Had a fun time in the shop today as I dove into the Adirondack Chair Guild Build. I started by milling up the front legs in preparation for the joinery and I immediately noticed some issues with the color of my 8/4 stock, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Once the legs were milled to length, width and thickness, it was time to cut the mortises. As is always the case in the Guild, I try to show multiple ways to do things. So I cut one set of mortises using a router, and another set using the hollow chisel mortiser. Which do I prefer? Good question Marc! The router method is a smidgen faster and results in mortises with nice smooth walls. With the sweet dust collection of my OF1400, the work is rather clean too. The hollow chisel mortiser is a bit slower, a little messier and the mortise walls aren’t quite as smooth. But it has the advantage of providing perfectly square mortises and built-in stops. So once everything is set up, I could literally bring a monkey into the shop to pull the handles for me. If you know any monkeys looking for work, please send them my way.

Mahogany

Now, about that mahogany color issue. Maybe its just my supplier, but the mahogany I have access to can be incredibly varied from board to board and purchase to purchase. This is not the first time I have been surprised to confront a board that is much denser and even looks significantly different than the rest of my material. Trouble is, this isn’t obvious in the rough stock (pictured left). As you can see, there isn’t much of a discernable difference between these two boards. But once milled the true colors really show (pictured right). The 8/4 stock is not only darker, but much denser. In fact, my first clue was during the jointing when I experienced quite a bit more chatter as I passed the board over the blades. So the real question I have to ask myself is, “Should I use this stuff in my project???” Obviously I don’t want the front legs look different than the rest of the piece, but the possibility certainly exists that natural aging would bring these boards into the same color family. Thankfully, the Arizona sun is quite powerful!

The Sun

I decided to conduct a quick test using three test pieces: a 4/4 board that represents most of the wood in the project, a single piece from the dark stock in question, and my backup stock that I stole from the Bell Forest kit that contains Fiji-grown Mahogany. I carefully placed the boards outside on my trusty “wood-aging boulder”. You DO have one of these don’t you?!?! After about five hours of unrelenting desert UV rays, the boards already started to darken. The results were actually enough for me to make a judgement call. The dark stuff was just too dark and I didn’t want to take the risk of this turning into a long-term eyesore. The Fiji Mahogany, on the other hand, looks perfect. And just in case you don’t believe the wood could change color in that period of time, the third picture shows you the tan lines. Hot! So it looks like I’m using the backup stock for my legs.

All in all, not a bad day. I’ll be back in the shop tomorrow continuing work on the legs and broadcasting live on the Live Page. Next up, adding a short tenon to the top of each leg and the Greene & Greene indent detail to the bottoms.

The rough lumber package costs $300 before our Guild discount. You can check the kits out here. The wood is Fiji-grown Genuine Mahogany and its absolutely beautiful stock. The widest board in the project is 10 3/4″ and with this kit, I won’t need to do any glueups! Even in their rough state, the boards look clean and clear. Should make for a great chair! And how does it compare to the material purchased locally? All I can say is so far so good. I’ll know more as I begin to mill the stock and reveal the grain under the surface.

I started to do some initial layout and noticed that Bell was pretty generous in terms of what they placed in the kit. If I’m really careful with my cuts and conservative in my usage, I’m going to have quite a bit of stock left over. Hmm…footrest anyone?

If you’ve never tried mail-ordering wood, I highly recommend it. Just be sure to use a high quality dealer that stands behind their product. Bell Forest Products has never disappointed me. You also might want to check out Horizon Wood Products and CR Muterspaw. For full disclosure, both of those companies are advertisers but I have had the good fortune of sampling their products and I really liked what I saw.

For folks who live in remote areas or simply don’t have access to a wide variety of species, mail-ordering is a great way to get some quality lumber delivered to your doorstep. The more I do it, the more confidence I have in the process. Of course its always better to pick out the boards yourself when grain and color matching is a big concern, but some folks just don’t have that option. I know many of you are mail ordering wood quite frequently. So what dealers have you had success with?

