roblindholm.com

Alright, alright… I know. I said a lot of things were going to happen. Some of them have, and I just failed miserably at letting you people know, and some of them, unfortunately, haven’t happened yet. But I’m working on it, so be patient with me. I’ve gotta get some stuff finished, some stuff photographed, some stuff programmed, and some stuff designed, but rest assured, it’s all in the works and you’ll be the first to know as things come off the finishing table. In the meantime, here’s a little tease of the Black Walnut and Zebrawood table I just completed… still needs a little final sanding and a finish applied, but otherwise the piece is complete… more photos to follow.

So the final piece for the fellas (which I am apparently now included in that classification, at least part-time) over at Hammerhead Bikes is finished. I know that sentence made little to no sense, but screw you, it’s Saturday. Point being, the short deadline, shorter budget project is wrapped, and I can finally get back to the projects at hand. I have been working on getting the backend of the Revolution Woodworks site finished, and plan to move my “process blog” over to there, shine it up and make it slightly more professional. Not entirely sure what the end product is gonna be, but in one fashion or another, it’s happening. Which will either result in this site returning to the glory days of randomness and bike related failure, or alternatively it will simply become a blind portal to the Revolution site… not sure yet.

Also, anyone know anyone who wants to buy a wood lathe? Let me know if ya do…

Other changes in my life include (finally) evicting the birds that built a nest in the light fixture outside my office door, so that I can now enter and exit the shop without fear of poop-age, and the addition of Lone Star to Primizie’s beer list (yessssssss……..). That is all, good day to you.

If anyone ever tells you it’s a good idea to cut dovetails in plywood, that it’ll be easy, people do it all the time, no problem… punch that person in the face. They are a liar. Sleep was lost, meals were skipped, patience was tested… but the front counter is finished, and it turned out pretty damn good, all things considered. For an extremely budget friendly piece, I think the guys will be very happy with this piece up front to greet their customers. I’ll get some kind of progress picture gallery set up soon to see the progress of things, but for now, here’s the final piece. Not too shabby for something made entirely of plywood.



And a detail of the dovetails.



One final piece to complete for these guys, then it’s back to the good stuff. Stay tuned…

I’ve been hammering away on this job, trying to get things wrapped up, so sorry for the delay in new content. I thought the job was just about wrapped up, but turns out the guys want one more piece, so here we go again. So of the new total of 5, 3 pieces are finished, done, out the door and delivered already… the main piece, the entry counter is well under way, and I hope to have it delivered by weeks end. The final piece will be about a week behind that… so THEN I’ll start back on the projects than I am sure you are just dying to see. Right? Right…

So here’s a few shots of the workbenches I build for the guys… very utilitarian stuff, but it serves their needs. All the base joinery is mitered half-lap joints, glued and finish nailed. The tops are a double lamination of 3/4 plywood, so they are beefy and hell for stout, perfect work counter, and wrapped with a solid wood edging to protect the plywood edges. The benches aren’t quite finished in these shots, but you get the idea…





Now I am trying to get the front counter wrapped up… the side pieces are dovetailed to the top, and are quite long. I struggled a while trying to figure out the best way to cut the dovetails, and finally came up with this solution. Probably not OSHA approved methodology, but it worked…

Making steady progress on the small job currently in the shop. If everything continues to go to plan, I’ll have the 3 minor pieces finished by Monday or Tuesday, and then I can start the final piece and get it all out the door by the mid-March deadline… hopefully sooner. Once that happens, we’ll get back to the hall table and desk projects (I promise)… I’m excited to see those two pieces come together. I’ll be in some this weekend to try to get a little further along on this… for now, I’m just wishing I would finish my outfeed table, so I can finish my crosscut sled, so I can cut dados in a way that doesn’t cause me to lose the use of my thumbs for the next 4 days… check back for progress on Monday… hopefully I will have some stuff wrapped up.

