Doug Fir Alaskan yellow cedar master build.

[Patrick Walsh]

First I’ll say like all my threads this one is really gonna drag on and on. Thankfully I’m gainfully employed and I only actually have so much time to do with life what it is I prefer.

I added a second or third shed dormer of the side of my bungalow a few years back. At the same time I replaced my roof, all my windows and insulted the whole second floor of my house with closed cell foam insulation. If that’s not enough I re shingled all three dormers and began re trimming out all my exterior trim with AZEK PVC.

I like to bite off way more than I can chew. It keeps me on my toes and busy, I like busy.

Anywaythe outside of my house is also still half finished. I will have to tend to that come spring time as my days of working outside in the winter are behind me. Well at least I hope they are, god knows I have paid my dues.

For now my task is to build four passage doors and jambs one being a small closet double/French door.

Door stiles and rails will be cvgdf and panels cvgayc. The rest of the trim will be milled up out of cvgdf. Long term I will build shoji screens of cvgayc for all the windows.

One thing at a time for now.

The inspiration room. My room won’t look anything like the picture linked bellow as my space is very different and will ultimately be a master with a sitting area and kinda dressing area in the front dormer nook. Inosration room is the first picture top down.

http://www.honolulumagazine.com/core...%2F&mode=print

[Patrick Walsh]

About a year ago now I purchased about 7-800 bf of 8/4 cvgayc and cvgdf from Bear Creek Lumber I think in Washington State, maybe Oregon?it was expensive, very very expensive. All the sticks were 8/4 x 12 x 20 and perfectly flat and free of twist wain or cup completely in the ruff.

The picture bellow is of a partial pile of the stock. In the front is a bit of BEM, I have a serious lumber hoarding issue. I cut most of the sticks to a general size to get them home from work where I had the lumber delivered being I can take freight deliveries at work.

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[Patrick Walsh]

So today I finally got around to taking some measurements of ruff of ruff openings, deciding on a final stile and rail width and making a]working drawings and cut lists of each door minus the jabs.

I’ll make the doors first and jambs second. I’m not thrilled to make a jamb in the traditional North American stile with the stiles and rail attached with screws. I’m not supposed to a couple screws but I would like to incorporate some actually joinery that will help everything hold together long term. I’m not sure what I’ll do regarding this detail but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Any of you versed in making high quality passage doors please feel free to chime in.

Today I dug though a very heavy and splintery pile of DF and ruff dimensioned and stickered up the ,arterial needed to make everything but the double/French door. I’m holdong off on the French/double door for now as I want to see what is going to look and work best once the other three doors are made as they are a more standard size. The double/French closet doors if my memory serves me right are like 18x60 a piece, if I do a 3.75” stile and top rail I get a 10.5 panel per door. I’m not really sure how this is going to look. There is the possibility I make it one large door. My concern with one large door is much the same as two smaller doors. Either way I think the proportions are going to be a bit awkward. I want to maintain a consists stile and rail size throughout but not at the expense of making a tiny little panel and things looking weird. I’m not sure though what is going to look worse. A different stile rail dimension for this one door, or panels that are to narrow. We will see, maybe I just do something completely different and or more decorative with this door opening?

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[Patrick Walsh]

I’m not as excited with the quality of this stock as I was when I first took delivery. I was very excited mostly in account of how flat and clean the material was.

Now having milled a fair amount of it up I’m not so excited with the variability between the yellowish wood and the pinkish wood.i have not worked much with DF and for all I know this is normal. On the other hand I’d much prefer all that pink orange wood to be yellow. I’m sure it has something to do with me working with 12” wide boards. Yes I could cut much of it away as the pink/orange does tend to be to one side of each stick. I’m not sure it’s the heart or sap wood but I suspect it’s one or the other.

Regardless I’m gonna have to live with it as I’m not cutting it all out and throwing that much material in the trash. My hope is finish will help even things out. My intention enitial and before I knew better was a hand planed burnished finish. Having now b[gotten a better idea of how prone df is to tear out I’m fairly confident those doors will go through the wide belt at work. I will probably pre finish the ayc panels prior to assembly. I’m still unsure what I’ll use for a finish. I will start by oiling them with something.

Being my background in cabinet making conversion varnish comes to mind. On the other hand not really at all as I hate the stuff being it chips like crazy and can not be repaired on site and can only be remcoated so many times as the product fails undear it’s own weight at a certain point.

Im also not a fan even in the slightest of any kind of polyurethane spar varnish. As you can see I know what I do and do not like and may have a problem on my hands. I like the hand planed burnished idea most but that will never fly with me and the dirty hands of a working man and a slobbering bulldog splattering his slobber all over my house.

The pic below shows the variation in tone between the yellow and pink wood.

