Riverbend Journal

I'm hopefully back from vacation and writing upcoming posts this morning but while that is happening, I thought I would post one more picture of my altar build project that I completed earlier this spring. We didn't get back from our first vacation until Sunday afternoon so headed down to the church that I built the altar for which only has mass on Sunday evenings. Above is how the alter now looks in place and with the chairs rearranged to create a central aisle. Before, there was an aisle down either side and the chairs stretched across the middle. You can still see the marks in the carpet where they had sat for years before. I think the altar is a perfect match for this small rural Catholic church. I'm happy I took the project though I must confess, had it been for someone else other than a church, I probably would have declined the project. The priest saw my family in attendance and mentioned that I, builder of the altar was in the congregation, in his closing remarks be...

I ran a few errands first thing in the morning. Knowing it was supposed to be the hottest day of the year, I wanted to get a jumpstart on the moving process. So I wrapped a packing blanket around the top and cinched it in place with a ratchet strap. I removed the seats in the old minivan and put a scrap piece of particle board (that the plywood for the top came protected with months ago) down to protect the altar top from the fastening mechanisms that hold the seats in place. I pushed my mobile work bench, with the altar top on top, up to the rear of the van and was able to slide it down into the back with the ratchet strap still holding the packing blanket in place. It was easy enough to get that accomplished with just myself but it will require two of us to reverse the process. With the van loaded, I prepped the tools and other things we will need for the moving and assembly process and put them into the van so they were ready to go. I laid out a selection of ratchet straps and more ...

  After deciding on the color of the altar and aiming for a shade darker, I nervously started applying the stain. It looks fairly dark in the picture but that it before I wiped off any excess that didn't get absorbed. The next day, I applied a second coat and I think I did pretty well. Below you can see the color sample I made and if you recall, we decided on sample C only a touch darker. I think I was able to accomplish that. The bottom half of the picture is my color sample board and the top half is the altar top itself. I am pleased with the results. Next up, I started the application of the top protective coat which will protect the wood surface from damage from water or scratching, etc. I am using a hard wax oil that you wipe on, let soak in for 15 minutes or so and then wipe off.  Above is the altar top after two coats have been applied and I've just wiped off the excess of the second coat. As it dries, it will dull a little bit and not look so shiny. Above is two coats ...

Above is the ambo which we were initially shooting for as the color to match as it will be staying next to the altar I build. Some of you may remember that I am partially color blind so I stink at matching colors and to me, there is a lot of orange coloring in the ambo though my wife and others assure me there isn't. So that will perhaps explain the next pictures. Using up some leftover stains/oils and picking up some samples from the local store, I came back and created the above color "swatches" to match against the ambo. Sample 'B' looked much too orange and 'D' didn't look enough orange to my defective eyes. So I decided to try a blend of 'B' and 'C' to bring the orange tones down and came up with the below sample which is the backside of the board above. I varied the ratios and by the time I got to one part B and 4 parts C, I thought I was looking pretty spot on. So I drove down to the church where I met the Good Samaritan and he q...

  Note: I am halfway across the country from my home and may not have internet access on a regular basis for a few days so if your comments aren't published right away, that is why and I apologize in advance. I will try to get them published and answered as soon as time allows. I have been dreading this step ever since the Good Samaritan got in his vehicle to go back home after helping me lower the base to floor level. I needed to create attachment points to allow for the top to be bolted onto the base after it was moved inside the church since the doors of the church aren't wide enough to allow the entire thing to be carried in as one piece. I was able to attach brackets to the base but I needed to get the top centered onto the base and mark the holes for the brackets onto the bottom side of the top. To do that, I either needed to lift everything high enough in the air to crawl underneath OR I needed to turn everything upside down. I thought with some planning, I might, just m...

  After getting the plywood top laminated together, I got one last stick of oak lumber from my big box store and milled it down to make my own shop veneer, much thicker than what you can buy, to cover up the exposed plywood edges. It is 1/4 of an inch thick and when I apply a 1/4 inch radius later to soften up the edges, it should all but disappear making the entire top look like it was cut from a giant slab of wood.  Unfortunately though, I discovered that despite maybe a couple hundred clamps, I did not have a single clamp that would work to hold the veneer in place while the glue dries. Not wanting to but a bunch of expensive clamps that I'll likely never use again, I had to get creative. Above you can see what I ended up doing after digging through my storage box of ropes, bungees and ratchet straps. Perhaps 15 years ago, while living in another town, the local Ace Hardware store was going out of business and I stopped in while all inventory was 75% off to see if there was...

