Wooden Wallet

"Wooden wallet? Are you messing with me?" - Nope.

I have a friend...  Let's call him Daquanne to preserve his anonymity. He found out I did woodworking when he saw one of my wooden business card holders. He thought they were stunning and asked me to make him a wooden wallet. Basically one of the business card holders but a little thicker.

I must admit I had two thoughts. The first was, "this is the stupidest thing I ever heard of." The second was, "I wonder if the geometry will all word out."

I thought that perhaps he'd take a super minimal wallet. More of a money clip to be honest. To make a prototype I took a 1/4" thick piece of poplar  and using my belt sander I thinned the edges out to give it a fair curve on the back leaving the face flat. I then took some sandpaper I folded down to about 1/2" wide and used it to put a slight recess in the back. by basically sawing it against the grain. I bought some elastic band and stapled it to the back stretching it around the front. It actually worked quite well for holding a couple of credit cards and a few bills together.

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of it and I cannot find it. If I come across it I'll update this post.

More unfortunately Daquanne was quite displeased with it. Let's just say he's lucky I felt like giving it another try.

So instead of figuring out if the geometry of a thicker business card holder would work I offered to make a card holder that had the same basic geometry of a zippo lighter but large enough to hold a credit card, some cash and a bus card. Since I was working with a time constraint I decided to see if I could just throw one together out of some scrap Wenge and Padauk I had lying around. I did take a couple of minutes to sketch out a plan.

I started by planing my wenge down to about 3/8" x 1/2". It's not exact but doesn't need to be for this purpose. I then cut it into pieces for the sides, top and bottom mitering the corners. I reporposed and old jig I used for making picture frames and glued up the wallet frame.

I cut the long sides about 1/8" longer than I needed so I could use my table saw to separate the top and bottom pieces. I then sized the padauk to width and separated the top pieces and glued them on. Then I fit and glued the bottom pieces on one at a time.

You can see in the left picture that the paduak on the top piece doesn't cover all the wenge. This is because I wanted to use the wenge stubs for my hinge as you'll see in a bit. You can see I also left the paduak a little long. After gluing the front and back on I trimmed off the excess with my bandsaw.

Then I drilled a hole and inserted the hinge pin. Once the case was being held together I spent some time at my drum sander to make the padauk flush to the wenge and to round the corners slightly. I also softened the edges with some sandpaper.

For finish I took the suggestion of my wood monger - I don't know if monger is the correct term but it sounds cool - anyway, Valarie suggested I use shellac to seal the wood before pulling my standard oil and urethane on as the oil would darken the wood and I'd lose some of the bright red color. So I bought a can of spray shellac and hit the outside of the magazine case with that. Then since shallac really isn't an appropriate final finish for something that's going to be carried in a man's pocket all day I put two coats of my standard wipe on oil and urethane finish.

I still think a wooden wallet is stupid; however, for something I threw together with minimal planning I think it worked out pretty well. Most important, Daquanne was happy with it too.

Magazine Boxes, Part 4 - Finishing

I used my standard finish on all the boxes which is General Finishes Oil & Urethane Satin thinned with Mineral spirits 2:1.

I like this finish because it is very forgiving. I get a lot of open time where I can deal with drips, pools and dry spots. Since the finish is thinned it self levels very nicely and since it is self leveling I can apply it with a rag instead of a brush. This means I can use a disposable shop towel and when I am done applying finish just hang the towel to dry. Once dry I just throw it out in the garbage. This makes cleanup a breeze. The finish cures quickly enough that I get very few dust nibs too.

There are exceptions. Some woods like cherry can end up looking blotchy with just an oil finish on them. Another issue comes up with woods that have a lot of natural oils in them. In these cases the oil in the wood keeps the polyurethane from curing correctly. I don't know of any North American woods that have too much natural oil; however, quite a few imported species do. This is why I always try my finish on an offcut first whenever I'm not familiar with a species.

The fix for both of these issues is to seal in the problem with shellac. Shellac doesn't have the same refraction properties as oil so it doesn't cause blotching and seals the pores so oil finishes put on top don't blotch. It will also seal in issues with oily woods.

I didn't have any oily woods in my magazine boxes but I did want to try sealing the cherry. We - my wife and I - were sending a miniature plinth for a friend that was so oily that we needed to seal it before putting my oil & urethane on it. Since I was going on a trip, my wife volunteered to do share the finishing for me. I have such an awesome wife.

We started by putting shellac on the plinth and the cherry magazine box. I gave the cherry magazine box a very light sanding them started putting the oil and urethane wiping finish on all of them. The downside of the wiping varnish is that the coats are so thin it take a lot of them to get a good coat. I got the first couple of coats before I left on vacation and my wife did the rest while I was out of town.

When I got back from my trip I rubbed the boxes down with kraft paper - brown paper bags - to remove the few dust nibs, filled them with magazines and put them on my shelf.

I'm pretty happy with how they all came out.

New boxes

New and old boxes (from right - Zebra wood, Walnut, Purpleheart, Walnut)

[This was originally posted in December 2016; however, the finishing work was done over the 4th of July 2016.]

Mission Style Dart Board Cabinet

[Edit: This entry is being posted January 2016; however, this project was actually completed in December 2013]

I got my first dartboard when I was in high school. It was among the few possessions I took to college with me and it has traveled with me ever since. The first place of my own was a townhouse that had brick walls separating units. Not wanting to ruin my dart tips I created a monstrous foam backer with the cheapest materials I could find. It was 3 ft x 7 ft closed cell foam on top of 1/2 inch fir plywood all covered in a bright blue burlap. It did a spectacular job of protecting my darts; but according to people with taste, it looked hideous.

