Phone Stands

 Since I didn't have enough going on this spring I made some phone stands. This is such an easy/simple project it went quick and I didn't get a lot of photos of the construction.

These were the prototypes...  I was working from a plan but I wanted to figure out how to make them quickly and safely. 

The faces were pretty easy. I just milled the wood down the right thickness and ripped it to length. After that it was just a matter of marking where to drill the hole for the cord cutout on the bottom, trimming the slot on the band saw and rounding the top corners over with a template and a router bit.

The curved back was actually a little more of a challenge. I created a template out of 1/4" plywood, used it to trace a shape, then rough cut them on the band saw. I then tried using the template and a spiral compression router bit to remove the excess wood but the end grain kept grabbing and making it dangerous.

Since I was in a hurry - and I wanted to keep my fingers - I instead used my stationary sander. It made a lot of dust but it went pretty quickly to sand each block to the line.

The only other steps were to cut little blocks to rest the phone on, routing a 1/8" round over on the back brace, and then lots of sanding to get all the milling and sanding marks off.

To be able to finish these quickly and so I could get finish on the bottom I drilled a hole in the bottom and attached a truss screw so I could hang them from my finishing tree with a loop of bank line.

In this case I used General Finishes water based polyurethane. I don't use a lot of water based poly so this was a good opportunity to practice. If you look closely at the above photo you can also see that I wrote the name of the wood on the bottom.

I know what each species is; however, since I am planning on giving these away as gifts I wanted the new owner to be able to know what they had.

And here they are with finish.

Left to right it is 4x soft maple, cherry, sapele, and cherry.

These plans came from Wood magazine and are available on their store.

All in all these were a fun one day project (not counting finishing). I'm a little disappointed in the quality of finish I got; however, it is good enough for a free gift. I'll probably make some more and see if I can refine my finishing technique on them.

Refurbished Gaming Table

Every 4th of July I travel to New Jersey to participate in a weekend long board game party at a friend's house. We'll call him Andy to preserve his anonymity Board games need tables to play on and a couple of other projects of mine have made it to his house. (See my pages of Projects for Friends)

The tables we have available for gaming at Andy's house is a relatively large dining room table, a large 4 ft x 8 ft table I gave him years ago, and some wobbly folding tables. I'd brought him a smaller table 2-1/2 ft x 4 ft a few years ago. After I refinished it it was a nice table it was a little small for almost all board games. Regardless, his wife took the table for her hobbies.

I had plans to build Andy a new table. It was going to be 3 ft x 5ft. Moreover I was going to cover the top of the table with epoxy. No, not a river table...  I wanted to make the table as an homage to all the board games we've all played over the years. My idea was to take old board game pieces and seal them under a layer of epoxy.

Then last summer while walking my dog I saw another table out on the curb. I happened to know the people who lived in the house as they had a dog that came to our puppy play dates. After contacting them and making sure they were actually throwing it out I collected it and stored it in my basement over the winter.

This spring after finishing my filing cabinet I needed something a little more simple and after doing the math I figured I had enough time to strip and refinish the table before my 4th of July trip this year.

On close inspection the top was in very bad shape. It looked like the table had been left out in the sun and rain for a long time. There were also gouges in the surface that looked like a child had been using it as a workbench. The legs were painted and generally in much better shape.

To me this was perfect. I was not going to be able to get the 1/8" deep gouges out of the top to make it a "good" table again but if I was going to cover it with maps and other game pieces it wouldn't matter.

So, I removed the apron pieces and pulled it out into my driveway to strip the old finish using a random orbit sander and 60 grit sandpaper.

Before

After

It took about four hours to strip the old finish. The edges had cracks and mold stains so I ripped about 1/2" from all the sides then used my router to round the corners then put a 1/2" round over on the top edge and a 1/8" on the bottom edges.

The next step for the top was to apply a dark walnut stain. The base wood used in this table was not terribly attractive by itself and the darker stain also helped hide water stains from being left outside.

I then found the game pieces I had been saving for this purpose and laid them out to find a good looking combination. This next one was my favorite. It was a very charismatic map and with the cheat sheets next to it it almost looked like someone was playing a game.

Unfortunately there was one problem.

The table had a severe cup in the top probably from being left outside in the rain and the sun. I tried adding a couple of battens to the bottom to flatted it out; however, they were not enough. Since the epoxy is self leveling it would all have just pooled in the middle of the table and been a mess.

So I fell back to plan B which was to just put polyurethane on the top and call it done. I used my normal General Finishes Oil and Urethane diluted with mineral spirits on about a 4:1 ratio that I then wiped on.

To finish the legs I scuff sanded all of them and whenever I found loose paint I sanded to bare wood. I then repainted them with rattle can Krylon Glossy Ink, a very nice dark blue. A picture of the first coat is all I have of refinishing the legs and aprons.

