Table Saw Outfeed Support

It's been some time since I've posted. I'm now working full time as an employee of a company that I worked at as a contractor for 2.5 years before they hired me. We write software that controls and collects data from devices we manufacture for the law enforcement industry. We're very busy, gearing up for a release in early May, so my time in the shop has been limited.

In addition, last fall my primary home computer suffered a hard drive failure, in which I lost all of the plans I had drawn up for various projects. So I'm back at square one.

I have completed much of the reorganization work I had planned for the shop. I've rearranged everything and found that I don't like where my work table / "workbench" is. Plus it's become an unorganized mess to hold stuff until I find it a home. Yes, I am in desperate need of more storage!

In addition, I can't rip a full sheet of plywood on my table saw without setting up roller stands. Even then, they don't do a good job of supporting the stock. The outfeed support table that came with my 22124 table saw is OK but it's inadequate for some jobs, too.

So I posted a question on the WoodNet Woodworking forum, asking for input on dimensions for a good table saw outfeed support table. I got to see a lot of different ideas from a lot of very created people.

After thinking about it for a while, I sat down with SketchUp and came up with this:

As you can see, the base is two open storage cabinets and a router cabinet that returns so you use the router from the side. The router plate opening in the top is sized for my Woodpeckers router plate. The top features a set or rollers that I intend to make out of 1 1/2" PVC tubing, just like ones that Norm Abram made for his outfeed support. The top itself is 25" deep; the rollers, when extended to full extension, will increase the depth to 49", which should be able to support 8' long stock while it is being ripped without it falling off.

I will probably start this after we finish some household maintenance items and my office releases our next version. I will post about it in the coming weeks.

Shop Reorganization

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything. The truth is that I was out of work for 22 months, starting in November, 2008. I finally got a job in August, 2010. After I finished building the pulpit, I didn't do any woodworking, except for a few pine wood derby cars for my son.

In the interim, I did manage to collect a few more tools. As a result, everything new, plus a few tools that I owned before I was layed off & never put away, accumulated on top of my temporary work table. The items accumulated include:

• A Rikon mini lathe, which I bought about 3 weeks before I was layed off as a Christmas gift from my family to me for Christmas, 2008;
• Some chisels and other turning tools for the lathe which were given to me by the good folks on WoodNet.
• A 6" variable speed grinder, attached to a shop-make version of King Heiple's turning tool sharpening jig.
• The Delta tenoning jig that I bought to make the tenons for the pulpit.
• A ceramic heater to try to beat the winter cold.

Plus a pile of other stuff.

There are some projects I want to work. I want to build a Roubo workbench, and I need to make a new coffee table for our family room. I've posted about these projects in the past. And a former coworker at the job I got in August, 2010 has commissioned me to build a pair of speaker stands for his Dahlquist speakers. I finally realized that I have to reorganize my shop and build more storage if I'm ever going to get back to woodworking.

I began a process of reorganizing the shop using SketchUp. I first draw a model of my garage with no ceiling. I then went into the SketchUp 3D Warehouse & found models of tools that matched my own tools as closely as possible. And I even found a model of the Roubo bench.

I started designing wall mounted storage. I quickly realized the cabinet I was building was humungus and unwieldly, so I went online & found a plan for a wall hung cabinet on PlansNOW.com that featured the use of pegboard. I bought & downloaded the plans and built a SketchUp model of the cabinet. I then designed a wall-hung router table cabinet.

For the lathe, I bought & downloaded a lathe station plan from PlansNOW.com. I built a SketchUp model of that, too. Finally, I played around the the placement of everything until I came up with a placement that seems to work, at least on paper. Here's the plan I came up with:

As you can see, my bandsaw will sit between the door to the family room & my clamp rack. The temporary work table will be replaced with a Roubo bench and will go in the rear left-hand corner. The pegboard wall hung tool cabinet will hang over the Roubo. My drill press is in the rear right-hand corner. The wall hung router table is next, followed by my cross cut sled, auxilliary / tall fence, and blade storage. My table saw is as close to the center of the shop as I can place it, and my thickness planer and jointer are closest to the door. Finally, the lathe station is on the other side of the door to the family room.

My plan is to build the lathe station first. This will get the lathe & all of its related things off of the work table. With all that space freed up, I can put away anything on the work table I find that has escaped my notice and then rearrange things to be in their places on the plan. I can then build the other storage later in the year.

What do you think of my plan? Do you have any ideas for other changes I should make?

Next time: Building a Lathe a Home

Change in Plans

I'm going to start building the coffee table soon. But first, I have to put away a ton of stuff that has accumulated in the shop in the almost 2 years since I finished building the pulpit.

In 2009, I created a post on WoodNet's Off Topic forum descrying my lack of funds for doing woodworking. I had all this free ime on my hands but couldn't afford to buy any wood to make anything. In addition, I had bought a Rikon Mini Lathe 3 weeks before I was layed off from my job and I didn't have any turning tools Lathes, drills, and routers are all alike in that the tool by itself isn't much good without the accessories, after all!

Much to my surprise & gratitude, the guys on WoodNet rallied & sent me about 70 bd ft of quarter sawn red oak and 6 or so different turning chisels and a number of other turning tools, like a pen mandrel and other things for making pens. I really don't know what all of the tools I was sent are called; I'm going to have to spend some time researching it.

So I went into the shop today & cleaned the dirt off of the table saw top that had accumulated & began putting things away. Then it hit me: I have no where to put the turning tools, and a lot of the clutter on my "bench" / temporary work table is the turning stuff.

So after I finished cleaning the tablesaw & spraying on a new coat of T9, I sat down with SketchUp & whipped up the drawing at the right.

The whole thing will be made from scraps of plywood I have left over from my previous projects. The whole thing stands about 30" tall and is 19 1/2" wide. The inside width is 18".

The 6 chisels I have, plus the roughing gouge & spindle gouge I bought a few months ago will be stored in the upper area. leaning back against the ribbed strip at the top. There's a 1/2" tall lip attached to the front of the shelf to keep the bottoms of the turning tools from sliding off of the shelf. The handles of my tools are all about 1 3/4" in diameter at their widest points, so I alloted 2" of width for each one. There will be room for a couple more gouges once I've got my existing tools in it.

I'll store the pen mandrel and other turning related stuff that isn't a gouge or chisel in the drawer. The drawer has through dovetails front & back. The front, back & sides will be made from 1/2" solid wood. It's about 4" tall & 5" deep. I thought about making 2 drawers & I may do that in the end. An 18' wide drawer may be a little unweildy.

The cabinet will be mounted to the wall using some screws. One day, I hope to replace the shelves on the walls with a bunch of french cleats & make cabinets & other tool holders to mount to them. I will turn this into a french cleat mount at that time.