This blue backstop moved with me when I bought my house and served admirably for a number of years. When my wife and I decided to redecorate the room housing the dartboard we choose to put in Kempas hardwood flooring, a faux finish on the walls that looks like leather and nice base molding and crown molding. A giant bright blue burlap covered foam board wasn't going to fit in so I promised my wife I'd make her a dartboard cabinet to limit the damage to the walls.

Now, five years later, I've finally gotten around to the project and delivered a Mission-style dart board cabinet in quarter sawn white oak. I built it pretty much verbatim from the plans in the August issue of Woodsmith magazine.

So, how did my version come out? Overall I would say that it came out okay.

Construction Details

The Doors

The doors are simple frame and panel construction with solid wood panels instead of the plywood panels specified in the plans. I used solid wood panels because the quarter sawn white oak plywood at my local lumber supplier was not very attractive and had very little flecking. I have done a fair bit of resawing so I was pretty comfortable making these panels from hardwood. The rails and stiles are connected with groove and stub tenons so they went together quickly and were mostly self-squaring.

Door Moldings

The doors have a few pieces of additional trim to spruce them up a bit. The top has a relatively simple piece of cove molding with a 3/8" bead detail an inch or so below it. The bottom of the door has a sill with a 1/2" diameter cove molding.

Cabinet exterior

The author used purchased cove crown molding; however, since I had been wanting to try making my own for awhile I decided to give it a try. I used the project drawings to determine that the cove was about 3/8" deep and about 1 7/8" wide. With these dimensions I was able to layout and make my own molding using my table saw. I could go into more detail of the technique but Wood Magazine has an excellent how-to explanation of this process.

Unfortunately my router bit collection does not contain a 3/8" bead bit or a 3/16" round over bit (I know, shocking right?). So, I made the bead profile with a low angle block plane. I planed a white oak board down to 3/8" thick then clamped the board on edge to my work table using a hand screw and a quick clamp. I drew the 3/8" bead profile on the end then a few dozen passes with a hand plane formed the bead. I smoothed it out with some 80 grit sand paper.

The cove molding along the bottom of the door was made using my router table and a 1/2" radius cove bit. I needed five feet of this style of molding because it is also used on the chalk trays inside the cabinet. I created the cove on both sides of a wider board and then cut them free on my table saw. The sill detail at the bottom of the door has a slight round over which I made using a hand plane rather than setting up my router.

Door Assembly

I didn't do a great job of sanding on the doors and as a result I rounded over the corners a little bit. It wasn't too obvious until I added the long flat trim to the doors. Fortunately some clamps and glue helped hide most of the flaws.

When creating frame and panel doors the panels need to be stained before being installed in the doors. This prevents an unfinished edge from showing when the panels shrink or shift. Here's a picture of what they looked like in the intermediate stage.

The Cabinet

The cabinet was put together using a tongue and dado in the corners. The back is 3/8" pine bead board plywood. The top and bottom rail in the cabinet are held in place with a bit of glue and pocket screws. The corner brackets were cut on my band saw and sanded to shape using a spindle sander and a block sander shaped to the same curve as the inside of the bracket. I  made five and picket the best four to install.

Cabinet Assembly

This project reminded me again why I hate projects with doors. Despite all the tips and tricks I have read to mount doors it is always a painful chore. I made it a bit more difficult on myself by forgetting to fit the doors before finishing.The doors ended up just a hair too wide so when I mounted them on the cabinet I needed to mount them a little wider in order to get an attractive reveal between the doors.

The Hardware

I purchased the no-mortise hinges and door clasp from Horton Brass as did the author. I thought the quality of the hinges was quite good and especially liked that they came with steel screws for test fitting and extra brass screws for final assembly. It is almost like they knew I would strip a couple of the screws in the hard oak. The door clasp came with slotted screw which I must admit look better than Philips head screws but I do not like installing them as they are harder to not strip or slip off and damage something with the screw driver.

I purchased the rare-earth magnets, cups and washers at my local Woodcraft store. They work quite well...  almost too well and I am considering removing two of them to make the doors easier to open.

The dartboard is not the one I got when I was a kid but one my wife and I purchased to replace it. My childhood dart board had round wires between the numbers which caused a significant number of darts to bounce back at the thrower. This new dart board has triangle shaped wires which will hopefully cause fewer bounce backs. Installing the dart board was as simple as putting a U-shaped bracket on the back and adding some spacer blocks to make the dart board not wobble.

Finishing Details

I finished the cabinet with Walnut Watco Danish Oil and after the oil cured I sealed it with Bulls Eye Amber Shellac. This is similar to how I finished my Craftsman-style nightstand; however, I used an oil based wiping polyurethane on the night stand. I choose the shellac finish for this project for its quick drying and recoating properties. I painted the back with General Finishes Somerset Gold milk paint.

This was my first attempt at using Shellac and my first impressions are not good. The speed at which it dries is great for finishing quickly but in contrast the slowness of polyurethane gives you the ability to push it around fixing mistakes and making sure you've got even coverage. The Shallac dried so quickly that I had trouble getting even coverage without drips. I really like the look of Shellac but I think I need some more practice before using it on a large project again.

Wall Mounting the Cabinet

Since the cabinet was heavy I did get help mounting the cabinet on the wall; however, to make things easy on the two of us I built a brace that held the cabinet the correct height above the floor. The brace was made out of 2x4 pine and held the cabinet the correct height above the floor.

Summary

This was a fun project to build. There were no significant errors or gaps in the plans and the final result is a very attractive wall mounted dartboard cabinet.

I tried a couple of new construction and finishing techniques some of which worked (making my own cove molding) and some didn't (Shellac). There were a couple of things which came out less than perfect that I am attributing to being rusty and rushing.