After quite a long hiatus on this project because of Life, Work, and various and sundry things I am back to working on my Anarchist Tool Chest.  It sucks that I had to put this down for so long, but it just had to be on the back burner for a while.

Last weekend I picked the project back up again and actually made some progress.   With the lid being done, the next step was to mount the lid on the shell.  Which means hinges.  I personally hate hinges.  I suck at them.  I just do.  So it was part of why I was putting this off for so long.  I took a deep breath and tightened my belt and other euphemisms as well and just got to it.

Except I didn’t.

Turns out the wood had moved quite a bit since the last time.  The lip where the lid rested on had swelled horizontally somehow, and was no longer straight.  I suspect the wood we used wasn’t totally dried (if you were in the class you can hear the dripping sarcasm from here).  I planed off a bit on each front and back lip until my lid and back edge lined up again.

Now it was time for hinges.

Hinge!

Which actually went just fine despite all my whining and wailing.   I followed the directions in the ATC book fairly faithfully, and took my time.  The lid ended up every so slightly askew, which I cleaned up with a few passes of the plane.

So, now I have a functioning lid that fits well and opens smoothly.

Lid Open!

Lid closed! (and tucked under my secondary bench.

This completes the outside woodwork.  I’ll paint it black with milk paint, and then start in on the inside.  I might actually get to start putting TOOLS in it soon.  That is pretty exciting.

Badger

See previous post here: Part 1

Before I talk about the sign, I want to mention that I think there are still a couple open slots in my wood carving class this Saturday April 12, 2014 at Rockler Woodworking Store in Northgate (Seattle, WA).    It’s a two day class, and I start with the basics and work up to more complex stuff.

Letters outlined

Tonight I finished outlining the letters, and finished most of the major detail carving for the center area.  Things I learned…  Super glue is handy to have on hand, and thin letters in soft-ish wood is not necessarily a good idea.  And yes those things are related.

The Alder is nice to carve, but it’s a bit soft and the thin legs on the letter had occasional problems when I slipped or pried even slightly off course.  I had to replace four different chunks, and the S could not totally be repaired.  Regardless I’m pretty happy with the result, and I’m going to be calling this a “Prototype” anyway.

Majority of the letter work done.

I just need to finish up two of the round bits, and four S scrolls around the out side.  A coat of Shellac should make it pop a bit, but over all it’s been a fun experiment. I definitely need to pay more attention to the general widths of the letter parts.

The outline of the letters was actually easier than I anticipated, and I did the bulk of the work with three chisels.

Flat chisel for straight areas.

Small medium curved gouge for the finials and bases on the letters, and some of the tighter inside curves.

Small flat-ish gouge (probably a #3) for outline the gentler curves.

I ended up using a fair number of other chisels because I had them, but I think I could have done almost everything with those three.  It’s a case of using what you have to fit the outline you want.

I’m actually considering offering a one day class on letters both V-chisel incised Times New Roman, and a bolder font done like my sign above for bigger stuff.  After I get through the relief carving class, I’ll see what Rockler wants to do in that area.

Badger

As I was preparing to teach my upcoming carving class, I realized I didn’t have a sign.  So, I thought I’d warm up my carving muscles for my class and demo, and make a sign for Badger Woodworks at the same time.

I started with some the Alder I’ve posted about before which I’m running a little low on, and glued three sections together to make a larger panel.  I used Hide Glue and a bunch of clamps, and it worked like a charm.  The wood has some funky grain in a few spots, but otherwise seems carve-able.

Staring the Layout

For this layout I started with a border around the edge, and set circles in the corners. I played around with proportions until I got something where I could put two S scrolls along the bottom, and a single one up the sides.  Putting the roundel or circle in the corner made it easier to layout, and gives me lots of options for designs.   I tried to do some strapwork based on the circles on a previous design and nearly drove myself mad trying to make it work with the proportions so I skipped that this time.

Since I knew I was going to put my shop name in the middle, I sub-divided my remaining space and used the center line to create two half circles at the ends to bound the middle space. I’ve seen a bunch of corner/triangular space filling designs in other chests and I thought this might be a good place to experiment with those.

Carving the Scroll work

With the layout basically done, I started setting the scroll work, and relieving the background.  I knew I had the carving demo coming up so I deliberately didn’t finish the outside edge so I could use it for examples in my demo.  I experimented with a half button inside the loops, but I’m still not sure the design element works here.

Outline of the text and filling some space

For the text I went to my trusty word processor, picked a good font and started playing with layout.  Once I felt I had something good, I started printing out samples and laying them on the wood.  It took four tries to find the right spacing and layout.  Once I had that I taped it down with blue tape, and went over the outlines with a pen directly on the paper pressing down HARD to make a dent in the wood below.  This left a nice impression that I was able to follow later to make the letters.

I knew that “Woodworks would be much longer than “Badger” so I had to fill in some space as well.  I tried free handing the design but I’m not sure it works as well as I was hoping, something I will need to practice some more.

To outline the letters I set in outline with 3 different chisels, a small medium curve gouge, a slight larger gentle curved gouge, and a straight/flat chisel.  I was able to do almost every single curve with these two gouges.   I had to be very careful on the thinner legs of the letters and already chipped one out which I had to glue the wood back in.  Then it’s just a matter of relieving the outside, and texture punching the background.

More to come later as I finish the project.

Previous post on tool chest here.

Made some progress on my tool chest this weekend.  I’ve been plugging away at it slowly since I brought it home from my class in Port Townsend.

Detail shot of the carved lid.

First challenge was fitting the beast into my small shop, which is really just the back end of a two car garage that is full of boxes of stuff.  I was worried that it wouldn’t fit, and I’d have to dance around it to get anything done until I totally re-arranged everything.

Luckily it just barely fits under the grungy shop workbenches that came with the house.  With room for the lid.

With that sorted, I was able to turn my attention to the lid, which was still un-assembled because I wanted to trick it out with some carving.  My understanding is that traditional chests were plain on the outside (because they get beat up a lot) and the underside of the lid and inside were usually prettied up with marquetry, and fancy veneer and the like.   Since I can’t do any of that I thought I’d do some carving, like I like to do.

It started as conversation at the tool chest class, about how Peter Follansbee used some of his sample carvings for the runners inside his chest.  One thing led to another and I decided to carve the underside of the lid, the tray sides, and possible the runners as well.  You know, just to show off. 🙂

Here are some progress shots of the lid.

One row of S-Scrolls for the underside of the lid.

Second row of S-Scrolls complete.

Final arrangement of carving for the inside of the panel done.

I had some thoughts around the design of the outside edge of the frame, but it had taken quite a while to get to this points, so I was thinking of a few different options including calling to good enough.  I’ve been re-reading the Joiner and Cabinet Maker and a quote from Thomas jumped out at me.  So I carved it into the upper and lower rail to remind me to slow down and do it right.

Frame and panel for the lid. The frame is just laid on top of the panel, just to show how it would look.

To get the lettering right, I printed out the words in 2″ on my inkjet and cut them out in rows.  Taping this to the frame rail with blue painters tape I went over each letter with a pen to impress the outline into the wood underneath.  Followed by a pencil to outline the edges, which gave me a guide to follow with my V tool.  I have never done lettering like this before, but I have been carving for a while now so I went with my instinct and put tool to wood.  It worked out well, and I was actually pleased with how it came out. I found an article later that says I figured it out pretty well.

Next step, fitting the panel into the grooves of the lid (it’s being stubborn about it right now, so I need to trim some edges), and gluing everything together.  Not sure if I’m going to finish the underside of the lid though, it really wants one but I’ve heard that is a bad idea.  Maybe just some clear shellac?