Popular Woodworking Editors' Blog

Ever since I designed and built my first passive-solar home near Atlanta in 1980, and, more recently, clients' homes that I have designed, I have been told that I was too “far ahead.” I was told, “We don’t build homes that way around here. Curb appeal only is what sells houses.” I was advised that homes had to be large to be good. Many of these suggestions were just the current trends or fads. But, what is real now? Our global warming and rising costs situation are not just passing — they are the future reality.

Building green should not be just the latest fad — it is a wise thing to do. At this phase of life of the American baby-boomers, I believe we have arrived at a crucial crossroads. We can choose to be smart or we can choose to leave a mess for our children.

"Building Today’s Green Home" will help you cut through the green-marketing hype and make smart choices that yield outstanding results. The eco-friendly sub categories – energy efficiency, sustainability, realistic home size, solar power and air quality – are thoroughly discussed in this book.

With "Building Today’s Green Home," you can start your journey to either building your own home or use it as an aid in selecting a smarter and greener future residence.

And, my wife, Nancy, and my daughter Kristina, would like someone else to hear all this technical homebuilding jargon. They have heard this stuff for years — now it’s someone else’s turn!

David Thiel's comment about not having "house lust" until he visited the Walnut house (from a real woodworker with known shop lust!) down here in Georgia, sums up what a lot of folks say. Seeing a green home in person is the best way to catch green fever.

Wood used inside your home can serve several purposes such as timber trusses that are strong enough to support various types of sustainable roofing materials, including concrete shingles, the trusses span the width of the entire house opening up the area to any number of floor plans and of course, there’s the warmth of the exposed natural wood.

Art Smith
author, "Building Today's Green Home"

Monday, August 03, 2009 3:05:21 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

With a six-day class at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking, Wednesday means we’ve just ended the third day – the hump day. Photos may not adequately show the progress, but it is huge. And everyone is on track to wrap things up on Saturday.

Since we began the class, the guys have tapered the table legs, built up the brick front apron and separated the apron from the bricked assembly (shown in the photo at left) are the remains of the first day's efforts. Afterward they attached the back apron to the bricking. That connection is no small feat. Due to the fragility of the bricks, the dovetails that join the back apron to the front are most difficult. More than one brick-laid apron developed an issue as the dovetail sockets were cut. One thing the guys have learned is how to overcome problems – and that is a great lesson to learn.

After the apron was complete and the medial stretcher installed, it was on to routing a wide dado as part of the bridle-joint-joined front legs. A couple guys wondered why we took the time to create this joint until after the leg slid in position and the added strength was discovered. These nine card tables will not show signs of racking in the future.

We ended the day by installing the front veneer. Most everyone had the veneer trimmed before Kelly and his wife Teri arrived back at the shop with trays of sandwiches and other goodies. What else would 10 woodworkers do but sit around talking shop and enjoying the good eats?

And what’s an instructor to do while all the handwork is being done? It’s no hammock, but life is good.

— Glen D. Huey

Wednesday, July 29, 2009 9:52:22 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

If you’ve been playing along at home, you’ll know that this is week number three – of the last four – that I’ve been on the road. Four weeks ago was the infamous “hammock” debacle, then two days after returning to the Popular Woodworking offices, I found myself on the way to Las Vegas to cover the AWFS show (I have two more entries to write about from the show, but those will probably have to wait until next week). And this week, after a full five days in the office, I’m in Berea, Ky., (where the first Woodworking in America conference was held), teaching at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking.

My better half is not sure I reside at the same address any more. And if I didn’t continue to send in blogs, the PW office might forget I'm still on staff (I am still of staff aren’t I, Chris?)

So to make sure my co-workers are aware I'm still kicking, and to provide you with an inside view of a woodworking class at Kelly Mehler’s, here goes:

The project this week is the Baltimore Card Table published in Popular Woodworking’s June 2005 issue. We began Monday morning at 8:30 and in less than an hour, we were making dust. (That’s the way a class should be, get busy and have fun.)

The task for the class today was to "brick" the table apron and to taper the legs. The bricking portion of the table is slow going because each brick must be buttered with hide glue and positioned on a template. Then, as each row is finished, a router is used to shape the front.

Everyone did a great job because by 5 p.m. all the class participants had the legs tapered and the bricking complete – except for one straggler. If you can’t quite make out the fellow in the back of the bench room still working on his table after hours, it’s Kelly Mehler himself. He doesn’t work on his class projects until all his school duties are complete – then he has the chance to catch up with the rest of the class. (Actually, he was cleaning up his bench and his table apron is complete.)

On Tuesday, we’ll wrap up building the table base and hopefully have the veneer in place. And if everything goes as planned, we should be routing in the leg stringing.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 8:59:09 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

You’d think running Grizzly Industrial, the wood- and metal-working machinery company, would be enough to keep its owner, Shiraz Balolia busy. After all, he’s a “hands-on” guy who founded the business, and to this day he's involved with everything from machinery design to the company’s catalog design.  

