Twin Hungarian Shelves

The wedges must scare people. I find it unbelievable that the best shelf system out there, to my mind, is still not, as of this date, available even at IKEA. The wedges satisfy me: nothing like tapping in the wedge, the last step of mounting the shelf, and seeing the shelf align rigidly 90º to the vertical standard. Hungarian shelves are dynamic and interesting with elements of simple machines: wedges, fulcrums, levers. It's almost as if Hungarian shelves are busy working right in front of you supporting their loads.

These twin Hungarian shelf units were designed to fill the voids on either side of a large fireplace and chimney as well as provide both library space for books and display space for artifacts, sculpture and artwork. Though the eye wants desperately to make these shelves appear symmetrical they are not, every shelf width and vertical spacing actually different. The lowest shelf is 12” wide, stepping down 1/2” per shelf until the top one is 10 1/2”. The height between shelves also decreases 1” per shelf.  Compare to the pillars, not really parallel, at the Parthenon. All the shelves are solid red oak, one of the 12” shelves actually a single piece of wood, quite a rare find at a lumberyard these days.

The joint that joins the shelf to the upright standard is technically called a cross lap joint. Because the notches or slots in each standard must be exactly in line I cut all the notches simultaneously by clamping them together, then clamping a guide at right angles to the set and running a router with a straight bit through all the standards. Typically I do the same thing to the shelves by standing them all together on their long front edge and routing notches on the back side. Alternatively, I've clamped the shelves together, placed them back side down on a table saw sled and pushed them through a dado blade. In this case, however, their large size and varying widths made this difficult. Thus I opted to cut the shelf notches with a tenon saw and chisel, thus proving two things: that Hungarian shelves can be made with just hand tools and that retired guys have more time on their hands.

I should add that SketchUp helped give birth to these twins, my first foray into using this 3-D CAD program for furniture design (dimensions removed for clarity):

I want to thank my fellow Columbia alumnus David Heim, a SketchUp for woodworking expert, for his generous advice and even a little personal YouTube tutorial critique of my design. I used his extremely well-written and helpful book SketchUp Success for Woodworkers every step of the way.

I also want to thank Tony Fuhrman of Summit Woodworking in Tucson for use of his shop facilities, as well as thank my favorite mechanical engineer Kyle Colavito for first introducing me to Hungarian shelves many years ago.  Find pics of my other Hungarian shelves by searching this blog or on the very first page of Google images.

Thank you so much to these and all my other patrons...
and, of course, Happy Thanksgiving!!

Find useful wooden objects including wedges for Hungarian shelves at:  FlyingCircusStudios.Etsy.com 

Meyers Collaboration X

Clearly there's some tomfoolery going on here. Or is it teddy-foolery for this turkey with inflated vest, spectacle and oversized pocket watch is a bit reminiscent of President Teddy Roosevelt, well noted, you know, for his bullying, braggadocio and bluster. But note the red tie: did Teddy wear those? Of course, this turkey is really a pilgrim, and all these references are likely connected. Anyway, quite a neat bird, a lovely product of Sara's craftsmanship, a perfect complement to our Thanksgiving celebrations.

As before the word collaboration is used loosely as the handmade frame of oak takes so little time to construct compared to the exquisite needlepoint stitching. I did, however, help out in one other way: spending near an hour going through dozens of bins at Ace Hardware until I found the exactly sized set of washers which compose all the circular forms here, each then painstakingly wrapped with thread.  The gold chain was found in a flea market in Sierra Vista.

Find our online shop at:  FlyingCircusStudios.Etsy.com

Café Shims - Table Leveling

You are sitting with your lover; it's a lovely sidewalk table on Place du Tertre in Montmartre. The waiter has just brought your wine, red wine, of course. The glasses sparkle in the fading Paris sunlight. You gaze into your lover's eyes and lean forward for a little kiss. Suddenly the force of your elbow finds that one leg suspended off the plane of the other three and voilà: first the seesaw down, then the recoil up. The glass of red wine tips and spills into your lover's lap. The deft lover, however, would have surreptitiously tested the table upon arrival, slipping his (or her!) café shim under the offending leg and avoided such unpleasant surprise.