And here it is in situ all finished. The legs did get dinged up a little bit in the drive down. I'd thought I'd wrapped them in towels well enough but I must have missed a spot. Regardless the table is going to look good from my house in Western NY and I think became a new favorite gaming table for everyone attending.

Small Boxes

I have some special wood I told my wife I would make her a box out of. I figured before I tried making a fancy box that I could use some practice making small boxes to work through any issues or skill gaps.

I started by watching several videos on making small boxes and settled on making one based on one based on the design by Quill Woodworks.

I started by ripping strips off a scrap of 8/4 flat sawn walnut. I marked the strips as I ripped them so I could keep adjacent strips. Using adjacent strips I will be able to "wrap" the grain around the box.

I built a new 45 degree sled for my table saw. I set the blade to 44.8 degrees so if there are any gaps they will be on the inside vs the outside of the miter joint. Using a stop block I could make sure the parallel sides were of equal length.

As you can see, from the below picture I marked all the pieces with white pencil to make sure I could keep them all together in the correct order.

After cutting the strips to length on the miter sled I cut rabbets in the top and bottom edges. I then used my router table to cut the notch to hold the top open (watch the video for details).

I had strips that were not usable for sides so I glued them together to make bottoms for the boxed.

After a lot of scraping and sanding I had my first box. I finished it with wipe on oil based polyurethane.

This is the only box I've finished so far. I was making these as a break while working on my filing cabinet. This one went to my friend Bonnie.

Four Drawer Filing Cabinet

I've posted about the four drawer filing cabinet I wanted to make for my office. Well, I finally made it a reality this last winter.

I had a plan. No really...  I had a plan.

My plan was to use some free rough sawn air dried soft maple that I acquired a few years ago from a coworker who was moving out of town and was leaving his woodworking behind. He'd tried selling it and had no takers so he gave it to me.

The second part of my plan was to spend the last week of December 2024 and see if I couldn't finish a large project in a single week. (hint: I couldn't)

I started by rough milling the soft maple. What I ended up with was a pile of disappointing looking wood. The first couple of pieces I'd pulled out last summer was a pretty brown and slightly spalted (blues and pinks) color. A large portion of what I had turned out to be kind of ugly and whatever spalting that was there just looked like black mold..

I thought long and hard about it. Then for giggles I checked how much it would cost to buy lumber. Turned out I could build the entire filing cabinet for just over $200 in cherry. I've always loved cherry but in the beginning of my woodworking hobby cherry was the expensive wood and walnut was less expensive. Now it's the opposite.

I did finish milling the soft maple so it will be readily usable for another project but then I ran out to the lumberyard and picked out several nice cherry boards and brought them home.

Construction of the filing cabinet was relatively typical. The one thing I did different from other cabinet projects is that I built the drawers first. Typically the size of drawers isn't the critical dimension. If your sock drawer is 1/8" wider or deeper you aren't going to notice. However, since my drawers needed to hold a specific dimension of hanging file they were made a bit earlier in the process.

But, I am getting a little ahead of myself. My first step was to rip some book-matched boards out of some 5/4 cherry for the panels in the sides of the cabinet. These were critical path because I needed to get them finished before I could start assembling the sides. 

I did use 5/4 for two 1/4" thick panels. I'll admit I did it because I'm not good at resawing on the bandsaw and I didn't want to risk too thin panels from a 4/4 board. Of course then I decided to leave them extra wide (i.e. wider than 6") and they were beyond the capacity of my 14" bandsaw. So I ended up using a rip blade on my table saw and then used a ryoba pull saw to finish.

In the interest of time I cheated a little. I didn't bother sanding the faces of the panels that would end up being on the inside. This "sacrifice" saved me a couple of hours of sanding plus when I was applying the finish - to both sides - I didn't need to be precious about the inside faces. This made applying finish easier too. I also left witness marks on the inside faces so I could keep the parts organized.

While the oversized panels were in my finishing room I built the drawers. Their dimensions were set by the size of a US legal sized hanging folder. This defined the width between the rails (sides) and height. The drawer depth was defined by how deep my filing cabinet was going to be. From this I created a cutting diagram and cut out the drawers pieces.

There are a lot of ways to build drawers; however, since I was planning on filling these with 50lbs or more of paper per drawer I wanted them to be as strong as I could make them while still being cost effective. My favorite way of building drawers is out of 1/2" plywood including the bottoms. It is relatively dimensionally stable and plenty strong. 

I know a lot of people might just use a butt joint and some brad nails; however, I prefer tongue and dado joinery. It doesn't take a lot of time to set up a 1/4" dado blade, cut all the dados and grooves, then come back and make the mating tongues. It gives me increased gluing surface as well as joints that will help align the pieces and keep everything square.

