Sawdust on the Floor

Hey, I wanted to give you an update on the bathroom vanity and mirror project, that I have been working on.  Well, all I can say is that it’s in process.  I have completed the mirror and have the first and second coats of the “greenish” stain applied.  I got that done over this past week end. And now I’m in a holding pattern, you see the next step is get a coat of polyurethane on the mirror.  But in order for that to happen “Mother Nature” has to be kind to me.  Something she hasn’t been for several weeks. The southern parts of New Jersey, where we happen to live,  has been inundated with either massive amounts of either snow or rain, each and every week end for the past couple of months.

The huge amounts of snow have kept me from getting into the shop to work, and the rain brought with it high levels of humidity. High levels of humidity and finish coats of polyurethane are not compatible with each other.  The ideal humidity for the application of most brands of polyurethane  is around 70%.  When the humidity levels are much higher than that the drying time for the polyurethane increases dramatically.  At times the polyurethane may never truly dry.

That happened back to when we were building our kitchen cabinets.  If you were not following our post back then, these kitchen cabinets took me over a year to complete and install. So it was only logical that some of the finish work was done during the summer months.  At one point I had a set of cabinets done, and the stain coats applied, all that remained was to apply the polyurethane top coat. Maybe because I was tired, or maybe I was just tired of these cabinets, but even though I knew better, I went ahead and applied the polyurethane.  The only problem was that the relative humidity that weekend was near 95%.

I applied that poly the same way as I had every other cabinet for this  project, nothing different.  The following weekend I returned to the shop, to do a fine sanding and then apply a second coat of poly, only to find a very ugly surprise. The Poly wasn’t dry.  Well it appeared to be dry to the touch, but when I went to sand it, it just rolled off the surface of the cabinets in tiny balls.  What a mess.   My only recourse was to totally sand the entire cabinet back to bare wood and start the entire finish over again.  So with that memory, and humidity levels over 70% RH for the remainder of that week and most of the week end, the application of poly had to wait. 

Since the incident with the kitchen cabinet, I have added an air conditioner and a dehumidifier to my shop, so I can work through these types of problems.  But since it is still winter here in New Jersey, using either the dehumidifier or the AC are not options. So that portion of this project is in a holding pattern. I know spring is just around the corner, hope it gets here soon so I can get back to work on the vanity and mirror.

Speaking of the mirror, I did make one more change to the design.  In the last post I talked about adding a bead detail to the inside edge of the mirror.  This bead was added to add to the visual appeal of the mirror.  After sanding the entire mirror, I took one more unbiased look at the mirror. And it still looked too plain. So I decided to add a top and bottom trim piece to the outside of the mirror.

I used the same beading bit that I had used on the trim above, and for the doors on the vanity to put a bead along one edge of a piece of 3/4″ stock.  After I had the bead detail on the wood, I milled it down to just over 5/16″ thick.  I was concerned that if I had milled the stock down first to the 5/16″ thickness, and then attempted to apply the bead detail, that the wood would split as I ran it past the beading bit. Yeah I know that I wasted a little wood, but I rather do that, then take a chance on having a piece of wood shatter or break up as I moved it past a spinning router/shaper bit.

The top and bottom trim was then cut to a width of 1 1/8″ wide.  This just happens to be the amount the top of the bead detail on the inside edge of the mirror will stand out from the wall.  To make the trim look more complete, I mitered the ends of the trim, and glued small returns at the end of the trim.  A small detail, but I think it adds to the visual aspect of the mirror.

So if you know of any good chants or prayers that will convince Mother Nature to give me a break, and stop all of this snow and rain, I love to hear about them.  Otherwise, I’m on a hold.

As a woodworker, it’s been a very frustrating couple of weeks.  First I’ve been away from home and my shop on business, so I couldn’t get into the shop.  Then when I did get home, Mother Nature decided that New Jersey didn’t already have enough snow, so she dumped over 40 plus inches of additional snow in our yard.  Then just because she could Mother Nature added a lot of wind, which resulted in 6’ drifts between our home and the shop. Now I love woodworking, but I’m not about to dig through 6′ of snow just to work in the shop, besides after digging out the front of the house, my energy was already spent. But over this past week end, I was able to get back into the shop and do what every woodworker whats to do, make sawdust.

During my exile from the shop, I had made tentative plans for the bathroom mirror.  I say tentative because while the design remains the same, the actual dimensions of the mirror have changed.  Ok in the sprite of truth in blogging, the design also changed, but more on that later. The original plans for the mirror called for it to be flanked by a set of wall mounted sconces. But after re thinking the idea we elected to forgo the sconces, and make the mirror a little wider. There were actually two reasons that we changed the design. The first is that I really couldn’t guarantee that there was room behind the sheetrock for a electrical box we would need to install, and the second is the proportions of the original mirror looked really wrong. All that  being said its time to cut some wood.

