Furniture Repair, Yeah I Do That

[chips&more]

So when are you going to have your own furniture making TV show?

 

[middle.road]

How much clearance did you put on the mating parts?
Red oak swells and contracts quit a bit in that direction. I know that humidity is fairly constant out there but. . .
I had an oak dresser with the same drawer setup when I lived in Palmdale and it would get tight in the winter.
+1 on the wax - it will help a great deal.

Thank you very much Mikey,
what i find difficult about woodworking is that some rules are the same as with metal, but not all of them
you can't weld wood back together - that's why i don't trust it

ah, but you can in certain circumstances, Grasshopper. . .

 

[markba633csi]

Next time Mike put that wood on the milling machine and show it who's boss around here
Mark

 

[middle.road]

Next time Mike put that wood on the milling machine and show it who's boss around here
Mark

+1

 

[Crank]

Mike,
I came to a realization many years ago training as a gunsmith. Iron is torn from the ground by man, crushed, refined, and with copious amounts of fire is turned into the metals we work with and has been tamed by man. Wood on the other hand, comes out of the ground (I suspect from Hell) grows at its own leisurely pace, absorbs moisture at will, provides an excellent snack for termites and couldn't care less about man.

I usually run away from anything involving wood, but like the other Mark suggested, I needed to make a stand for my RC hydrofoil and milled the wood for it on my Bridgeport . A wee bit overkill, but worked just spiffy!
Great job!

Mark

 

[Ulma Doctor]

Another difference between wood and metal is how much they shrink and expand, and the effects of exposure to humidity. What would be a great sliding fit on metal parts, would bite you on the butt with the first cloud burst. Nice job Mike.

Thank you very much Mike!
i have .060" to about .080" worn male dovetail slop, dependent on where you measure.
i hope that is sufficient

Mike,
Give each side a little paraffin or candle wax (don't let your wife catch you!) and you should get years of great service.
Evan

i did, but thanks for the suggestion

i dripped candlewax into both dovetail surfaces on both members, to ensure easy sliding and used a heat gun to melt it in

Great adventure to the dark side Mike.
Greg

Thank you Greg,
if i keep doing stuff i'm not comfortable doing like this, it will be just like my real job

Ugh...wood. If I get a good fit on the 2nd or 3rd attempt I had a good day.

Hi jcp,
i know that feeling all to well, brother LOL

Mike,
They make a dovetail jig that works pretty good for making dovetail joints using your router. I'm sure you know this.
BTW-nice job!

yes sir, thank you very much Ken
i used the edge guide provided with my router to do the work.
if i was to do a lot more dabbling in the dark arts of woodworking, i'd buy more toys- but that takes away from metalworking machines and tooling

So when are you going to have your own furniture making TV show?

Hi Chips,
there are already too many incompetent people pretending to be authorities of this or that on TV.
i'm more qualified to stay with the role of being an imaginary doctor in my own soap opera

How much clearance did you put on the mating parts?
Red oak swells and contracts quit a bit in that direction. I know that humidity is fairly constant out there but. . .
I had an oak dresser with the same drawer setup when I lived in Palmdale and it would get tight in the winter.
+1 on the wax - it will help a great deal.

ah, but you can in certain circumstances, Grasshopper. . .

Hi middle.road,
i have between .060" and .080" running clearance between the male slide and the female dovetail,
dependent on where it was measured

do you think that is sufficient clearance?

please tell me of this wood welding...
i can join steel to copper
i can braze just about anything bronze or silver will stick to
i can weld steel and aluminum in all 4 positions in 3 different processes (2 processes for aluminum)

but for the life of me i can't figure how you melt parent wood and add filler wood and have the resulting amalgamation be stronger than the parent wood???
can you weld wood SMAW(arc), or is GTAW(tig) the process of choice???
can you use Cherry filler rod on Rosewood? or is Persimmon a better rod
how many amps do you run .045" Mahogany GMAW(mig) at anyway???
i'd love to try to FCAW(flux core) some apitong, it taps like it is metal, so it must take flux core

Next time Mike put that wood on the milling machine and show it who's boss around here
Mark

Hi Mark,
believe me if i would have screwed up one more time, that was gonna be the next step

Mike,
I came to a realization many years ago training as a gunsmith. Iron is torn from the ground by man, crushed, refined, and with copious amounts of fire is turned into the metals we work with and has been tamed by man. Wood on the other hand, comes out of the ground (I suspect from Hell) grows at its own leisurely pace, absorbs moisture at will, provides an excellent snack for termites and couldn't care less about man.

