How to buy screws for woodworking

Screws are one of the main metal fasteners used in woodworking. The other is the humble nail. But screws hold better, stronger and longer, they can also be removed for when the piece needs to be dismantled.

But the screw isn't exactly simple. While we go to a hardware store and get away by holding up out fingers with a gap between the thumb and pointer and saying, "teen screw, itna bada"( three screws, this long). This simply doesn't work, if you are half way serious about the wood you are screwing (DAMN, I love inneundo), you would be best served knowing more about "le screw".

The Short Version

"Wood screw, MS, cross head, #8, 1 1/2 inches" 

would mean, a wood screw or half thread or partial thread made of mild steel, with a head that needs a phillips screw driver. The thickness of the shank is 8 on the imperial gauge and the total length is 1 1/2 inches.

The conversion from gauge to mm is in a table below.

Detailed Version

Now screws have a head, a shank, and a thread. Each of these are important for the use you are putting the screw to. 

First, there are many many types of metal fasteners with threads, metal screws, machine screws, lag bolts, carriage bolts and more; each created for a purpose. I'm going to focus on the wood screw.

A wood screw is a metal fastener, that is used to hold two pieces of wood to each other. The wood screw is characterised by the presence of a naked shaft (shank) below the head followed by the threaded shaft. In use, the top piece of timber takes the unthreaded shank and hence can effectively slide around. The bottom piece which takes the threaded portion of the shaft is drawn tighter and tighter to the top piece with every turn of the screw. If the top piece has a thread portion of the screw, there would be a point where the threads in the top piece would stop the screw from tightening further, even though the bottom piece has not been drawn up properly. There are only 2 possibilities at this point; unscrew and drill a hole in the top piece that is bigger than the shank or try to tighten the screw to the point that the threads in the top piece are destroyed. 

How to buy screws

 Any and all hardware stores will have screws, but some will have a larger variety than others and then you have the specialty stores that only sell screws and bolts.

Now lets take a look back at the screw. It has a head, a shank and a threaded portion.

The Head

The head is the portion you use the screw driver on. There are a few types of heads, the slot head and the cross head (phillips head). The trouble with the slot head is that the screwdriver will pop out at high torque or high speed, making them very difficult to drive. I like the cross heads, these are designed to hold the screwdriver much better. But the problem of jumping out at high torque still continues. There are apparently pozidriv heads which take care of the slip out.

To me the head is only useful to determine the size of the counter sink.

The Shank 

As I pointed out the shank is the only portion in the top piece of timber. Hence drill a clearance hole of the same size in the top pieces; this will save you a whole load of time and effort.

The shank also determines the overall thickness of the screw. Obviously the thickness of the screw determines the strength. Being wood, I have never seen any place where the metal breaks before the wood, but if you use a 3mm dia shank on roofing timbers of 5 and 6 inch thickness then I'm sure we would see a fine example of screw shearing.

So remember, the shank determines the size to drill into the top pieces of wood.

This size is important while purchasing screws. The imperial scale simply has #3, #4, #5 etc. These have some approximate metric conversions

Gauge	Metric diameter (mm)	Pilot Hole size (mm)	Clearance hole (mm)
3	2.5	1	3
4	3	1.5	3.5
6	3.5	2	4
8	4	2.5	4.5
10	5	3	5.5
12	5.5	3.5	6
14	6.5	4	7

The Threads 

The threads itself are not very complex. There is a measure of coarse and fine threads, but for wood coarse is best and you never have a variety.
The other thing to note about the threaded portion of a screw is the solid shaft which the threads are attached to, or cut out off. The pilot hole thickness given in the table above generally coincide with the thickness of this shaft. Note that in hard wood, the pilot hole should be a little larger than suggested. The reason being that, hard wood has much less give at the cellular level and it will not make space for the threads. Either the threads will strip off or the wood will split, the latter being the most likely outcome of a pilot hole being too narrow.

The Length

The next parameter is the length. Remember the more threads holding the wood, the better. A 1 inch screw in a 3 inch piece of timber will probably not do hold very well. I generally use screws that are 1/2 an inch less than the total amount of timber. Put another way, I make sure that the threaded portion penetrates to about 2/3rds  to 3/4ths of the wood.

