Sample Presentation

In the sample presentation last night (which was very good), I was unsurprised that the full time was not taken for her speaking section.  Even with Katherine's speaking skills it was hard for her to take up the entire time.  This is because a half hour of talking is a very hard for anyone to take up.  For my presentation I will have to carefully plan out my presentation time, so it is organized, and so it fills up the entire time.  To do this I plan on bringing lots of visual aids (tools and wood), and will go into detail on some of the techniques.

Some Reflection

Recently I have been looking back on the earlier parts of my journal, to see how I can improve my journal.  In the beginning of my project, my journal was not so great.  Mostly this was because I was not really doing anything on my project, so I did not know what I should journal about.  My mentor was super helpful about this, she helped me by making sure I knew exactly what I was supposed to be doing for my journal.  It is still hard for me to write about topics outside my hands-on work, but looking at my more recent posts, I am very pleased about how my journal currently is. 

Magazine Article Research

For my magazine article I will be writing, I need to do some research on the general layout of a typical woodworking article.  To do this I browsed through a couple of Popular Woodworking Magazines, the most recent edition and the April 2012 edition, focusing on the feature article "Irish Chair" by Don Weber and the  cover article, "Cherry Wall Cabinet" by Matthew Teague.  Both share a similar layout and structure that I will use to guide my writing of my own article.  As both of these project articles are about fairly unusual projects and techniques, they focus on the unusual aspects, instead of going over every single aspect of the build.  This saves the reader from having to re-read information on basic woodworking techniques, so for my article I will focus on the aspect of this build that are unique to my project, such as the adjustment system, both height and angle.  I will briefly cover my methods of making the adjustment mechanism, and will also cover my influences for the design, and wood selection, as well as the finish I end up using.

Teague, Matthew. "Cherry Wall Cabinet." Popular Woodworking Magazine Apr. 2012. Print.

Weber, Don. "Irish Chair." Popular Woodworking Magazine June 2012. Print.

Adjustment Mechanism

With the stand almost done, I have started thinking more about the adjustment mechanism.  For the tightening screw, I will need some dowel, maple for durability.
http://www.leevalley.com/US/wood/page.aspx?p=32721&cat=1,250,43217,32721

For the overall shape of the pegs, they will be modeled after tuning pegs, which is not my idea, I saw it done somewhere, but I cannot remember where.  I think that I will top the maple screw with a darker wood, possibly macassar ebony, or burmese blackwood, both of which I have on hand.

Base Joinery

Moving on to the base joinery, which consists of a kind of half-lap joint that I had never cut before.  To prepare, I read Tage Frid's primer on mortise and tenon joints, and then I cut a practice joint.  It was surprisingly easy. 

I find that chalk rubbed in the cut-lines make them more visible on dark walnut.

One down!

Marking out the thickness of the column.

Halfway done.

Unfortunately one of my joints was too tight, and while I was fitting it, it snapped.  Luckily it was easily repaired with some glue.

All done.

So far this was one of the most fun parts of the project.  Most of the work has been milling, which is slightly boring, so it was nice that I was finally able to do some real joinery.  Iwas also very proud of the way it turned out, that (besides the one component breaking) everything went together very smoothly.  Overall I am very happy with the base.

Frid, Tage. Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking. Newtown: Taunton, 1986. Print. 

Thoughts About Final Presentation

I am beginning to brainstorm ideas for my final presentation:

• Bring in completed project
• Bring in wood samples
• Have slideshow of some interesting aspects of the build
• Answer a few of my research questions
• Present my magazine article

Power vs. Hand

As a follow-up to my post yesterday, I want to talk about why I could not earn a living with my woodworking, as I am currently set up.  When I first started purchasing tools, I only purchased hand tools, mainly because I could not afford or fit any power tools in my shop.  After a while I bought a bandsaw, a drill press, a grinder, and a router (all relatively small and inexpensive).  Why is this important?  Because about 80-90% of the time I have put in to this project so far has been milling.  Milling is making the wood the correct dimensions so I can cut joinery into it.  My current process it to use my bandsaw to rip the stock to the correct width, hand planing to flatten and square the faces, and hand sawing to cut the piece to length.  Almost every woodworker who makes money from making furniture has power tools to do almost all of these tasks, simply because milling by hand takes way too long.  If a task can be done more efficiently one way over another, it is unrealistic to do it the more inefficient way, and milling with power tools (using a jointer and planer) produce excellent results much quicker.  So to really start making money from woodworking, I would need to mechanize in order to reach maximum efficiency.