Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Tim and Chelsea’s daughter had her first birthday and Tyla had the idea of a wooden name puzzle. I decided to give it a shot. I found a font that I liked, printed out her name and then used spray glue to stick it to a piece of pine. That was cut out on the bandsaw and sanded. For the paint, I went with a spray enamel which I hadn’t used before. It worked well but the weather was cool and rainy so it was hard to get the coats to pile up. In the end I left it with the top looking great and the other sides looking passable. For the bottom, I grabbed a scrap of sapele and routered out space around the letters. It might be a bit too challenging of a gift for her to do at this point but it was fun to make and she seemed to enjoy moving the pieces around.

When we visited Grandma Martens this summer, she showed us a photo album of a bunch of Grandpa’s woodworking projects. I thought that was a pretty neat idea, and while I’ve blogged about most of them, I thought I’d walk around the house and make a video of my projects. I realize it’s dorky, but what did you expect from me?

A couple years ago, David Picciuto made a Super Mario picture using 1″ square “pixels” cut out of three types of wood. That has stuck in my head as a fun idea and it ended up being the first project that I completed since April. (My shop has been used for storage during the siding and window project on our house.)

I chose maple, walnut and paduk for the white, brown and red pieces. The key to this project is getting all ~150 squares to be totally identical in size so that when you build them into Mario, the lines stay straight. The next trick was getting a chamfer cut on all four sides of the squares. This helps to define the edges and made each square look more like a pixel. I cut two of the sides with a router when the wood was still in 1″ strips. After cross cutting those strips into squares, I set the table on my small disc sander to a 45 degree angle and sanded the rest. Then I had to hand sand each square to clean them up.

David put his on to a square piece of plywood and made a frame for it, but I wanted to make mine frameless. I cut out a piece of plywood on the bandsaw that would be just smaller than the assembled Mario. I picked a row near the center and carefully glued it as straight as I could. From there I glued two or three rows at a time working out toward the top and bottom. I took my time and let the various rows dry before getting too far so that I could make sure I was staying straight.

I love this project! Thank you David for the inspiration!

In August of 2016, Logan and I took down the two dying trees that were along our driveway. I saved a few pieces of the wood and attempted to cut them into tiny slabs. There’s an old saying that goes something like “logs rot and lumber dries.” Yes, you can leave a log to sit there and dry completely, but it’s better if you can cut it into very rough sizes and stack it up with room for air to move between all the pieces. It will drive more evenly with less cracking.

I finally pulled it out of the shed a couple weeks ago and stared at it … it wasn’t particularly beautiful cherry, but it seemed fun to use it for a small project. I remember Grandpa Martens making crosses out of the tree they took down in his front yard so I set off to make a cross as well.

The design emerged from some trial and error, but I ended up building a cross with 45 degree miters to fit all the pieces together. Then I sawed it in half in both directions to end up with 4 L shapes. I cut a rabbet into all of the interior sides and inlaid a piece of paduk, leaving the cherry a bit longer than the paduk. It was a tricky glue up but it held together. I finished it off with a couple coats of shellac. I think it will look a bit better as the cherry oxidizes and darkens over time.

I’ve been working with maple for a couple years, but I’ve never used “curly maple” before. The Wood Database describes it as a maple board where “the ripples in the grain pattern create a three dimensional effect that appears as if the grain has ‘curled’ along the length of the board.”

It’s generally expensive to buy since it’s somewhat rare, but Crosscut Hardwoods in Seattle had a stack of ~30inch long boards that had some curl in them. I picked up two of them to play with and I ended up attempt a small box.

You’d think that a small box would be simple, but it seems like the smaller your project is, the tougher it is to get it right. Tiny gaps and imperfections are a lot more noticeable on small projects.

The first thing was deciding what size box to make. Based on the wood I had available, I went with 3″x5″x8″. Fun fact, if you want a box to look “normal”, use the Fibonacci sequence to determine your dimensions. It’s a close approximation for the golden ratio of 1:1.61803399. Fun fact #2, if you follow that rule, your box will have the same ratio between the dimensions as the Parthenon.

