Sawdust on the Floor

A while back we posted an article about a set of floating shelves for our living room. In the article entitled Floating Shelves I talked about building a set of floating shelves out of mahogany after the store bought ones were a total disappointment. In the end of that article we admitted that we, well how should I put this, we goofed.

When the construction side of the shelves was complete we attempted to finish them using an oil based mahogany stain. This was a mistake on two fronts. First the stain was from a brand that we no longer use, because that particular brand tends to get cloudy when it dries. And the second mistake is that we tried to use stain on mahogany. After the stain had dried, all of the beauty of the mahogany was lost, I could have painted the finish on and gotten just as good of a result.

So we attempted to sand the stain back off the shelves. and on the flat portions of the shelves, that seemed to work, some what. But where I had used a router bit to create the flouted edges, the stain didn’t want to come out. Even after I made another pass over the decorative edge with the same router bit, stain residue remained. When I figured that I had all that was going out come off the project, I cleaned the entire project with Naphtha and attempted to apply a finish using a combination of Linseed Oil and Tung Oil. The outcome, well let’s just say that I felt that I had just wasted several hours of work trying to clear the surface of the oil stain.

The finish reminded me of when you try to apply stain to an open grained wood like pine. I think blotchy would be the best description. So, now I had a real problem, the store bought shelves were a disgrace, and the ones I had built and finished looked really bad. There was only one real option left. I had to build another set.

Because I really liked the design of the first set of shelves, I simply made another set. Thankfully, I had purchased enough lumber to make two complete sets. Maybe it was divine province or just luck, who knows. Once again I started out by dressing all of the lumber, first with the jointer to ensure that two edges were completely perpendicular to each other and then through the surface planer to make it all the same size.

Then the stock was ripped down to the same 2″ widths as the first set were. Then I ran the stock over a fluting bit installed in my shaper. Once again I used two sets of hold downs to keep the stock tight against the fluting knives and the bottom of the stock in constant contact with the shaper table. I did make one slight change on this set, I made the flutes a little more pronounced by taking a deeper cut then on the original set. To prevent chip out, I made the deeper cut in tow separate passes, adjusting the fence after the first pass.

The next step was to return the stock to tablesaw to cut a 1/4″ x 1/4″ dado in the inside edge of the stock to accept the 1/4″ Oak plywood that made up the shelf itself. The fluted edges were to be on the front and side only, the rear is a straight piece of mahogany, ripped to 2″ width. The 1/4 x1/4″ dado was cut into rear board of each shelve.

A quick trip to the miter saw gave me the 45°mitered cuts that formed the front and sides of the shelves. Just like in the first set of shelves, I cut a 3/4″ rabbit along the rear edge of each shelve to accept the rear board. Then a little glue, a little persuasion to make the joints line up, and the second set of floating shelves were done. Again, to keep the mitered corners aligned while the glue set, I used several spring clamps . These things work much better than other clamp in my shop for mitered corners.

Now since I learned from my first attempt at finishing these shelves, I used a combination of tung oil and linseed oil mixed at a 50/50 ratio. The oil was brushed on with a disposable brush, allowed to soak in and the then excess was wiped off. One of the other things I did different this time was to use the painters pyramids that allowed me to apply finish to both the top and bottom at the time.

After letting the oils dry for several days, the surface was lightly sanded with 320 grit sand paper then finished off with a couple coats of spray on polyurethane. The first coat was done with a high gloss poly, while the second and third coats were done with a satin finish. I prefer this method, as I feel that the Gloss finish provides a harder top coat than the satin.

So today, I finally was able to take down those UGLY store bought shelves and replace them with the ones shown here. If you’re curious about why I didn’t take down the Ugly ones before this, the reason is simple. I didn’t want to have to patch the screw holes I had made installing them in the first place. The new shelves were installed in the same locations, so I was able to cover over the holes.

 Lessons learned: Be very careful applying stain to Mahogany, don’t try to get by purchasing cheap shelving even if it is on sale. I don’t want to even begin to think of what the sale cost me.

