CNC Reproduction Work ... Technology in the Workplace

10/9/09 We have had our Multicam 1000 CNC router now for about four years. Trevor's been running it for almost 3 of them and we've refined our technique for reproducing stuff so that it goes remarkably smoothly. This table came to us recently. It was a Grand Rapids piece, probably from the 20's, not particularly valuable except sentimentally ... The end piece was broken off and missing but we had the broken off molding. So, here's how we get from the first picture to the last picture below ... Holman Studios is doing a little orange shellac and colored lacquer work on just the top and new piece to get it looking good... Click the pictures to enlarge them.



The table as it came to us

The table when it left ...

Close up of the new end that Trevor made .... Below shows how he did it ....

First step, photograph the good end

Get the image full size, (in this case 13.06 x 1.81) in Photoshop and save it as 1 to 1 (1306 pixels x 181 pixels

Import it into your CAD program in a box 13.06 x 1.81 and draw over it ... Save it as the right kind of file for the toolpath program to read

Import it into Enroute and toolpath (have the program tell the router how to cut it, what bit, what order,etc.) it

Make a sample in luan to check it ... In this case ... perfect

Trevor then made a 3 ply replacement sandwich piece (two vertical pieces of veneer on a horizontal grain 1/8" solid wood core ... net 3/16ths " thick

Cut the real thing, stain it, install it and take it to Steve .... Start to finish ??? Hmmm, we'll see when we do the time clock, but probably less than you might think ... 4/16 total elapsed time for Trevor, 4.27 hours, stained and ready to finish ...

We do all kinds of custom cnc work for our clients and for other furniture makers, both local and nationwide. This week we made the (200?) chair parts below for one friend and Monday we have a couple of big slabs to mill flat for another ... keeps Trevor off the streets....

The finished parts before running them through the planer them to release them

CNC at work ...
There are some links to other blog posts below showing this technology at work. Check them out if you have a minute ...
A video on you tube of the cnc cutting an inlay
Some custom inlays in the Greene & Greene Style
A custom corporate logo inlay
An Art Deco Style Mother of Pearl Inlay

Recycle, Reuse

Ok ... We're all into recycling ... Here's a recycled blog post from last October ... The foliage is pretty spectacular again this year, but the photos below are hard to top ... I'll add just a couple new ones from a walk I took on the Appalachian Trail to Little Rock Pond this past weekend, so if you saw this one last year, at least you'll get a little something new .... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

This is my 38th October in Vermont yet it never fails to knock me out. Right after coffee this morning I did the "The Loop", which is a loosely connected series of trails I have cleared through the adjoining woods to a lookout point, back along a different route and home again. Walking biskly, I can usually go out and back in 40 minutes. Today it was more like an hour and a half. I just timed it here and I think you can do it in about 40 seconds ....Not a cloud in the sky.... Click the pictures to enlarge them ... Enjoy!

Down the driveway

Past the hornet's nest

to the maple at Goodwood Lane

down past the shop

(no frost yet) first fronst yesterday this year

and out past the pileated woodpecker tree. The woodpeckers have been working on this one for about 5 years and I'm amazed it's still alive. It's about 22" in diameter and in some places at the back of the 4 or 5' high cavity there appears to be about 3" of bark and wood remaining.

On through the woods aways and past the "Big Oak" ... Note the bench in the lower left corner. This is a REALLY big oak

Out into the open and past a couple more nice leaves just before the

big view to the west and nothwest.

Then, back around the corner to the South lookout ...Glastonbury Mountain in the distance

Back towards home past the East view of Peter's Peak,

along the edge of the field past some killer sumacs

and through the woods and back to the house.

The top photo in this post was taken across town this afternoon at the top of Nichols Hill.