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[Jim Becker]

The VG D-Fir I bought for my "kitchen continent" project awhile back exhibited the same color variation you mention, Patrick. I'm happy to say that it did mellow out after being in place in the clients home for awhile and I minimized the board to board differences at the joints between them by very carefully arranging the sticks to best effect. Fabulous material to work with at least!

[Patrick Walsh]

Well Jim I really hope it evens out. If not I’m gonna be very very disappointed. I spent like $8K on this pile of lumber.

For a minute I considered throwing the sticks I had processed back up in the pile and using it for casing down the road. Then I figured if I’m building doors and milling up base and case out of this all for one space the fact is their is going to be some variation to the wood no matter how hard I try.

Don’t get me wrong I did and will be deliberate picking and matching lumber. Buying the 12x20 sticks my intention was to get two styles and two rails out of out of one board adding to the continuity of the project. So afar I have done that and we will just have to see what I get tomorrow when I mill up the styles.

If I don’t like what I have I’ll pick through every remaining 8/4 df board I have in hopes of finding the most consitnat pieces. The problem with that is it’s nearly impossible to se this yellow pink thing in the ruff. I’d have to mill the whole lot of lumber up and I really don’t want to do that as getting a finished 1.75” out of it as is can be a challenge. The rest of the 8/4 will be resawn and milled to finish at .75” for all the trim.

The VG D-Fir I bought for my "kitchen continent" project awhile back exhibited the same color variation you mention, Patrick. I'm happy to say that it did mellow out after being in place in the clients home for awhile and I minimized the board to board differences at the joints between them by very carefully arranging the sticks to best effect. Fabulous material to work with at least!

[Jim Becker]

Finished in the shop...(weird seeing this pre-CNC shop arrangement. LOL)



After installation and a little time...it's even "creamier" now but still has a little differentiation because of what you talk about.



Hopefully you can at least get things looking copacetic room-to room with a little stock shuffling.

[Patrick Walsh]

Took the dog for a nice walk, Ran a few errands then got back at it for a couple more hours.

The panels will all be or at least I hope will be .75 or 11/16”. Well that’s if I can get the 11/16 out of them and also dependent on me getting 1.75” stiles. I should be able to make this all work. If not I’ll have to settle for 1.375 stiles and rails and 7/16 panels.

I started with the ayc jointing two sides.

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Look how beautiful this stuff is!

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I then took it to the band saw. I just love the s500p it make researchers work effortless and brainless. I did this without any infeed suffer or feather borders. I could have gotten a much better result had I taken the time for a better setup. I decided the result was as good as I needed for the intended purpose.

Like shot knife through butter is all I could think with the saw and yellow cedar combo.

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Look at that dust just beautiful.

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Surfaced two sides now and waiting for edge jointing and glue up.

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That’s it for a day, good to let the lumber sit and release tension a bit. Well the ayc I really don’t want to move hence the weight on it. The df for the styles I figure it’s good to take it slow and give some time to do its thing. To be honest when I ripped it to width the stuff isn’t barely move a 32nd. The stock was kiln dried and had now been in my shop a full year so it should be very stable at this point.

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Tomorrow I’ll surface four sides the stiles and rails. I’ll also setup the shaper to cut the tenon. I don’t have a 3/4 birdsmouth bit for the slot mortiser so I’m gonna have to figure out exactly what I’m gonna do. Ideally my panel and tenon are the same thickness. I have decided not to do the double tenon as I’d rather be restoring my saw. I need to just get these doors done. No dominoes or dowels are still not a option for me.

I’m consodering trying a router bit in the slot mortiser as otherwise I’ll have to wait to source a birdsmouth bit. I’d rather than not the case as I’d like to think I can get the joinery done on these by end of day Friday. If that’s the case I should be able to make the jambs over the weekend or by end of day Monday and call this project done. Well not done as I’ll still have to mortise for hinges hang them. Plane to finish and or sand and well yeah finish them. But I could see the construction of them done early next week if I can sort out a mortising bit.

[Patrick Walsh]

What did you use for finish. The second picture looks very rich. Almost like it has a light stain on it. It looks very very nice.

Finished in the shop...(weird seeing this pre-CNC shop arrangement. LOL)



After installation and a little time...it's even "creamier" now but still has a little differentiation because of what you talk about.



Hopefully you can at least get things looking copacetic room-to room with a little stock shuffling.

