Week Ten, Monday

This is going to be out of sequence, since I'm publishing it before my notes about the Ninth week, but my comments for last week grew to a huge size, and, because I finally got my camera back from Nikon, I took a bunch of pictures.

I wanted to get up to date on the project I'm currently working on.  (The project on which I am currently working.)

For our latest projects, we were told that we should try to do at least one project for the final four weeks, but that we should try as many techniques as possible.  At first I thought I would like to make something using bent wood.  I went through several candidate projects, and nothing appealed to me.  Then I saw some of the beautiful veneered boxes made by our new instructor, Adrian Ferrazzutti.  While it isn't the same sort of design as his, I've come up with a design for an 8-pointed star, a compass rose.

I spent a lot of time figuring out how to design the star, and then decided that it was too hard to do and would take me too long.  I went home that evening and worked on the design some more, and decided that it was what I wanted to do after all.  I started working on it on Wednesday after I installed the knobs on my cabinet.

The diagram I used to build the compass roses.  Note, the woods used are
Mahogany, Holly, and Walnut.  

I didn't take photos of the process of building up the the stars (there are three - one full one for the top, and two which will be split in half for the four sides of the box), but I've taken a few photos after the fact so that I can sort of explain what I've accomplished so far.

Each star is split into eight sections, and each octant is made up of three pieces of veneer, two for half points, and one for the background, for a total of 72 pieces of veneer.

Packets of cut pieces used in the construction.
There were 24 pieces of Mahogany,  and 12 each of
the large and small pieces of Walnut and Holly, a total of 72 pieces.

I first cut out the 72 pieces, in three different sizes using templates, and got out my plane to clean and square up the edges.  Planing a piece of wood only 1/28 inch thick is an interesting exercise.  It's done by laying the plane on its side and "shooting" the edge.  It requires a great deal of care not to split the veneer or tearing it by planing against the grain.

The building process is one of "growing" the stars.  The first process was to carefully glue and tape a background piece (the Mahogany) and half of one of the untrimmed smaller points together to make 24 new pieces.  These were then again carefully planed, and each glued to one half of the larger point pieces (again, untrimmed). After this, I had 2 sets of twelve pieces, left and right parts of the large points.

I used a large amount of "blue tape."  Each time I glued a joint, I would match the two pieces on one side, tape them by stretching one or more pieces of tape across the joint to pull it together.  Then I would flip the assembly over, fold the joint back on the tape, and carefully spread a small amount of yellow glue on the two exposed edges.  Then, I'd bring the edges back together, carefully scrape off any glue squeeze-out, and then tape that side.  I often also ran the face of a hammer over the joint to make sure it was flat.  Usually, because there was so little glue actually used, I could remove the tape and continue with the assembly within 10 minutes or less.

An example of one the 24 initial assemblies.  This one would
eventually be the light side of a large point, and
the dark side of a smaller point.

I now took each of the halves of the large points, planed the joints, cut across the large rectangle using the diagram as a guide, and then glued them together to make 12 pieces.

Then, the same thing again - cut, plane and glue - to make 6 half stars.

Then, again, cut, plane and glue, and I had three full stars.

Adrian said that it would get faster as I added pieces together.  My experience was slightly different.  As the pieces got larger, it took more and more care to cut the pieces and get them matched properly and properly planed so that there weren't any gaps, no matter how small. This took more time per part.  Also, as the pieces got larger, it took longer to spread glue on the edges.  The net result was fewer operations, but they were more involved and complicated.

There was a lot of picking and choosing to do for the last couple of steps.  It got harder with each successive glue-up because the joints needed to be very precise.  Your eye naturally goes to things where the corners don't quite come together.  So, each glue-up evolution required a sorting/ranking.  The top star, of course, had to be the most precise.  I think I did pretty well on this.  All of the joints match to less than a thirty-second of an inch.  That's a visible error, but you have to look really hard. The other two stars are mostly correct but have acouple of small mismatches.  Since they are going to be cut in half to make the sides, I'm hoping that I can choose well enough that the errors won't be noticable.

I started this part of the project last Wednesday morning after I finished installing the handles on my cabinet. Working almost continuously, I finished construction of the three stars Saturday afternoon.

Here's the assembly I chose for the box top.  It's the
best of the three.

These are the other two assemblies, slightly less perfect.

This morning I continued the process.

First, I made a template about 8-1/2 inches square, with a 3/4 inch hole cut in the exact center.  I had drawn lines on the template, and these I used to line the template up with the centers of the four large points.  The hole was there so I could see the centers of the stars.   I marked the edges of the template on the assemblies, and then cut away the waste.  

The template used to cut the three assemblies to size.

After I cut the three assemblies to size, I sawed in half the two stars that I had designated for the sides.  Another "cringe" moment.

Next, I cut several boards which were intended to be used as "substrates" to which the assemblies would be glued.  Eventually, those will become the actual top, bottom and sides of the box.  I also cut two other boards from Masonite to act as glue cauls.  These I wrapped in shipping tape  (the annoying clear tape whose end gets lost.  Yellow glue doesn't stick to it.)  to act as a glue release.  I also cut pieces of mahogany veneer to be glued to the backsides of the substrates.  These will eventually be the inside of the box, and also the bottom.  They also serve to counter the effects of moisture, etc. on the top and side veneers.

All the veneer pieces were attached to the substrates with veneer tape. Then yellow glue was spread on the substrates, and the veneers pressed into the glue.  What a messy job.

The two substrates, two cauls, and several other boards and a plastic sheet were then sealed in a vacuum press bag, where they remained for several hours under a heavy vacuum.

At 5 pm I opened the vacuum bag and removed the assemblies.  Some of the glue was still tacky, so I set the boards on edge with clamps to allow them to further dry over night.  The idea of setting them on edge is to allow air to circulate around so that both front and back of the boards would dry evenly.

Veneer glued to substrates, just out of the vacuum press bag.  In front is the top and bottom sections of the
box, and the four side pieces are behind.

The next step in the process is to cut the boards to size to build the box.