From: Charlie O’Flaherty

Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL

Hobbyist or Pro: Hobbyist

Finish Used: Sanded to 320 then applied 2 coats of 50% tung oil diluted with mineral spirits. Wiped excess and waited 24 hours between each coat. Then 5 coats of 100% tung oil with the same process. Finally, lightly burnished with 0000 steel wool.

Wood Species: Cocobolo, Zebra wood and Mahogany

Project Description:
Digging through the spider-filled corners of my hardwood supplier yielded a great piece of 12/4 cocobolo with beautiful grain and highly contrasting heartwood. The heartwood formed a graceful arc on the front edge of the plank that I wanted to feature so I found a piece of zebra wood with a similar feature and used that to repeat the pattern in the trestle (I had to do a 3-ply glue up to get the 12/4 thickness in the zebra wood).

I spent a while in Asia and it influences my design but I also made use of the golden ratio as a bit of a self-check. The original design was done on Sketchup (download here) but just as a rough plan then I templated everything on 1/2″ MDF.

This clock is my best piece to date. I finished it just in time to give to my mom for Christmas. The design is not my own, but a design that I found to be challenging. The main body of the clock is a simple carcass construction using rabbits and dados. I made a book match panel for the back behind the pendulum. The broken colonial style top was made using a combination of the band saw and router. Creating the finial was my first time using the lathe, it was a great experience.

The best part about this build was the incredible highs and lows that I experienced each time I was in the shop. I made plenty of mistakes which would just eat at me. Despite the few negative things that happened, I can look at it now and be proud of the thought of this clock hanging on my parents dining room wall.

From: Kevin

Location: Broken Arrow, OK

Amateur or Pro: Amateur

Finish Used: A couple coats of natural Watco danish oil, followed by numerous coats of Arm-R-Seal.

Wood Species: Mahogany

Project Description:
I wanted to build a TV stand. I was inspired by Marc’s Walnut TV stand, but knew I wanted something different. I also didn’t want simple metal drawer pulls.

Most of the main box is mahogany plywood, joined with dadoes. There are a few pocket screws here and there, and a lot of glue (thank goodness for Titebond slow-set glue).

The top is a solid wood glue-up. It’s the first glue-up I’ve ever done. In fact, this is only my second decent sized project. The drawer boxes are birch plywood, trimmed with mahogany to cover the visible ply’s. The back is some sort of ply as well. The back panels fit into a slot at the bottom and they’re held by magnets at the top. I used the nice easy-close/self-closing sliders for the drawers. Really smooth and nice, but ridiculously expensive. Overall this project turned out a lot heavier than I expected. I should have integrated retractable casters.

Topics Covered:

• Application tips for water-based dyes
• Application tips for gel stains
• The concept of layering colors

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Hi Marc. Thanks for posting some beginner projects here – it’s been encouraging to see a wide variety of skill levels on The Wood Whisperer. The Jewelry Box was my wife’s anniversary present this past June. She granted permission to send you a few pictures – but I think she would have wanted to ‘rearrange’ the jewelry inside before snapping these! In any case, I’m new to woodworking and I learned a lot in the process of ‘creating’ the design and I’ve learned a lot from your videos. Seriously, thanks for what you do.

Here are some specifics about the project:

The Honduras Mahogany I received for free from a woodshop that had accidentally planed the rough lumber too thin for their use! Tragic. The grain pattern shifts around in the light – which I thought was interesting and Denise was able to select the pieces herself – which was also cool. (The box was a surprise, but the lumber wasn’t.)

I don’t own a planer – so I left it 3/4 – which might be strange for such a small box – but works for a new guy! It was my first drawer box and it took a little while to get sized just right. I opted to not try anything fancier than a dado…but it’s tight enough for this small stuff.

I made up the dimensions and the basic design, partly from your maple/bubinga box (awesome by the way) and partly from the sizes of the pieces I was trying to use up. Your design video also helped. The earring holder I saw in a magazine on someone else’s box and tried it out with just some blade kerfs. The rest of it was made-up-as-you-go.

By the way – there is a sliding dovetail joint in there above the dbox. My first one. I’ll probably use that a lot more because it’s pretty strong and easy to make. Plus it looks like I know what I’m doing. Personally, I can see a number of places to self-improve– the finish, the open grain issue on Mahogany, etc. I think I’ll need to buy your finishing video for the next one! In any case. I hope you enjoy it.