  With the best piece of plywood turned with the good face pointing down onto a moving blanket to protect it from damage, I applied epoxy to the back side. Like the side panel assemblies, the size prevents me from clamping it adequately and in a short enough period of time before the adhesive starts setting up. Epoxy gives me enough time to use alternative clamping in the form of lots of screws placed every six inches or so. The epoxy comes in tubes that I squirt on and it thick enough it doesn't run which meant I needed to spread it out in an even layer.  Previously I used small glue rollers but they cost around $10 and the epoxy pretty much renders them junk afterward. I had two old ones that I used and both had to be thrown away. This time, I wanted to try something different so bought some plastic putty knives for 99 cents each. They turned out to work quite well and I didn't feel bad about tossing them after I was done. It is hard to see but above is what it looked like a...

  After kicking around various ideas on how to entice people to lend me their backs, I came to an obvious solution. I would call up the parishioner who designed the altar and ask them to find some people to help lower it. He responded back saying that although he knows of one person who could possibly help, he thought that just the two of us would be able to do it. I was a bit skeptical but acquiesced.  While waiting for him to arrive, I decided to up the odds a bit and built a sort of midway platform between the height of my workbench and floor level. I overturned four 5-gallon buckets and placed a short 2x4 piece of lumber between them. This would give us a place to set the altar on about 18 inches or so above floor level and prevent us from having to lower it all the way down in one go and possibly injure our backs.  After checking things out, my good Samaritan and I just went for it and honestly, it wasn't bad at all. Both of us got it set down onto my makeshift platf...

  I have reached what feels like a pretty significant milestone. I have the base of the altar completed for the most part. All the trim and bead work has been added and I spent an entire day of nothing but sanding it down through two different grit levels. I still have one more finer grit to go so another half day. It takes a lot of time to get into all the nooks and crannies and to do the sanding I have two different sanders plus a few wood blocks and good old fashioned elbow grease. At points during the assembly process, I felt discouraged about a few defects but I was able to get them all repaired and they are no longer noticeable at all. In fact, as I was wrapping up my second grit of sandpaper, I was quite pleased with how everything had turned out. As I have told several people, building this thing was above my paygrade but somehow, I think I may be able to pull it off. After taking these pictures, I put a padded blanket underneath it to protect all my sanding efforts and was...

  After the delays of looking at flowers and trying to stop radon from entering my life, I decided to get back to my altar project. When I left this thread last, the beading had been clamped to the scraps cut out to form the double ogee arches above to assimilate the rough shape so that it would be easier to fasten in place. After a few days of hanging out around my forms, my beading that will be used to cover up the plywood edges and provide some detail interest had warped enough to allow me to fasten it on easier though it would still require a lot of clamping to hold it until the glue dried. So I spent a day applying the beading, waiting for the glue to cure and then continuing with another vertical strip. The bottom beading will be applied maybe tomorrow and then the real fun of lots of sanding can begin in earnest. 

Above is the nearly completed base. I have added another layer of trim around the bottom perimeter of the base and have all the cove molding cut and laying in place on top of that. I am too worn out today to glue it in place so will do so tomorrow. I also have to install the beading that will go around the perimeter of the double ogee arches to cover up the plywood edges and give it a bit of panache. Then there is a lot of sanding followed by figuring out how I am going to install the top to the base and get those attachment points mounted. Then somehow, I need to get said base, some several hundred pounds worth of wood, off my workbench and down on the ground so that I can start on the top. I still haven't figured out how to do that. Perhaps there may be pizza and beer bribes to get some manual labor involved. Above is a close up of the beading that I spent a fair chunk of time this morning making. I made it out of scraps, cutting in the bead detail and then ripping them from that...

  With warmer weather finally here for good, hopefully, I am able to put in some longer hours on this project. As I have mentioned before, adhesives prefer warmer temperatures to bond and cure properly. Still, I find myself idle for small chunks of time simply because I don't have enough clamps, or at least the right kind of clamps. As you can see, I'm starting to pack out the columns by adding layers to them and to avoid using mechanical fasteners, I need a lot of clamps to hold things while the glue dries. Fortunately, glue sets up enough I can remove most of the clamps within an hour or so and fully cures within three hours. I probably could have kept going on other pieces but unfortunately, I have my tablesaw dialed into an exact 45 degrees for mitering all those corners and the next steps require me to have the blade at 90 degrees. All this is technical jargon for saying that I need to finish all these small mitered trim pieces before I can reset my saw and move onto the r...

