Mark's Musings

Mark Bronkalla

Bill Hull Meeting and Workshop - Veneering

The Bill Hull Veneering workshop is March 13, 14. Meeting is Friday March 12th. Bill does a great job teaching these workshops. You WILL learn a lot whether you have never applied veneer before or are experienced. The workshop is a real hands on session. You will be shown how to fit and apply the veneer and then you will do it. We will be making a radial match top / field and a mariner’s star as well as learning other techniques, including how to work with burls. Sufficient materials for a small table top will be provided. This will not be a complete table “kit” as in the prior classes. Emphasis is on learning the techniques to accurately fit the veneer, create the radial match, etc. Class size is limited to 10-12 people. Sign up early so you don’t miss out.

Basics Series workshops

To kick off the basics series workshops, I will be teaching a few of the workshops. See the workshops announcements for details.

Volunteers

We need volunteers for a number of roles. We have had several board members step down and on top of it, Bruce Bogust is moving away. Bruce has been a great contributor over the years and will be sorely missed. We need several people to fill these roles. We need committee chairs and committee members, as well as general “go fer” folks. There are always a variety of tasks to be done and the board members too often end up doing the odds and ends.   We also need someone to make the Golden Tongues (another of Bruce’s jobs).   Right now we have only about 15% of the members that are actively involved with helping run the guild.

In the Shop

With the cold weather and no snow (bad skiing), there has been plenty of time for woodworking. I have been spending a lot of time in the shop.
Several little projects were completed in the last month. I often have a larger project underway as well as a number of “side jobs” or little projects. The current big project, is one my wife has been asking me to build for a couple of years. It is a large wardrobe / dresser. This is the final piece to complete our bedroom set and will replace a rather ugly old commercially made piece. The design is based on the Restoration Hardware Marston Wardrobe which sells for over $3000. The savings will justify / finance the tool budget for quite a while.
When making a new piece of furniture such as this, it is important that we agree on the design details. It is very frustrating to put a lot of effort into a piece and have the initial response be “Why did you do that?” or “It doesn’t match.”. So in this case, we looked at both catalog pictures, and the piece in the store. Design elements such as type of wood and finish, flush vs. overlay drawers, cockbeading around the drawers and door, panel and frame construction for the ends and door, etc. While a lot of these design points are the same as the existing dressers, many are different. Other design elements, such as the width for the frame pieces around the end panels (4 fingers wide) helped complete the details. We also agreed to use book matched panels from some wild figured ash stock that I had been saving.
Next, I drew up scale drawings of the front and side views. Construction details and improvements are made, sliding dovetails vs. dowels and butt joints, solid runner drawers vs. a center guide, etc. A cut list and machining order list (almost an instruction list) is then made. This prevents me from skipping steps or doing them out of sequence. Making the frames for the ends is easy. The panels were resawn and glued up. The new Performax drum sander makes flattening the panels and the completed frames easy. Not having to worry about tear out on the wild figure is really great.
The dividers for the drawers use sliding dovetails. This makes for a very strong case and adds a nice design detail. The large size of this piece (roughly 60x60x18”) does mean that there will be considerable racking force on the joints when moving it. A couple of jigs were made up for cutting the dovetails with a router and the router table. With over 40 of these joints to make, consistency and accuracy is important.
Final trimming of the joints and assembly of the majority of the frame took a day. The dovetail slots are stop cut and this means that the tails of the dividers must be trimmed on one end to match. I used Polyurethane glue for the assembly. It adds a small amount of lubrication when pushing the pieces together, has a nice long assembly time (you can adjust joints for an hour), and does not swell the wood fibers. With close fitting joints the water in white and yellow glues swell the dovetails which can result in a joint that is stuck hard in place - when only half way slid in. After a piece is slid in and set flush, it is pinned. If not pinned, when another piece is hammered or pressed home, the prior joints will become misaligned. I use 23 gauge pins rather than 18 gauge so that if I need to remove a pinned piece during assembly, I can, without destroying it.
The downside to using the polyurethane glue, is that my hands looked terrible afterwards. The glue will set up in a very thin film with dirt mixed in and it was almost un-noticeable from a texture standpoint. Once it sets up, the only way to get it off is to have the skin underneath come off with it. When the glue is still wet, I found that denatured alcohol works for removal since I don’t have the “dibasic ester” that is the recommended solvent.
Now I am ready to start making the cock bead molding to go around all of the openings (10 drawers and 1 door) and have also started on the drawers (5 assembled).