Everyone has been annoyed by a rocking restaurant table. Still you probably won't have a cafe shim with you, but if you did, you would certainly impress your companions. Andrew Knowlton wrote in the April 2016 issue of bon appétit, speaking of a Beverly Hills restaurant, “They solved the single biggest annoyance in restaurants: wobbly tables.”

The set of six is made of random hardwoods, hand-sanded and oiled, not hardware shims at all! They are 1 3/4" wide and 3” long, a little smaller than a business card, and taper from 3/16” to near zero.

A novelty perhaps, but shims are useful: leveling furniture and pendulum clocks, securing hammerheads, locking Hungarian shelves, etc. 

Singular wooden ware + hand carved teaspoons at:   FlyingCircusStudios.Etsy.com

In-Drawer Knife Block -- Compact

The items in my Etsy shop shop derive from my abhorrence of wasting wood, especially beautiful hardwoods. How can anyone trash fine pieces of black walnut, cherry, oak, mahogany, maple, hickory? Yet woodshops everywhere do so every day as you will see from this very short explanation of how woodworkers work:

First, a board is ripped usually on a table saw to the required width. Ideally a board is chosen that closely matches the final width, but these long strips of many feet, varying from a sliver to a couple inches, have no utility to the project at hand.  The Cheese Serving Board was designed to utilize these narrow strips and make something useful out of them. Fatter cutoff strips exceeding 1½ inches can be used to make the Wooden Teaspoon in.... 

Trash???

Second, a board is crosscut usually on a power miter box to the required length. This inevitably leaves a useless short chuck of wood when the cross cuts are done. Rather than go into the trash such chunks become Mini Cutting Boards as well as Wooden Teaspoon in....

Thus up until now items in my Etsy shop were designed to utilize waste wood from larger operations. The In-Drawer Knife Block is a departure from this principle as the thicker oak was specifically purchased for its fabrication. We wanted our knives convenient but out-of-sight.  Finding this particular kitchen organizing accessory, however, was not easy...so why not make it instead?

Singular wooden ware + hand carved teaspoons at:   FlyingCircusStudios.Etsy.com

Pneumatic Secret Compartment for Poker Table

My client warned me not to reveal the mechanism of this secret compartment, or he would have to shoot me, a threat I took seriously as the compartment was designed to hide his 45 which would be easily accessible should a poker game turn south. But, of course, this is the West. You see a tug on the perimeter of the table sets the pneumatic lifters, lifted from trunk lifting parts, into motion, briskly raising the tabletop above its interior apron and making the contents quickly available. Large custom made wooden scissor hinges keep the two pieces aligned and a nylon strap limits the upward motion.

The tricky part was finding lifters of exactly the right pressure and length, which would deal with the flat force angle and yet not snap the tabletop upward dangerously fast. Anyhow, my hope now is that the requisite number of years has passed, not to mention that this was one of six seemingly identical tables which I built, though only one with the compartment. The many apron segments are splined, and the whole apron screwed to the top in order to allow for wood movement. Aprons glued to their tabletops are, of course, a most common novice woodworker error.

Singular wooden ware + hand carved teaspoons at: FlyingCircusStudios.Etsy.com

Small Set Hungarian Shelves

For all the posts on Hungarian Shelves, including tips on how to build them, type "Hungarian Shelves" into the search this blog window at the top of the blog.

Singular wooden ware + hand carved teaspoons at: FlyingCircusStudios.Etsy.com

Missing Stile Home Library -- Woodworking Tip #18

Home libraries have certainly populated my woodworking career, and though my design preference for small shelving units is the Hungarian Shelf; when the collection reaches a certain size books just feel better “housed” rather than “shelved,” cozying themselves with walls on five out of six sides. When used on a huge wall there is something disconcerting, upsetting, precipitous about Hungarian Shelves...some number on the Richter Scale being conjured.

For these larger libraries I have often used the “missing stile” approach as above, leaving the stile off one side of each vertical bay. Each subsequent carcase slides behind the stile (vertical) on the one already placed giving the whole library the look of having been built in place. I have used this system successfully even in series of six bays. The resulting junction of the stile and rails is resolved in one of three ways: the rail is either of considerably less thickness, it's end is curved, or, in the case above, beveled.

No matter which method, from a design perspective, the library also avoids a kitchen cabinet look wherein rails and stiles are sanded flush. One hint with this method is not to glue the back in its dado, thus allowing ever so little racking, if required, when the carcases are screwed together.