One choice I did regret was using Sande plywood from my local big box store. It was less expensive than birch plywood from my hardwood supplier but it was also not the best plywood. It had voids and was soft enough that when I made some jigs out of the offcuts screws would rip right through it. Though, I think it will be fine for this purpose. 

I did finish building the drawers with what I had because I didn't have anything else. I figure if they ever start falling apart I can rebuild them then. It's an experiment. Living, learning, and growing.

Here's a mockup of how I did the rails. They're basically 1/2"x1/2" angle aluminum that I screwed into the tops of the drawer sides. So far they are working great and I have no complaints.

With the drawer boxes complete I started working on milling the lumber for the drawer faces as they were going to need to be glued up out of multiple pieces and the rails and stiles for the sides.

Unfortunately, this was where my week of PTO ran out. It was January 2nd. My finishing room needed to be reverted to an office and I had not really started on the case work yet. Things were already not going at a breakneck pace but I needed to go back to my day job. However, by the end of January I had managed to get the side panels assembled.

Yes, I saw the staining at one end of those panels. I'd already cut my board to rough length and couldn't use the other end. As discussed earlier, this is not the first of the compromises I made for this piece of furniture.

Once the glue dried on the side panels my next step was to start cutting the joinery. I'd had a lot of different ideas for how to fasten the rails between the sides. I'd even considered using sliding dovetails to get additional mechanical strength. In the end I decided to just use shallow 1/4" mortises in the sides and stub tenons on the rails.

To get some level of accuracy I first calculated, then re-calculated, then sanity checked the spacing. I then did layout on the mortises. I also built a jig so I could cut them using my plunge router with a collar.

This whole project was about stretching my comfort zone. I wanted to try to build it quickly and I also wanted to try some new techniques. 

All of the cabinets I have built so far have a top that sits on top of the carcasses. This allows me to put screws in the front and screws in slots in the back to account for wood movement. The design for my filing cabinet has the top inset inside and between the two side panels. I could have just added more structure inside the case to fasten the top to; however, I decided instead to use a sliding dovetail joint. I am relying on the dovetail to hold the sides together.

For my first sliding dovetail I am satisfied. They aren't great but they're good enough for a prototype filing cabinet. I need more practice with this joint.

With all the joinery complete I could move onto glue-up. I've been dry-fitting throughout the entire project but I did do another complete one along with miming adding glue to each joint. This let me know there were going to be a couple of challenges with the glue up. 

The first was that trying to do it all in one big frenzy of gluing and clamping probably wasn't going to be a good idea. If I glued in all the rails to just one side I could take my time, at least on the first side.

The second problem was that my sliding dovetail on the top meant that I couldn't just bring the two sides together. I needed to be able to slide the top into place. The challenge with that step is that I had already fit the front lip onto the top and the top back rail would interfere with sliding the top on.

I worked around this issue by shortening the stub tenons on that one rail and with the top only partially slid into place there was enough movement to get that last rail in.

So, I glued the rails into one side using the top and the other side to make sure they were all square. After 24 hours of clamping I took the cabinet apart. Put the unglued side face down on my workbench, added glue to the mortises and tenons then with my wife's help fastened the two sides together.

Once all the glue was dry I started fitting drawers and drawer slides.

Then fitting drawer fronts...

You can see from the picture that I used playing cards to center the drawer fronts, then some truss head screws through the pre-drilled holes for the handles to hold the front in place. After the fronts were held in place I added four more screws from the inside to permanently hold the fronts in place.

I couldn't resist getting an early glimpse of what the filing cabinet would look like with hardware.

It was not April 13th and I finally got the case into my finishing room - my wife's home office. Fortunately it is well ventilated and if I applied finish right after we finished work for the day by the next morning most of the smell was gone. I also moved the cabinet into my home office for the day so new smells wouldn't be volatizing near her during the day. It was extra effort but worth it.

I finally finished it mid May. It took an evening to reattach the false fronts to the drawers, reattach all the drawer slides, and put the leveling feet on but it was finally done and tucked into a corner next to my 3d Printer.

Overall I am satisfied with this project. There are a number of things I pointed out here and a few things I didn't that could have gone better. However, my primary goal was to have a filing cabinet and I accomplished that goal. It is solid and I have no fear of it falling apart any time soon. 

I ended up needing to design my own cabinet from scratch because I could not find any plans I could buy. I found 2 drawer and desk based cabinets but not 4 drawer cabinets. I designed this cabinet based off of a broken 4 drawer filing cabinet my in-laws had. Theirs was all veneered plywood. Since I wanted to use solid wood my construction challenges would be different. If I can find the time I am going to write up these build plans for this and publish them here for free.