And, he builds amazing guitars – you may have seen them in the print catalog or at one of the shows where Grizzly is exhibiting. Guitar making must be what Balolia does in his “spare” spare time.

For the past couple weeks Balolia has been competing in Bisley, England as Vice-Captain of the USA F-Class Open Rifle Team, where he finished in the top 10 of the Grand Aggregate (multiple shooting ranges) World F-Class Championship. His USA F-Class team took the gold medal.

Just what is F-Class shooting? F-Class is shot prone at distances of 300 to 1,200 yards. Competitors may use almost any caliber rifle, a scope, and a front and rear rest or bipod. That’s right up to 1,200 yards – well over 6/10ths of a mile. The “bulls-eye” target at these distances? Just 5" in diameter.

Balolia, age 57, has been shooting for more than 30 years and is just one of 24 shooters in the United States who is qualified as a National Rifle Association High Master marksman in the medium-range (500 yards) and long-range (1,200 yards) categories. He has documented his experiences during the recent competition on his blog.

What does it take to shoot at these distances? More than a steady hand, apparently. In a story about Balolia for “The Bellingham (Washington) Herald,” Doug Huddle wrote, “It is a world where the slight swelling of blood vessels from a shooter’s heartbeat at the moment a bullet exits the barrel can result in a monumental miss at the target end of the range.

“In his quest for the string of perfect shots, among those things under his control, Balolia strives to leave nothing to chance. And to overcome all the variables in the bullet’s intended path that can jibe its trajectory over which he has no control, Balolia focuses a Zen-like concentration.”

In addition to his recent success in England, Balolia is also the current Washington State Champion and holds several national records in F-Class. His rifle is a single-shot, bolt-action 6.5-284 caliber rifle built to his own specifications.

— Steve Shanesy

Photo courtesy of the US F-Class Open Rifle Team

Monday, July 27, 2009 7:15:01 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1] 

The cover on the August 2009 issue shows two walnut blanket chests stacked one on top of the other. I built the two chests at the same time, but to different dimensions. I kept notes on each and, of course, did my scratch-pad drawings on both as the building progressed.

As I worked, I struggled with which size chest I would write about in the accompanying article. Should it be the larger of the two? Or would it be better to run through the building of the smaller blanket chest? I selected the smaller chest due to its unique size, because that smaller size might fit better in more of our readers' homes. I had a 50 percent shot at getting the choice right. And I think I did OK because I haven’t been overwhelmed with woodworkers asking for plans for the larger chest – but I have received a few requests.

I posted a blog entry on how to scale furniture from drawings and other plans, or how to bypass the entire process by taking a drawing to a copy shop and having the piece enlarged. (That, however, should be a last resort due to the board thicknesses becoming enlarged as well.)

Because I was looking for a reason to use SketchUp and improve my skills with the free program (you better believe that I’ll be in the SketchUp seminar at Woodworking in America next month in St. Charles, Ill.) I thought I’d prepare a front and end elevation for those of you who want to have something more to work with. You can download a pdf of the file below (or access the SketchUp file here). Enjoy, but do take the time to learn how to scale from photos and drawings. And by all means, get a firm grip on Google SketchUp so you can use our entire library of SketchUp projects.

— Glen D. Huey

Monday, July 27, 2009 1:04:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [6] 

“You pick the project that you like the best and we’ll build it.”

“I like the Aalto lounge. Think we can do it?”

To a woodworker who likes a challenge, anything is possible!

“Of course we can. Um, give me a few days to work out the details, OK?”

“Sure Pop.”

That’s how all good projects start — a great idea and a “How the heck are we going to do this?”

My daughter Kelly was taking an art history of design class. The instructor had the students create a project that would draw upon the style of an artist of their choice. Kelly had three different ideas, all involving building a piece of furniture. She finally chose Alvar Aalto’s lounge.

Working from a photo is sometimes the best you can do. We measured the lounge parts in the photo, sized them up to fit a person anywhere between 62" and 72" tall. I measured the distance from the top of Kelly’s head to her hips, then from her hips to the inside of her knees. We fit these with the bends in the seat of the lounge. The sides were proportioned to that.

We threw around a lot of dimensions, worked out radii for the various bends and finally had a full-scale plan.

I’ve bent a lot of wood over the years, but this was going to be interesting. We decided that the sides needed to be about 2" thick and 3" wide. That’s a hefty chunk of wood. We knew the bottom bend would need to be strong. The seat parts came out to 1-1/2" thick and 2" wide. Still fairly chunky, but strength was needed to bear the stress of the webbing.

Making the forms was the first task. We used 3/4" MDF. The side forms required four pieces and the seat required two. Whenever you are making bending forms that require multiple layers, make the first layer as close the final shape that you can. Smooth the edges and fair the curves. Then add one layer at a time, using the first piece as a template. Rout each layer to match the first. That done, we bought some red oak with the straightest grain that we could find.

We tested various thicknesses of wood to see what would bend the easiest around the tightest radius. We found that each strip would need to be no thicker than 3/32". That’s fairly thin. We would need about 22 strips for each side and 16 for each side of the seat. That’s 76 pieces, plus another 10 thrown in for good measure. Good grief.

