Sawdust on the Floor

I guess I shouldn’t really be complaining I have a great woodworking shop.  Well it could be a bit bigger, and there are a few tools I would like to add.  But I would be willing to bet that every one reading this has the same sentiments about their shop.  But being honest, the one thing my shop really lacks, and that is a separate area for finishing.  When I have a project that is in the process of having the finish applied, all other work in shop comes to a complete stop. I have found the hard way that wet finish and sawdust do not mix. And this is where I stand. The bathroom vanity has gotten a good coat of stain, and in fact the first coat of polyurethane has been applied. So until I am able to get all of the finish top coats applied to the vanity, I can’t make any more sawdust.  My only option left is to start planning the next stage of this upgrade. 

The next logical part of this project is for me to build and finish the wall mounted mirror that will reside over the vanity.  The article in the “This Old House” magazine that we are using for inspiration had an “Arts and Craft” Mirror that we really liked, so that is what I am striving to duplicate. Building the mirror really shouldn’t be that big of a task, it’s not an overly complicated design piece.  However; the trick will be to marry the vanity and mirror with the rest of our existing bathroom layout so we have a cohesive look.

The dimensions of the bathroom mirror pretty much are dictated by the space we have to work within.  Like the vanity in the original pictures from the “This Old House magazine”, our vanity will be installed into an inside corner.  The one in the article has a right hand corner; ours will reside in a left hand inside corner.  The wall behind the vanity extends another 57″ to the right; along this wall you will find a small window and end of our bathtub. 

The distance from this inside corner to the window measures only 33 ½” horizontally, not a lot of room to work with.  After some discussion we decided that we wanted a couple of things to occur in this small space.  First we want the mirror to be centered in this horizontal space; we also wanted the mirror to be flanked by two sconces.   Doing a little measuring of sconces we already have in the house and some on line shopping at Bathroom lighting  we have shopped with before.  We came up the following for a layout.  The mirror will measure 20” wide by 40” tall. This will leave 6 ¾” of space on each side of the mirror.  I hope my math is right on this, otherwise I will have a lot more work to do.

Taking our cue of the TOH article we want to include the same horizontal band shown in the concept picture in our bathroom.  We plan to install the band so that the top edge of it aligns with the top edge of the existing window trim.  As in the concept picture the mirror will extend down from this horizontal band.  The sketch at the left is what we are planning on doing.  The existing window is cased in some cove molding that I made in the shop.  We originally we wanted to keep, the cove molding, but now we are leaning more toward removing it and replacing it with flat casing.   As much as I like the cove molding, I just think it will look wrong next to the flat trim of the mirror.

Taking a closer look at the concept picture, it looks to me like the mirror is actually a door for a medicine cabinet.  Building the mirror as part of a medicine cabinet would be fun, but have done some prior work on this wall; I know that there is a vent pipe running vertically directly behind the center line of the vanity. So it looks like I don’t get to build another medicine cabinet. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t make the mirror appear as if it were part of a medicine cabinet.

I plan to make the mirror out of 4/4 red oak stock.  The mirror itself will come from an old plate glass mirror that the builder installed in our house, some 32 years ago.  I don’t know about you, but I just hate to throw things like that away, so it has been in my shop all that time, just collecting dust. It will have to be cut down to fit the new dimensions of the new mirror, but I think I will wait to do that until the mirror is done, just in case I goof on the math.   

You know I was just thinking, since the vanity already has a seal coat of polyurethane on it on it, I could probably just cover it up, move it out of the way and get busy working on the mirror.  Then I could apply the remaining finish coats to both the mirror and vanity at the same time.  Wished I would have thought of that sooner. But then I was anxious, Ok maybe the right word was apprehensive about how the green stain would actually look so I wouldn’t have wanted to wait on applying the stain.    Reading this I know understand why my wife says I sometimes drive her crazy. Oh well, I think I will go make sure that the vanity is dry so I can move it and get to work.  See Ya.

I have delayed, procrastinated and even pontificated about staining the new bathroom vanity its green/gray color for about as long as humanly possible, so having no other plausible excuses today I went back into the shop and got busy working on it.  With other projects I have built, I have always looked forward to the finish portion of the project.  That’s wasn’t the case this time.  If you’re wondering why the different attitude, please allow me to explain.  I have built numerous woodworking projects over the past 30 plus years.  Most of these projects were finished with traditional colored oil based stains, such as oak, cherry, pine colors. A smaller proportion of the projects were designed and built as painted projects, and for the most part these turned out OK.  As a woodworker I have some angst against painting wood, but that is another story for another time. But this project is the first one that I stained to a color.  And the truth is that the idea somewhat freaked me out. 

Over the past couple of weeks I have been building a new vanity for our bathroom rework.  We (actually my wife) found a design in an This Old House magazine article that we both agreed would look great in our upstairs bathroom.  In the article the color of the vanity, wall mounted mirror and the accompanying trim all were stained a Green/Gray color.  This color has been the subject of a lot of discussion in our home. Not the actual color, we both liked it, but how to get our vanity to look the same as that in the picture was the issue. We have gone through several different options regarding which method to use and have finally found the one that we figured would work. 

