Resawing on Bandsaw and Construction of Arts and Crafts Sofa Table With Book-Matched Veneer Top

under construction 7-14-08

While I have been an amateur woodworker for many years, for most of that first period, my interest in veneering was low. For the pay off, veneering just seemed too complicated.

This attitude toward veneering began to change, however, when in June, 2001, I bought my first bandsaw, a Laguna 18-incher. At over 3-HP. it is a machine with power and heft. However, it took quite a little time and patience for me to learn how to operate it. You just don't turn it on and begin making marvelous creations. Little irritations, like blade drift, a table that's too-small and -- most disconcerting -- breaking blades, forced me to rethink some of my original assumptions, namely that the bandsaw worked just as it was captured by professional woodworkers in the magazines.

After struggling for quite a while -- and building the larger table and fence -- things began to come together more satisfactorily. In addition, after volunteering to create a seminar on the bandsaw for the woodworking group that I belong to, I decided to follow one of my practices from my earlier professional career in the academic world -- create a web-based syllabus, primarily so that I, myself, would become better informed about bandsaws.

(I was also helped enormously by Doug at Bob's Supersaw, my local blade sharpener. He steered me away fro a 2-1/2-tpi to a 1-tpi, and solved my problem asssociated with my blade breaking while resawing. Removal of sawdust is too inefficient with a 2-1/2-tpi blade; the gullet is just too small to remove the extra sawdust that accumulate in resawing large workpieces.)

These exercises seemed to have a liberating effect, because my own vision of a bandsaw shifted, ever so slowly, and my skill in using the bandsaw changed, changed to a point where actually trying my hand at veneering no longer seemed "alien territory".

The next hurdle was the actual veneering. When I read instructions about veneering in woodworker's manuals and woodworker's magazines, frankly it seemed strange and undoable, unless you could use a vacuum-bag process. My wife helped me here: after hearing about my plans to buy a vacuum bag kit, and built a system "from scratch", so to speak, she insisted that I simply buy an affordable, "complete" vacuum bag system, with a Venturi pump. (I have an air compression system in my shop, so I wanted a vacuum system that connects to it.) After some investigation, I settled on one of the models sold by Quality VAKuum Products.

Initially, I practiced with small projects, using resawn old growth western red cedar and douglas fir. These experiments turned out quite satisfactory. Then, through a friend, I had the good fortune of getting some local Big leaf Maple burl blocks.

Out of the largest block -- images below -- I cut four sets of book-matched veneer.

(Some claim that since these sheets are about 1/8 inch thick, they are "laminates", and not "veneer". To be accurate, they say, to be veneer, the sheets should be 1/16th inch or thinner. So, by that logic, this is a "laminating" project, not a "veneering" project. )






On the left is an image of the finished table in our living room



















Right off, I have a confession about my limitations as a woodworker: while I can rough out drawings/plans of projects that I am building, I don't have the skill of capturing these drawings to scale, and thus, for proportions in my projects, I have to rely on my intuition, and -- with judging proportions appropriate for projects which have no specific plans -- my intuition is sometimes faulty. You get what I mean by faulty proportions immediately, if your reactions to the width of the "feet" on my table is the same as my reactions: the table's "feet" seem slightly larger than they should be. The lyrics that famous tune by Fats Waller, "My Feet's too Big", from "Ain't Misbehavin?", keep coursing through my mind.

For the source of the burl and the story of its milling, please click here

For the table's base design, I was drawn to this table designed by Rodney Hooper, an associate of Percy Wells. both disciples of William Morris's Arts and Crafts Movement.

The edge treatment I copied from several pieces in my living room, roughly from the same era, but scroll down to Fryklund.

The table below from wells and hooper is what I used for the legs treatment. Incidentally, the other three tables that I plan to make with the veneer - and using the same configuration on the top - are going to be coffee-table height. I would have made the first table coffee table height, but we already have a nice oak coffee table. That coffee table, incidentally, is of the examples of edge treatment that I used.

