Studio711.com – Ben Martens

A while back I stumbled across a coupon for 100 free 4″x4″ prints. I’ve had a project in the back of my mind that involved something about displaying a bunch of Instagram photos. This seemed like a good match so I ordered them. (By the way, I later discovered that if you use the Shutterfly app on your phone, you get unlimited free prints so this wasn’t much of a coupon.)

The 100 photos arrived and sat around for a while as I thought about how to do this. My initial thought was to get a ton of practice making frames and pump out 100 identical simple frames. That sounds painful, but what stopped me was realizing that I had no good way to attach them all to the wall without making at least 100 holes in the wall. Then I thought about making a single frame that could hold 100 photos. I’ll take you along the project in more detail that I have in the past. If you follow my woodworking Instagram account, some of these pictures will look familiar.

The first step was to figure out how big to make this and what aspect ratio it should have. I started laying them out on my table and quickly realized that a 10×10 grid of 4″x4″ prints was going to monstrous. I settled on a 6×6 grid.

Also sitting on the table in that picture, you can see a jig for making photo splines. I made that jig as well as a miter jig. Both came from David Picciuto over at makesomething.tv.

I figured out the spacing between the pictures and the resulting dimension of the frame and started milling up the walnut to make the outer frame. I cut a rabbet in the back to hold the glass and the plywood backer and then did a very slight chamfer on the inside of the frame. Then it was time to cut up the walnut into the individual frame pieces.

I thought I had nailed the miter jig, but with a frame this big and wide, even the tiniest error was amplified. My frame wasn’t even close to fitting.

I almost threw in the towel at this point, but ehh, it was already kind of ruined so why not try to fix it? I basically free handed the miters and nibbled away with tiny increments to all the corners until somehow it all came together! If you look closely, you can tell that I’m still off by the tiniest of margins, but hey, it’s not bad considering how I got there. I used blue painters tape for clamps and glued the pieces together.

The next step was to try out my spline jig. It looked pretty wild, but in reality, I felt like the whole setup was pretty safe. Everything was clamped on place and all I had to do was move the sled through the blade. But if I was going to do frames this big on a regular basis, I might make a bigger jig.

I then used a bunch of trial and error to cut splines that were exactly the right thickness. Those got glued into place, trimmed with a flush cut saw and sanded smooth.

At this point, I felt like the project was really going to work so I headed to TAP Plastics and had them cut a piece of 5/64″ P99 non-glare acrylic. They can cut very precisely there and when I brought it home, it was a perfect fit. I left the protective paper on until the end though.

The “only” thing left was to cut a grid of very thin maple strips to hide the seems between the pictures when I put them down in a grid pattern. <insert tire screeching sound> How was that actually going to happen? When I originally thought this up, I envisioned a system of interlocking tiny dado cuts, but I had also planned for these pieces to be 1/8″ thick. Have you ever tried to cut 1/16″ deep dados that are perfectly positioned? My tests were not promising so it was back to the drawing board.

As I lay in the dark waiting for my son to fall asleep one night, it dawned on me that I could double up the grid pieces. So imagine a grid made out of 1/8″ thick by 1/4″ wide pieces of maple. Then make another grid and rotate it 90 degrees. Glue the two grids together and it should hold together pretty well.

That plan worked but wow, there were a LOT of extremely precise cuts to make. Thankfully my wonderful new table saw was able to slice consistent 1/8″ thick pieces off of a 2″ thick block of maple, rip them down to 1/4″ wide and then, with a crosscut sled, make all of those tiny little pieces to fit together. Any gap at all was very noticeable so I took my time and did it right. Now comes a long montage of 4 or 5 nights and voila! The grid was done.

As I assembled the grid, I used a combination of CA glue and wood glue. The CA glue acted like a clamp and the wood glue gave it strength. I also used a couple pin nails to hold it in place against the walnut.

At this point, I finished the frame with a 50/50 mixture of boiled linseed oil and mineral spirits. I wiped on the finish, waited about 10 minutes and then wiped off the excess. I let it dry for 1 day between coats and I applied four coats. The final step in the finishing process was to apply clear Briwax and then buff it out. (This photo was taken before the wax was applied.)

I cut a 1/4″ sheet of plywood to size and used spray adhesive to attach 36 pictures. To align them, I first placed the plywood under the grid and used a pencil to trace out all the boxes where the pictures should go. This process went pretty quickly and I took extra care (and lots of changes of disposable latex gloves) to make sure I didn’t get any adhesive on the pictures.

I put all the pieces together and then secured it all in place with a new point driver tool. That thing was a joy to use, but I feel like I need to make some more frames to make it worth the cost.

For the final step, I rolled out some fresh brown paper, traced out my frame, sprayed adhesive down on the paper and then set the frame on top of it. I cut around the frame with a knife and voila, I had a nice dust shield on the back. I have a couple very nice frames and I always wondered how and why they added that paper. Now I know. Thank you, again, David Picciuto for teaching me that trick!

The back of the frame also got a wire picture frame hanger and little rubber bumpers on the bottom of the frame so that it would sit straight on the wall.

I don’t know yet exactly where this will end up in our house, but for how many times I thought the project was doomed, it turned out great! At some point I feel like we’ll want to replace the pictures, but all I have to do is cut out another piece of plywood and glue on some more pictures. I think next time, I’d probably do the collage on the computer and then print off a single large photo. That would be a lot easier to align.

Keeping up with the theme from yesterday, I realized that I haven’t written about the riser block kit for my bandsaw. I got the Grizzly bandsaw 1.5 years ago and have really enjoyed it. It gets used most often for curvy cuts and resawing thick stock.

