show all of the reference marks and the doors installed to make sure that no other adjustments are required. Next step is to finish the 220-grit sanding, break all of the sharp edges, install the knobs and pulls, and apply several finish coats of an oil urethane blend.

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Improving the Fit of a Cabinet Door

One of the first posts I ever made here was related to a sideboard that I was building. That was a little over a year ago. It’s still not done… It’s not complete for 2 reasons. First I have been busy with other projects and paying customers. Second, there are just a number of extremely frustrating components to this build. Many, many months ago I worked to stiffen up the cabinet. It was a minor fix, but frustrating to have to do. I’ve also spent countless hours perfecting the fit of the drawers. I’ve finally dialed all of that in and now the only thing left is the doors. The doors haven’t been easy. Slightly out of square openings (related to the earlier need to stiffen up the cabinet) led to a very difficult fit for the door. The challenge with doors is to get the proper gap all of the way around the door (this is even harder when the opening isn’t perfectly square).

After lots of hand planing and sanding, I had an even gap around the door. Unfortunately the gap was too large. Originally I considered rebuilding the door, but ultimately I decided to work with what I had (this piece is more of a prototype and learning experience than something I’m selling to a customer). To build up the width and height of the door, I have glued thin strips of walnut to the outside of the perimeter of the doors. To create the strips I took thin pieces of resawn walnut and passed them through my wide belt drum sander until each strip was less than 1/8″ thick.

The final pieces were glued on today. The picture below shows the final step in the glue up. The challenge with the doors, is that I like to cut the sides at a 5 degree angle (it helps in opening and closing the door). Cutting the angle isn’t hard, but clamping it up and keeping the glued on strip from slipping while maintaining enough clamping pressure and keeping the center panel from buckling was not easy. I’ll be curious to see how this dries up. Hopefully it comes out well; otherwise I will be building 2 new doors on the next trip to the shop.

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What Does Handmade Mean? Please Ask…

So I’m a little late in writing this post… I guess that “late” is a relative term. In one sense I meant to write this 2+ weeks ago when I took the photo below. At the same time, I think that the topic is more timely than ever. And timely in the sense that it won’t be answered here, tomorrow, or frankly anytime soon.

If it’s not clear to people that occasionally read my blog posts, I sell things on Etsy. I don’t sell everything on Etsy, but I do sell some items. And I definitely consider them “handmade.” Etsy marginally mentions the term handmade on their site, but I would guess that in the consumers’ mind, the term “handmade” is much more prevalent. That’s okay; I’m not trying to say it is bad…

But it is a different context than I think some people consider… For me “handmade” has meant many things. In some case it might mean literally that it was built by hand. Or should it mean that it was created with tools that require no power? Or maybe somewhere in between as long as there was a human touch at some point? For some people, handmade means that there are flaws that should be excused… This is where I’m most conflicted… When you are dealing with real world supplies, there are defects. You may want it to be 100% perfect, and that is possible…

But frankly if you are building to enough scale that you can’t reach out to customers to ask if you like a certain look to a piece of wood or not, that means you are not handmade…

I don’t mean this in a negative way. I mean this in a descriptive way. Many of the designers that I admire don’t adhere to this mindset, and I don’t ascribe any lesser value to their designs. But I do assume that there wasn’t a human helping to guide every crucial design decision…

So there is my long convoluted description of what handmade means to me… it only took 4 “paragraphs” and I don’t pretend that it is crystal clear as a result… My only request is that if it means something to you as a buyer, please ask the people you are buying from what “handmade” means to them… In some cases you will be more than willing to do business with them. In other cases, the exact opposite holds true…

Anyway back to me (because everything must eventually come back to me)… The photo below is for an end table that I’m building. It is essentially, 3 through dovetail boxes with a floating top. The photo shows one of the last steps in the process… before this step I cut and joined the 3 through dovetail boxes shown in the picture. Although, the boxes were made with same jigs and lumber of the same dimension, they were not identical within 1/16 of an inch…

What’s happening in the photo, is that I’m clamping the three boxes together so that I can ease the transition from one piece to the other… It was definitely a handmade piece (in my terminology). Each piece wouldn’t be perfectly identical… In fact I would eventually round over the corners of each piece, so they couldn’t match perfectly. For me exact duplication, would mean that it was machine made. But if near duplication might mean that it was made by hand and matched to the clients’ needs… That’s what I was doing here… Ultimately, I sanded all of the joints of the boxes flush in the photos. That doesn’t mean that I did everything by hand, but it does mean that I was there with tools controlled by hand that did not depend on mechanical accuracy to get the final look.