I'm going to make a simple board with 3 pegs for hanging up extension cords, too, but that is too simple a project to show. It will just be 1 piece of 3/4" poplar 2" tall & 32" wide with 3 1/2" diameter dowels 7" long sticking out of it at a 15 degree angle. The pegs will mounted on 14" centers. That way I can get my extension cords out of drawers & hanging on the wall. Then I can put other stuff away.

Update

No, I didn't fall off the face of the planet. I'm taking a course on .NET programming, and it's eating up most of my time. It's like going to work every day -- the class starts each day at 9 am, ends at 5 pm, with 15 minute breaks in the morning & afternoon & an hour for lunch, Monday through Friday. I had more free time in the course of a day when I was actually working.

I will do a post on the coffee table, but right now, I'm stretched pretty thin:

• In addition to this class, I'm in the honors program, which means I have to tutor my fellow students for 10 hours a week. I have one student I'm tutoring and it's going well, but this does take time away from other interests
• I have to take a Microsoft certification exam next Wednesday, and I haven't taken any practice tests yet.
• I have to prepare a special project and present that to my class near the end of the class. I know what I want to do, just haven't had time to do any work on it
• My wife & kids expect me to be available for them, too. Luckily, summer vacation has started & the need for help with homework isn't there till September. But they do expect other things of me.
• I'm busy in my church & have things I owe to them that I have been putting off.

So I'll get to the coffee table, I just don't know when. And I really do want to get started. I even cleaned my table saw's top & put Boeshield T-9 on it last weekend!

So that's all for now. More later, when I can breathe & think wood.

There Has Been a Design Change

There has been a design change to the coffee table. I posted a couple of the pictures in my last blog post in a thread on WoodNet & got a range of feedback, mostly that the drawers were too big. So I decided to add two more drawers 2" high above the existing drawers. I don't know if they'll make the tall drawers look better or not, but they do add additional storage, which is a good thing.

So here are some renderings from SketchUp of the new design.

Here is the coffee table in an isometric view. You can clearly see the new drawers, which are 2" tall in total. The sides are now all 13" + wide. There are going to be three tenons 3" long on each one. I also realized that I'm going to have to glue & peg the top tenon into the legs, but leave glue off of the middle & bottom tenons. These will need elongated slots cut in them with pegs going through the slots & glued into the legs. These will keep the top of the side in the same place with regard to the top & allow the sides to expand downward with seasonal movement.

This is the front of the new design. Both sets of drawers will be able to be opened from either side. I will use some rare earth magnets mounted in holes drilled into the drawer openings on all 4 sides, and similar magnets mounted in holes drilled into the drawer fronts & hidden under thin plugs. The magnets will all be oriented so they attract each other. These should help keep the drawers aligned to the apron face. I don't know how many I'll need; I will have to experiment.

I got an interesting tip on WoodNet to use something called "Nylo-tape" instead of wax on the drawer glides. From what I can gather, this is some kind of tape, adhesive on one side, that is slick & will allow the drawers to pull open easily. This lead me to think about making the drawer glides & guides out of UHMW. I don't know if I'll do it, but it is a thought!

This is the bottom view. Except for the new drawers sticking out, there really is nothing different to see here. An interesting change is now there will be three dust frames to build. The middle frame will have two 1/4" deep dadoes cut in the top & bottom of the center rail to accept drawer dividers. I expect the carcase of this piece to be strong as steel & not to rack at all.

Also, since the legs will be joined to the sides using mortice & tennon joinery, they won't give us the headaches the existing table's legs have given us. The legs on the existing table are removable. These legs are made from 2 3/4" thick pieces glued to each other in an "L" shape. At the top, there is a block with the ends mitered at 45º that was glued to the inside of the legs. These blocks have lag bolts driven into them. These bolts fit through similar blocks attached to the undeside of the table top. The legs are held on by a washer & nut.

Well, these blocks were glued & finish nailed to the inside of the legs. Over the years, the glue has failed & the nails were pulled out on a couple of the legs. I've epoxied the blocks back on, and the repair is holding for now. I just don't know how long the repairs will last.

Here is the top view. Nothing much to look at, I'm afraid. But if you were standing on it & looking straight down, this is what you'd see!

That's enough for now. Next time I'll present the steps I'm going to go through to build this table.

The Coffee Table's Design, or "You Want Drawers With That?"

It's time I introduced you to the coffee table. It's a Tony V original design intended to replace a coffee table we bought when we first got married almost 15 years ago.

There's a funny (as in unusual, not "ha-ha") story behind the coffee table the new one will replace. My wife is from the next town up from where we live now, called Mahopac, NY. When we got married, there was an unfinished furniture store not far from where we live today. We bought that coffee table from there. Today, the unfinished furniture store is gone, but that same store is now the Tool Nut, which is where I buy a lot of my router bits and other tools!

In any event, A lot of the furniture in the family room, where the old coffee table is, and where the new one will go, was purchased, or designed, to go with the coffee table. I think we even have an end table that goes with it in the attic. So I wanted the new coffee table to be reminiscent of the old one, but with some changes my wife wanted.

Essentially, my wife wanted the new table to have some storage in it so we could cut down on the clutter in the family room. My kids—well, actually, my son— has a lot of stuff in plastic bins that are tucked into various corners. Most of it is games & accessories for the Wii and the old GameCube systems we have. So I needed to add some drawers to the table that will allow us to get rid of the bins. It also needs to sit in the same footprint, as our family room is only 10' wide. Actually, it's on the other side of the wall that separates the wood shop from the house, so the new table won't have far to go once it's done.

So here are some views generated from SketchUp of the coffee table as I have designed it.

Here is an isometric view of the table. As you can see, the drawers are designed to open from either side. This will allow the kids to get at some things from one side & other things from the other side, and allow us to use all of the space inside the table for storage.

The drawers, as designed, will feature half-blind dovetails. I've never made dovetails of any type, so this will be a first for me.

The drawers also will not use metal drawer glides. Instead, they are designed to sit on waxed wooden glides. There will be rare-earth magnets hidden in the sides of the apron & drawer faces that will help keep the drawers lined up with the apron when they're closed. At least, I hope they'll keep everything aligned!

Here is a front view of the table. This is pretty much how the table will look from the other side, too. The edges of the top are designed to have a full 3/4" diameter bullnose, just like the table it's replacing. Since the corners are also rounded, I'm probably going to have to make a full size template of the top and use a guide bushing in my router base to do the bullnosing. This will be pretty interesting to do!

The bottom edges of the all 4 aprons / sides have a decorative cut-out & 3/16" radius round-over. These I will be able to do with a regular bearing guided round over bit in my router table. This pattern, by the way, is taken from the existing coffee table.

The drawer fronts will be made by taking an over-width blank for each long apron & ripping them out. The parts, minus the draw fronts, will then be glued back together. This will allow the grain on the drawer fronts to match perfectly with the rest of the grain on the aprons. The drawer fronts themselves will then be ripped a little narrower to give them enough clearance for the drawers to open & not bind, and allow for wood movement.