Jointing and planing the curly maple was a challenge. Even though I had recently replaced the blades on both machines, that curly grain is extremely subject to tear out. I took very light passes and did a lot of sanding. A drum sander would have come in very handy to make all the pieces a uniform thickness without tear out.

For the box construction, I mitered the four sides at 45 degrees on each end and then created a dado for both the top and the bottom panel. I glued it all together and ended up with a box that had 6 sides and no way to open. Then I moved over to the table saw and sawed it in half, being careful to insert spacers into the kerf that I had just cut so the box wouldn’t pinch the blade and eat me.

There are multiple methods for creating a snug-fitting lid. I chose to line the inside with walnut and leave the sides of the walnut a little taller than the interior of the box. With a little sanding and finessing, the top fits perfectly over that interior lining. I finished the whole thing off with a couple coats of shellac.

I learned a lot making it which is code for “I made a lot of mistakes, some of which I couldn’t recover from”, but I think this one will be good enough to sit on my dresser without annoying me. The grain is beautiful when you hold it up to the light and see how it changes. The pictures don’t do it justice.

Frank Howarth got involved in an auction at his kids school again this year and made an incredible neighborhood art project. He started by cutting up a bunch of scraps and having he kids put them together to form pictures of their houses. Then he combined all the houses into a single neighborhood on a piece of wood.

As I was out in the garage with Elijah a couple weekends ago, I thought he might like giving something like that a try. I cut up various pieces from some nice scraps and asked him to make a house. That proved to be a little challenging so we switched to robots. He was immediately on top of that and made two of them almost completely by himself. At that point we ran out of the scraps that I had cut and he ran out of patience so we called it quits.

Later, I took a picture of what he had made and then transferred it onto a square piece of cherry plywood. I made a simple frame out of some walnut scraps and voila! I’m excited to get this finished and hung on his wall. I’m waiting for the weather to warm up a bit so that I can put some finish on it.

I got a set of cheap chisels and a block plane from Home Depot a few years ago. There are times when they come in super handy, but how do I sharpen them? If you search online, there are a bazillion different options and each one is a bit of an investment. I wanted something that I couldn’t screw up and was quick to use without much cleanup. I ended up buying the Work Sharp WS3000.

The basic kit comes with two glass plates and four different abrasive levels. The abrasive sheets adhere to the glass so you can pick the right one and flip it to the correct side. My chisels were in rough shape but in less than half an hour, I had flatted the backs, and established both a bevel and a micro bevel. Brilliant! I’m so excited to finally start using my hand tools more.

Fear of sharpening was a major reason why I haven’t invested in a bigger plane yet. Maybe a jack plane will find it’s way into my shop.

Up in the man cave, there is a couch with a recliner beside it and the recliner is at an angle to the couch. We have a set of cheapo folding food table things that sits in the gap between the chairs but it doesn’t look very nice. Almost exactly one year ago, David Picciuto made a table to fit a similar spot in his house and I finally got around to making my own version.

Most of this project will be hidden between the sofa and the recliner so I spent all of the funds for this project on the top. I bought a big chunk of 6/4 walnut and glued three pieces of it together to get a slab that was wide enough for the table. I carefully cut the appropriate wedge shape out of the slab and then built a simple plywood box for the base. The top is just held in place by gravity and a few cleats on the bottom so that it doesn’t slide around. You can lift off the top and get to some storage and the other feature of the base is that it has a built-in outlet and dual 2 amp USB chargers built into the back.

The base got painted black and the top was finished with teax oil and then covered in Briwax. Needless to say, this looks MUCH nicer than what we had there before! The downside is that now I feel the need to use a coaster. Hmm… Anyway, this went well so I’m going to make a similar table for spot between the couch and the wall. This one will just be a simple rectangle top though so that should make things a little simpler.