I Am Thankful For YOU!!!

11/27/2008

I just wanted to say that this year has been remarkable in what I have learned through the wood working community, and equally wonderful are all the people I have met. Since I live in the United States of America, I'd like to express to you, those that stop by here and read my blog, leave comments , added me as a friend, etc. that I have a special  thing to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving.
And that would be YOU!!!
Thank you!
Allison of Wood Alley

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Scrolled Table Saw?

11/16/2008

At  LJ’s awhile back I posted a gag gift I gave my son and his wife for Christmas. It can be found here.I also have it posted here on this site.It was called a “Buck Saw” It is from a designer who has his projects in Creative Wood works and Crafts magazine, and his projects and patterns are always fun and “different” than the norm that you find in these magazines. He has several others also and I would like to make them all. I had made two of the Buck saws for 2 of my sons, and I also made two of these “Table saws.” I was out walking around my town today and stopped by my sons house and I had my camera so I decided to take a picture of it and post it here. These were just fun. I was not even trying to be perfect with these projects. I just wanted to share them as I love these sorts of “fun” patterns once in awhile. And my boys seem to like them, They are already wondering what “gag” they will get this Christmas! The “saw ” handle is made from my sons own apple tree that they had to do some major pruning on awhile back. I left the piece just the way it was instead of trying to cut out the “bad” piece or plane it down and off. I was hoping this would not bug them. On the contrary they said they were glad I did it that way. Now of course I am his mother, so I suppose he would not say “hey mom you idiot! Why didn’t you plane off the bad piece” LOL!!! The table top is also from their apple tree, and the legs were already made and just cut in half from one of those coffee cup accordion style holders you see in dollar stores.

 

  

I actually have another "Buck Saw" here but it is not a gag gift!

Aromatic Cedar Christmas Ornament Tutorial

11/12/2008

I found an incredible deal before last Christmas while visiting my father down in southern Ca, at the La Mirada swap meet. 1/4 inch tongue and groove aromatic cedar. I would say I got around 25 pieces of it. They are all in 3 foot lengths .

 

Because of their size there has not been any ideas popping up in my head on what to do with it. However today looking through old pattern books I found a bunch of Christmas ornaments and immediately thought of this wood. After all how nice would Aromatic Cedar smell on a fresh Christmas Tree. It also appears to be lite enough that a small ornament would not weigh down the tree limbs.

The upper piece I have covered  with packaging tape. Then I have sprayed the paper patterns that I copied from the original patterns on my printer with spray adhesive spray and then placed them.

On the bottom of the upper pictures you can see I have put pieces of double sided carpet tape on the wood and trying to keep most of it from being underneath the paper patterns above when I place the top piece onto the bottom piece.This wood appears to not be warped and I am hoping this will hold. I use this method quite often especially on thin pieces such as these.

 

Now in the shop I drill out my starter holes. As you can see I have placed a couple of pieces of old pine I don't plan on using in case of tear out. Quite frankly I am unsure if tongue and groove such as this will be less sturdy due to the, well---- , tongue and groove! LOL!!!

 

So I drill out the starter holes for this one angel and I do think I will have to secure the two pieces together more securely as I feel slippage between the pieces. (I have only stack cut projects 2 other times besides this) so this is VERY new to me. The others were at least 1/2 inch thickness and for intarsia not scroll work!

 

This is the back of the angel and I am seeing some tear out.

 

Sooo I just had to see what this would look like had I NOT had the pine beneath it.

NOW THAT IS TEAR OUT!!!

Next post will be cutting it out and learning how I am going to secure it better. I can tell I will need to, yet I am hesitant about using any more packing tape but I just may. I also can tell now that this wood is dry, I mean SUPER dry. Maybe stack cutting may not work. I will see!

 Note: Even though it appears that I am wasting quite a bit of wood in between the ornaments, trust me, I am not. Intarsia is my passion and I will eventually use all small pieces in some project!

