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.