I never really felt like I had the hang of resawing thick boards. I always got a lot of blade drift and I’d just try to free hand it to compensate for the drift. It sort of work, but I wasted a lot of material with wavy cuts.

For Christmas, Dad and Mom got me a riser block kit for the saw. The stock configuration gives you about a 5 3/4″ capacity but the riser block kit doubles that. I don’t usually work with 11″ boards, but I do regularly have 6 and 7″ boards so this is very handy. Getting the kit also meant that I had to get rid of my old blades and buy longer ones. I had learned a little more about blades by this point so I bought some nicer Timber Wolf blades. I have one for resawing and one for cutting smaller curves. I don’t know whether I have it all tweaked better this time or if the blade made all the difference, but wow, resawing with this thing is incredible! I can just set the fence to the thickness I want and watch the saw plow through. It has no problems going through 8″ of hard maple and when I’m done, I have a pretty smooth and straight cut. It means I no longer fret too much if I have to resaw a 1″ board into two 3/8″ boards. I know I can nail the cut right on the money.

P.S. If you follow my woodworking account on Instagram, you’d have already seen this picture.  @martenswoodworks

As you already surmised from the title of this post, I’ve had my new table saw (a Grizzly G1023RLW) for three months. It was a huge splurge and way more than I needed, so I was curious how I’d feel after a few months. Would I regret going big?

No way. I LOVE this saw! It’s dead accurate, or at least better than I can measure and it has gobs of power. I’ve plowed lots of different pieces of wood through it and I’ve never heard the motor change pitch. It just laughs and says, “Is that all you’ve got?” I thought I finally got it to bog down with a 2.25″ piece of walnut, but it turned out that my fence was a little bit out of alignment so I was getting a small pinch (yikes!) That was easily adjusted and the saw resumed it’s monotonous sawdust making.

I’d buy this saw again in a heartbeat. That’s a relief because I have a nasty habit of getting bored with a hobby about the time that I finally spend money on a really nice piece of equipment for it. With RC planes, I fizzled out around the time I bought a Spektrum Dx6 transmitter. With skiing, I slowed way down right after I bought brand new, high end skis. Was the same thing going to happen with the table saw? So far, the answer is no. I’ve been amazed at just how many nights I’ve used the saw and there’s no end in site for all the projects I want to build.

Maybe this is the hobby that sticks with me?

We’ve lived in this house for 6.5 years. For that entire time, our piano books have sat on the floor in the box that they were packed in (or scattered messily around the box.)

I decided this would be a good wood working project to tackle so I flipped through a bunch of plans and settled on the tower bookshelves from Wood Magazine, partially because I previously purchased the digital back catalog of the magazine so the plans were “free.” The plans recommend oak or maple but I thought I’d go for cherry.

The project began with a trip to Crosscut Hardwoods to buy the most expensive piece of plywood that I’ve ever purchased (though it can get much more expensive than this!) I got a 3/4″ piece of cherry plywood that was nice on both sides, a 1/4″ piece that was nice on only one side, and a 1″ thick board.

I was pretty nervous about cutting into the plywood, but I was also excited to use my new table saw with a big sheet of plywood. My old saw was too wimpy and too unsafe to do big pieces. I cut about 25″ off one end and then ran the rest through the saw. The saw ran like a champ, and combined with the assembly/outfeed table, it never felt unsafe.

After cutting some strips of hardwood and using it as edge banding on the plywood, the main joinery is done using biscuits. I’ve done a little bit of work with the biscuit joiner before but never this much. It really is simple and makes quick work of some of these bigger glue ups.

Next up was the base and the top trim pieces. Those were a little tricky as the plans recommended biscuit joints on the mitered angles to hold the joints together. That worked but I think I’d probably choose a different method next time because it took forever to get my cheapo biscuit joiner dialed in for that fancy cut. In the photo below you see a scrap piece filling in the empty back so that the band clamp can squeeze evenly all the way around.

The final construction step was to build the drawer, install the drawer slides, and then cut/attach the drawer front.

For a finish, I chose to keep it simple and went with a wipe on polyurethane. It does give a bit of a plasticy finish but that build-up is also extra protection for the books that will be sliding in and out fairly regularly. After the coats of finish were done, I put on the 1/4″ back and reinstalled the drawer.

Once we figured out where to place it in the room, I took the time to attach the top to a stud with a strap. It’s very easy to tip over and with a three year old running around, it wouldn’t take long for it to topple over.

This project was a nice way to dabble in some nicer furniture. This was about the biggest thing I can comfortably handle in my shop so I won’t be tackling a dining table anytime soon, but I’m happy I did this one.

It’s pretty easy to see the different colors of cherry woods, but I’m hopeful that as time goes on, the cherry will all darken up to the same color. But even as it is now, I’m very happy with it and admit to walking into that room just to check out the bookshelves. It’s a nice step up from the cardboard box mess on the floor.

I’ve really enjoyed having dust collection in my workshop, even if it’s just a simple shop vac with a cyclone. I kept it under my workbench, but the mess of wires and hoses basically meant that it stayed there. It was a pain to dig it out to vacuum out the car or anything like that.

I finally made a version of Jay Bates’s shop vac cart. The cyclone hangs above the shop vac so it uses less floor space and gives me a space to collect all the various attachments. It’s also very easy to move around.

The project was pretty simple but I’m always amazed at my ability to mess up the easiest things. The end result is good enough though and I think it will be helpful. One negative that I didn’t forsee is that the hose connection is now ~5 feet off the ground and most of my dust collection parts are near the ground. That just means I need a little bit longer hose but maybe that will be offset by being able to move the cart closer to the machine I’m using.