The Material

There are a few materials to choose from. MS (mild steel); strong but will rust. SS (Stainless steel); expensive, will not rust. Brass; expensive, look amazing, soft metal so the threads get stripped easily. If you use these, please buy a MS screw of the exact same measure and pre thread the wood.

Enjoy your next visit to your local hardware. Swagger in and blow him away with your knowledge of screws

Wood and brass ring of promises (wife).

Last year, I was commissioned to make a ring for my wife. (The commission was from my wife). I've never worked with brass before and especially never done any of this "fret" kind of work. I procrastinated as usual, and now with one month to go before Diwali (it will be a whole year during diwali) I frantically went about trying to complete it.
Here is what I used
1. Drew the design in inkscape and then printed it.
2. Bought a bit of brass (brass like all the metals is sold by the kg. brass is about 320/kg)
3. Bought the right thickness of brass (oops)
4. Bought a jeweler's saw with 2 types of blades

Process
1. Glue the pattern to the brass

2. Attach the blades and begin cutting

3. Keep cutting

4. Finally done

5. Sandpaper the brass. soften the edges. Sanding was done at 80, 220 and the final was at 400.

6. Move on to polish compound and a dremel polishing bit.

7. Cut a thin strip and bend it.

Brass is a lot softer than iron. But just like iron it will break if you force it when it is hard. But when soft it will bend quite willingly.
Iron softens if it is heated and then cooled slowly, the more slowly, the more flexible.
Brass on the other hand softens when cooled quickly, called quenching. I heated it up on the gas stove in the kitchen, dull red and then quench in tap water.
Bent easily

I tried a question mark shape, but that was not working.

So finally I simple made a U shape and had a tiny bit braised to the brass U.

8. 1/4 inch Burma teak was cut out with a hole saw and varnished. See the difference between varnished and unvarnished.

9. Finally Araldite

A good one week night build, most of the time.

Collapsible workbench - A guide to building in India

First off let me say I never wanted to write a post about this build.
To me its just another work bench, the second one I've built in my life. The previous one was collapsible too. But on lord what a mess it was.

This table was going to be everything that one wasn't and I did my fair research and came up with this article from the close grain blog As you can see, the article is from way back in 2010.

This article is going to be in a few parts

1. What the table is supposed to do for me
2. Material needed for the table and how to buy them
3. Skills needed for the table
4. Lessons learnt

We ended up building 3 tables so far.

What the table was for

1. The first and most important purpose of the tables is that I should be able to load 2 of them into the car, drive 40 kms to the other side of Mumbai and teach a class of about 6 or 8. This would be the same basic wood working class which I currently take at MA (Maker's Asylum).
2. The table would be sturdy to take the rigors of sawing, chiseling and most importantly planing.
3. The table top had to accommodate 3 to 4 persons.
4. There had to be overhangs on all side to facilitate clamping.

Material needed and how to buy it

Timber marts - do and donts

Since these tables were going to see a lot of action there was no point in using expensive teak so I settled for a framework of saal wood and a top of 2 layers of 12mm plywood.
Now if you've never been to a timber shop here are a few tips

1. Know your dimensions and design.
   Often you will have to change your dimensions based on the availability of wood, or of a table saw. Try to find a timber mart that does have a table saw and befriend the helper there. (chai pani is the best ice breaker)
2. Know your design
   Have an approximate idea of the total amount of wood you are going to buy. The rates are all done on cft so if you dont know what cft or gun foot is then read this article. The basic idea is that cft is a cubic foot. So a cube of timber 12in x 12in x12in is 1 cft. Another way of looking at that is 12ft x 12in x 1in is the equivalent of 1 cft, And you can break that up any which way you want. Now a quick way of doing the math is to just multiply all 3 dimension of the board expressed as inches. Now you have the number of cubic inches that that you need, simply divide by 1728 which is 12 raised to 3 or 12x12x12, this will give you your requirement in cubic feet.
3. Examine the wood
   Unless you are a regular they will give you the first piece that comes to hand. So examine the wood. Again, chai pani helps here too.
4. Dont bluster
   I learnt very early on that acting like I knew anything was getting me bad results. Always act like you know nothing, while dropping little nuggets... Like "Wow this CP saag is superb it looks like BTC." or "That looks like 1/2 inch pine, how do you manage to cut it that thin." Show that you know, but dont challenge. And ofcourse if you dont know then just shutup and learn. I promise you these guys will rip you off for hardly 300 bucks, but if you are humble they will go the extra mile to find that perfect flawless piece of 6 and a half saal, that is denser than normal.