10/11/09 walk to little rock pond

Appalachian and Long Trail

pathsidde

the pond

the leaves

Cleaning Smoke Damaged Furniture

My man Jim, my jack of all trades assistant, has just received his honorary 'doctorate' from the 'Dorset Custom Furniture School of Restoration' for his recent work in mitigating smoke damage to a large and diverse group of objects, from elephant spears to light fixtures to 18th century painted blanket chests. I met with the clients last Friday and we reviewed the work he had done on their stuff in July and August. They will not be back in their home, which was damaged in a linseed oil fire, until the spring but they are thrilled with the progress he is making. We still have quite a few items left to restore, but Friday he rewired and fitted the paper replacement parts and new bulbs to some of their beautiful Danish chandeliers that they had actually considered, for a moment, to be a total loss. Anyway, the rewiring presented me with a great image as I was leaving for the day. Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Looking through the finish room door with the chandeliers temporarily plugged in and hung from the ceiling ...

Before

After

Chairs before and after .. we will have to renew the French polish as there is no way we know of to clean the smoke from shellac without also removing the shellac ... Anybody out there know??? We have two fourposter shellaced beds to clean ....

Jim is also now working on other desmoking jobs like this fireplace surround in the house restoration project we're working on ...

After some thought, I have decided not to post our cleaning methods here as, while they work for us, and after some considerable trial and error, Jim knows the right approach and the appropriate precautions for each type of object, I'm not sure we should just stick them up here and laet you have at it. If you would like to contact us regarding what we have learned for your own use, leave a comment below, or email or call me through my website and I would be happy to share what we have learned along with our many precautions and disclaimers ...

'Fine Curved Front Drawers Without Dovetails' 12/2007

Curved front drawers

After picking up my December (DECEMBER ???) 2009 Fine Woodworking today, I was inspired to go back to the DCF Blog archives to revisit what appears to be one of my first actual posts in December 2007, Curved Drawer Front Joinery. Our method was pretty much the same as the FWW cover story that starts on page 34 of the current issue. I agree with pretty much all that Mr Varju says and I particularly liked his dowel sizing jig ... We, on the other hand, had the added complications of curved drawer fronts, drawer fronts overlapping the case sides, and undermount runners. We got through it all ok though Mark's last day working here (the closing on the sale of his house) was about a couple days short of finishing this project and I had to final fit the fronts, make the side appliques and mount the hardware my own self personally ... Mark did a great job on the parts and he definitely completed all the hard work on this piece, and he is now making furniture on his own in southern New York State. He's got a website and you can see his work here. Click the photos below to enlarge them ...

We started this piece with a sketch which I can't find, and a CAD drawing

And then we made a mockup

Once Mark got the case together and put the runners in, then we had our drawer sizes.

Mark did his typical dovetailed backs and then cut the laminated curved fronts to fit inside the drawer sides with a jig he made for the tablesaw. He next determind his drilling angle and set up the jig below on the drill press with a 1/4" brad point.

The piece on the right is just a stop; the holes appear to be a test piece for some Euro hinges

Next he clamped the drawer to the bench, clamped the front in place, extended the holes and glued and pinned them.

'All' that was left for me was to hang the boxes and fronts on the undermount runners,

fabricate and install the diamonds appliques for the sides, finish the piece and

take the photograph. The feet look a little strange in the photo above because I had to cut the image from the dingy,dark, background paper using photoshop ...

'Common Tools Defined'

This just in from my friend, fine furniture builder and local wit Steve Holman of Holman Studios ... It came to his inbox and he forwarded it to me and I forward it here to you ... enjoy ...

Begin forwarded message:

COMMON TOOLS DEFINED

DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, denting the freshly- painted vertical stabilizer which you had carefully set in the corner where nothing could get to it.

WIRE WHEEL: Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, "Oh sh!#..."

SKILL SAW: A portable cutting tool used to make studs too short.

PLIERS: Used to round off bolt heads. Sometimes used in the creation of blood-blisters.

BELT SANDER: An electric sanding tool commonly used to convert minor touch-up jobs into major refinishing jobs.

HACKSAW: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

VISE-GRIPS: Generally used after pliers to completely round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

WELDING GLOVES: Heavy duty leather gloves used to prolong the conduction of intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for lighting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub out of which you want to remove a bearing race.

TABLE SAW: A large stationary power tool commonly used to launch wood projectiles for testing wall integrity.