The Mirror is made from more of the same red oak that the vanity is made of.  I had purchased this lumber rough, that is the top and bottom were somewhat smooth, and the edges totally rough. The stock I started with was just over a 1”thick and 9” wide.  I rough cut a length of this stock to a little over 40” long. The first step was to take stock to the jointer and clean up one edge.  This was followed by a trip to the table saw, where the stock was ripped into three 2 1/2” wide pieces. After ripping the stock, I took it back to the jointer where I redressed an edge and an adjacent surface.  This process gave each piece a true 90º angle between an one edge and one surface.

The final step was to take all three pieces of stock to the surface plainer where the remaining two edges were dressed, so that I ended up with three pieces of stock that were exactly  ¾” thick.   To be sure that I didn’t plain the wrong surfaces, I placed a large “X” on the surface that had been dressed on the jointer.  As long as the surface with a “X” were always down and away from the plainer knives, I was OK. This was followed by a trip back to the table saw to rip the three pieces to a final width of 2 3/8″

From here I went to the Miter saw where I cut the stock so that I ended up with two stiles that were 36 3/8” long and two rails that were 19 1/4” long.  Two Pocket screw holes were then drilled into both ends of both rails. To join the rails and stiles together, I took all of the pieces to my modified tablesaw extension that I had equipped with my own version of the Kreg Assembly table. The table and the Kreg Klamps enabled me to secure the pieces while I installed the pocket screws.  The table also allowed me to ensure that the four corners were clamped at a perfect 90º angle.  I left the mirror frame in the clamps while the glue cured.

After removing the mirror from the clamps, I did a quick sanding to remove any glue squeeze out that I had missed during assembly. The next step was to route a rabbet in the back of the mirror to accept the mirror itself.  I used a rabbeting bit equipped with a bearing for this task.  To prevent tear out, I made several passes to cut the rabbet.  With each pass the depth of the bit was increased, until I got to a final depth of 3/8”.  Because the router bit cannot cut a square corner, I used a  combination of a corner chisel, a regular wood chisel and a mallet to make the corners square.

I put the mirror frame away for a while so that I could cut down the mirror I had been keeping around all these years.  After cleaning several years of dirt and grime from face of the mirror, I cut it down to size.  I will admit a lot of trepidations about cutting the mirror.  I am not superstitious, but I didn’t want to break a mirror.  After all I don’t know about you, but the idea of 7 years back luck didn’t really thrill me. Thankfully, I was able to cut the mirror without much trouble.  One edge didn’t come out as smooth as I wanted, but I was able to correct that with a little sanding.  I used a rubbing stone that I had from when I did the tile work in our kitchen, as a sanding medium. 

So with the mirror frame and the mirror cut, it was time to dry fit them together for the first time.  The Mirror fit OK, but I found a new problem.  The mirror assembly was….. Well boring.  I mean it had absolutely no pizzazz.  It was just a mirror in a wooden frame.  I had to fix that.  And this is where the design change of mirror cames into this project.

After a lot of thought and some head scratching, I came up with a fix for problem.  What this mirror needed was more detail.  And as much as I hate to admit it, I knew just what kind of detail was needed, more of the $@*&^%&* Bead detail.  Yeah the same bead detail that drove yours truly nearly mad, when I built the vanity itself. My first thought was to add the bead to the outside of the mirror frame.  But that just wasn’t practical, I couldn’t visualize a way to cut the bead that was both safe and didn’t stand a good change of destroying the mirror frame.  Remember that to create the bead; both the face and adjacent side both have to pass over the beading bit.  Something that is relatively easy with a single piece of stock, but not practical with built up mirror frame.  The first pass would have the base of the frame tight against the shaper table, this would be easy. The second pass, the one that concerned me would require that the edge of the frame be on the table, and the face of the frame was against the beading bit. That would require that I kept the frame totally vertical and tightly against the beading bit, at all times. Even with all of the feather boards I have, I couldn’t see away to do this. To ensure a clean bead detail, there can be absolutely  no movement of the stock away from the bit.  When the stock is not held tight to the bit, there is a strong tendency for the bit to dig into the stock, totally destroying the stock.  And taking the frame apart wasn’t an option either.  Glued up stock does not come apart easily.  In fact from my experience, the wood will split before the glue line will separate.  So another option was needed.

That option was to add a bead detail to the inside of the frame, and that’s what I did.  From a couple of pieces of ¾” stock I fabricated a bead detail that measures 7/16” wide by 3/4” tall.  I used the same beading bit that I used on the vanity to create this detail.  I mitered the bead detail so that it would fit snuggly along the inside of the mirror frame.  The bead detail was glued into place, and then tacked with pin nails. The bottom edge of the new bead detail was aligned with the base of the rabbet that I cut into the frame earlier. The top edge of the bead detail, now is setting proud of the face of the frame, I think it’s an interesting detail.

The entire mirror frame was set aside to cure.  Hopefully I will be able to get back into the shop soon the work on the mirror.  The next sets include a complete sanding and then an application of the same green tinted stain that the vanity already has.  That is if Mother Nature doesn’t have more surprises in mind, like more snow or maybe something worse.  Man I truly hope not, I really want to get back to work on this project.

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