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Finishing the Ambrosia Maple Box

In a recent post, I was showing how to flatten an ambrosia maple board with a strategic cut before employing the jointer and planer.  Since then I have finished assembling the box.  As with the Edison Lamps that I make, the box features through dovetails.  The ambrosia maple has such dramatic coloring that it is crucial that the box is cut all from the same continuous piece of lumber.  I made passing reference to wrapping the grain around the corner in that previous post.  The photos below show why that is so important.

From a woodworking perspective this box is nearly identical to the Edison Lamps that I’ve been making, but there are a few differences.  The minor differences are the lack of holes for a lamp cord or a dimmer switch (this piece will be illuminated from the inside by a string of battery powered LED lights).  The major difference is the top of the piece.  On an Edison Lamp, I take a 1/4″ thick piece of lumber for the top of the piece.  In this case, I replaced the wood top with a sheet of rice paper (same concept that is used in shoji lamps).  Because I could anticipate this being used as a modern table centerpiece, I didn’t want the rice paper exposed.  I wanted to be able to clean this piece without worrying about ruining the paper.  As a result, I sandwiched the paper through two pieces of glass that I had cut at the local hardware store.

I still really like the concept, but I’m not positive I like my approach to the rice paper.  As of right now, everything looks like it will work just fine, but I’m not sure I love the quality or coloring of the rice paper I used.  And by sandwiching it between sheets of glass, it can’t ever be replaced.  This one will be permanent as-is.  For future versions, I think I’ll keep the glass on the top to protect it / keep it easy to clean, but I’ll find a new way to install the paper.

The photos below were taken in my shop before a first coat of finish was applied.  Usually, I do WIP photos at lower resolution, but I do like the ambrosia maple, so I kept this full resolution.

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Overcoming a Bowed Ambrosia Maple Board

Building unique pieces is fun. The “unique” part of that statement can be defined in many ways. Sometimes it’s the design. Sometimes it’s the raw material. Sometimes it’s the finish. In this case it was definitely the raw material. I’ve always really liked the look of ambrosia maple; actually I’ve always called it spalted maple, but it seems like everyone has been more specific recently with the term ambrosia. Plenty of other places on the internet describe the ambrosia aspect, so I won’t bore you with stories of beetles…

On the last trip to the lumber store there was a really nice looking piece of ambrosia maple that everyone seemed to be ignoring. It wasn’t priced outrageously. It wasn’t abnormally short or narrow. But it was badly bowed. The board was ~40″ long but about 1/3 of the way down the board, it was bowed about 1-2″ (I’m probably exaggerating for purposes of the story). No one wanted it because it would be difficult to use in most applications. The photo below shows how large the bow was.
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I don’t mean to imply that I have some magical fix for the board, but I was able to use the board with a strategic cut around the bowed section. I was building a box and was able to locate the primary cut just to the side of the worst part of the bowed section. After cutting the boards they weren’t instantly flat. They still required more work (couple of passes over the jointer and through the planer), but the waste from this one board was minimized. The photo below shows the 2 boards now “flat”.
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I decided to make a variation on the Edison lamps I’ve been making so many of. Actually, this “lamp” will be the opposite of an “Edison” lamp. Rather than featuring the light bulbs that give those lamps their unique look, this lamp will just have a sheet of rice paper sandwiched between 2 pieces of glass. The interior of the lamp be wired with strings of LED lights powered by a battery – great news for me (no light sockets, wiring, switches, etc.) – all of the time consuming steps of the Edison build are avoided. This will be my modern take on a shoji lamp.

When doing the dovetailed boxes, I insist on getting at least the front and sides of the box out of one continuous piece of lumber. The primary reason I do this is that I want the grain to wrap around the piece. In the case of highly figured lumber (e.g., this piece of maple) it is even more important than ever. You can see in some of the photos below how the grain and coloring will wrap around this piece (side note: I’m not sure why, but I decided to keep my new cherry napkin holder in the photo). If all goes according to plan, I should be getting this piece into the finishing phases next weekend. Hopefully, all of the effort associated with this bowed board will be worth it.
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