E-Z OUT BOLT AND STUD EXTRACTOR: A tool ten times harder than any known drill bit that snaps neatly off in bolt holes thereby ending any possible future use.

BAND SAW: A large stationary power saw primarily used by most shops to cut good aluminum sheet into smaller pieces that more easily fit into the trash can after you cut on the inside of the line instead of the
outside edge.

TWO-TON ENGINE HOIST: A tool for testing the maximum tensile strength of everything you forgot to disconnect.

CRAFTSMAN * x 24-INCH SCREWDRIVER: A very large pry bar that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end opposite the handle.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the vacuum seals under lids or for opening old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splashing oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip outPhillips screw heads.

STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER: A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws.

PRY BAR: A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50 cent part.

HOSE CUTTER: A tool used to make hoses too short.

HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the object we are trying to hit.

DAMMIT TOOL: Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the garage while yelling 'DAMMIT!' at the top of your lungs. It is also, most often, the next tool that you will need.

Update on the Front Door

10/1 Home stretch on the door project ... We had to go to the site yesterday to final refit the front door before final priming,painting and rehanging. The molding miters will need some patch and fill work and Tom of Keefe and Wesner Architects (restoration specialists) turned us on to a product by West Systems called 'microballoons'. You add this sort of mysterious powdery stuff to their epoxy and it makes what they refer to as a 'fairing' compound. Weatherproof, durable, carveable, sandable, paintable .... We made a sample Tuesday and it's pretty amazing stuff. More on that later ... Click photos to enlarge them.

The opening with it's granite sill

The inside view after refitting ... There was soooo much paint on the jamb edges that the door was thicker than the rabbett in which it fits. Over the years, it seems that the carpenters, when repainting and adding new hardware, had rehung the door further and further from its original location until when we first fitted it yesterday, it was about 3/16ths pround of its jambs. Luckily, we were able to rerout the jambs in place and now it swings freely, fits flush and doesn't bind ... we'll add new weatherstripping after it's painted and rehung.

From the outside with the new knocker in place
Update 9/22

Trevor has made one continuous patch to cover the historical assortment that has accumulated on the outside ... The new knocker will cover the old knocker holes .... the small patch was a knot that had fallen out ...

And we've laid out the Ball & Ball lockset location )love their stuff). He'll fill the round holes and do another 'one patch' on the inside.
9/19/09
Another project we're working on for the painted library house is the front door. Originally, our scope of work included making a new front door similar to the original. We didn't pay too much attention to the old one at first as it had some 1960's or 1970's era lacquered brass hardware and some really thick bad paint. But, when I decided to take the original door to copy it, we started to look at it more closely and decided that, yeah, maybe it was old and we'll strip it first and see what it looks like. I took it to my friend Alan Tschorn at Chem Clean in Arlington, Vermont and he put it in his dip tank for a soak. When we got it back, it showed some past insults, but it was definitely an old door. We're feeling like it could maybe possibly be the original after removing the moldings that were loosened by the stripping process. The panels are all one piece, not narrow glued up boards. Some are bookmatched (the two horizontal top ones) or obviously from the same board, and all the nails appear to be from the same period and manufacturer. I'm actually not familiar with the exact style, but it appears to be an early 'cut' nail, stamped from a sheet possibly by a local Vermonter. Check the nails out below ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Interior view of the original entryway ...

On our first site visit, we took measurements to estimate a price to copy the existing door. This house has beautiful, original, cut granite foundations and note the granite sill detail ... You don't see that often ...

Back from the strippers ... interior view

Exterior view showing clearly the patches that accumulated over the years as hardware and locks were changed ..

The door with all its exterior panel molding removed. To get the first one out we drove the two nails holding the molding through and then pried it up. Once that one was out, the others could be removed with their nails ....

Paint and stripper remained under the hand plane shaped moldings

The nails ... two per strip of molding, 8 per panel, carefully and symmetrically placed by the original maker. Note the square ground nailset for setting the nails through ... We'll patch the holes neatly, and make accomodtions for the new Ball and Ball hardware ... It'll be sweet when it's repainted and I'm sure it will be happy to get back home ....