SAPFM-ORV Spring 2015 Meeting Minutes - Part II

aushbaush

Well-known member
See nearby posting for Part I

Ed Vance has been learning to make stained glass to incorporate in future projects. He brought a small piece of his new work to show his progress. Ed explained the materials used and the technique for “soldering” the pieces together. Following Ed, Larry Bilderback discussed a small oval period foot stool. This beautiful little stool was made of Black Walnut with ball and claw feet. The stool apron is a simple construction of four aprons glued to the leg blocks. Larry and his spouse did the upholstery, and the piece is finished in Watco dye with polyurethane surface finish.

Doug Moulder (not Dave as I previously erroneously reported) brought both his shop made panel raising plane (Willard “Bill” Anderson, “Make a Panel-raising Plane” Nov 2013 Popular Woodworking Magazine,), and a recent challenging pinwheel cabinet project inspired from a visit to MESDA in Old Salem. The cabinet plans came from Robert Lang’s and Glen Huey’s Furniture in the Southern Style, a book with 27 shop drawings of furniture from MESDA. This miniature cabinet has an arched top, much like a clock hood, and a pinwheel motif inlay with surrounding maple border on the door. Dave converted the shop plans into a CAD file, printed 2-D prints of individual pieces, glued these onto stock, and cut the pieces using only these plan lines. Everything went together very well. Finish was Minwax Antique Oil with a coat of the Dave Boeff homemade wax.

Eric Matson’s Rio Grande students also inspire us with the quality of their school projects, which are usually scattered about the shop in which we meet. We were not disappointed this time when Matthew Spallinger displayed his glass door hanging wall cupboard. This beautifully executed piece showed a very neat sliding dovetail means of attaching the bottom molding. The doors were composed of nine “lights,” the top row of which had arched tops. The design had a really cool slightly exaggerated cornice, which added greatly to the beauty of the piece. This project re-creates a piece sold by D.R. Dimes (http://www.drdimes.com/catalog/collections/branded-reproductions/glass-door-cupboards/hanging-wall-cupboard/). Matt also showed an in-progress Philadelphia side chair, and he and Eric Madson showed a couple of the jigs used to cut the doubly compound angle tenons forming the joint between the side rails and the rear leg stiles.

Bryan Koppert wrapped up the Show and Tell by showing a method of converting damaged block planes into chisel planes, as an alternative to the generally expensive models sold by Lie Nielsen and Lee Valley/VERITAS. He often ends up with broken or cracked block planes in this high school shop classes. Rather than throwing these away, Bryan cuts off the front right at the rear of the mouth, creating a good approximation to a chisel plane.

Day one Show and Tell was followed by an hour or more discussion of techniques for making the complex bandings used in Federal furniture such as the Seymour pieces discussed by Dick Reese. David Conley started this off by showing table saw inserts and jigs for cutting of small strips for assembly of complex bandings. He learned of these jigs from Dick Kammerer who learned of them by taking a Phil Lowe class. One jig included a sacrificial hold-down board for safety in cutting small parts. He also showed the type of clamping cauls and configurations used in gluing up the multiple strips to make a banding pattern. Rob Millard then led an informal, around-the-bench discussion session of the tools and techniques he uses to produce his Federal bandings. He had many examples of complex designs to show, and discussed his methodology and choices of glue for various steps. This subject was continued near the end of the Sunday session when Dick Kammerer discussed his methods of making these complex inlays, many of which were also learned years ago in a Phil Lowe class. He pointed out the value of using a 7 ¼ inch Diablo circular saw blade in a table saw to make very smooth cuts while minimizing wood loss due to wide kerfs. Dick went further in that he described methods for making the grooves into which stringing is applied. He typically uses a Dremel tool held in a mini router base sold by Stewart MacDonald. MacDonald also sells the little mill bits required, but they are expensive. Dick reported an alternative source as being Drill Technology of Ada Michigan (www.drilltechnology.com or 616-676-1287). They offer a SAPFM set of little mill bits (about $9.00 each, about 1/3 the price of Stew/Mac bits) designed in conjunction with Steve Latta of Thaddeus Stevens College. To keep light colored stringing from discoloration when dyeing the wood, Dick carefully paints his inlays and stinging with lacquer with a tiny little brush. (Shellac is not good for this as it yellows over time.) He generally adds a small strip of black stringing adjacent to the light stringing, both to accent the stringing and to make the lacquer application a little easier.

