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Getting closer to the end, and it's time to think about finishing the project... with wood finish. I'm going by my client's (mom's) request here. She wants it to match our barn back home. This is lighter than the barn, though the barn has darkened with age. She did also say "not dark - keep it light," and I'm pretty sure this is about what she's hoping for. There are actually 2 different stains here, half on the left, and half on the right, but they look identical. I'm a little disappointed that even after properly mixing up the pre-stain, and wood finish ("Colonial Maple"), and following the directions, and wait times, I'm getting a blotchy look. Of course, this is scrap that hasn't been sanded ever. I'm pretty sure the finely sanded (400 grit) TV stand will accept the stain far better.
After extensive reading as to the uses, pros, and cons of everything here, and other things recommended in the instructions not shown here, I have decided to go pick up spar varnish, instead of using either Polycrylicâ„¢, or Polyurethane, as spar varnish is good for lots of sunlight, and will keep the wood from graying over time. The TV stand will be in a room with huge glass doors and windows on 3 sides, and 2 large skylights overhead. It gets very bright in there. I don't want it to gray in the areas around the TV's shadow.
This is a scrap piece of maple held in the jaws of a large drill press vice, which has a cotton rag draped through the jaws to keep the dirt, and jaw marks off the scrap piece. I'm using this to see how good I am at hinge mortising with a chisel. I've never done it, but I've certainly seen it done often enough through my life. Seeing and doing are different things, of course...
The panels glued up quite well! I was very happy with how flat they were, and how strong. I had jointed them on my router table to ensure invisible seams, and that worked out really well, too.
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Here's the previous glue-up of scrap wood into a new, usable panel. It might look rough, and dusty, but that's only because it's all board-ends you're seeing, straight on. It's actually been sanded with 400 grit to a very smooth finish, and feels amazing. on all 6 sides, and edges. I want to take the long glue-up panel cut-offs in the background, cut them in half, and join them all into a longer, narrower panel, roughly like this one, but more detailed, as now it's pieces glued up in 2 dimensions. Because of the low points being so low, I'm only going to get maybe a 0.25" panel out of it, but I'm curious to see how it'll look, and to think up quirky, homey uses for it.
I gave up on hinge-mortising with a chisel, as it's just too ugly when I do it. I decided to use the router table, and Incra LS Positioner as it's meant to be used, and incrementally move to rout out the door edges to sink the hinges properly. Here I'm using the right-angle attachment, with a wooden handscrew clamp to hold the two doors against the fence, with a fronter, and backer board to keep it from tearing out on either side of the doors. This worked beautifully, and the hinges fit *exactly.* Awesome.
Aniline dye is a very concentrated product. You can mix it with anything, including water, oil, mineral spirits, or alcohol. I used denatured alcohol from Home Depot, a pleasant smelling, and fast drying mild solvent often used as a marine cooking oil, or to clean brushes, glass, porcelain, and metal, or to thin shellac. The dyes I picked up at Rockler.
This is how big the knobs I bought as blanks to carve into shapes - before finally finding leaf pulls I liked just fine - would look. Too big. Interestingly, Rockler, where I finally found the leaf pulls, also had this style pull in a row of sizes. I could have actually gone with this style and found an appropriately sized knob just like this.
The side panels of the magazine box have been trimmed to size, after the glue-up work in the previous operation. The next step is to contour them to the right shape, and glue up the box.
I used one of the stakes from the foundation work on the wood storage project as a test piece. Earlier it had been used to test the Sheer Rustic Red Thompson's WaterSeal + stain on the wood storage shed project, which is why the end is orange-brown. The blue I chose looks great to me. That's pretty much exactly what I saw in my head. Let's get to painting!
To round over the corners, I simply taped the panels together, set my drill press up as a simple drum sander, and sanded them by eye to a nice roundness.
The original wall mount brackets are a cantilever design.
Mortise and through tenon and glue joinery connects the members together.
The sign appeared to be sitting lower on one side. Closer inspection of the wall mount brackets revealed a slight separation at the mortise and tenon joint.
First, some tests on scrap wood...
The iron is really burning my fingers here. It's tremendously hot, much moreso than even larger soldering irons I've used. A lot of heat rises up from it, and holding it like this, hands above, it's like putting your hands right over a clothing iron.
It occurred to me shortly before this, the packaging day, that the newly acquired band saw (thanks again, mom!) gave me an awesome new power: custom packaging. I picked up these 1.5" thick, 2'x4' slabs of Styrofoamâ„¢ from the insulation aisle at Home Depot, and broke in the new saw with almost the softest of materials. The dust collector kept it from making a complete mess.
This thing cuts styro like a laser.
After peeling off this wax paper, there was a lot of very thinly squeezed glue making the surface crusty, but this sanded off quite well, as expected.
This is prior to the roundover work I'm about to do along the outer edges. Normally this would be done before assembly, but I'm being weird :)
Here's a back side view of how the shelves came out. They're all flushed up. You can also see that old gouge error I made by moving the router positioning system the wrong direction. It's repaired with a piece of wood, sanded to fit. This won't be hidden by the light stain color, but it will be hidden by being at the back of the unit, behind the television.
Check out those sharp edges with their perfect 90° corners. I'm ready to turn these into a magazine box.
I will admit that it is a tad ridiculous to use a dedicated hole cutter to cut a hole in Styrofoamâ„¢. A steak knife would probably have worked as well. Still, how often does one get a chance to use one of these awesome contraptions?
Mom's TV is pretty gigantic on the back porch. I didn't realize quite how small the final TV stand would look underneath it, but it does its job. At least now from the couch they can see the TV properly over the corner of the desk, seen here intruding in the lower right corner.
I was very glad to see this technique work out so well on such thin stock, as I'm sure it will come in handy on many future projects.