Materials

Now for the frame the table needs about 1 to 1.5 cft. Saal wood at the timber mart I bought it at is about 1200 to the gun foot. So I knew I was looking at about Rs 1600 - Rs 2000.
The ply top would be an additional Rs. 1500.

Remember to go to the original post, Steve has posted step by step images.
Here is a tentative list if you can get your wood cross cut, which essentially means to the length you want.  I really don't follow rigid plans. I just total up everything and buy 54 feet of timber. But here are my measurements
1. 2 legs, 2 x 2 saal, 31 inches
2. 2 legs, 2 x 2 saal, 29 inches
3. 5 lengths, 2x2 saal, 20 inches each ( these are your bottom rails, your spacer and your hinge block)
4. 1 length, 2x2 saal, 12 inches (this will be the anchor for your bracers)
5. 2 lengths, 2x2 saal, 48 inches (bracers, you will need to cut this to length later)
6. 2 pieces of 12mm ply, 20in x 6in (upper leg rails)

Hardware
1 dozen, 2in wood screws
1 dozen, 1 half in wood screws
1 dozen, 1 inch wood screws
1 dozen, 1/2 inch wood screws
1 length, 10mm threaded rod, 8 inches
2 lengths, 10mm threaded rod, 6 inches
6 nuts for the thread rods
4 heavy duty strap hinges or even normal hinges

Now to localise this, also called

"Catch that running foot"

The wood is hardly every charged at the length you want. The timber shops sell according to what they call running foot. This is not some complex term. I'll explain; You see they have lengths of wood running from 3 feet to 8 feet and sometimes even more. If you ask for a 2 and a half length, they will not charge you for just 2 and a half feet. They will charge you for the entire 3 feet, because that is what they have and what on earth are they going to do with the remaining half foot. This 3 feet is the "running foot", it is just saying, "whatever length the actual piece of wood is, that's what I'll charge you for."
Which is why the chai pani to the helper is important, not only will he find good pieces, he will also find pieces that are close to what you want, or multiples thereof. Here's an example
You want legs of 30 inches, the guy could give you a 6 foot piece, that is 72 inches, which would waste a whole 12 inches (a foot!) or he could look a little longer and hand you that 8 foot length, from which you could get 3 legs and waste just 6 inches. So be nice to the helper and request to go see and choose the wood.

At the hardware store threaded rod is sold by the foot and most guys will not sell less than 3 feet, so that's that. Ofcourse they will cut the 3 feet any which way you wish them to.

Asking for strap hinges will get you the most blank looks ever. Ask for "do chey gate hinge" (Hindi for two by six gate hinge). hahaha, no seriously... I kid you not. This is 2 inches body and six inches strap and they are usually used on gates hence the wild name. Oh and the regular sizing is char-aat (four-eight), that's 4 inches on one side and 8 inches strap. So there is some searching to be done.
I settled for some good quality 2x2 heavy duty MS (mild steel) hinges (Merwyn calles them butt hinges, I dont know why).

Localisation done!

As I said earlier in the post, images, step by step instructions are given in almost painful detail in the article at closegrain.com. I skip to the intangibles.

Skills you will need

1. Planing
   If your timber shop hasn't "dressed" the wood then you are going to have to spend about an hour planing the wood.
2. Cross cutting
   Hopefully you can cut perpendicular to the face otherwise like me you just make do with cutting off and then chiseling. Oh a power saw comes in very handy here.
3. Chopping mortises and fitting tenons
   This part I love, and most people hate. I promise it takes 4 joints to get comfortable with the mortise and tenon. Unfortunately this table has just 4 MT joints, so I would strongly suggest practicing on some waste wood. Always practice on the same wood so as to understand the way the particular piece is going to behave.
4. Cutting half lap
   Just get the floor of the lap, flat and you are sorted.
5. Installing hinges
   You really want to google this if you've not done it before, the very last thing you want is to install 2 hinges and then find that their axis of rotation is not on the same line. (facepalm really hard)
6. Drill straight
   Always a good thing. Mostly impossible ;)

Here's a section I don't normally add.