Just for fun, I threw in this bottom view of the table. There will be two frames inside, one beneath & supporting the drawers, the other one identical to it & above the drawers, keeping them from tilting out when you pull the drawer out far. These will be dadoed into all four aprons / sides & cut out to go around the legs. The long grain on all four arpons / sides will run from leg to leg, so there will be no cross-grain issue with this construction.

The aprons / sides will be attached to the legs using mortice & tennon joinery. Due to their width (about 14", I think), there will be several tennons cut in each apron. I'll probably have to allow glue the middle tennon in and peg the others, with elongated slots cut through the tennons to allow the aprons to move. I'm not real clear on the proper joinery technique to use; perhaps some of my more knowledgeable readers can suggest something?

Finally, here is a top view of the table. It's nothing much to look at right now, really, but I figured I'd include it anyway.

Well, that's the coffee table! See you next time!

Next: Not another long list of building steps!

Starting Work on a New Project

Well, I'm blogging again, at least for another project. I have taken the past year or so off from woodworking & blogging due to my lack of employment. My job situation still hasn't changed, but what did change was the contents of my shed.

Last year, I wrote a post on WoodNet decrying my inability to build anything because of my lack of income. Well, the guys on WoodNet, particularly Bones and Gary G, got together & sent me a bunch of stuff, including 70+ board feet of quarter sawn red oak. I can't find the words to properly express my gratitude to these guys for what they've done for me. Let me just say "thanks," and realize that I wish I could say more.

Originally, I was going to use the wood to make a Roubo style workbench, as shown in Chris Schwarz' book, Workbenches: From Design And Theory To Construction And Use. I received the wood in October (it had to be shipped from Florida to New York, and the guys had a job finding some way to get the wood up here without it costing a small fortune. My thanks to Walt for making the trip!) Upon getting all that oak home, I put it in my shed to acclimate. And the cold weather set in.

Well, the boards are impressive. Some of them are more than 10" wide. Many of them are 5/4 thick. And the more I looked at the wood, the more I thought "I don't want to use this wood for a workbench!" I'd rather wait until I have a job & spend a couple hundred bucks for some construction grade doug fir & make a bench from that.

So I've decided to build a coffee table. Back in 2008, my wife asked me to replace the one we have in our family room, which is also made from red oak. She wants the new table to have drawers for storing the various Wii games & accessories that are littering the family room now.

So project coffee table is about to get underway! That is, after I clean out the garage and get a few other things done around the house . . .

Next time: The Design, or You Want Drawers With That?

The Pulpit Has Been Delivered

The last time we met, I had finished making the last parts of the pulpit. As you would expect, applying the finish was the next step. And after that, it would be time to deliver the pulpit to my church and my pastor. Well, as of Thursday, January 29, 2009, all of that was done!

Because of the weather, the finish took a little bit more than 3 weeks to do. To remind you, here's the finishing schedule I used for this project:

1. Wipe on Minwax Golden Oak stain.
2. Wait 5 minutes.
3. Wipe off excess stain.
4. Apply a coat of shellac.
5. Apply a coat of clear gloss Polycrillic water based polyurethane.
6. Sand with 220 grit paper.
7. Apply a coat of clear gloss Polycrillic water based polyurethane.
8. Sand with 320 grit paper.
9. Apply a coat of clear gloss Polycrillic water based polyurethane.
10. Sand with 400 grit paper.
11. Apply a final coat of clear semi-gloss Polycrillic water based polyurethane.

I was able to get through the first 4 steps of the finishing schedule pretty quickly, but then the weather turned real cold and I couldn't proceed any further for a few days. In fact, it got down into the single digits. There was no way the little tiny heater I have in my garage was going to get the temperature anywhere close to 60°, so I had to wait for the next week.

After it warmed back up enough that I could work with the Polycrillic, I began applying coats & sanding. It pretty much turned out that I would apply a coat of Polycrillic one day and then spend the next day doing the between coat sanding. By the time I got through one of these activities, there wasn't enough time to do the other before the kids bed time, at which point I'd have to give up for the day.

I used a foam brush to apply the Polycrillic at first, but I found that the brush would start to crumble from all of the surfaces I had to cover & leave little bits of foam in the finish. This was unacceptable, so I went out & bought a decent 2" brush with synthetic bristles from my local Ace hardware store.

I used a brush because I don't have any spray equipment. It may have been wiser to thin the Polycrillic down with some distilled water & wipe it on, but that would have taken more coats. I did get some drips using a brush, which is the one thing I hate about brushing. I have to admit that I don't recall any drips while wiping on the finish on my corner cabinet.

One of these days, if I keep up with this, and after I go back to work full time, I will probably get an Earlex HVLP spray system. However, if anyone would like to donate one, I'd be happy to accept it! Only kidding! (Well, maybe not . . .)

I applied the last semi-gloss coat of Polycrillic on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 28. I left everything in my garage for a few hours for the finish to fully dry to the touch, then I brought it inside the family room over night to keep it warm. This was pretty much what I did after applying each coat.

On Thursday morning, I began by removing the newspaper & masking tape I had placed on the raised panels, which I had finished when I made them back in September. I was greatly relieved when I saw that the colors of the panels & the rest of the wood actually matched!

After carefully removing the occasional stray piece of blue painter's tape that ripped & remained on the panels with a utility knife, I was ready to mount the purple heart & maple cross to the front. I mounted the cross using this procedure:

1. I determined what the reveal should be between the edges of the center rail & stiles & the arms of the cross; this came out to be 3/8".
2. I measured in 1" from the end of the top & bottom & placed two marks on the back of the cross. This would be about where I wanted the screws that I was going to drive through the center stile into the back of the cross to penetrate it.
3. Next, I measured the length from the top end of the cross to the top edge of the arms & subtracted 1 3/8". This came out to be about 2 7/16".
4. On the inside of the center box, I measured up the center stile from the top of the cross rails 2 7/16" & placed a mark centered on the rail.
5. I measured the distance between the two marks I had made on the back of the cross. This was about 7 5/16".
6. I measured down 7 5/16" from the mark I had made on the inside of the center box & made another mark there.
7. I had my wife hold a block of wood against the front of the pulpit while I drilled a counter sunk pilot hole through the stile from the inside.
8. I then enlarged the hole in the stile using a 5/32" bit.
9. Using a 3/8" brass bar to place the cross on the front, I had my wife hold the cross in place while I drove the top screw into the cross.
10. I then drilled the bottom hole & drove the second screw in.

I had thought about driving 2 more screws in, one in each of the arms, but decided against it. I seriously doubt the cross will come off with the two screws in it. I then removed the cross because I didn't want to risk it getting damaged or leaving an imprint on one of the other pieces while transporting everything to church.

