Finishing Tip #5: Roll on the Oil

"Rollers are for houses...brushes are for furniture."  Despite nearly forty years of woodworking I am still basically ingrained in this mindset.  Even when creating this massive "three story" wall system I used a brush, albeit a large one, to apply the oil:  Solid Cherry Wall System.   However, when a fellow woodworker asked for some help in the final assembly of a 21-piece bunk bed staircase of Pacific madrone and black walnut, I offered to complete the job with a coat of oil.  The side slabs of solid madrone, some 5 feet high by five feet deep, called out for roller application.  With a four inch roller I could hit all the corners of the risers and treads, and a short extension allowed me  to reach through the windows of this a.k.a. children's fort and coat the interior as well.  Not only incredibly faster, the roller also yields a much more even coating, in this case 50% linseed oil and 50% Natural WATCO.  I don't even bother with a roller tray, but just dip the roller part way into the bucket of oil.  And, of course, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Woodworking Tip #15: Pseudo Tabletop

The Table ("The Table") shown in my Oct 27, 2011 post has legs that are flared outward at two degree compound angles.  The resultant complex  sizing and positioning of all the pieces would have been a complete nightmare without a CAD program.  Further, to facilitate and check the registration of all the pieces during the fabrication I built a pseudo tabletop as shown to the left.  In each corner was placed a removable dowel.  As the top of each leg has a permanent dowel installed, the pseudo tabletop, with its dowels removed, was used to insure proper positioning of the leg assembly during glue-up.  This light and easy to manipulate board made it simple to insure that the finished tabletop would be parallel with the compact trestle base.  Then, with the dowels in place, the pseudo tabletop was used to position the holes which were bored in the table's brace rails and received the dowels glued in the top of the legs.  It was also used to set the spacing between the brace rails.  The dowels are merely to keep the legs in position while Norse latches provided the clamping force between the legs and tabletop, see:   Norse Fasteners for Tabletop.

Woodworking Tip #14: Norse Fasteners for Tabletop

I always design my larger, heavier tables so that the top and base can be separated, which greatly facilitates moving, repairing, refinishing, and even, heaven forbid, storage.  Last week's post (Oct. 27, 2011, The Table) shows my latest and fastest, perhaps strongest, methodology employing 4 Norse SXR latches and "J" receivers (norse-inc.com).  These stainless steel latches can exert up to 200# of clamping force, far more than is needed to keep a table and its base securely together.  Dowels glued in the top of the legs keep the alignment correct.  To my mind the latches are also beautiful and the mechanical engineering superb.  I have used Norse latches in other applications.  For instance, their fully mortised Type 2 fasteners attach the sectional pieces of my home dining booth:  flyingcircusstudios.blogspot.com/2007/05/blog-post_17.html.   In this case no hardware whatsoever is visible.  Also visible in this picture are the cushioned glass retainers that hold Chris Norlin's stained glass work (ravenseyeglass.com) in a circular rabbet and beneath the 1/4" plate glass "trivet" embedded in the table's top, stout enough to place even your big casserole of lasagna.  The light box has been removed to show these details.