Mistakes made, lessons learnt.

1. Hinges should be secured by all the screws holes provided and they have to be well secured. Under load the metal itself could twist and the entire joint will being to wobble.
   
2. Predetermine the sequence of putting together the build. In this project we found that it was very difficult to attach the leg assembly to the table. At the same time if we attached the hinge block to the tabletop first then the the hinges were difficult to put onto the hinge block. We finally figured out t hat if we assemble the leg with the hinge block and then unscrew the hinge block. We could then screw the hinge block to the table and easily screw the hinge back onto the prethreaded holes in the hinge block.
3. If you don't have clamps, it is impossible to screw 2 pieces of wood to be flush together if you are using metal screws. The metal screws are designed to hold both pieces of material together. But there is a catch, if while going into the second piece, the screw misses one thread, then the 2 pieces will always be at a distance of one thread apart. ALWAYS! So use either wood screws or drill a slightly larger hole into the piece of wood that is carrying the head of the screw. The consequence of this was in the way the 2 pieces, (the spacer and the hinge block for the shorter legs) rocked. There was a half mm gap between the 2 pieces and the screw was acting as the fulcrum making the entire joint wobble. 
4. The table top made from ply is very heavy. Very sturdy, but very heavy. Also remember that the legs are designed to fold inwards. Hence when you lift up the table to stand it upright and put in the bracers, the table tries to fold back down.
   
   This is a dangerous situation and my own leg has been cut open by the falling (folding) table. To be honest, cuts are the least of my concerns, its my back that I'm really worried about. So I've come up with a simple lock on each leg.
   Its just a triangular piece of ply that is hinged to the underside of the table top with the rotation at right angles to the legs, So when the legs open these locks drop down with gravity and then block the legs from closing up again. So the table can now be opened with one single lift.
   

I think that's about it. If I think of anything more it will be in the comments. Please use the comments to ask any questions you have.

Gun Foot vs Cft vs Board Foot - Clearing the air

If you've been to a wood shop, or timber mart or a ply mart and have bought timber you will probably have come across the terms gun foot or board foot or cft.
Now buying wood in India is mysterious and fraught with peril. Timber marts stock a number of different woods and bandy around acronyms like CPC, BTC, SAAG, SAAL, at the drop of a hat. To make matters worse they will then deepen the fog by asking if you want do-ek or do-ada and worse still is the ek-dedh. I hate that word dedh, is it one and a half or effing two and a half... I never get it right.
But after you've gone through the selection of the type of wood CPC - Central Province saag, BTC - Burma teak saag (dont ask), saag - teak (sagwan), saal - a type of indian hardwood. And after you've decided on the dimension, do-ek is nothing but 2 x 1 inches, etc. You are faced with the dreaded billing.
The guy will pull out his calculator and do some heavy division and then he will do some multiplication and then some addition, notice that he never does any subtraction and he will come up with an astonishing amount. Then typically you will ask how, what is the rate of CPC and the answer you will get, 10 times out of ten is 1450 gun foot. Now you are screwed my dear reader and he knows it, he will hammer the nail in harder by even showing you, very slowly the calculations on the calculator, but you don't have an idea of the starting point, who is a gun foot, where did it come from, is there is gun somewhere.
Now I don't know where it comes from, but the basic concept is most simple. Haha haha, ROFL
First a gun foot or ghan foot or cubic foot (cft) is the same thing.

Timber is sold by volume, not area like plywood, laminate or other sheet goods. Hence a cube of timber 1 foot high, 1 foot wide and 1 foot deep is a cft/ cubic foot / gun foot/ ghan foot.
Imagine that please.
So if you go to a wood shop and purchase a board 12 inches long x 12 inches wide and 1 inch thick, the guy will simply divide the gun foot cost by 12.
Incidentally, this is known as a board foot (used in the US)

Note the symbol for foot is a single quote ( ' ) and that for inches is ( " )

Great, so now a little practice
Let's say the gun foot cost for BTC is Rs 3600 and you wish to have a 1ft x 1ft x 1in board, then all you do is divide the gun foot by 12

3600 / 12 = Rs 300

At Rs 3600 gun foot for BTC what would an ek by ek x ek foot cost... that is 1in x 1in x 12in.
This is easy its the gun foot rate divided by 12 and divided by 12 again.
the first division gave us a 1in x 12in x 12in, so another division by 12 will give us the desired 1 x 1 x 12.
3600 /12 /12 = 3600 /144 (and this if you watch closely is the first step on that calculator)
Hence an ek x ek, foot long is worth 25 bucks (which is true at Marol naka).