I usually run away from anything involving wood, but like the other Mark suggested, I needed to make a stand for my RC hydrofoil and milled the wood for it on my Bridgeport . A wee bit overkill, but worked just spiffy!
Great job!
Mark

Hi Mark,
i agree completely with your sentiments.
especially, in regards to the differences between my beloved metal and to where wood was spawned.

i was afraid of wood, because i literally had no idea of how to work with it effectively.
i still don't know how to work with it effectively, but i'm not afraid anymore - i'll just buy extra wood when i go to do my next project

i hope there is a limit as to how many screwups one man can encounter with a particular material.

 

[Ray C]

I like working with wood as long as there's plenty of ventilation and dust control. I have no room for it in my current shop but, when I was partnered with a local marina shop, a good many jobs involved woodwork. Here's a hatch I rebuilt. The wood was teak.


First picture shows some context of what it was used for. The second picture shows how badly rotted it was.



I re-built the sub-frame completely from new wood.



Pictures aren't shown here but, each slat was unglued, stripped and re-assembled onto a new backing board.



The edges and all seams are sealed with a black silicone/rubber adhesive. I hand cut all new dowel plugs for the screw caps.



This was a test fit. As you can see in daylight, some of the slats and the outer border had to be replaced. The boat was over 50 years old and it was all teak. This particular customer would only let me and one other person work on his boat.


Front and back view. The adhesive on the back side is "Gorilla Glue" made for wood. Takes several days to cure.



Final treatment is a layer of teak oil. Had to leave a note on it not to move it or mess-up the rubber glue seams. Customers would walk by on the way to the office and run their fingers over the wood to inspect it. It needs to cure for several days. It's good for another 50 years in the baking sun and brackish water mist of the Chesapeake bay.



Ray

 

[Dave Paine]

Well done on the repair. I am a woodworker who now owns metal lathe and milling machine. I have a router table with a decent router lift and fence, able to provide woodworking tolerances.

These days I prefer to use the milling machine even for wood if practical. The slower rpms of the milling machine give me less tearout and no burning.

I used a jig with a router to make the slots in this cherry bowl. I used a router bit which was the second time used, I cleaned off the resin on the faces between each pass which was advanced 0.1in on the X-Y table. I had the router set to the "slowest" speed, about 12,000 rpm I still got burning on every slot. Very frustrating.



I then made a jig to mount a rotary table on the milling machine to clean up these slots. No burning. Mill was running around 1,200 rpm, MUCH slower means less heat, so less or no burning.



I then glued in pieces of purpleheart and then needed to cut a second slot for pieces of maple. I used a 45 deg router bit which cut the slots with no burning.



This was the cutter after making 12 slots. No residue. I had tried this in my router, burning and resin on the cutter in a short time.



If anyone who may be curious, this is the completed bowl.

 

[ACHiPo]

Well done on the repair. I am a woodworker who now owns metal lathe and milling machine. I have a router table with a decent router lift and fence, able to provide woodworking tolerances.

These days I prefer to use the milling machine even for wood if practical. The slower rpms of the milling machine give me less tearout and no burning.

I used a jig with a router to make the slots in this cherry bowl. I used a router bit which was the second time used, I cleaned off the resin on the faces between each pass which was advanced 0.1in on the X-Y table. I had the router set to the "slowest" speed, about 12,000 rpm I still got burning on every slot. Very frustrating.

View attachment 260236

I then made a jig to mount a rotary table on the milling machine to clean up these slots. No burning. Mill was running around 1,200 rpm, MUCH slower means less heat, so less or no burning.

View attachment 260237

I then glued in pieces of purpleheart and then needed to cut a second slot for pieces of maple. I used a 45 deg router bit which cut the slots with no burning.

View attachment 260238

This was the cutter after making 12 slots. No residue. I had tried this in my router, burning and resin on the cutter in a short time.

View attachment 260239

If anyone who may be curious, this is the completed bowl.

View attachment 260240

Beautiful! In the immortal words of Wayne and Garth, "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!"

 

[Ray C]

Well done on the repair. I am a woodworker who now owns metal lathe and milling machine. I have a router table with a decent router lift and fence, able to provide woodworking tolerances.
...

This was the cutter after making 12 slots. No residue. I had tried this in my router, burning and resin on the cutter in a short time.

If anyone who may be curious, this is the completed bowl.

That's very fine work there Dave. Thanks for showing us! I don't have that in my DNA but, I sure did enjoy the basic/crude repair jobs like that hatch. At the shop I was associated with, there were three other guys who did nothing but fine finish and rebuilding work on very high-end yachts. The wood they used was incredibly expensive. Those guys did everything from hull and deck work to custom cabinets, staircases etc... They would work a year or more on one yacht and the final bill would be 2-3 times the cost of the average home in the USA. Some of those exotic woods are outrageously expensive, that's for sure...

Ray