During an earlier post I indicated that we had settled on an exterior deck stain for the vanity. However, that stain contained a fungicide. The expert at the paint store recommended against using it for an interior project. His concern was that the fungicide would cause unpleasant odors, or worse create a health issue for anyone with a sensitivities.  Even though this stain was the best color match, we decided to heed his advice and went looking for  other options. That option took the form of a water based custom tinted stain from one of the DIY super stores. 

This is the point that my hesitation begins.  This stain was a somewhat new formulation for me.  To begin with it is a water based product,  I normally use oil based stains.  The second change was the color, “Green” or ” Athena”, the name the manufacturer assigned to it.  My limited exposure to water based products hasn’t been overwhelmingly positive. I have used water based polyurethanes in the past, and found that the product tended to cause the grain in the wood to raise more so then oil based products. Which would lead to more sanding between finish coats, something I really don’t want to do more of.  And even though Kermit the Frog from Sesame Street claims that Green is beautiful, I wasn’t sure that green, would be that beautiful on our vanity. 

Despite all of the apprehension, I began applying the stain today.  First thing I noted was how quickly it dried on the surface of the wood.  With an oil based stain, I normally would apply the stain to the surface, let it sit for several minutes then wipe off any excess stain that had not soaked into the wood.  This water based stain, which actually went on the wood looking much like paint, soaked into the surface very quickly. In fact when I went to wipe off the excess, I found very little setting stain sitting on the surface.  To be honest I soon found out that wiping the stain really wasn’t necessary.  When I let the stain dry, without me fussing with it, it dried to a semi transparent finish.  Which was ideal, because we wanted the grain of the red oak to show through the finish, yet have an overall greenish tint.  If we hadn’t been looking for the grain to show, we would have simply painted the entire vanity.   In the sprite of total honesty, the areas where I  had wiped off the stain I had to go back over the area and touch it up later. 

After letting the vanity sit untouched for several hours the finish settled out and is exactly what we were looking for. Well somewhat, looking at the attached picture of the vanity stained, I see spots that may need a little more attention. But just in case its still not 100% dry, I think I will let the entire project dry another 24 hours before I do anything.  But I think we are getting there, or at least I hope so. 

This entire project has been a learning experience for me, from adding the bead detail to the doors, drawer faces and side panel, to the new hardware for the drawers and door hinges  and finally the “Green” tinted stain. But I am not complaining, that’s one of the better part of woodworking, learning new things.  Having the mirror and the rest of the trim yet to make, plus the tile work on the walls and around the bathtub, makes me wonder what else is in store for me on this project.  I’m sure it will be interesting.

According to some of the recent articles I have been reading on designing and building of woodworking projects, my way of woodworking is all wrong. According to those articles when it comes to designing, I break all of the rules that lead to good design.  Most of the renowned designers use the concept of making a complete set of drawings, followed by a mock up of the project before they ever venture into the work shop.  Once in the shop they follow the drawings and mockup faithfully, never deviating from the plan. 

My method is a little less refined, ok make that a lot less defined.  I make a sketch with the pertinent dimensions defined, and work from that.  I feel that you need to be able to adjust your project as it develops. Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. 

If you’ve been following along, you know that I have been working on the new vanity for our anticipated bathroom overhaul.  As part of the searching for the perfect green tinted wood stain for the proposed vanity and its accompanying wood trim, my wife and I visited one of the local woodworking shops.  While there we not only found some stain that may or may not work, we also found cabinet hardware that should’ve looked absolutely perfect on the vanity. The hardware which we choose is gloss black, which would be a provide contrast to the green stained wood.  Well the simply designed drawer pulls looked okay when I installed them. Wish I could say the same for the door pulls, but after I installed them, they just looked off.  I don’t know a better way to describe it but the pizzazz they had in the store just disappeared on the vanity doors.  Or as my wife said, “They’re just there. Nothing special”.  So we went looking for new door pulls, again.     

Taking this second look at the door pulls gave us another opportunity to exam our design choices. The drawers and the drawer faces looked great, but we felt that there were still issues with the doors, beyond replacing the pulls.  The original plan called for full wrap around hinges, with balled finials on the ends.  These are the same type hinges we used in our kitchen cabinets.  They looked great in the kitchen; here they looked out of proportion. After spending an couple of hours pouring over the hardware catalogs and knob web sites, we decides to abandon the wrap around hinges  entirely and try a totally different approach, concealed Blum hinges. 

I have used Blum style hinges before, but that was always on frame-less cabinets with full over lay doors. The vanity is built with conventional rail and style face frames, and the doors were designed as inset doors. Common sense told me that the conventional Blum hinges wouldn’t work on my application.  I have been able to purchase Blum style hinges at the local DIY centers in the past, no such luck this time.   So another trip to the Woodworking store was in order.  There I found Blum hinges that met my criteria.