Toilet seat covers ? Tips and Tricks

11/11/2008

     Ever run out of tracing paper at the WRONG time right when you are ready to trace and transfer a pattern for intarsia or scroll work? You have no place to go at this hour? No local store open to purchase some? Well I bet ya have a local gas station! Yup, you read that right. Those tissue paper seat covers work great in a pinch.
No pun intended,
(but perhaps should be) LOL!!!
An old artist down in Laguna Beach turned me on to this "tip or trick." And yes I have actually tried it. I am not condoning thievery here by any means. But as a intarsist and scroller , being taken off the task for any period of time can sometimes take longer to get back on, (for me anyway.)
     So just a little "tip or trick" that perhaps will come in handy someday for you!
And please do not forget to honor all our veterans today, such a VERY important day.
PEACE!!!
Allison

Woodworker in the true sense of the word

11/08/2008

     Lumberjocks as you can see from my sidebar is and has been very important to me and instrumental in the just plain guts department. Giving me the spirit to keep posting there and of course right here. Sometimes I forget to perhaps share with you my readers just some of the truly remarkable woodworkers that are over there at Lumberjocks. Just now I read a post that you could say brought back memories of what I have personally found to be my "favorite" choice to look around. It just so happens to be in Southern Ca. 650 miles away from me, but just a hop skip and a quick freeway trip from my father's. It is called Austins Hardwoods and Hardware and I have already posted a post here. But this is not really what this post is about. It is a post about the exceptionally talented people over their at Lumberjocks. If you would I encourage you to check out  http://www.kolwoodworks.com/ for a real insight into some true woodworking. And you know me, Please if you stop by tell him Allison from Lumberjocks sent ya!

Take that stain right off of your hands, A Tip and Trick

     I subscribe to all sorts of magazines to do with wood working, from this Old House to Woodcraft, Handyman to Creative Wood works and Crafts. If I see a tip for something I know I want to try I will snip it out, write it down or mark it. The other day though, and I do mean just a couple days ago, I was reading something and I am not sure what it was, that is why I can not give credit (but I am leaning towards Handyman magazine.
     I did not clip it, nor mark it. The reason? It was about stain, something I rearely use. The reason it caught my eye was because it contained "girl" stuff! Like dishwashing liquid that is a degreaser such as Dawn. A product I am a faithful buyer of. The other was vegatable oil, another product in my home.
     This was the "tip or trick."
     To remove stain from your hands instead of mineral spirits etc, rub your hands in vegatable oil and then wash your hands with a dishwashing soap such as Dawn. Well I could not believe it that just today I was messing around with a stain, got some on my hands, remembered what I read, and put the tip to use. It worked!!!  That is all this post is about. To let you know it really works!!! I was really impressed.

A Tutorial---Alligator and Grasshopper wood puzzles

11/06/2008

 This tutorial has been on this site since August, however a dear girlfriend of mine asked me to place it here today. So if you have been here before you have seen this. This is a favor for a friend with the most simplistic of reasons and private. Thank You for understanding, Allison

This is the plate of my Scroll saw. What I am going to do for this project is I am going to cover it with a couple sheets of white paper and a playing card. I have a couple of  reasons for this. First is I don't want any small pieces I will be cutting to fall through. Which in actuality there is not small pieces per say, rather the little ends of the "puzzle pieces" . The tabs that I do not want to break.....

 

So this is now taped on the scroll saw table just for this project .

 

Now you can see where I placed a small hole to feed my  blade through.The reasoning behind the card and not just paper is, it is a waxed card and therefore a little more supportive. I will "hear"and or "feel" if I feed the wood to fast and hit the card. With these puzzles I will try to explain how important it is to have your blade square and your table level .

 

So I am now "leveling" my table. Besides the fact that this particular scroll saw has a tilting table and because of the wear and tear I have laid on this particular saw I have to make double sure that it is level and it is going to stay that way!

Then this is the way I square it. Believe it or not I use a real square all the time but the hubby has them all down in the basement he is working on. LOL!!

Anyway the blade for these puzzles has got to be square. Just picture making a puzzle without the table being level and square. If you are not cutting square then your puzzle pieces will not  go together (as in from the top and bottom) any slight miss-cut will keep them from going together. The same with it being level, if it is not level than you also will have problems getting the pieces to go back together. Believe it or not just the a hair of difference can make a HUGE impact on whether these pieces will fit together correctly. but I am cutting these out of 1 inch green  poplar because I have made both of these before a couple times and if the wood is thick enough than you don't need to hang them or place them on a mount of any sort, because they will stand on their own. I personally LOVE these patterns.They have wildlife , birds, domestic animals, and all sorts of other wood puzzle patterns, along with tons of patterns that ARE NOT puzzles.You can find them here.

