Riverbend Journal

  March 24 With full intentions of beginning work on the altar project in earnest, I went to the local big box wood store, my sole supplier of plywood and found their selection to be very lacking. So I went back home and placed my order online for some superior looking product, hopefully, which I will not wait patiently a week for delivery. Meanwhile, I did a tour of our property looking for signs of spring and found some. Above is a flat of basil in our greenhouse that is indeed starting to show life. We planted three early flats using leftover seeds and none of the three every sprouted. To be fair, our unheated greenhouse received at least six days of below freezing weather during the early morning hours which may have played a part. The above flat was one we replanted a little over a week ago along with me replanting the tomatoes. They haven't shown life yet but it takes a little bit longer for them to sprout. March 24 In the garden, the surest signs of life is the garlic patch....

  I have been commissioned to build an altar for a neighboring church and though a bit nervous since previously, all my work has stayed in my own home or with close family members, I agreed to do it. After some back and forth, the design that was settled on is shown above. It is the CAD file that I created based upon some rendered drawings provided me. Now that my show is clear and the weather is starting to warm up, I thought it time to get started on the project. The first step was to create a template to use in making the ogee arch details on the front of the altar. First I created a dimensioned print of the area in question. To create the ogee arch, I had to learn the geometric tricks involved for creating it which required some YouTube research.  This was helpful in drawing it on some MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) to create the template. I only need one template and will just transfer it twice to get the proper locations. MDF is great for templating material as it is ea...

  I have evolved a lot over the years when it comes to finishing wood projects and I continue to try and use new methods. I started out finishing a few of the drawers on one of the inbox units with rattle can spray shellac. I have never used shellac but have seen it used by others to great success. It indeed worked okay but it took a lot of time to get into all the nooks and crannies evenly without getting too much elsewhere. In fact, I left the nooks and crannies somewhat baren of finish after the first coat to avoid getting too much that could later run and ruin the finish. Also, my index finger got quite tired of pressing the nozzle down repeatedly. So I stopped. The next day, I remembered some leftover Odie's Oil I had from a previous project. It is the consistency of peanut butter on the runnier side, more like Nutella if keeping with the spreadable food analogy. It is rubbed on and the wiped off so you don't have to worry about running drips. But I feel as if it doesn...

  Above is where I stopped last fall due to cold weather and frustration. You might be able to notice on the inbox drawers on the left, I routed grooves on the sides to fit over the wood drawer slides glued to the bases on the right. For some reason, several of those boxes twisted on me so the grooves were crooked. I also routed a groove on all nine of them when I only needed to do them on six, because the top drawers don't slide and are just screwed permanently in place.  Over winter, I mulled over ideas on what to do to fix these problems but never came up with a good solution. Then this spring, knowing I need to come up with an answer to finish these, I studied the problem one more time. I realized that the grooves on the top fixed drawers weren't really an issue. They won't be visible from the front or even sides of the completed inbox. Only if you look from the back they might be noticed and I'm guessing someone will probably just assume they were supposed to be th...

  After presanding all the drawer parts, on their inside surface anyway, I applied some tape and then glued them together. The tape is to catch the glue being squeezed out of the joint by pressure and so I can easily peel it off and not have to fuss with scraping and sanding lots of inside corners filled with dried blobs of glue. This is something that age and experience has taught me that I wish I had known in my younger years. Above, all nine drawers are glued up and I have roughly sanded the outside surfaces to prepare for the next steps. Because the corners of the drawers are also mitered joints, weak joints for wood, I added contrasting splines to all of them which was a fair amount of work cutting all those splines gluing them into place. I should note, that the drawers are all made from leftover cedar from my porch swing project that I completed a couple years ago. My shop smells so nice whenever I'm working with cedar.