I spent this morning putting the new hinges on the vanity, and to my wife and me they look fantastic. This change from the wrap around hinges to the concealed hinges however required another change.  With the original design, the doors were had a center astragal, which is typical on double doors.  But we felt that the astragal looked wrong for the concealed hinge application. Removing it left a 1/2” vertical gap between the doors.  Remembering the fun I had working with the bead detail on the doors, there was no way I wanted to rebuild the doors.  So another solution had to be found.   A simple fix would have been to just install a 1/4″ strip to both sides of the opening, but I knew I couldn’t hide the joint.  Then it hit me, make the patch decorative. So instead of the plain 1/4″ vertical patch, I decided to apply a bead to the patch.  Since my shaper was still set up with the beading bit, cutting another bead was painless.  For safety reasons, I didn’t try cutting the bead on a 1/4″ piece; instead I used a piece that was roughly an inch wide.  The bead detail was cut into two edges, and then the stock was ripped to the final 1/4″ width.  The patches were attached with glue and a couple of small nails from my nail gun.

 The attached photo shows the vanity with the new style hinges and hardware installed.  We still haven’t found the ideal door pulls, so for now I installed the original ones.  I still have some sanding to do before I apply the green tinted stain.  But before I do that, I think I will experiment some more on scrap stock, to be sure the color is right. 

While the changes that were made on the vanity were not significant, they were in fact changes.  Something the design experts tend to frown on.  I truly believe that being able to look at your work with an honest eye and appraise it, is as much of a skill as being able to cut a good Mortise and Tenon joint.  If something looks wrong then change it.  The idea of making something exactly from a drawing wouldn’t be woodworking to me.  It would be wood manufacturing, something I have no desire to ever do. 

Well, it’s time to get back to the shop and do the final sanding on the vanity.  Once I’m sure on the stain, I will begin the finish process, which could get interesting.  I have never worked with tinted stains before.  Once the vanity is done, I think I will begin work on the mirror that will be installed above the vanity.  The original plains are quite simple, but …… you never know what changes we will make as I work on it.

Like a lot of woodworkers, I am always looking for sources for information on one of my favorite subject, Woodworking.  One of those sources of that information is the multitude of woodworking magazines that are published each month.  I don’t subscribe to any of these magazines on monthly basis but instead I tend to purchase the ones that contain articles that are of interest to me.  Just like most things in life, some of these magazines are better then others.  Out of all those published, “Fine Woodworking” has always been on somewhat of a pedestal for me.  The articles in the magazine are normally chocked full of useful information.  Articles that help woodworkers improve their skills as woodworkers.   Articles that inspire woodworkers.   That’s why I was very surprised by an article in the December 2009 issue on” How to Handle Plywood”, by Gregory Paolini. 

I don’t know exactly what I was expecting out of the article, perhaps information on how to safely cut full sheets of plywood in a one man or woman shop.  Or maybe something on how to finish plywood so that it doesn’t end up looking like… well plywood with stain on it.  Instead the article had gems such as “you will need a truck to get full size sheets of plywood home from the store” Or “slide the sheets off of the racks at the store onto sheet rock carts”.  To me this is not information, these things are common sense. The article did contain useful information on using a cross cut sled for cutting plywood on the tablesaw, or using a router and straight edge to produce a clean cut on plywood that has been rough cut with a circular saw. 

Now I don’t blame Mr. Paolini, his article had to meet the requirements of the editorial staff at the magazine.  After all they, not the author set the tone of the articles.  Hopefully, this is not the direction that the magazine is headed. Looking at Mr. Paolini’s other articles and his workmanship I acknowledge that he is a skilled and informed craftsman so the tenure of the article surprised me. 

You know I have been thinking about the article, I do know what I was hoping to see in the article.  There are a couple of newer products on the market such as the EZee-Feed system that helps the one man shops to cut plywood in an accurate and safe manner.  Or the Gorilla Gripper  that is used for hauling plywood from your truck to your shop.  To me those are products that help in handling plywood.

There are basically two style of routers, fixed base and plunge routers. As the name implies with a fixed base router the depth of the router bit is set and remains at that position.  Conversely, with a plunge router, you position the router over the work, and with the router spinning plunge the bit into the work.  Plunge routers are the ideal tool for making cuts such as blind dado’s. Regardless the size of your plunge router, the concept is the same.  But the question that needs to be asked is, Are you using the correct bit for plunge work? 

When most of us think of a plunge router bit, we naturally think of the straight router bit, but the truth is that plunge bits come in many different designs. The Classic Fluted Plunge Router Bit from Rockler is a great example of that concept.

What makes this a true plunge bit is the fact that the cutting edge of the bit extends beyond the face of the bit. 

Take a look at the normal straight bit shown here at the left.  This bit has two flat edges that do the cutting, while some straight bits will have two points. Flats or points, the issue is the same.  These are the leading edges of the cutter.  When you plunge this bit into wood, it will cut only to depth of the leading edge cutters, after that it stalls. 

Not all straight bits make poor plunge bits.  Take a look at the CMT Bit from Woodcraft. Notice that here the cutter edge extends all the way across the face of the bit instead of just on the edge of the bit.  The center part of the bit is ground to  form a ridge.  While this ridge is not particularly sharp, it will remove wood very effectively when used as plunge router bit. 

The CMT Bit will work just as will as a conventional straight bit when used in a non plunge application.  While they may cost a little more, it seems to me that a bit that can do  double duty might be worth the extra costs.