Finally, it was time to load up the minivan. Mary & I managed to fit everything into the back of the van; we only had to stow away the rear row of seats. This is pretty much what I had planned. We had to stack the two wings on top of each other in order to get everything in. And we loaded all of the shelves into the center box. We stuck the lectern in between the boxes, with pillows & a couple of blankets between everything, to keep them from getting scratched. I fit the box with the hardware & the tools I'd need to assemble everything, including my 2 foot level, into various nooks & crannies as well. Though it turns out I forgot the hinge for the lectern in the commotion to get going.

We got to the church without incident & parked in front of it. Main Street in Danbury is a fairly busy street & they recently renovated it & removed a lot of parking spaces, so we had to unload the van & move it as quickly as possible. We were hampered in this in that most of the guys I had asked to help unload & carry the pulpit upstairs didn't show up. But we managed to get it all upstairs.

Here I am with Vinnie Weber, my pastor's son, in the stair well at the church's building. Vinnie helped carry everything upstairs, even though he hurt his back on Sunday. We're about to carry the center section upstairs, which can also be seen in the picture. Credit for the picture goes to my daughter Samantha.

Here I am with Major Bill Weber (ret.), my Pastor's husband, carrying the center box into the sanctuary. Another Samantha picture.

Another Samantha picture. Here I am with the center box after setting it in place in the sanctuary. You can see the cross whose color I was trying to match with the finish in the pulpit in the background.

Here I am assembling the right wing to the center box. First, I had to level the center box, then we had to adjust the height of the adjustable legs to get everything to line up properly. Then I inserted & tightened the four (4) bolts that hold everything together. In this picture, I'm checking the height of the wing & finding that it's too tall. Credit for this picture also goes to Samantha.

Here's the finished lectern with its inlays, waiting to be installed. Yep, a Samantha photo.

Here's the finished cross, also waiting to be installed. Credit goes to Samantha.

Here I am with Pastor Evelyn Weber, after I'd finished assembling all I could. As I said, I had forgotten the hinge for the lectern. The church is a 40 minute drive from home, so I couldn't just go home & get it. I'll install the hinge on Sunday morning & all will be finished then. And yes, it's a Samantha picture.

Here is a front view of the finished pulpit in its new home.

Here's the pulpit from the rear, showing the handles, one of the cup holders, and the lectern.

And finally, the back of the pulpit with all of the shelves in it.

Over all, I'm very pleased with the way that this project came out. There were days when I thought I'd never be finished with it, but I finally got everything done and the pulpit delivered.

My plan at this point is to concentrate on finding a new job & take a break from woodworking. While I do have a few boards & plenty of scraps lying around & I could make a few small things, I have to put my priorities straight. But I will be posting again.

The Last Parts

I'm almost done with the woodworking! The last parts to make are the lectern & the cross that goes in front of the finished pulpit. When they're done, it's on to the finish. So let's get started!

Here is the plan view of the lectern, taken from my SketchUp plan of the pulpit:

As you can see from the drawing, the finished lectern will be 3/4" x 16 3/4" x 20" or so. The exact width will vary somewhat depending upon the curve I cut on the top edge. There will be a cross made from purple heart inlaid into the middle, and a 1/8" wide strip of maple inlaid around the perimeter of the lectern. Three sides will be kept 3/4" in from the edge, while the bottom piece will be kept 1 1/2" from the bottom edge. This is to leave room for a 3/4" thick book stop that will be glued along the bottom edge of the lectern. These will be the first inlays I will ever do.

While I was milling the lumber for the cap rails, I also milled the lumber for the lectern. I had a red oak board about 8 feet long and 9 1/2" or so wide. This board was almost completely flat along its entire length, with just a slight bow, maybe 1/8" along the entire length.

I cut two pieces about 24" long off of the board to glue together for this part. When I placed them on my table saw top to look for high & low spots, there was only a very small gap, maybe 1/64" or so at most, under the boards. The grain on the boards had a nice cathedral arch, and I really didn't want to rip the boards in half, so I skipped face jointing them and just ran them through the planer to clean them up & get them uniformly thick.

After that, I did the grain matching & I edge jointed the boards. I glued them to each other using cauls to keep the faces aligned to each other. Then I put the glue-up aside while I worked on the cap rails & the purple heart & maple trim.

After finishing up the trim, I took the lectern blank, sanded it flush with my ROS, and cut it to final length & width. I set the off-cut from cutting it to width aside to use as the book stop. Next I took a scrap piece of 3/4" plywood about 22" long & 6" or so wide & laid out a grid. I drove a 1" brad partially into the plywood at the intersection points of the grid & snaked a 1/16" thick piece of red oak scrap about 3' long through the brads to get the curve I wanted. I traced the curve on to the plywood, removed the strip & brads, and cut the shape on my band saw.

After cleaning up the edge with some sand paper, I traced the curve onto the lectern blank & cut it on the band saw. Then I used the plywood pattern to pattern route the curve to final shape on my router table. I was extremely pleased with the way the curve came out.

Next, I mounted a 1/4" radius cove bit into the router table & cut a lip along the bottom of the curved edge about 3/8" deep. This provides a grip for the user's fingers when they want to raise the lectern up if it's lying flat on the top shelf. I then used a 1/8" radius round over bit to ease the sharp edge on the finger grip.

Once all of that was done, I got started on the inlays. I went out & bought an inlay router bushing & bit set made by Whiteside. The kit comes with a 1/4" shank, 1/8" diameter solid carbide down spiral straight bit, a brass guide bushing with a 9/16" outside diameter, a special centering rod that you use to make sure the bushing & the router base are centered on the collet, and a special removable bushing that allows you to attach to cut the recess for the inlay & remove to cut the inlay itself.

I started by getting a scrap of 1/4" plywood to use as a template. I laid out the cross inlay on this piece of plywood. The difference between the cutting diameter of the bit and the bushing was 7/16", so I had to make the arms 7/16" wider & longer than the plan. Otherwise, the resulting cross would have been 7/16" narrower & shorter.

I drilled some holes in the template with a 1/4" drill bit & used my jig saw with the speed turned way down & orbital cutting turned off to cut the shape. I made sure I didn't remove the line with the jig saw. I then used a bastard file to smooth & straighten everything out. I checked everything with a straight edge to be sure the arms were all straight.

I measured the lectern to determine where the cross needed to go & used double stick tape to attach the template. With the bit & both bushings from the inlay kit mounted on my plunge router, I set the depth of cut to about 1/16" & went to town removing material. This went fairly quickly & left me with a very clean outline & a pretty clean bottom. I cleaned a couple of small spots that I didn't get with the router up with a chisel & 1/2 of the inlay was done.

I next cut a piece of purple heart the required size off of my second purple heart board. I attached the template to the purple heart, making sure that the grain ran in the same direction relative to the cross as it does in the lectern. The inlay would be a small piece of wood, but I didn't want to risk any kind of cross grain movement issues. I removed the outer bushing & very carefully made one pass around the perimeter of the template.

Next, I had to cut the inlay out of the purple heart. The depth of cut is still only 1/16". You need to essentially resaw the blank to cut the inlay free. I've seen Norm do this on the New Yankee Workshop a few times, and it looked easy. And it essentially is. The only tricky part is getting the rip fence setting right. Which I didn't.