I chucked up a new band saw blade and we proceeded to slice, and slice, and slice the oak. That took about six hours. Did I mention that the side strips needed to be almost 10 feet long? My shop is 25 feet long. The band saw is in the middle of the shop, so it worked. It got cozy very quickly as strips of wood were piling up. I own a thickness sander, so we sanded the strips to their final thickness. That only took two days.

One thing to remember when strip-bending wood — as you slice the strips, keep them in order so the grain pattern will match when you glue them back together.

Now it was time to bend and glue some wood. On a good day, this can be nerve-racking. Everything has to be in place and ready to go — clamps, glue, forms, strips of wood and, most important of all, calm nerves.  After checking, re-checking and re-re-checking, we began. Kelly wetted the strips with lots of water and applied the glue using a small paint roller. The idea was to have a lot of moisture in the wood so it wouldn’t scream and yell and crack and split.

We clamped the straightest section first, and then made the bends. The sides of the seat were easy to bend and clamp. The sides of the lounge weren’t. After clamping the straight bottom section, both Kelly and I put our weight behind the sharp bend at the foot. It took all we had to grunt it into place and then clamp it. We let the glue dry for two days for each glue-up. That took eight days.

To make a long story shorter — we planed the edges of the parts, ran them on-edge through my thickness planer (yup, it can be done with some finesse), cut the parts to length, machined and cut the three cross pieces for the seat, doweled and glued the seat together and put the lounge together using some clamps. It was exciting!

Then we sanded, rounded and smoothed the edges, applied three coats of amber shellac (which gave the oak a nice, rich color), sanded with 320-grit and rubbed out the finish with No.0000 steel wool.

In the middle of all of this, we picked out some webbing and ordered it online. We had enough time to put one strip of webbing in place, and then we took it to Kelly’s design class. All the students were required to give an oral presentation. After class, the instructor wanted to see Kelly and a couple other students. He asked them to put their projects in an art show in the fall.

We finished the webbing and assembled the lounge using bolts and nuts. It won’t come apart anytime soon.

Is it comfortable you ask? Kelly caught me napping.

Working with Kelly is always a wonderful experience. I recommend that each of you build a project with yours kids, your grandkids, nieces, nephews or the neighborhood kids. Let them make some sawdust. Guide them when needed, but let them run with it.

Bob Lang and his son Hunter and Chris Schwarz and his daughter Katy have worked with their kids and it’s always a win-win event.

The book, “I Can Do That Woodworking Projects”, contains projects perfect for that adult/young adult joint adventure into woodworking. Here are more ICDT projects.

— Jim Stack

Monday, July 27, 2009 12:00:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2] 

I grew up in a college town, and we used the term "regular guy" to describe people who didn’t let the initials after their names make them act superior or place them outside the real world. As in “he has a Ph.D. in economics, but I ran into him at the lumberyard and he’s a regular guy.” Before the 1930s, design was not the realm of folk educated beyond their intelligence. Design was the field of regular guys; it wasn’t a profession, it was a skill learned by experience and intimately connected with making things. It was learned from someone with experience in the real world.

Tom Wolfe’s book From Bauhaus to Our House makes the point that there was a cultural shift in the design world between 1930 and 1950, due in large part to the Great Depression and World War II. We weren’t making or building much in those years, and that left a gap in a long chain of practical design experience. Design became an intellectual exercise, largely unrelated to the real world. It moved from the shop floor and the job site to the college campus. After 20 years, there weren’t many regular guys left, and the academics convinced the rest of the world that their credentials were essential.

There are two approaches to learning, the academic and the practical. The best information about historic forms of furniture comes from people who know what they know because they have had their hands and eyes on the real thing, have done their homework – and most important, have done it themselves. The Woodworking in America Furniture Design and Construction conference isn’t an academic exercise; it is a gathering to pass on practical knowledge. And the presenters are all regular guys.

If you want to make your own furniture, and you want to do it well, you need to be careful where you get your information, because there is also a significant gap in information about woodworking that started about 80 years ago. We stopped making stuff when the stock market crashed in 1929, and when we returned to it there were very few people around who knew what, why and how things were accomplished. There are plenty of people without practical knowledge passing along what they’ve read, what they’ve heard and what they imagine about these things. That won’t teach you much. If you want good information, look for a regular guy to teach you.

Regular guys know what they know because they are driven by curiosity and passion. They read everything that has been written, but they also take the time to try things out to see how the written word holds up in the shop. They willingly share what they know, but they are willing to point out what they don’t know, where historical evidence is lacking and when we have to make our best guess. If you’re interested in making better furniture, and want to learn the fine points without getting lost in academic hooptedoodle, come and join us in August. You’ll have access to people who know what they’re talking about, and you probably won’t hear the word evocative. You will head for home better equipped to build anything.

Click Here to learn about Woodworking in America

— Robert W. Lang

Thursday, July 23, 2009 11:20:28 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4]