Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Making Boards for Closets

Jeff here. I met with my new "woodworking consultant" friend, John, to walk through the steps for taking the reclaimed boards Sharon found and turning them into finished boards for the closet shelves. After much discussion, here is the recipe I am starting with:
  • Repair splits, checks, or chips
  • Do some coarse sanding to remove some of the paint
  • Plane the faces
  • Select which pieces will be joined and which will be ripped
  • For the pieces that will be joined:
    • Joint the edges
    • Rip roughly to width (to ease clamping)
    • Join the edges (still deciding on the method)
    • Glue up: Lightly clamp, then clamp cauls in place, then tightly clamp
  • Roundover with 1/16 or 3/32 inch bit
  • Scribe to fit the space
Some tips and notes I took during the visit:

For cleaning up checks or splits that won't easily accept wood glue, consider using super glue which will wick into the crack. Accelerator can be applied to speed up the curing.
When planing, go with the grain. You want to make sure the knives are sheering and not lifting the grain. 

Shown is a way you can mark the edges to show for each face which direction to feed the stock through the planer.

Also, remember to use two sacrificial pieces before and after the boards go through the planer since, when things go wrong, it is usually at the beginning and end of a run.

When jointing the edge, once the material has cleared the bit, apply pressure towards the fence on the "receiving" side.

The Fein dust extractor may be the way to go for the small tools. It is cool the tool plugs into the unit because then it turns on and off with the tool. I also like that there is no bag to purchase. 

2 comments:

  1. I hope you get some hands on training, too....

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    Replies
    1. Now we need to do the glue up.
      Trying to remember what to do for cauls.

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