Claremont Designs

Category Archives: WIP

Work in Progress Furniture Pieces


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Butcher’s Layout

There is an inordinate amount of gluing required to put together an end grain butcher block. I’m about half way through today’s gluing exercise. In the picture are about 15% of the pieces in the top. They are all rotated 90 degrees so that it is easier to grab, glue, rotate, glue, put in place, and then repeat on the next piece. You’ve got to move quickly so that the glue doesn’t dry too much before you reach the last piece in the line. Hopefully they dry pretty straight so that I don’t have to do as much cleanup work in the morning.

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Start of Butcher Block Top

Below is the messy beginnings of the butcher block top to a coffee table. The first picture shows the scrap lumber that I’m using for the top. It’s great to see it find another home other than more iPad styluses (although I’m sure there will be a few pieces leftover for me to throw on the lathe). The work on the top starts by getting the pieces all to a common thickness and length (I don’t care about the other dimensions at this point). The first pass of this work is shown in the second picture where the pieces are laid out prior to glue up. Hopefully I can get the initial glue up completed before calling it a day today.

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Glue and Sawdust

Despite the hours I will spend trying to remove any trace of glue from the surface of a finished piece, glue mixed with sawdust is a tremendous help. In the small Dixie cup pictured below is walnut sawdust from a first pass at sanding the dresser / buffet. When blended together with glue and inserted in small gaps in the furniture it is great at hiding flaws. It would have been better if I had done a little better at fitting the pieces in the first place, but this is a great plan B.

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Such Is Life

Only had a little time in the shop before needing to run off to lunch so I figured that I would turn a quick pen out of mahogany. Unfortunately the wood chipped out at the last minute on the barrel on the left. Rather than trash the whole thing I decided to make one of the smallest styluses ever. With the added thickness in the middle it’s actually pretty comfortable despite the very short length.

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Proper Fitting

I feel like I’ve been writing about a proper fitting on this piece forever… At least I’ve knocked out a bunch of other projects while working on this one. This time I really mean that I’m onto fitting. Currently in clamps are the final structural elements of the cabinet. The studs from yesterday stiffened up the piece enough that I can avoid the hidden 5th leg. I could probably finish up all of the fitting today, but with temperatures near 90 degrees and no ac or moving air in the shop, that activity will have to wait until next weekend.

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Stiffening Up

The span from one end to the other of this cabinet is pretty long. As a result the center section supporting all of the drawers was sagging about 3/8 of an inch. To stiffen it up a bit, I’ve installed some studs attached to the bottom rails to support the bottom. Hopefully that will fix things up. If not I’ll have to add a small center leg to support the bottom. You would never notice it unless you were on your hands and knees, but I still hope to avoid adding it.

On a positive note, two new brushes were able to revive the planer. And while I was in maintenance mode, I finally replaced the busted plug on the table saw…

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Mother’s Day Work

Spent Mother’s Day in the shop. None of these pieces are for her though (sorry Mom). Most of the day was spent between assembly, sanding and fit work. The tall cherry piece in the photo below was the dry fit of the back part of the new cabinet I’m working on. The four corners of the piece feature through dovetails. The back is a panel about 1/16th of an inch thick. The wood for the panel is from the same pieces used to make the sides of the cabinet. My cherry stock was pretty thick, so I resawed it to get the backs and the sides out of the same piece of lumber. The walnut piece below is in the middle of being fit for the 4 drawers in the center section of the piece. Little more fit work on the drawers and doors next week and then this one will be ready for finishing…

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Hand Tools

As much as I love my power tools, sometimes the hand tools are just a little easier to use. In this case I was trimming a walnut strip that I put on the front of a drawer runner. Granted once I got it dialed in it was over to the wide belt sander to get all of the runners cleaned up and the same thickness. The walnut might be overkill, but I don’t want the maple to show when the drawers are shut.

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Cabinet Dry Fit

Part of the way through a dry fit on a cabinet. The primary woods in this piece will be cherry with some nice looking dark streaks running through the wood. There will be some walnut used as a secondary accent wood in the piece. Between the through dovetails, dados for shelves, resawn lumber glued on edge for doors and the back, and then an intentional gap running around the perimeter of the piece; the dry fit will be crucial to get all of the measurements right.

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Time for Dust Collection

Rather uneventful day in the shop. Turned a few styluses to get started and then spent the rest of the day planing, jointing, resawing, sanding and generally creating a mess. The pile in the picture below is a mixture of cherry, maple and poplar shavings coming out of my planer.

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