Scroller LTD

Anyway

This is the beginning of my tutorial of cutting puzzles and here are the two I am making. An alligator and a grasshopper.

 

 As you can see I have placed packing tape on top of the wood first. Then I use spray adhesive to place the puzzle patterns on TOP of the packing tape. I used a 1/16 and a 1/8 drill bit for my starter holes. It may also look as if I am wasting a big piece of wood, but I am not, because I mainly do intarsia and with intarsia there is not a whole lot that of wood that will be wasted and I do make a lot of trees and such out of green poplar.Also to be able to hold on to a bigger chunk of wood is easier to cut when it comes to making these puzzles or (anything little for that matter) I don't quite understand this wood as it does not feel like a hard wood going through my bandsaw or scroll saw but it seems to burn quicker than any wood I have worked with so far. That is why the packaging  tape is a must do (in my opinion) for this type of wood.

A Tutorial Grasshopper and Alligator # 2 Tutorial

My next step has been taken and that is to cut out all the inside pieces with the starter holes. I have done many of these puzzles and normally I have cut them by simply cutting off a letter at a time. Besides the middle of the A's and R's and O's and P's a person does not even need to place a starter hole in the other places if you are to cut the letters out one at a time. In the letters L,L,I,G, if I were to have cut the letters OFF one at a time then these inside cuts can be done later.

There is a couple reasons I am not doing it that way on these. # 1 This is a piece of 1 inch poplar. Like I stated in the first of the series you have to be level AND squared so as the pieces will come apart properly. Doing it this way helps me keep better control of the wood. The last thing I want is to end up with one letter that needs some kind of sawing. Even my small hands are to big for that.

Now I remove the inside of the legs so that I can get to the actual pattern pieces.This way I will be able to then cut UP through the body and then over the "back" or top of the next letter and I then have a fully cut already done letter that "hopefully" fits!

And since I started this "blog" tutorial I can say happily that on my grasshopper , the R connected to the E piece and the E piece connected to the P, just fine!

WHEW!!!

I normally use a spiral saw blade to cut these puzzles out. Most people that I have spoke to that scroll do not like to use spiral blades. I learned how to use a spiral blade very early on before I read all the horror stories about them. I probably would have never tried even using one if I had read and continue to read the bad rap these blades get. I am not using a spiral blade on these puzzles for only one reason and that is because of the thickness of this wood. So this is new for me also . Thats why I said whew. I know that Betsy here at L.J.'s uses spiral blades as she recommended something to me about using one on a particular project, but I do not here about them much at all.

A Spiral blade is a blade with teeth all the way around instead of just on one side such as a band saw or jig saw blade. This makes it where you do not need to turn your wood around to do a cut . You are able to push the wood any way and it gets the job done. I love them. Just not for this project

PEACE!!!

A Tutorial Grasshopper and Alligator # 3

This is the way I have chosen to cut this out. First to go is the "O". Leaving me with with the long "H" which is like the back

Just a short tiny cut removes the 1st "P"

Now I only have the "H" left and the "G" and I can cut them any which way I want to.

In the next and last of this much too long series I will be bringing in "The Cheater"

#4 Grasshopper and Alligator tutorial.

This is the puzzle all cut out and put back together

Notice I did not even really try to cut my "G" and "H" perfect. You can see where there is some to be removed also between the "O" and "P". I would have rather cut this out better but I did not, nor did I notice it till now.

In comes "The Cheater" My term of endearment to one of my very favorite tools I own. My very old Delta 

1x 42 inch belt sander (with a 8 inch) disc sander on the side.

This also needs to be level and also squared.

 I am not sanding off anything that will keep this puzzle from fitting from one piece to the other, however I do want his back and feet to be squared.

Now he is back together and he is all cleaned up!

By the way all his pieces fit the way they were suppose to and I did not even use a spiral blade. So I learned something my self here.

I also want to point out I used a #7 reverse tooth and also a #9 reverse tooth blades.