I ended up with a nice slice from the blank with my inlay still attached. And even though the wood that connected my inlay to the rest of this piece was less than 1/16" thick, the stuff did not want to break! This is when I really found out just how strong purple heart is!

In retrospect, I suppose I should have taken the piece to the band saw & carefully cut it out, then cleaned up the edges with a file or sand paper. Instead, I tried to break the cross out & ended up splitting the top & bottom arms off along the grain. I used a utility knife with a new blade to try to cut the cross out, but that took more effort than I would have believed. Did I mention that purple heart is a very hard, strong wood?

In the end I got my pieces & I was able to put them into the hole I had cut out. Since everything split along the grain, everything went back together again pretty much invisibly. The parts split into more pieces when I tried to remove the inlay from the hole. The moral of this story is to resaw everything to the right thickness & don't tap the inlay into the hole until you have glue in the hole!

The next task was to cut the recesses for the maple strips. I used the edge guide for my router for three of these cuts. I removed the inlay guide bushing from the router but kept the same bit chucked in the collet. I set the fence on the edge guide 1 1/2" from the bit & made a test cut on some scrap. I verified the cut was indeed 1 1/2" from the edge. And then I cut the recess for the bottom edge, making sure to start 3/4" from the left edge.

I reset the edge guide for a 3/4" space between its fence & the bit. I made another test cut & verified the setting. I then cut the straight recesses on the sides. These went fine, though I cut one about 1/64" too far.

To cut the curved recess along the top, I used a trick I saw Norm use on the New Yankee Workshop. I took a narrow 3/4" plywood scrap, about 1" wide, and used my drum sander attachment in my drill press to round over one end. I then removed the edge guide & clamped this scrap to the router's base 3/4" from the bit. A test cut confirmed the setting. I then cut the recess, being careful not to twist the router & letting the scrap guide it along the edge. I'm happy to say this worked perfectly.

I took some extra 1/8" maple strips that I had left over from making the maple trim & ripped them in half. I had to hand plane some material off of them to get them to fit. I then carefully mitered the corners & glued them into the recesses. Then I glued the cross into its recess. The last step, after letting the glue dry, was to plane off the excess maple & purple heart using my block plane & then sanding everything flush. Finally, I shaped & glued book stop onto the bottom of the lectern.

Here's a picture showing how the lectern turned out.

Next, I made the cross. Here's a plan view from SketchUp:

The cross was made from four pieces of purple heart, each about 1/2" thick by 3/4" wide, mitered at the center. The purple heart was then wrapped with 12 pieces of maple 3/4" thick by 1/4" wide, mitered at the ends. All of these were glued to each other and a piece of 1/4" thick plywood cut in the shape of the cross. Each arm of the plywood is 1" wide. There are 1/8" wide by 1/4" deep rabbets cut in all of the maple pieces. The plywood is to act as a backer & a gluing surface to firmly attach all of the parts to each other.

I used my table saw to cut the cross shape out of the plywood. I raised the blade to full height & made a mark on the fence parallel to the front edge of the blade. I then make sure I extended all of the edges of the cross on the plywood to the edges. I set the fence to the distance from the edge of the plywood to the nearest vertical edge & made four cuts, stopping each when the intersecting line reached the mark on the fence. I reset the fence for the next two pairs of cuts, as necessary, turned the blank 90°, and cut the cross pretty much free. A little clean up with a chisel in the inside corners & I had a 1/4" plywood cross.

The rest of it was a process of carefully cutting double miters on the purple heart, then cutting the parts to final length. I glued them to the plywood & used 23 gauge pins to hold them in place while the glue dried. Then I carefully mitered a maple strip in which I had cut a 1/8" wide by 1/4" deep (actually the thickness of the plywood) rabbet & wrapped the purple heart with the miter. I used clamps only to hold the long pieces in place, but I did use pin nails on the end pieces.

And here's how the cross came out.

It's taken about 7 months or so to get to this point. I'm very happy with the end result, but I'm also anxious to deliver this piece & clean up my garage!

So next time, it's the start of the finish!

Purple & White Trim

After I finished making & attaching the cap rails, I pulled out the boards I had set aside for the trim. These included one piece of hard maple 3/4" thick by about 7" wide by 4' long, as well as two pieces of rough 4/4 purple heart about 6" wide & about the same length. The maple stock came planed flat & of a uniform thickness, with one straight edge. The purple heart was a little over an inch thick.

The trim consists of two pieces of maple; one piece lies on top of the plinth or under the cap rail. A second piece is glued to the vertical face of the carcase. All pieces are mitered at the corners. The pieces that run under the cap rail just end at the rear of the sides of the wing carcases; the pieces on top of the plinth wrap all the way around the base and meet at a 90° angle where the wings attach to the center section. Two different moldings, made from the purple heart, get glued where the maple parts meet.

The first job was to make & attach the maple. The maple was all supposed to be 1/8" thick, but because of an earlier mistake, I have about a 1/16" reveal where the rails meet the corner posts on all of the carcases. In order to make sure the maple would touch the rails as well as the posts, I needed to make the stock for the these areas 3/16" thick, and then rabbet the extra 1/16" off.

First I ripped a number of strips of maple 1/8" thick. I did this by placing a feather board in my table saw's miter slot & setting it 1/8" from the blade. I placed the board against the feather board, then brought the fence up against the right edge of the board. After locking down the fence, I'd make a cut and the strip would fall to the left of the blade. I then reset the fence in a similar manner. After cutting the 1/8" thick material, I used the same technique to cut the same number of 3/16" strips.

Once I had all of the maple strips made, I worked on one side of each carcase before going to the next side of it. I would miter, glue & pin nail a 1/8" strip for the top of the plinth. Then I'd cut a 3/16" strip, miter it over length, rabbet the ends, miter to final length, then glue & pin nail it on. Then I'd miter a 1/8" strip for under the cap rails, glue & pin nail it on. Finally, I'd make another 3/16" strip to place near the 1/8" piece under the cap rail. Then I'd turn the carcase 90° and work on the next face.

After all of the maple was in place, I milled up the two purple heart boards. I then mounted my classical ogee bit into my router table. This bit cuts a 1/4" radius round over, a 1/16" step, and a 1/4" radius cove. I then took one of the purple heart boards & ran the profile down one edge. I rotated the board 180° and ran the profile down the other edge. Then I ripped both edges off of the board & did all of that again. Finally, I ran one more edge & ripped it off.

Next, I needed to make a 3/8" radius cove molding our of purple heart for under the cap rail. I replaced the ogee bit in the router table with the cove bit & reset the fence. I was able to make two pieces of this molding. At this point, I felt it was unsafe to make any more molding from what I had left of this board. It was, however, just slightly oversize to make the purple heart pieces I needed for the cross that will go in front of the pulpit. So I ripped it to 3/4" and put it aside for that purpose.