Singular wooden ware + hand carved teaspoons at: FlyingCircusStudios.Etsy.com

Queen Murphy Bed

Through both time and culture many are the instances where the bed was not a permanent, stand-alone piece of furniture. From the 20^th century minimalist roll-up futons to the 17^th century Dutch sleeping cupboards to the American Indian blanket, these beds were not in the way during the day. Whether William L. Murphy really designed his bed to disappear in order to avoid the impropriety of bringing a lady to his small San Francisco apartment might be debatable, but it's function of saving space certainly is not.

This particular bed allowed an office to double as a guest room. I used Create-A-Bed hardware, which was well-machined, operated perfectly the first time, and in no way utilized Murphy's Law. I took some liberties with their plans, however, such as making the bed header (top) assembly a single finished piece of woodwork that required no crown molding. This simplifies both assembly and disassembly but requires strict adherence to the plan dimensions. The kickboard is not shown but screws onto the sides at the base thus avoiding the use of a nailed-on baseboard. C.A.B., Inc. makes their own hinges which allow two of the pull blocks to not only rotate into legs but also cleverly release the safety latches at the top.

Interestingly, as of 1989, the name Murphy Bed is no longer proprietary and has entered our language as a common word to describe any pull-down or wall bed, making Mr. Murphy just as famous as Mr. Kleenex.

Singular wooden ware + hand carved teaspoons at: FlyingCircusStudios.Etsy.com

"Quilted-Wood" Headboard

Dinner conversation with friends last night turned to the matter that typically purpose precedes design. Such was the case with my “quilted-wood” headboad where the purpose was somehow to mimic the feel and pattern of the quilt in the wood. To match the beige background material I chose hard maple. To mimic the dark border of the quilt I chose cherry. I then measured the size of the four-block cloth pattern and duplicated it with wooden blocks of the exact same dimensions. A template was made and the four-block pattern was routed, not easily, out of the hard maple field into which the wooden blocks were embedded. I thought briefly about a more dramatic, high contrast set of woods, say ebony, zebrawood, bubinga, purpleheart, but aside from my aversion to tropical hardwoods, I sought more muted and subtle variations in order to echo the feel of the quilt. Thus I chose North American woods, both soft and hard: Douglas fir, redwood, hemlock, cherry, black walnut and oak. The basic form of suspending the headboard on dowels (maple) from the posts I have used before, one of its advantages being that the headboard is easily removed from the posts with 8 screws making it possible to transport the piece in even a small coupe. These two will likely stay companions for a very long time.

Singular wooden ware + hand carved teaspoons at: FlyingCircusStudios.Etsy.com

Flagstaff First Friday ArtWalk Tonight!

Print Display Rack

The most excellent nature photographer Tony Freeman Nature Exposed Photography will be displaying his work tonight at his law offices in downtown Flagstaff, 19 W Birch Ave., between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM.  An added bonus will be the giving of awards to the winners of the Youth Lens High School Photography Competition.  Do see the amazing work of these young people.  Also, fan through his prints in this display rack, which I built for his gallery, and take one home with you!

Singular wooden ware + hand carved teaspoons at: FlyingCircusStudios.Etsy.com

His and Hers Bureaus

Note that the grain runs across the two bureaus

Detail showing dovetails

This pair of bureaus was designed to promote spacial equity between the sexes.  Each drawer rests on its own web frame joined at the corners with an open mortise, the bottommost with a dust panel.  The boards of the carcase sides are elongated trapezoids, not cut on a table saw but edged with a jointer plane in order to minimize waste.  All corners of the drawers are dovetailed, and each drawer individually planed to fit its designated space (numbering included!).  The drawers slowly graduate in height and the pulls are custom made.

Detail showing web frames

Cheese Paddles

In Flagstaff our woodstove had an endless appetite for table saw cutoffs, but in Tucson these are reduced to 28" lengths, becoming cheese paddles.  They have not, however, been tested for actual paddle ball.

Floating Headboard

Custom Door

2-Drawer File Cabinet Revisited

2-Drawer File Cabinet

Stud Depth Cabinets

"Wall of Stars" Donor Plaque at NAU Observatory

Tambour Light Valence

Craftsman Computer Desk