Having made the decision to rework the table on my Delta Unisaw, I had two what should have easy, tasks in front of me. My idea was to rebuild the existing top that was starting to delaminate, to include components of the Kreg Klamp Table. So the first step was to order the desired components from one of the larger woodworking stores. Ordering the components actually created a nice surprise, one of the pieces I wanted as actually on sale, Hooray!! If luck holds out for me these parts should arrive sometime this week end.

 While I waited for the parts to arrive, I went to work on building a new table top. The original top was simply a piece of ¾” particle board with a thin laminate on the top and sides. Since this combination had already failed, I knew that I wanted to use something different for my new table top. The question then became what type of materials to use.

The local big DIY stores offered several options. The first was the same old thing, particle board and laminate. I don’t have a problem with the laminate; it’s the particle board that I didn’t want to use. My table top is 48” long, and 27” wide. A single piece of particle board this size just doesn’t have a lot of structural stability. Particle board doesn’t really stand up well to any type of liquid, which I try to keep off my tablesaw, but sometimes the top is used for finishing and stuff gets spilled. So the particle board was out.

The next option offered, was to use a piece of MDF, and cover it with laminate. MDF doesn’t have the same stability issues that particle board has, but man it is really heavy.
Ok, I know that I had concerns about the Kreg Table not being heavy enough. But hear me out here, please. In my design of the new table top, I planned to install a section of Kreg track. This track is 2 ¼”wide, by ¾” tall, each section is 34“ long. I wanted this track to be recessed below the surface of the table top, because if it protruded above the top, it would be in the way when I used the Unisaw to cut wood. My plan was to completely remove the wood in the area that the track was to be installed in. That meant that I would have to install a second layer of MDF or what ever I used on the bottom of the top piece. Other wise I would not have any thing to bolt the track down to.

Remember, that we are laying the MDF/particle board horizontally. It is supported only on the far end, away from the actual Unisaw by a couple of legs. Along both the front and rear edge of the table there are metal support beams. The edges of the table top are bolted into these support beams. With the MDF, I was convinced that this second piece would add so much weight that it would be really hard to install the top and keep level with out a lot of additional support. I could have added more legs under the table, but I really wanted to keep the area under the table as open as possible. This is really valuable storage space. So the MDF was out.

The next consideration was to use sheets of melamine. One of the stores had sheets pre mounted in 4’ by 8’ sheets. I have no experience working with melamine, so I went on line to see what kind of problems I might encounter. The first thing I found out was that there was no consensus on how to cut sheets of melamine without chipping the surface of the melamine. Several articles that I read suggested the use of special saw blades, made by Festool. I don’t currently own any Festools, so I can’t make any comments on the quality of them. But I do know that they don’t sell any thing at bargain prices.  And since I didn’t plan on cutting a lot of  Melamine, I really couldn’t justify the prices that Festool wanted for the blades. The second problem goes back to adding the second layer of material. I couldn’t find any good information on gluing two sheets of melamine together, and the final issue with the melamine sheets was the stiffness of the sheets, or should I say the lack of stiffness.

To recap, I had considered and passed on particle board, MDF and sheets of melamine for a number of reasons. That didn’t leave me a lot of options. I looked into purchasing a new table from Delta, but that presented two problems, the cost and the fact that it was made of particle board. No way was I going to go that way again. So what was left? I settled on using a sheet of good old ¾” plywood that I planned to cover with Formica. One of the reasons that I bypassed this option in the beginning was the costs, I only needed a small piece of the Formica, but I could only find it in full size 4’X8’ sheets. I couldn’t think of any future project that I could use the Formica on, but this was the only option that made sense. As for the plywood, that really never goes to waste in my shop.  So I purchased a full size sheet of both the Formica and the ¾ plywood and returned to my shop.

Because all of the other parts I wanted have not yet arrived I think it would be prudent to wait to actually start cutting wood. I don’t want to ruin the top before I even start to work on it.