Before making these 2 pieces of cove molding, I had to resaw the stock to remove about 3/16"of thickness that wasn't needed. The stock was narrow enough that I could do it with one pass on the table saw, which is what I did. Then, after routing the profile on to both edges of the stock, I ripped them from the board. And found myself with a small dilemma.

I was thinking that I might need a third piece of the cove molding, but I didn't think making a third piece from what I had left at this point would be safe. I figured I could probably get away with what I had, so I didn't make a third piece. I did, however, leave the bit in the router table & didn't change any of the settings on the router & the fence, just in case I did need to make another piece.

Once I had all of my molding pieces, I began wrapping the molding around the carcases, much as I did for the maple. I started with the ogee molding on the plinth, then worked on the cove molding under the cap rail.

What I did not do, however, was put any moldings on the front of the wings, top or bottom, as I needed to cope those pieces into the inside corners, and I hadn't ever coped a joint before. So I cut the moldings for these faces extra long & put them aside.

I began trying to cope the ogee molding by working with some scrap pieces -- I had lots of extra molding at this point. I pulled out my father's coping saw, which I've had since he passed away when I was 23, but I've never had a use for until now. I even went out & bought a brand new blade, since the one in the saw was bent.

I installed the new blade, and took the coping saw to the piece of molding. And that's when I found out how hard purple heart is. I was able to remove some of the material from the molding, but I had a hard time getting it started & following the curve. I was very nervous

At this point, I spoke to one of our Elders at church, Jack, who is retired & has experience with coping moldings. He agreed to come over & help me cope the moldings for the corners.

So Jack came by and he tried using his coping saw on the purple heart. And he was taken back by how hard the purple heart was. What we ended up doing was breaking out my Dremel tool & the 1/2" drum sander attachment with a coarse sleeve and just sanded away the material we needed to remove. We got some burning, but it didn't matter, since that side would never show.

The resulting coped joints looked great & fit perfectly. If it weren't for Jack, I'd be deep in despair now, trying to figure out what I would do.

Here are some pictures of the finished moldings. First, the ogee moldings:

Now the cove molding:

Another shot of the cove molding:

That's enough for this post. Next time, we'll cover the last bits left to do, the cross for the front & the hinged lectern.

Creating the Cap Rail

When we last met, I had finished making and gluing the plinth on to the pulpit. The next step is to cover the upper edges of the pulpit with the cap rail.

The cap rail is made up of 11 boards 3/4" thick by 2 3/4" wide. They get mitered where they meet at the corners. Since the corners in the center rear are cut off, they get mitered at that point as well. It gets even more complicated because the pulpit is made of 3 carcases that are bolted together. And there are handles, to boot!

The pieces that sit on top of the handles need to be wide enough that they cover the corner posts, but they also need to be narrow enough that a person can get their hands into the handles and hold on. This means that:

• The pieces for the wing carcases need to be 2" wide at the rear, then narrow to the thickness of a 3/4" piece of plywood by the handle holes, then widen back to 2" near the point near the miter point.
• The pieces for the center carcase need to be 1 3/4" wide at the rear, as that's the width of the rear post, then narrow to the thickness of a 3/4" piece of plywood by the handle holes, then widen back up to 1 3/4" near the miter point.
• The pieces for the center carcase need to widen to 2 3/4" at the front in order to have the proper over hang that the rest of the parts have.

I had originally designed a complicated shape on the end of the front pieces for the wings where they meet the center pieces. They essentially needed to be mitered in two directions. That is, they needed to be mitered to go around the corner of the wing, and they needed to be mitered to meet the overhang on the center carcase. The picture below is a top view of the pulpit, generated by SketchUp, showing the pulpit as I had originally designed it, and it shows what I'm talking about.

The next picture, also from SketchUp, shows the shapes of the center carcase parts. One side is a mirror image of the other. The top piece in the picture is common to the wings. The pieces for the wings are similarly shaped, but wider because of the wider post. The other part is shorter & almost triangular in shape (see the picture above).

As always, I got started by cutting the stock to rough size, jointing, and planing it to thickness. I cut the pieces for everything except the parts that cover the ply partitions that meet 3" wide; I cut the other parts 4 1/2" wide. It was my intention to get the wing pieces & the center pieces from the wider boards.

I started by making the parts for the wings. I made the parts that go over the ends & the front first & mitered them. I used my Osbourne EB3 to cut the miters. I could have used my miter saw, but this worked just as well, and was more convenient, as my miter saw was in the shed.

At first, I decided to miter the front pieces for the wings in one direction only, instead of in two, and just let them meet the center carcase at a butt joint. The wings are only bolted to the center carcase, after all. So I cut the end of the front square & to length and then cut the miter for the mating part. And I made an error.

It turns out I cut this part 1/4" too short. I didn't have my drawing in front of me & I forgot that there is a 1/4" thick faux rail that overlaps the corner. Now I had to make up that 1/4", and I didn't want to just remake the part. I had extra stock, but I've gone through enough at this point, and I was trying to use parts that were cut consecutively from the same board. This makes the grain nearly continuous as it goes around the top.

So I ended up changing the shape of the part that covers the ply partition. I make it longer & added a tongue 1/4" wide that would make up for the missing 1/4" of length of the front piece. And I decided to go ahead & miter the front piece in both directions. This effectively shortened the length of this tongue.

To make this shape, I first added a tall auxiliary fence to my miter stock miter gauge. I then nibbled away about 3/8" to 1/2" of material near where the base of the tongue would meet the miter I needed to meet the front piece. I could then remove the rest of the material to form the tongue by making a stopped rip cut, and the material would fall away free.

I then set my table saw's blade bevel angle to 45° and made the miter cut. Next I returned the blade to 90° and cut the stock to width. This formed a piece from which I would get one half of the handle and the short piece that meets the front piece.

Next I took out my Osbourne EB3 & determined the miter angle that I needed to use to cut the miter piece from the handle piece. That turned out to be exactly 12°. I set the EB3 to that angle. I now determined where I needed to make the cut and carefully lined that point up with the blade. I cut the mitered piece free, and then I turned the remaining piece over (placing the face that had been toward the blade toward the miter gauge) and made the mating miter cut.

To keep everything balanced, I had to make both wings identically, so I repeated these steps for the other wing.

Next, I had to make the parts for the center section. I used a similar procedure, except that I attached the blanks to each other using double stick tape. I made sure the upper faced of both boards faced each other. This allowed me to make both parts for the center section at the same time, and each would be a perfect mirror of the other.

I had to make these parts twice. The first time through, I had made everything perfectly, but then I went & cut the miter for the front piece backwards. There was no way out of this mistake except to remake the parts, which I did. Also, I separated the two parts from each other before I cut the 12° miters, to make sure that the miters were in the right place!

At this point, I attached all of the parts that needed no further shaping to the wings. That is, the parts that all met at a 45° miter. I used glue & pocket hole screws to attach these parts to the carcases. Putting them on the carcase now would protect them from being dropped accidentally & getting banged up.