Ok, a slightly tougher one. What about a 6 foot long board of teen ek pine, thats 6 feet of 1in x 3in
gun foot of pine = 650
hence 1x1x12 = 650/144 = 4.5
Now build it up we want a 1in x 3in x 6ft
hence 1in x 1in x 1ft multiplied by 3
= 4.5 x 3
=13.5
hence 1in x 3in x 1ft is 13.5 which is 1 foot of 1in x3in
Now for 6ft
= 13.5 x 6
= 81

Now go do the same for 4 feet of ek ada saal at 1400 gun foot
Let me what you get.

Care of saws - making the jigs

Last week I decided I needed to resharpen my saws. I have a back saw from the US, obviously its a push saw and a rip saw. But my cross cut is indian and hence a pull saw. Both are about 2 years old and have done duty almost everyday and in everyway.

So coming to the rub, they needed sharpening. A lot of articles exist out there to help explain how saws work and hence how to resharpen them. Some are brief, some are verbose, I read them all. Read the Part 1 of this article.

While that article and the embedded link talk about the concepts and show how to sharpen, it doesn't quite explain the making of the jigs. I've read so many articles that the jigs are sort of in my memory now, but here goes

1. Saw clamp: A lot of sites suggest buying a nice iron one, but if you have 2 saws to service all your needs then you really don't need to put down that much cash. I built one its the easiest thing ever

Most saw you are going to use are 1 to 1 and a half foot so your saw clamp can be anywhere between 8 inches and a foot. I made one by cutting 3 pieces of 6mm ply that I had lying around.

The 2 large pieces are about 8 by 6 inches and the small one is 8 by 1 inch. The reason for the 1 inch piece is that when the clamps are applied to the saw clamp, the tops of the large pieces come together to tighten around the blade and keep it stable. without the small piece of ply in place you would have to clamp right on the saw to make sure that blade is stable.

One problem I did face with the back saw is that it is just about a foot long and hence the handle was in the way of the clamp. It took me nearly 15 minutes to figure out that I should just pull the saw back and clamp up only the first 6 inches and do that properly.

Since I don't have a vise, and I'm not going to get one, I simply clamp up a thick piece of wood to the underside of the table, at the edge, to act as a skirt. The saw clamp is then attached vertically to that. This is also how I plane edges or cut tenons.


2. Saw Jointer: The saw jointer is used to flatten out any inconsistencies in the height of the teeth. I made a simple jointer by chopping a groove in a thickish piece of wood and inserting the file

Here is the effect of the jointer. Notice how the top of each tooth is flat and shiny. Some of the teeth even have a burr formed with the action of the jointer.

I may have jointed a little too much, but these teeth are so tiny that it was difficult to see. I would suggest if any of you are doing this for a 14 PPI, then get a good magnifying glass, so you can examine the impact of your action.

The one thing to watch for is that all the sites say, that each top MUST have a little material knocked off. But common sense will tell you that if a few (1 or 2) teeth are really short or broken, there is no way that you should joint down to that level.

3. Rake guide and Fleam Jig
Here I used the section on Making a Rake Alignment Jig from http://www.vintagesaws.com/library/primer/sharp.html.

The fleam jig theory is from the same article but the jig or guide is from the section "Hand saw sharpening guides" at http://workshopcompanion.com/KnowHow/Tools/Sharpening/8_Sharpening_Hand_Saws/8_Sharpening_Hand_Saws.htm

One thing that I did wrong while drilling the hole to take the triangle file was that I made the hole too small and then jammed the file in there. After which it was a problem to adjust the angle of the file, which is kinda the whole point of the exercise. What you can do to get the size right. is hold the tip of the file over the shaft of the drill this will tell you how much of the file will comfortably go into the hole without binding.