Resawing Big Leaf Maple Burl 1

Resawing Big Leaf Maple Burl 2

Resawing Big Leaf Maple Burl 3

 

Resawing Big Leaf Maple Burl 4

Resawing Big Leaf Maple Burl 5

Resawing Big Leaf Maple Burl 6

Resawing Big Leaf Maple Burl 7

Resawing Big Leaf Maple Burl 8

Resawing Big Leaf Maple Burl 9

Resawing Big Leaf Maple Burl 10

Will have more images on creation of top later. In meantime I have located this helpful account of Thumb Mold,

Adapted from Verne C. Fryklund, "How to Lay Out and Cut a Thumb Mold"

Popular Homecraft march april 1933 page 563; also "To lay out a thumb mold." In Verne Fryklund and Armand J La Berge General Shop Woodworking. 1940 ed., pages 67-68. (There is an "irony", here, I think, because General Shop Woodworking is designed for woodworking courses at the "junior high school" level! On the strength of the croos-reference to the instructions on making the "thumb nail mold" in PH, impulsively I ordered a copy of General Shop Woodworking
. When it arrived, I was astonished. For its attention to rudimentary details about technques and skills in woodworking, this woodworker's manual -- over one hundreds pages -- rivals those manuals that I have vigorously commended: Charles G Wheeler and Chelsea Fraser.)

"Creating Thumb Mold for Table Top"

This example of a table top and edge fastening arrangement comes from Herman Hjorth's Basic Woodworking Precesses, 1933, but it is a common technique, shown frequently in woodworker's manuals on furniture construction.

Says Fryklund, "Modern furniture requires molded effects on the tops of tables and chests. Here is a simple method that enables shaping with hand tools. Determine the dimensions from the drawing and proceed as follows",

Lay off lines 1, 2, 3, Fig. 1, by the thumb gage method.

Clamp a straight edge firmly on line 1 and use it as a guide to saw down to line 3 as in sawing a rabbet, Fig. 2. 1

Keeping the straight edge in place, chip the stock to line 2 with a mallet and chisel. Fig. 3.

The chisel should have its bevel down to be most effective. Remove any remaining chips carefully with a chisel in the direction of the arrow shown in Fig. 3.

Use the Bull-Nose plane, or a Rabbet Plane, to shape the thumb mold in steps as shown in Figures 4, 5, and 6, keeping in mind that the arris at line 1 must be carefully preserved.

In the absence of a special plane, a block plane may be used although it does not work well in the corners. A chisel may be used to trim stock in the corners.

Carefully finish with sandpaper, wrapped on a block, using No. Y2 first and No. 0 last. Note how the corners are finished in Fig. 6.

The side and end molds meet to form a perfectly straight line.

This can be perfected readily with the sandpaper! When sandpapering on the end grain, work only one way. You will get results with less effort than by sanding back and forth.

Some may question why bother to create a special clamping system like this when, to do the trick, plenty of examples -- see how Tom Caspar does this task simply with commercial clamps and blocks in the September 2008 American Woodworker, on page 50 -- exist of simply using clamps and blocks. My motive for building the clamping system is that I am "a jig and fixtures freak", and -- since I have four torsion boxes to make for the four tables-- creating the system seemed like the logical thing to do. Moreover, given the ease with which glue-ups can be achieved with this system, I think that I will be using it for more than torsion boxes











































































































































Sources: Herman Hjorth Basic Woodworking Precesses,Peroria, Il: Manual Arts Press, 1933; Rodney Hooper, Woodcraft in Design and Practice 2nd ed. London: Batsford, 1948. (Hooper's book was first published in London in 1937, and then in 1939 -- under the title Modern Furniture Making and Design -- published in America by Manual Arts Press. Hooper is the brother of John Hooper, both of whom are associates of Percy Wells.)