Some Milling

Quick post - I had to take out a dogwood tree and the logs ended up kind of long and straight-ish. I thought maybe I could try my hand at milling them up on the table saw. Dogwood isn't exactly supposed to be worth cutting into boards but I thought I could try anyway just to see if it would work. I started with this

Couple of logs

in the end, I ran it through the table saw a couple of different ways, split in half, and ended up with a handful of boards.

Not a lot, they aren't in great shape, still some bark on there. I could actually see water coming out of the boards while they were on the table saw, that's how green it was. After letting these dry out for a few months I'll run it through the planer and see what happens. Maybe I can get a picture frame out of it or something.

Couple of Tables

Made a couple of really cool tables recently, since I worked on them at the same time I figured I would blog about them at the same time.

I made a live edge slab table for my front porch that turned out great. So great in fact, other people wanted some. When we got that slab, there were 3 others in the stack so they all made their way back to my shop eventually. Then, we had some trees taken down in the front yard, and I got my little electric chainsaw out and cut a cookie off of one of the stumps. That turned out to be pretty interesting by itself!

before the power planer? hard to tell here

The cookie

because you haven't seen my face for a while - still in tank tops in October

that's a lot of polyurethane, y'all

 Yeah, that last picture has the floating shelves for my youngest, the next pine slab, and the cookie all getting polyurethane at the same time.Pretty interesting

To prep these live edge slabs, you have to (stay with me here) work the wood. I start with a power planer to get level faces, and a spokeshave to debark the sides. Once you can get all of the parts relatively level, it's time to start smoothing. For the flat faces, I start with 80 grit on the belt sander, then 120 grit. The live edge parts still have to be smoothed over, but you don't want to make them flat. Leave the interesting parts and some color. Next I hit 180 grit paper on the random orbit sander on all sides, then 220 grit.

Then you start in with the polyurethane. Put about 5 coats of the wipe-on stuff on the bottom, sometimes hitting the sides too. Then put at least 8 coats on the top, 10 would be best, again hitting the sides. So the live edge sides get doubled up some.

I didn't get any finished pictures of the big slab, but I put some of the same hairpin legs on it as the first table I did. the cookie got pipe legs, I think it turned out pretty good!

Installing the legs

These turned out great! It's a nice addition to the porch, the pipe legs let me get the table exactly level, and the hairpin legs look great too. These were both really fun builds.

Muscadine's gone, man

I finally finished setting up the boat building area next to the deck. Still need a couple of strong friends to help me move that thing over there, but at least there are now rocks on the ground. Here's the before:

A loaded set of vines in the summer

6 vines on 3 trellis

starting to come down

When my grandfather retired he moved to a farm and grew muscadines. Every house we move into I plant vines, they take a few years for the grapes to come in. This time I planted some of the same varieties that he grew. The reality is that these would produce tons of grapes at a very small size and the bugs or birds would get them all. Every year it looks like I will fill 5 gallon buckets with these things, and I get nothing in the end. This year I got 4 grapes. From all 6 vines, not even 4 grapes per month. 4 grapes total. I actually left the front trellis standing for about 2 months longer than I really wanted just to let the last 2 grapes ripen. they were delicious. And I still cried every time I cut one of the vines down from missing my grandfather so much. He passed away 21 years ago from cancer and it still hurts.

Small, not ripe

getting there

After building the porch, it created a bottleneck between the brick column, the rain chain, and the first trellis. After I took down the back few trellis' I was able to build that deck to assemble and paint furniture (that's working out really well). So the bottleneck had to be opened up.

No more vines, and a teenager surfacing a slab table

I did actually connect those lines of rocks too

Eventually we are going to landscape this yard around the porch, and put in a brick paver pathway from the driveway all the way to the shed. Right now we're enjoying decorating the porch, and I'm super busy building stuff.

For fall, all setup for thanksgiving

and all lit up for Christmas!

Next Christmas we'll have some trees, shrubs, and mulch in there.

More Floating Shelves

I'm finally getting around to posting about finishing Lena's floating shelves. When I designed the shelves it was supposed to wrap an inside corner with a continuous line of shelves. I already got the left side of the shelves put up, now it's time to fit the right side!

Drawing with lengths

Cut out the stack of boards

This is all of the scrap oak I had left over

I started with 2 boards of red oak, 4/4 by about 6" wide rough cut. I cut them to width with straight sides, then got them through the planer and cut out the boards I needed to length. After that, I have to rip out a 1.5" strip off of the side to attach to the wall, add a bunch of holes and seal it with polyurethane.

Laid out on the new deck

I put about 3 coats of a glossy brush on poly on each side. Then I marked the stud locations inside the wall onto the strips so I could use a 3" draw-tite screw (with the pan head, like you would use for pocket joints) to attach the strips into the wall. Then I can use dowels to attach the bulk of the shelf and seal the joint to the wall.

Right side wall strips are attached

Attaching the fronts for the top sections

All set!

These turned out super cool. Lena absolutely loves them. I totally got the idea from pinterest but it executed really nicely. Her friends are pretty impressed with her room setup, and I'm really happy with the way it all turned out.

That's my pink-haired girl with all of the ducks decorating the shelves

Slight daybed update

One of the things that always bugged me about the daybed - I had to hang the ropes from existing ceiling joists. When I built the porch ceiling I didn't anticipate hanging a bed there, so the ropes on the yard side rubbed against the bed. Also that side wasn't exactly far enough away from the wall so the bed constantly bumped the house or the handrail. I finally decided to get into the attic and add some 2x6 blocks in there with joist hangers to move the anchors into the proper location.

First, I put holes in the plywood ceiling where I wanted the hooks to go, that was I made sure to put the blocks in the right location. Then it was just a matter of getting up into the tight corner of the roof and nailing everything in place, then moving the ropes.

that's a tight corner to be swinging a hammer

Now in the proper location

Those ropes don't rub!

I didn't think the daybed could get more comfortable, but this is really nice. It might actually be nicer now that the bed doesn't hit the wall anymore.

New Deck

The muscadine vines that I have enjoyed for about 7 years now have never produced any real fruit. This year I got a whopping 3 grapes. It is nice to see the vines leaf out in the spring, and my grandfather had some of the same varieties on his farm so it makes me feel connected to him. But the new porch creates a bottleneck where the vines are in the front yard, and I need something else out of that space anyway so it is time for the vines to go.  Before:

See the bottleneck?

6 vines on 3 trellis'

Time for them to come down. The shed has a flaw, namely the walls & roof. it's an enclosed building and I need a flat platform with square corners to assemble furniture outside. No limits like walls or doors. Luckily the trellis is well anchored in concrete already. Also I can clear out the far side for a new space for boat building.

First, I cut these off level

Then ran a 2x6 rim around the blocks

Ok, this 2x6 rim

I pinned these in first, then added joist hangers and set the scrap 4x4  posts into the concrete pier blocks

I needed this to come out to almost 94" - I love math

First deck board is on

All decked up!

Platform established

The final size is 8' x 12'. It went up clean, and this thing is sturdy - I mean solid as a rock. So far it has come in really handy. I screwed down a jig to build beds that are square and consistently sized, I've been using it to stage furniture and stain shelves. This is a really nice addition to the shop.