Here is my rake guide. The rake guide should ideally be just one, because the rake angle for all the teeth will be the same regardless of whether they are bent away from you or towards you or whether it is a cross cut saw or a rip saw. The issue is actually with the secondary angle on the cross cut saw each, what is called the fleam angle. This is where the direction of the handle comes in handy. 

Now I've done this rake guide for the push, rip cut, back saw. I will have to make a different guide for the pull, crosscut saw.

And that's it folks.

Care of saws - A personal journey

First of all this is not a complete guide to care for saws, this is probably just a personal journey of studying and bringing that knowledge to bear on the real problem.

Problem statement: My saws take forever to cut.

Last week I embarked on a journey of learning and doing with this problem statement and I learnt a lot. A whole load that I already knew, and then some aha moments. So lets just call out the facts 

1. Ripping is different from cross cutting - hence a rip saw will cross cut slower than a cross cut saw

2. Number of teeth or PPI is important. Only 4-7 teeth should be engaged in the timber at any given point. More and the saw will bind, less and the saw will tend to jump and vibrate, but still cut.

3. Sharpening a saw is not difficult, it needs a few jigs and guides that you seriously can make in a few hours. I took an entire week of 15 minutes a day.

4. A back saw should ideally be a rip saw

5. All saws have a set. The set allows the saw body to move through the cut easily.

6. Pull saws make for economy of wood and of energy (effort)

7. Some people really explain saws beautifully, if you are willing to spend hours searching through the internet.

The meat

This article is much more than a primer. Its long but the explanations are beautiful

http://www.vintagesaws.com/library/primer/sharp.html

Yesterday, with no fuss and being only half prepared, I went ahead and sharpened my back saw. I mucked up a few teeth, but all in all it is cutting much better than it was. Faster and cleaner too.

SO SUCCESS.

Tools and jigs
Read about the Making of the jigs here.
The tools and jigs are easily available and I made all the jigs. One jig remains though, a jig to help me set the teeth. Right now that is not too important since the teeth have what seems like proper set, the blade does not bind, neither does the blade jiggle in the cut.

Tools
1. Mill file with a fine cut like a bastard cut or finer (Yes Bastard... look it up)
2. Triangle file

Jigs (I made them all)
1. Saw clamp
2. Saw jointer
3. Rake angle jig
4. Fleam angle jig for the cross cut saw.

Wedding vows reminder

Boxes are one of the most used pieces of furniture and the most useful.

Boxes exist in myriad types, dimensions, shapes and sizes.

I've been trying to make the perfect box for a long time now, ok actually I tried once, 7 years ago, and gave up. I also developed a healthy hate for the mitre joint at the same time.
Recently Jesal asked if I could make a box frame. A box frame is a strange frame, like a picture frame but depth about 3 inches deep.
So here are the project specs

Project name: Wedding vows reminder.

Requirement: A couple of sticky notes with the wedding vows would be glued to the back of the box. The box itself would be hung like the Sword of Damocles in a prominent place.

Technical requirement: A box frame either 6" x 4" or 6" x 6" with a depth of 3" to  4". It will have a back but the front will be a glass or acrylic. The box must be easy to open and the acrylic or glass easy to replace. I'm guessing easy to open so that "someone" can quietly change a few vows.

Materials: Solid Burma teak.

Joints: Mitre joints for the frame, rabbet for the back, dado for the glass panel

Tools: Hand plane, circular saw, router with straight bit for dado and round over bit for the front edge molding

Description:

Hand planing the board of burma was the most fun i'd had in a long time. If chosen well, planing a board is easy. The straight grain, the sharp edged plane iron, the perfectly set hand plane; these are all it takes to bring on levels of satisfaction normally attributed to the 7th shot or the 3rd orgasm.
We used the circular saw to cut the 4 pieces we required and Jesal ran a round over bit along the edges and then a straight bit to make the dado.

4 pieces with dado cut out and the round over molding done. Next step, shooting the mitre.

Next he spent a good hour at the mitre shooting board.
First he marked the 45 degree line on the end of the pieces. Both edges and the long line across the face is required. He then chiseled the excess material. This considerably speeds up the planing or shooting as its called here.
We then used the age old techniques of gluing up a box with mitre joints.