[Jim Becker]

I helped even the tone with some relatively amber dye before my normal de-waxed shellac to seal the dye followed by the clear coats. That part was more effort than I original intended. I decided to try the SW Kem Aqua water borne since I could buy it locally for about the same price that ordering finish from Target Coatings costs...and it. WOULD. NOT. LAY. DOWN. I kept adding coats and flattening it back, but to no avail. (I later learned from John T that the GF extender helps with this on the Kem Aqua) So after several coats and several leveling steps, I decided that the SW product was now just the base coat and proceeded to add a few coats of Target EM8000cv...which went down beautifully (as expected...) and provided a very nice durable surface. It's the "satin" sheen which isn't too shiny which I prefer. It really does look "creamy" when you are standing there with your wine glass and a cracker with cheese.

[Kevin Adams]

Looking good, Patrick! I do need to come see that wonder shop, I enjoy looking at that as much as your work! Hope you had a great Christmas, too!

Take care,
Kevin

[Patrick Walsh]

Kevin I’m here through at least the 7th, hopefully the 14th if my boss can afford it.

Stop by whenever you want I’d love to have you.

If u need we can take the slab to work “30 minutes from my house” I think the 20” jointer 24” planer and widebelt should be able to handle it rather quickly. I can remember the exact width though?

I hope you also had a great Christmas.

Looking good, Patrick! I do need to come see that wonder shop, I enjoy looking at that as much as your work! Hope you had a great Christmas, too!

Take care,
Kevin

[Patrick Walsh]

Not much progress today. I had holiday family stuff to attend to.

I milled up a few more sticks of df as one of the six i milled up yesterday andneeded to make the first batch of three doors ended up just under 1.75

With that said only one of the doors is a actual passage door, the others are closet doors. I was and am shooting for 1.75 stiles and rails with .75 panels. Being I’m resawing my .75 panels from 8/4 stock then edge gluing I’m goint to potentially have issues getting a finished .75 panel as my panels are 65x22..

The solution is to make 1.375” stiles and rails for the closet doors with .5” panels. I suppose I could easily get away with 1.5 stiles and rails and .5” panels.

The actual passage door I will stick to the 1.75 and .75 plan and just succumb to wasted material to get my 70x23 ayc panel.

I think my favorite tool just might be my perfectly flat bench.my second favorite thing is a perfectly flat dimensioned board on my bench. I really do get off on perfectly flat dimensioned lumber free of defect. There are a few things I really love in life that get me actually excited and this is sadly one of them.

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Not a flat bench but perfect sticks.

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I spent another couple hours sharpening and tuning three kana. I decided there is no way a soft wood like df can’t twke a hand planed finish without incident. I knew I could do it with my #4 but that just did not excite me like the prospect of a Japanese plane.

To date I have had a few kana a few years now and am still not confident in setting them up well enough to yield better results than my LN or HNT stuff. As a result they tend to collect dust. Today I decided tht had to change. Out of three of my planes I got tow functioning perfectly on the df. One of the three is more suited to hardwoods. I was not able to get it to yield the same successful results in bubinga as I did the kana I have for soft wood in dF. Still two out of theee is good for now and the best news is I can now proceed with ahand planed finish for this project.

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The bubinga board is a poor example of the result I was abale to get. I was actually able to get a much better finished product. What you see in the picture is the result of a misadjuatment ad adjustment and not indicative of the result I was getting. I was getting a wee bit of tear out “way more than to my liking” but nothing like what you see in the picture.

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Tomorrow I hope to get at least two of the first theee panels glued up.

[Patrick Walsh]

Not much progress today and as a result very little to report.

The distractions of being home always amaze me. As much as I love having a home shop it never ceases to surprise me just how little one can get done as a result. I’d like to think I get more done at work and I’m pretty sure I do. Well most days as being in a shop has its own set of distractions.

I did some hanging out with my dog today. I took the opportunity to touch up my most used chisels.

I think they are shape now

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Part of my not getting much done today was the realization yesterday that I don’t have a 3/4 or close to it slot mortise bit. I ordered one yesterday and it came late today.

I was kinda nervous tbg as I read couple reviews of this exact bit “after” I had purchased it suggesting it was problematic to to bit whip as a result of the length. I experienced no such issue and I’m a happy man.

Looks pretty darn clean to me. Put calipers on it and is dead nuts perfect.

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Other than that I milled upa bit more ayc for panels as I was not happy with the material I had milled up yesterday.

I’m getting better at wrestling large boards with no infeed support, a proper resale fence or even a feather board for that matter. I’m pretty much always happy when I just pony up for what is supposed to be the best in class machine. Every time I buy the middle of the road I cry a million times till I just replace it. The s500p has been a dream much like my t54 at work.

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I have made clear I need six uninterrupted hours of work each day this weekend. Tomorrow I get panels glued and stiles and rails cut to size and maybe some joinery we will see. By end of day sunday I should be pretty far along with this.

[Patrick Walsh]

Other than that I think I should just purchased a lumber yard. My shop is freaking lumber everywhere. I really have a problem. At least I. Gonna put a big dent in the pile with this project.

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