Widget of the month - adjustable handles

When I rebuilt my lathe and added a router table / fence to the wing of my table saw, I needed some clamping knobs / levers. My personal preference is for the type that have a lever handle that can be lifted to rotate the handle to clear obstructions. I normally buy them in the threaded insert (female) version. If I need to have a stud or threaded piece sticking out, I simply cut off a piece of threaded rod and glue it in with some super glue.
You can commonly get the plastic handled versions at the woodworking and hardware stores, but these are limited to relatively low pressure clamping.
If you crank on them too hard, the plastic teeth that allow the adjustment, strip out (e.g. tightening the router fence or lathe tailstock). McMaster Carr has some very nice “Die Cast Zinc Adjustable Handles with Ball Knobs” (cat page 2010) that allow a lot of force to be applied and look good as well.




Board Briefs

BOARD of DIRECTORS MEETING MINUTES for JAN. 15, 2004

Present:

Mary Anderson, Ken Bahr, Don Berger, Mark Bronkalla, Leila Crandall-Frink, Jeff Nebel, Liz Rohde, Dick Yezek

President:

A toy chairman is still needed. A joint workshop with the Turners Guild was accepted by the board as a good idea to be pursued.
George Henderson is seeking volunteers for a kids workshop. Liability concerns resulted in a decision that the opportunity would be presented to the membership but this could not be a Guild-sponsored activity.
A plaque of appreciation will be made for Bruce Bogust, who is moving to North Carolina. There are about a half-dozen “Gilded Tongues” left. Several board members expressed a desire to change to something more “tasteful.”

Vice-president:

Dick distributed a list showing 70 Holiday Party registrants. Two were complimentary guests, two were paid no-shows that may get a refund and one remains unpaid. There is one sign up so far for the March Bill Hull workshop. Mary will send out a flyer on this to the membership.

Secretary:

Minutes of the November board meeting were accepted as written. Jeff reported several changes to the Guilds insurance coverage policy. None should affect the Guild.

Treasurer:

Liz distributed a report showing the treasury balance was $9,880.48 on 1/15/04. The Holiday Party resulted in a slight loss of $66.64 and the raffle generated an income of $310.00. Several shortcomings of the last Holiday Party facility have Liz looking into a new location for the 2004 event.

Programs/Workshops:

Ken ran down the list of future workshops being planned.
He again raised the question of whether the Guild would like to offer display quilt racks for sale. The board agreed this would make a good workshop. Ken raised the subject of raising membership dues. This generated some discussion of pros and cons, but no decision was reached.
Ron Hinderman has accepted the position of Logfest chairman and Mark has provided him with a duty list. George Henderson will again host the event in 2004 and a storage barn is available. The Guild member’s trailer used to haul logs will be upgraded and licensed.

Exhibits:

Don reported he received a list of rules for the upcoming Woodworking Show. This is new and one of the new requirements is for the Guild to provide its membership list to the Show administration. Since this is a violation of Guild policy, Don will explain to them it is too late for this year. In future years the Guild will provide a list of members who agree to have their information given out. Volunteers are still needed for the evening hours. Photos of past Guild activities will be used, but exhibit items are still needed.

Membership:

Mary reported membership is at 143 to date. This is considerably better than at this time last year.

Publications:

Leila reported that Si is working on the 2004 Membership Directory and a new trifold. The board agreed to having an additional 1000 trifolds printed. Woodline USA, an Internet company, is donating the next raffle item and offering the membership a 10% discount plus free shipping.
The board agreed to include them on the newsletter “Friends of the Guild list.” An article will be placed in the R.I.P.S.A.W. regarding donation items for Habitat for Humanity. The Guild’s Program Calendar was discussed in light of the fluidity of information availability. It was agreed the newsletter could run a rolling calendar, with events of the next three months in detail and the remainder of the year outlined with minimal information.

Respectfully submitted,
Jeffrey M. Nebel, Secretary



Program

PROGRAMS FOR 2004


Speaker
 		Affiliation Topic
 		Date
Tom Monahan
 General Finishes
 Finishing ideas
 January 7
John Petrovic
 Guild Member
 Plane Techniques
 February 4
Bill Hull
 Guest Speaker
 Veneering Techniques
 March 5
Bill Hull
 Guest Speaker
 Veneering Workshop
 March 6, 7
Bob Flexner
 Guest Speaker
 Finishing Methods
 April 2
Bob Flexner
 Guest Speaker
 Finishing Techniques & Problem Solving Woodshop
 April 3
Bob Petrovic
 Guild Member
 Windsor Chair Making 
 May 5
Mike Hanley
 Guild Member
 Antique & New Planes  
 June 2
Volunteers
 Guild Members
 Show& Tell  
 July 7
Pete Hartman
 Guest Speaker
 Period Furniture 
 October 6
Mark Adams
 Guest Speaker Cabinet Making
 November 5
Mark Adams
 Guest Speaker
 Cabinet Making Woodshop
 November 6,7


Basics Series Workshops