Any woodworkers?

I haven't done any woodwork since high school, but recently did a spiral staircase step stool which gave me the bug. A friend has a garage shop that was used to make it and I wanted to thank him, so I'm making a small walnut box that will have some things he needs in it (i.e. dowel pin markers).

The walnut treads on the step stool was the first time I've worked with walnut, but I haven't put a finish on those yet. Anyway, I've been stopping by the store periodically looking at walnut boards for the box. Not having any idea what to look for, and there are a lot of variations in grain, I just kept hesitating.

Hard to tell much when they are dry, so in the store I got my hand wet from the rain water on the cart and wiped it on the boards that interested me. Yesterday I found this board and I thought it was so visually striking that I bought it. It's 3/4 x 3 1/2 x 5.

When I got home I wiped it with mineral spirits. The pic is about 2 feet of one end of the board; the top of the pic is one side of the board and the bottom of the pic is the flip side. I cropped both pics and spliced them together to make it easier to look at and decide which would be the outside of the box.

I'm curious about the grain and figuring. I can see the sapwood and that doesn't bother me. Does anyone have an opinion on whether this is a good piece for a box?

 

You'll have no problems using that for a box, it will add lots of visual interest. I'm assuming if it's store bought it'll be dry. Walnut is a very stable wood and one of my favorites to work with.

 

Yes, kiln dried. Believe it or not, I got this piece from Home Depot. I have spent so much time during my visits there digging through the rack of walnut, pulling out many many boards, to find something I liked. Biggest problem was the number of them that were bowed or cupped. The first one I bought has about a 3/16 bow over the 3 foot length. After that I meticulously looked at each one. Still not sure what I'm going to do with that one.

I read some kiln dried wood, if they steam it to even the color out, is grey and dull. In preparation for that I bought some amber/orange shellac flakes to warm it up. The finishing schedule will be Tung oil finish (wet sand the last two coats), several thin coats of shellac (will be blonde now that I see the wood looks good), then a few layers of satin varnish sprayed on.

 

Nice piece of walnut, great grain. It will make for a nice project. Tung oil may not be your best choice as it takes a long time to dry, if ever. I've had good luck with Watco Clear Danish Oil and then coats of Poly. You can thin the poly with paint thinner and wipe/ brush it on. It will take 4 or 5 coats with a very light sand between coats. Google wipe on poly. Are you going to do some finishing samples first? I'm just speaking from trial and error and lots of research.

 

Depending on what the box is for, you can also look into Walrus Oil. They have some great products such as their Furniture Butter.

I use their cutting board oil on all my cutting boards.

 

Zinnser Seal Coat is a wax free premixed shellac so you don't need to mix your own.

 

I won't be using pure tung oil, but "Minwax tung oil finish". Not the same and it dries faster. Yes, I have many things I'm going to try on scrap first.

 

Yeah, that's what I'm going to use. I got the amber flakes because the Zinnser amber shellac is waxed. Not going to use amber so the seal coat will work.

 

Wife’s Christmas present

 

That's cool, where's it going?

 

It’s an addition to some vintage cabinets that I had rebuilt some years back for my kitchen, the other cabinets have a butcher block top so that’s why the top on this one looks thick.

 

anyone have experience with Watco teak oil, i have a teak board where my second coat doesn't seem be absorbing like the first, is it just a matter of waiting it out or should I take some action now

 

I’m looking to buy the Ridgid R4512 tablesaw. I have an older Craftsman with a Biesemeyer fence on it. Would anyone happen to know if the Biesemeyer will bolt on to the new Ridgid??

 

I might sell the craftsman. I know I can’t sell it without a fence though.

 

I'm sure it will Tom, you may have to drill a few holes here and there. I had to do that when I installed a new fence on my old craftsman.

 

As I'm making my first wood box I'm learning all kinds of things I never did before. Making continuous grain on the left, front, right and back panels and kerf loss is one of those things. With straight grain wood losing 1/8 inch or so on each mitered corner it doesn't look obvious, but wood with a lot of grain movement (the walnut I'm going to use) it will be. The grain lines will not match. So I'm using a blade with a relatively narrow kerf bit it's still significant. There are super narrow kerf blades but they are very expensive. So I'm trying to figure out another way...

I came up with an idea and did an experiment. Where I need to make two opposite 45 degree miter cuts on a board for a corner, which would look like this /\, and result in approx 1/8 loss to kerf waste, how can I do it differently to minimize the loss? I wondered what existing blade/saw could make a very narrow cut and thought of what I had. My jigsaw blades are pretty narrow so why not? I knew I couldn't make an accurate miter with that saw but figured I didn't need to. I only needed to cut the face surface with the narrow blade and the use the regular blade for the rest. I made a relief cut up the middle, stoping short, so the Jigsaw only had to cut thin amount. Once that was cut I could shave off the other material on my table saw.

So this is the experiment that resulted in going from 1/8 loss to 1/16 loss. Pretty good result! The jigsaw blade was well used and not fine or straight so it left the cut way too ragged to be of use, however maybe I can get a smoother new one or find another alternative. I'm going to try my scroll saw next. Any thoughts or suggestions?

The cut on the left was done with a bevel cut sled on my table saw. The cut in the right had the relief cut with the table-saw, then jigsaw to cut it in two, then bevl sled to complete the miter.


Table saw blade cut


Jigsaw blade cut

 

Bandsaw