Topics Covered:

• Creating sliding dovetails
• Using a dowel-centering pin to locate holes
• Cutting a recess with a pattern bit
• Sanding end-grain

Circle Templates – $32.99 This template set has been incredibly useful for numerous projects including these keepsake boxes and the Contemporary Clock Project from last year.

GRR-Ripper Adjustable Push Block – $59.99 The GRR-Ripper is the fancy push block you see me using in this video. Incredibly useful and gives you ultimate control of the workpiece!

This project was sent to us by Jim. Let’s check it out:

Hi Marc here is some pictures of my holiday projects. I’ve made 2 long couch tables this year they are made out of sepal (African Mahogany) and a solid hard maple top. The top is supported by 2 stretchers that have sliding dovetails into the aprons. The base is all mortise and tenon construction except for the long bottom stretcher which is dovetailed. I had the idea a couple of years ago when I made the end tables in the last picture. Thanks for all your help and inspiration.

This project is submitted by Tom. Let’s see what he has to say about it:

“Dresser is primarily Honduras Mahogany with Beech internals, Philippine Mahogany drawers and Walnut pulls. A mongrel design (I mean hybrid?)
Sources of design: Began with a Will Neptune article, Anatomy of a Chest of Drawers (2003 May/June Fine Woodworking). From the Summer 2008 Woodwork Magazine I loved Christopher Schwarz article, A Better Blanket Chest Design. That supplied inspiration for the plinth. I used dovetails rather than finger joints. Mark Edmundson wrote about NK-style drawer construction in A Better Way to Build Drawers (The New Best of Fine Woodworking). I decided to give it a try. I havent seen them mentioned in any other articles, on-line or in print. After making these I still havent decided if I like them functionally or from a construction standpoint better than others Ive used. Any thoughts on this from Wood Whisperer fans?

The November/December 2008 issue of Fine Woodworking arrived just as it was time to figure out the door pull treatment. One of the Four Custom Pulls that Please the Eye by Michael Fortune struck me as perfect. Lastly, the top molding. Trying to decide on basic size/proportions, I held a scrap of drawer runner against the case, below the top. Eureka. I modified the drawer runner with chamfer and round over and was very pleased.

Two disasters: Just as the plinth was completed it fell and bounced on the rough concrete of my driveway. Ouch! The structure survived nicely. Thank you, Christopher. But a corner had nasty gouges and tears as well as a few other bashings. At that point I knew this would be a ?country” piece. Later, as I foolishly stacked drawers on a rolling cart, one of them fell on that same nasty concrete. Direct hit to a drawer front corner. More sanding and acceptance of ?the process being more important than the product.”

Problems?: Of course! When selecting the Mahogany, I liked the look of the 8/4 offerings much better than the 4/4. So this seemed like a good time to try resawing. I used a 3/4-inch Wood Slicer. As soon as the blade exited the wood, that lovely wood sprung to open up huge cups (and/or bows) in each half. Of course I proceeded to cut all of my stock with similar results. By the time I milled the material true it was 5/8-ish rather than the 3/4 I had planned on. On the positive side this saves weight if I ever have to ship it by air. Just doing my part to lessen the carbon footprint.”

Construction Details: The plinth is a dovetailed box with two horizontal supports that are glued into rabbets. Case is screwed into those pieces (no glue). The half-blind dovetailed case has a full top and bottom allowing the show top and plinth to be created without considering case integrity. Case has dadoes for horizontal and vertical dividers with exposed dovetails the three front most inches. Horizontal dividers are mortise and tenon frames, Mahogany for front stile and Beech for other pieces. Vertical dividers, same depth as horizontal stiles on top row are separate pieces, glued in place. Beech dividers float in dadoes since the grain runs opposite of other case members. Bottom molding is simple bevel with small lips at top and bottom. Top molding, mentioned earlier, is a bit more detailed but still rather clean. Finished with five coats of 1:1:1, semi-gloss poly:linseed oil: mineral spirits and then waxed.

You can view more of Tom’s work on his website.