The next step was to produce two templates for the handle parts. To do this, I took two pieces of 3/4" ply scrap and cut them a little wider than the parts & a few inches longer. Next, I took some measurements from the pulpit & decided where I wanted the curves to be. I transferred the measurements to the ply & drove brads into the proper points.

Next, I took a piece of oak scrap & cut a strip about 1/16" thick from it. I threaded the strip through the brads and that was my curve. I traced the curve with a pencil onto the ply. Then I removed the brads and went to the band saw. After cutting the waste away, I took them to my drill press & installed my 2" drum (the biggest I have). I then sanded everything smooth & to the line.

After the templates were done, I was able to use them to cut the shape I needed out of the stock & pattern route the parts smooth. I then took out my 3/8" radius round over bit & rounded over the edges that needed it. I then did some sanding to blend everything together & make everything smooth.

It turns out, though, that I didn't make the dip I needed in these pieces deep enough -- they overhung the handles by about 1/4". So I took out my card scraper & removed the extra material. That was followed by some more sanding.

The last operation before I could attach these parts to the carcases was to cut the parts to length using a plumb cut. I used my bevel gauge to get this angle & transfer it to the miter gauge. And when that was done, I attached them to the carcases.

I put the carcases together & I then did even more sanding & some planing to get the parts smooth & aligned & level. I wanted everything to feel like one handle when the carcases are put together.

The following pictures show the finished cap rails. The first is a 3/4 view from the right front side.

Here's a shot showing the handles.

Looking down on the center section.

And another shot of the handles from the other side.

If you look closely in these pictures, you can see that I also made & installed the lectern support blocks with their shelf pin holes. The lectern will be hinged at the edge closest to the speaker. The shelf pins will then support the lectern & any notes the speaker has at the angle of their choosing. Or they can leave it flat & put a laptop computer on top,

We're getting very close to the end now. Next up, the maple trim goes on.

Here a Plinth, There a Plinth . . .

Time for another update on the pulpit. I'm getting near to the end of it now!

Just to remind you where the pulpit project stands so far: I've got the three carcases put together. I've modified the carcases by cutting off the rear corners on the 4 ply partitions. I've made a design change to add handles at my pastor's request. I've actually made & installed the handles into the ply partitions. The next task to tackle is to make the plinth that goes all the way around the bottom of the pulpit.

For those of you who don't know what a "plinth" is, it's the sub-base that goes all the way around the bottom of the pulpit. It's made of thick boards that are mitered at the outside corners. An ogee trim molding will wrap the bottom, hiding the joints between the plinth & the carcases.

The stock for the plinth I had was 6/4 by 9" x 48". It needed to be thicknessed to 1 5/16" thick. And, of course, I needed to rip the three boards in half before I could joint them. The stock had a few ugly black knots on a couple of the boards, and one board had some perfectly round holes about 1/16" in diameter. These looked like bug holes. The holes weren't growing & there was no dust near the board, so I'm pretty sure the critters were dead. I've never had any wood with such bug tracks in it before, so this was a bit different for me.

After ripping, jointing, and thicknessing, I ripped everything to 4 1/4". The final width needed to be 4", but I wanted to leave some room for adjusting the alignment of the grain, if needed. Next, I cut a 3/4" wide by 3/8" deep rabbet along one edge of each board. The way the pulpit is designed, this rabbet matches up with the 3/8" rabbet I cut on the bottom of the corner posts. The rabbet also give me more gluing surface.

After cutting the rabbet, I had to figure out how to cut up the boards to get the parts I needed. I went back to my SketchUp drawing & took the dimensions from it. Then I imported these into CutList Plus & had it generate the layouts. Then I began to cut the stock.

Because the corners were all mitered, I figured I'd use my 10" chop saw to get good 45° cuts. So I went out & I bought a new 10" thin kerf cross cut blade to use on the chop saw. I mounted the blade & ripped a ply scrap about 36" long to 4 1/2" wide. I intended to use this scrap as an auxiliary fence to back up the cuts on the miter saw & reduce tear out. Then I mounted the auxiliary fence to the saw.

That's when I found that my chop saw doesn't have the capacity to cut through anything that tall. So I tried ripping 1/2" off of the auxiliary fence. The saw cut through the aux fence, so I marked where I wanted to make my first cut on my stock. I put the stock in the saw & lined up my marks. And that's when I found that my saw can't cut all the way through 4 1/4" wide stock, either.

So I removed the new blade from the chop saw, put the chop saw away, and mounted the new blade on my table saw. I then titled the blade to 45°. Some test cuts confirmed the blade was at a true 45°. And I started cutting.

Rather than trust the dimensions on the plan, I tried to determine the length by placing the stock against the place it had to go & marking it. This worked great, yet somehow I managed to screw up one piece in the back of the pulpit. I cut it too short.

The pieces on the back of the wings have one mitered corner & one cut at 90°. The piece in the back on the center section has two 90° corners. When I cut the piece for one of the wings, I measured it. And it came out 5/8" too short.

I didn't discover the problem until after I'd cut the rest of the parts. I just didn't have the stock to remake the part. And given that I am no longer gainfully employed, I didn't have the cash to go out & buy a new piece of stock.

So I tried cutting a miter on the short end & cutting a miter on a piece whose grain matched very closely, in order to make a ship lap joint. I used 5 minute epoxy to glue the two parts together. The end result is a very good match, so the joint should be easy to hide when I get to the finishing steps.

After getting all of the parts to rough length, I then spent about a week or so just trying to get all of the outside mitered corners to meet properly and the parts cut to proper length. It turns out that the corners of some of the posts weren't perfectly square. So even though everything is parallel, I had to carefully remove material, and in some cases add it, in order to get the corners to fit properly.

Once the parts all fit together properly, I had to shape the feet on the plinth. This took a couple of days to complete, given the number of parts. I made a template out of 1/2" MDF and used it to trace the shape on to each board in the proper places, namely, at the mitered corners. Time to cut the shape.

I used a 1" Forstner bit to drill out the arc in the corner where the foot transitions into the bottom, then I used my table saw or band saw to remove the waste material. I used the table saw for those parts that had a foot on one end, and the band saw for those that had feet at both ends. I used a 1" chisel to clean up the transition on those parts that I used the table saw to remove the waste.

After sanding everything, I finally started gluing the parts on to the pulpit. I used glue & clamps only, working with one piece at a time. I'd let it sit for 30 minutes or so before I started on the next piece.

Here are some shots of the pulpit & completed plinth. First, the whole pulpit from the front:

The right wing end:

A close up of the center front:

That's enough for now. Next time, we'll go over the cap rails, which I should finish up today.

Of Mice & Men & Design Changes, Part 2

When last we met, I had finished making the handles for the pulpit that my pastor had been asking for. They are made from four pieces of red oak, with oval shaped cut outs in the middle. To remind you, here is a picture showing what we're shooting for when it's all done.