4 mitre joints simultaneously being glued up using a canvas strap and plastic tightener

Jesal used the laser cutter to cut the back and a piece of mdf which would fit into the box, making a lid of sorts. Ofcourse, he would glue this back to the box since this is a hanging frame and we cant afford it opening and falling.

The back face is made up of 2 pieces of veneer, laser cut to size

The next morning we cut the box in half. The board we had initially used was about 4 1/2". This is a delicate operation, running the circular saw over these faces requires extreme balance. Most woodworkers use a table saw or a band saw. We have neither, so I turned to the circsaw. I think I did a pretty good job.

That's it, the build is done.
The acrylic panel is glued up to one of the sides. This side is not glued up and slides open on the dados.

Shreya built a teak watch box

A while back Shreya got in touch with me because she wanted to build a watch box as a gift for someone who loves watches.
A watch box is a cool project, it can be done in a couple of days and its satisfying. Very satisfying.

Maybe I should have taken pictures at all steps of the project, but when I'm helping someone build I tend to forget that I will have to document the process later. Plus I take terrible photographs (something I'm thinking I need to work on)

Step 1: As always the selection of wood. I took her to the local timber and ply guy and asked if we could go inside and select the pieces. To date no one has said no.

Step 2: We got back to the asylum and re examined the wood for knots and any difficult bits. And then she planed. Shreya took to planing like a duck takes to water. I guess the physical activity and the rewards really make planing a fun exercise.


Step  3: We assigned different pieces of the box to various sections of the timber. Now was the time to cut, glue up and plane the top and bottom, since these were wider than the timber we had procured.

Step 4: Glue up of the top and bottom. we would get to it the next day

Step 5: Cutting the sides to length. I did this with the circular saw. We could have done this with a hand saw but cutting straight is always a problem and then it gets frustrating to correct the cut.

Step 6: Day 2: Chopping the fingers: Shreya had decided that the finger joints would look best, and I tend to agree. Mitres might look good, but they are difficult to get right and the joint tends to exaggerate any screw ups in the 45 degree angles. Since then I've made a mitre shooting board which is an article for another time.

Step 7: Day 2: We unclamped and examined the jointed top and bottom. They were beautiful. Shreya gave them a touch up with the hand plane and they were set aside

Step 8: Day 2: We layered on a single coat of varnish and left for the day.

Step 9: During the following week, I sanded and then applied coats 2 and 3 to the box pieces.

Step 10: Shreya came in and glued up the box. We made the partitions of the same 3/4 inch wood, planed down to 1/4 inch. She was sweating like a pig by the end of that, but the smile said it all.

Finally etching the top and we were done.

A wooden hairpin: It is just challenging enough

"Yesterday a friend yanked out a hairpin and brutally attacked me ninja style... "

Ok, ok, nothing quite that dramatic. She did yank the pin out, shove in before my face and demand to know if I could guide her to making it. It was a simple 2 pronged rosewood hairpin and like all hairpins it was thin and delicate.
Rosewood is a great choice, its dark brown grain looks superb and it is dense enough to take the strain of holding back falling tresses.
I didn't have rose wood, and I wasn't about to break out the ebony, so good old burma it was. Burma teak if well chosen has the color to rival rosewood (over small pieces) and is probably as dense.
Without further ado, I pulled out a bit that I had lying about (waste from the Basic woodworking class last month) and proceeded to make a blank in under 2 minutes.

The construction is simple enough if you can cut straight. I'm not going to get into it but I wanted to see just how delicate these furniture hands could take me.
I also felt like fooling around with carving hence the strange top. You cant see it in the image but its tear drop shaped in 3 dimensions, with the edges being nearly sharp.

What do you think, delicate enough?

Building of the Arcade Game Emulator II

The blog post is titled "building of the arcade game emulator II" for a reason, you see this is the second time I've tried to build the emulator. Those of you came to ISDI or were following the maker's asylum posts back then would have seen my post about building the case with Rupin.
We never did get that one completed, but the carcass served a purpose. The case was always lying about, and it inspired Satyam and Girish to restart the project.

Satyam is an inspired electronics guy and he and Girish located the dusty electronics, they had to find another display for it though; simply because I had repurposed the old display for the magic mirror.
They got the electronics in order and then started looking for help with the case.
That's where this blog starts.
Here's a few images of the build. and the excessive wood we used for structure.
Always plan your builds!!