To be exact the #s on their packages of blades are

#7 - .047 - .018 - 10(8rev)

#9 - .049 - .018 - 9(6rev) These are Olsen Blades that I get from the same place I got these patterns at

https://www.scrollerltd.com/

Now for the pattern removal. I did it the way I have said on LJ's before. I place the packaging tape on the wood first. Then I use spray adhesive on the pattern, wait 5 or 10 seconds for the spray adhesive to become tacky and then I place the pattern onto the packaging tape that is placed on the wood.

Poplar burns real easy and because of its light color I have always had trouble trying to "get the burn out" . I could not capture the picture I wanted to show you all, but I had actually burnt the paper on one of these pieces just with the scroll saw blade. Sooo if I had not had the packaging tape on it first that piece of wood would have been burnt instead of the paper that is on the tape. That would have been real bad considering there isn't a lot I could have done to fix a formed puzzle piece.

This is the best I could get on this, but I hope it sort of gives you an idea on how the tape just balls up and rolls the paper pattern off with it, by taking a heat gun and waving it over your project. Again don't get to close, you sure don't want to burn your now finished project.
Another thing I would like to share is you can use a blow dryer that a person uses on their hair if you do not have a heat gun. It really does work, but obviously not as fast and perhaps not quite as thorough.

I will say though this DID NOT work as well as usual. I am sure it is because of all the twisty cuts of the puzzle itself. I still would not change the way I did it unless perhaps transfer the pattern with a piece of carbon paper and then simply place the packaging tape. That may very well be the best way to do it as this did not come off anywhere near as easy as usual!
And again, the reason for the packing tape is to keep the blade cool. When the blade is kept cool it does not get all out of shape as quickly (especially on these puzzle pieces) and a cool blade has a much longer life.

Alligator and Grasshopper - Wooden Puzzles.The final outcome

11/05/2008

Honest to goodness I do not know what was harder, cutting these two puzzles or trying to get a decent picture of them. I do not know why I was having such a hard time getting a decent picture of them but I was. I prefer to use room light when I take pictures of my projects and almost always do, however believe it or not all the fires and all the smoke and all the real crappy  air we have here in these parts, (I live in northern Ca) damn near made a decent picture impossible. Well actually it did make it impossible . Sooo this is the best I could do.

 

So here they are , finished. At this moment I only have a coat of oil on them. It is kinda hard to put a spray or any other kind of clear coat on them , because obviously just the slightest bit of build up inside would keep them from fitting back together again. Also I might add, that I have no plan on actually having these be a toy/puzzle etc, however any children that may be visiting may not see it that way and you sure don't want to apply anything that would be harmful/poisonous on it just in case that were to happen. Honestly I could tell you a story about a Jeremiah who broke the camel's back!

"My grandson on my picture here."

 

And believe it or not this greener of the two is the true real color, Why I simply could not catch the color on the grasshopper I am not sure. But this piece of green poplar is REALLY green. It's the prettiest and greenest I have ever worked with thus far!

My Lumberjocks Link

Scrolled finishing tip

11/02/2008

Everyone of my scroll saw or intarsia projects always involves putting some sort of coat of finish on it. Lately the items I have been making I have opted for good ol' fashioned spray clear, shown below. For 2 reasons really, #1 being it's the only product I can purchase in my small town. LOL!!! and #2 I actually really like the finish this product gives.

 

However this post is not about the product but how to apply it. I found what works best for me. A lazy Susan. To those that may not know what a lazy Susan is, It is essentially a turning disc of some sort. For me I grew up with them at holiday times, and they have spaces for different foods. Some are used for chips with a dip in the middle. Some have no middle space. You can find these anywhere. I side for the good old thrift store. Find one and have fun tearing it apart. Place a piece of plywood on the guts, the turning (usually) metal disc. Secure.

Now instead of holding your done projects and trying to paint all around them , you can place them on your lazy Susan and turn the plywood top instead of the piece. This also really does offer a much more uniform coat of clear or paint. I tend to get a little heavy handed on those spray caps, and have had to start over with sanding. Something I have not found to be a problem since using my lazy Susan. I did however change her name from Susan, but THAT'S my secret!

Another great tip is cover the plywood with either saran wrap (which I don't do but I know those that swear by it) or my preference, wax paper. Everything can be peeled of wax paper!