Once I had finished shaping the handles, I clamped one against one of the sloped sides and carefully traced it onto the plywood. I had all of the boxes bolted together, so I would make the cuts in the two sides simultaneously. After tracing the handle block, I carefully measured & cut a straight guide that the shoe of my jig saw could ride against while making the vertical cuts.

I then began to cut out the notch. The cuts I ended up with weren't as clean or straight as I would have gotten had I been able to make these cuts before the boxes were assembled, but they would have to do. I even had to cut some wedges to slip in between the notch & the block on one side. This was the first one I had cut; the second one came out much better.

Here's a picture of the better of the two cuts after it was cut & before the handles were glued in. As you can see in the picture, I did get some tear out. I own a cheap Skill jig saw, and my skill with it isn't terribly great. But that thing does jump around a lot & is hard to control.

After making the cut, I cleaned it up with my belt sander & a file. The sander wouldn't fit in the entire notch -- that is, it could only reach the forward most 3 inches of the bottom. This allowed me to get that area pretty flat, but I needed the file to work on the rear portion. With about 30 minutes or so of work, I was able to get the blocks in to the notches well enough that any final clean up could be done with a ROS or block plane.

Here's a picture of the finished notches with the corresponding handle blocks in place but not yet glued. As you can see in the photo, the notch was cut a little over size. Believe me, though, it was a lot better than the other side.

Because the fit of the blocks wasn't the greatest, I decided to use 5 minute epoxy to glue the handles in the notches. The epoxy would fill any voids & would even glue the end grain to the notches. The result would be a very strong bond that should hold up to even my weight pulling on it.

After gluing in the handle blocks, I proceeded to fill in the remaining spaces with stainable wood filler. I will probably have to give these areas some extra attention to get the color to match, depending on how everything looks after final staining. Here's a picture of the pulpit with both handles in place & wood filler applied.

While this completed all of the retro-fitting work that needed to be done, there is still work to do on these handles. The cap rails that go over these areas will have to be shaped to make the handles easier to grasp. But that will have to wait until after I make the rails some time in the next couple of weeks.

Next time: Mitering the Base Mouldings

Of Mice & Men & Design Changes

Back in October, I decided that the lectern was too plain as originally designed. The design for the improved lectern appeared in my head almost as a vision. I could see what I wanted to do. So I put together the change in Sketch-Up in a couple hours. The picture below shows the idea I had.

Essentially, the lectern will be shaped like a tomb stone with a 1/4" wide strip of maple inlaid 3/4" in from the edges. And there will be a purple heart cross inlaid in the center of the field created by the maple inlay. I'm going to need to purchase an inlay kit for my router to do the inlay. Luckily, these kits aren't too expensive. These will also be my first inlays. I intend to practice a little before doing it for real.

Through out the summer, my pastor kept asking me to add "handle bars" to the pulpit design. At first I thought she might be joking. But she often feels dizzy while preaching as the Holy Spirit works through her and felt she needed something to hold on to, in order to keep from falling over.

After determining that pastor wasn't kidding, and after making the obligatory jokes about putting chopper handlebars & a seat on the pulpit so she could take the pulpit for a spin, I began to wonder exactly how I was going to meet this request.

A number of ideas presented themselves to me & were discarded. One was to actually get a set of motorcycle or bicycle handle bars & add them. That got discarded quickly -- I just couldn't see how to make that work. And I don't think anyone would take seriously any pastor preaching from behind a pulpit so equipped.

Then I had the idea for what I call the "towel rack". This would be two triangular gussets made of maple a full 3/4" wide rabbeted into the corner posts of the center box. Between them would be a rod or dowel made from purple heart a full 1" to 1 1/2" in diameter. This would give pastor a place to hold on. But this still didn't work for me. All the pulpit would need at this point is a pair of wheels in the back & you could tilt it back & push it around.

Then, one night while driving to the Men's Ministry meeting at church, I had another vision of a change to the pulpit. As originally designed, the boxes had nothing but square corners. I saw the pulpit with the inside corners of the center box & the adjacent outer boxes cut off at an angle. And our Elder Jack then suggested cutting an oval hole through the partitions.

This idea appealed to me so much that I started working on modifying the drawing that night. After a few hours work, I came up with the design shown in the picture below.

Since the partitions are made of ply, I first cut the corner off of one of the outside boxes. I then transferred the line to other outside box so they would be cut identically. I then cut the corner off of that box. Next I transferred both lines to the center box & cut those corners off. These cuts were made with my circular saw & straight edge guide. Because my straight edge guide uses a carriage to hold the saw, I couldn't get the blade low enough to cut all the way through the corner posts, so I had to finish these off with my flush cutting saw.

The boxes were then bolted back together & everything sanded with my belt sander. The photo below shows everything after all of these steps were completed.

The next step was to make the handles. I didn't just want to cut oval holes in the ply, as that would make the plies visible. Plus, I wanted to round over the edges of the hole to make the handle more comfortable to hold, and there just wasn't enough room to get a full size 2 1/4 HP router base in there at this point.

So I decided to make the handles out of solid red oak, cut notches to accept the handles in the ply, and glue the handles in. The next step, therefore, was to actually make the handles. Since the boxes come apart, I would have to split each handle in half & glue each in to a different ply partition after the notches were cut.

As you can see from the Sketch-Up image above, these pieces are parallelograms. I drew the shape on one of the ply partitions & set my bevel square to the angle. I then used the bevel square to set my miter gauge. It turns out that the correct miter gauge setting to cut the shape in the drawing is about 25°, give or take a few tenths of a degree.

So I took the two failed bottom rails for the center box & ripped them to 2 1/2" wide. I then cut them into blocks for the handles. After cutting 5 blanks from the two rails, I layed out the oval holes.

Originally, I planned to make the holes by drilling 3/4" holes at the ends with a Forstner bit, then clearing out most of the waste with the same bit. Then I'd clean everything up with my chisels. I also figured I'd use one as a pattern & use a flush trim or pattern bit to get all 4 holes identical. It's important that someone holding the handles doesn't feel any uncomfortable edges because of inconsistencies in the shapes when the boxes are bolted together.

Well, the first attempt didn't come out very well shaped. And the holes were a bit tight on my hands. And when I tried to pattern rout one of the other handles, I inadvertently made a climb cut & the handle split in half. Luckily, I was able to glue that blank back together & you can't tell where the split happened without looking at the end grain.

I decided the best way to recover was to increase the hole diameter to 1 1/8". This was the minimum size I needed to remove all traces of damage to the grain within the hand hole. This time, I did a better job of cleaning everything up & the handle came out much better, as you can see in the next photo below.

Next, I ripped the four blanks to the thickness of the ply and rounded over the hole edges using a 3/8" round over bit in my router table. The photo below shows the handle after rounding it over & sanding everything smooth.

That's enough for now. More on installing the handles next time.