For the remainder of the Saturday session, Larry Bilderback provided a demonstration of V-chisel sharpening, with hands on participation by attendees using their own chisels and equipment. He taught us the notion of attack angle, the angle at which the chisel begins to cut, and how this should be set (via sharpening) to match the attack angle of one’s other chisels. He recommended 15 – 20 deg, saying that either higher or lower imparts a loss of carving control. He studied the geometry of the V-chisel and showed that sharpening is like sharpening three different tools; the two flat V sides, each sharpened as one would a bench chisel, and a tiny little gouge at the apex of these two planes, sharpened carefully as one would a carving gouge. Larry recommends the Chris Pye technique of dragging the end of the chisel perpendicular to a stone until a visible flat has been created on the end, and then sharpening the three “tools” until that line just disappears, working up to that stage on increasingly finer stone grits. (Woodcarving: Tools, Material & Equipment, Volume 1, and many other books by Chris Pye.) This is followed by stropping, the exterior with leather strop and the interior with a suitably shaped slipstone. The inside is honed only to remove any burr, not to create an inside bevel. One more required step is to narrow the “keel” such that multiple cuts can be taken by the V-chisel in the same groove. If not narrowed, the keel does not let the chisel go suitably deep in the second cuts.

The Sunday session was pretty much dedicated to a discussion and demonstration by plane maker Tod Herrli on preparing profiles on molding planes, i.e. the shaping and sharpening required to make a hand plane blade take on the shape to match the plane body. Tod contributes to many SAPFM chapter meetings across the country by giving demos and displaying his superb wooden molding and other planes. He started the session by presenting Eric Matson with a specific custom molding plane as appreciation for all the support provided by Eric to the ORV Chapter meetings.

Tod started by instructing how to choose, and to initially shape the surface of, grinding wheels used to profile a blade. He showed how to construct a simple yet effective wheel balancing jig, and how to use hot glue on the side of a wheel as weight to achieve balance. I cannot wait to try this on my shaky grinding wheels! He recommends rounding over the grinding edges of wheels such that they can be used more effectively to grind the convex and concave curves which make up a complex molding plane. Using 2-D cardboard models of edges he illustrated the geometry the grinding surface should make with the blade to achieve an appropriate cutting bevel angle along the profile. And he showed where one must initiate and terminate grinding wheel contract with the blade. He then moved on to the honing process, using his own shop-built electric honing wheels, or commercial equivalents. Tod goes directly from grinding to honing. And he actually likes to start with fairly course grinding wheel grits, say 40 – 60 grit, because they cut faster and generate less heat. As usual, Tod’s instruction was full of useful tips while being very entertaining. I recommend that other SAPFM chapters engage Tod to contribute to their own meeting successes.

At the conclusion of another highly successful ORV chapter meeting, thoughts began to turn to planning the next meeting for fall of 2015. Tentative dates are 29-30 August, and possibly being held at Dick Reese’s shop near Dayton, OH. Possible subjects include Rob Millard presenting on the making of the Tambour Seymour desk, and George Walker on the anatomy of molding profiles.

Thus concluded another very successful ORV chapter meeting, with many techniques and processes shared, and many good friends visited. – DAA
 
Dale: Great reporting on the meeting.
One item for correction. I believe you will find that Moulder's first name is Doug and not David.

David Turner
Plymouth, MI.
 
Dave:  Thanks for catching this.  And Doug, I apologize.  Aging brain on my part, as I have known you for over two years now!  Both David Conley and I missed this in our proof-reading! I will figure out a way to re-post the Report Part II.

Dale
 
Part II for the Spring 2015 meeting has now been corrected.  But guess what, I find that I made the same mistake in the Fall 2014 Part I report! That also has now been corrected. The double mistake happened when I copied some text from 2014 to start the 2015 report.  Man oh man! I need a new job! Now I owe Doug TWO beers.

Dale
 
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