  After much sanding over several days, of both the carcass and the columns, I was able to attach the columns in place on the carcass. This involved applying adhesive to one side, clamping it in place on the outside and then using a ladder, screwing it from the inside of the box several times to apply the proper "clamping" pressure. It required lots of up and down and some minor contortions but I was able to get them in place satisfactorily. My next step was to obtain some more oak to start batching out various trim details which you see on the workbench. It always makes me sigh a bit to cut up an expensive board into small pieces but it has to be done to achieve the effect the client desires. Next up, I will start cutting the joinery on all those small pieces and after more sanding, start attaching them to the altar permanently. Then it should visually start looking more like an altar. I'm an engineer so it stands to reason, I loved physics in college. It was one of my f...

  Although as of this writing, it is still too cold for gluing the entire assembly together, it won't be long before it remains warm enough. After sleeping on the corner legs with the splintered wood chunks, I decided to attempt to repair them but liberally applying glue to the splintered areas mixed with sawdust to create a like colored patch. After it dried and I sanded it, the repair virtually disappeared and is no longer noticeable. Crisis adverted.  With that decided, I trimmed the columns to the correct with and using clamps and some screws, temporarily mocked everything together with the exception of lots of trim, molding and bead work that still remains along with the top that will go... well on top. But for the next couple days anyway, weather will put a halt to my work until I can get the four sides of the base adhere together so that it can be sanded before I apply the columns permanently and then final sand those before applying the trim work permanently. Essential...

  With the very next day being forecasted to be in the mid 70's followed by ten days in the 50's, I decided to make a go of it and laminate all my pieces together in a marathon of a day. Due to the awkward nature of the side panels, I don't have enough clamps or weights to apply the proper pressure for wood glue to bond properly. Wood glue also starts setting up in about 10 minutes meaning I would have to work very fast. Fortunately, technology has created products like the Thixo epoxy you see above with open times closer to an hour and although it needs some pressure to bond, it isn't as much as wood glue. However, it does need to have 55 F or above temperatures for 24 hours to fully cure. With one day of warm weather forecasted, I came upon the solution. I opened the interior door between my kitchen and garage and set a fan blowing warmer house air into the garage to bring it quickly up to temperature. The day started out at 48 degrees F so it didn't have far to g...

  With my template that I cut out earlier laid onto my newly cut to width front panel, I could trace out the double ogee arch decoration that will go there. I drilled some holes on the insides of those lines and carefully cut the middle parts of each are out, leaving about a quarter inch of material between my cut and the line. The reason for that is because I was using a jigsaw to cut out the middle parts and it leaves a very rough cut, the blade doesn't always track straight up and down and it tends to splinter the edges of the wood being cut which isn't very attractive. I have a secret weapon for fixing all those defaults but it only works if the majority of the waste wood is removed first. This is how the double arched panel looks after I cut it out with the jigsaw. You can see the lines I drew still there and the wavy edges left by the jigsaw. Above is a closeup of the front panel with some double sided carpet tape adhered in a few spots. I will put my template on top of t...

  Probably the second worst job of any large furniture build that involves sheet goods is breaking large sheets into smaller pieces. (The worst job will always be sanding and it's not even close to second.) The sheets are heavy and my accurate tools like the tablesaw with a nice sharp blade on it, are too small. So I have to cut them into pieces small enough that my table saw can handle the rest.  To break down a sheet, I slide it up onto my workbench and slide some scrap pieces of wood underneath so that I don't cut into my workbench table top by accident. Then I measure out a rough distance giving me some room to play with. The tool you see above is called a track saw. The saw itself slides on a grooved aluminum plate that makes it cut a perfectly straight line, in what ever orientation you position it in. But the blade in the saw isn't meant for fine carpentry so I cut it oversized so that I can do the final trimming later. Once I had the sheets broken down into smaller ...

  I have a love hate relationship with my local big box LowNards Depot, more hate than love. But when living out in rural America, there isn't a lot of better options especially since they drove out all their mom and pop competitors years ago. So when I placed my order for six sheets of A1 graded red oak plywood, I knew just getting it home would be a struggle. Under current prices, not sure if the tariffs on Canadian wood is in place or not as of this writing, this stuff is pricey coming in at about $120 per sheet. I need six sheets. I could have paid for delivery but in my past experiences, delivery operators that LowNards Depot contracts out too are usually reliably rough in handling the merchandise, not to mention, it would cost me the price of another sheet of plywood to pay for the service. The alternative is to just haul it myself. It is a lot of physical labor and six sheets is pushing the envelope of what my poor old minivan can handle, but I thought with no need to hurry,...