This. This is why we don’t buy the cheap bags for the dust collector. If you’ve never seen a geyser made of wood chips and chaos (and why would you…), let me assure you it can be a disconcerting thing. After I recovered from my initial assumption that a giant swarm of bees had somehow gotten into the shop, I realized that in actuality the dust collector had blown a hole in the bag, and was spraying sawdust everywhere. Guess I’ll be cleaning my shop for the rest of the day. Awesome. Here’s the shop, quite literally, after the dust settled…

So….. yeah. Looks like the hall table is on hold for a bit longer. I picked up another small job with a REALLY short deadline, so all my energy is gonna have to go into that for now… good news is the short deadline will force me to get it done and out of the shop, and back onto other projects. Of course, I will be issuing myself an extension on the mid-March deadline for the desk and hall table… let’s say if they aren’t wrapped by mid-April, no birthday cake for me. That sounds fair. Anyway, the new job is rough milled and stickered as of 15 minutes ago… I’ll give these components until at least mid-week before taking them down to final sizing. In the mean time, I will work on some other elements of the project. While mostly utility type pieces, I was able to talk the clients into doing one piece with a little more visual interest. I’ll attempt to keep ya posted…

Was out of the shop at the end of last week, and have had my hands full trying to get a proposal put together on another job. Hope to get back to work on the hall table soon, I’ll let ya know when I get back to it… hopefully later this week. Stay tuned…

Well… partly because I was being a little overly ambitious to start with, and partly because we had some kind of biblical storm front immediately followed by a dry front last night, the components for the table are not ready to milled to final thickness. Realistically, they need to just chill for about a week, which works out well cause I will be out of the shop for the rest of the week. So, for now the table is on hold.



So instead I spent the morning working on a few other things. The first is a small concept piece that I finished up. This is a prototype box I built for KB to use as a temporary jewelry box until the planets align and I can build her the real one. Idea being that after I rough out the pieces for a furniture project, I have a lot of small random scrap pieces. This is one of several designs I have come up with to make use of these small cutoffs and leftovers. More to come in the future…

Here’s the box closed…



and open…



The box is a solid piece of cherry, and the dovetailed lid is zebrawood. Another reason I used these specific woods, is to see how they interact visually, as they are the woods I am using on another project that I am (finally) getting back around to. I started this desk back in late October, and unfortunately it got put on the back burner during the holidays. I will be working on this project along with the hall table, and hope to complete both projects by the first or second week of March. The desk is cherry, and I plan to do a solid zebrawood top. Some of the assemblies have been glued up in these pictures, and the rest is just loosely dry fitted. The ‘box’ component on the end will have a panel in the front, and a drawer and door in the back. Here’s a quick walk around the piece…









I’ll be out of the shop for the rest of the day, and week, so look for an update on Sunday or Monday…

When I got to the shop this morning, I took a second to marvel at exactly how much sawdust there must be floating around in the air while I am milling lumber. While aware of this, and it’s the very reason I purchased my air filtration system, it’s still pretty amazing to see how much crap it sucks out of the air (and prevents it from living in my lungs…). Point being, wow. (That’s a new filter on the left, just for good comparison… and mind you, that accumulation is from less than a week…)



So after mulling the purchase of a powered respirator, I got to work on the table. Ideally, I would have done this work yesterday, when I milled everything to rough length and width, but I ran out of time and steam. So, today is a short day for the table, as all I can really do is now mill everything to rough thickness as well, and re-sticker it and wait. I started by grouping the components by their finished thickness, so as to make sure I milled everything to the same thickness. Next, I established one flat face on the jointer, and using that as a reference, resawed everything on the bandsaw to it’s rough thickness.



Now all the table components are milled to their rough length, width and thickness, and have been re-stickered to allow any movement to take place in the wood prior to milling everything down to final thickness. In case anyone was wondering what Ambrosia Maple is, here ya go. This is going to make up the three drawer fronts of the table. Should look sharp.



Now we wait… I’ll check the stack tomorrow, and if things look good, I’ll be able to keep moving, but might have to give it another day or two before I start taking things down to final size…