The Little Free Library is Coming to Selkie Wood Works! Discussion and Plans

Hi Everyone,

(As a side note: the train table project is moving along nicely and I'll post about that on Friday),

Ok, hello again,

I've been asked by a neighbor to build a Little Free Library for our neighborhood and I've agreed. In the past I had thought to build a library and place it on our lawn but there didn't seem to be much interest in one at the time so I dropped the idea. But we have new neighbors and lots of young couples with kids living here now so this is an idea who's time has come.

Discussion
I've spent the last week researching how these are built and displayed and I've also carefully considered the rugged climate we have here. Here's my thoughts on this:

• The library box needs to be water tight with a waterproof finish to keep rain and snow out of the interior and ruining the books.
• It needs to be large enough to accommodate a large range of book sizes, from large picture books for kids to smaller, pocket book type books.
• Special attention needs to be directed at the roof-it needs to shed water just like the roof on a house does.
• The door should be self closing with a magnetic catch so if someone leaves the door open, it will close on it's own. 
• The door also needs a large window so the books are displayed to the public.
• And it needs to be attractive and well situated in the ground with a 4x4 post.

The little libraries I've seen have been made out of all sorts of materials but the predominate materials are plywood and solid pine or cedar. Some are painted and some are stained. Others are covered in cedar shingles. They look pretty cool.

Plans

I will be using the following plans from the Little Free Library website,

• A modified Little Library design with a materials list – courtesy of Hannah Lane-Davies of Kalamazoo Little Free Libraries. Many thanks to Hannah and her family for posting these plans.

My plan is to build a little library with-

• Exterior grade plywood and solid pine
• Use Lexan, a hard to break material, for the window
• Use self closing hinges and a magnetic catch for the door
• Use exterior grade paint and/or waterproofing deck sealer on the sides and front
• Use construction mastic and bathroom caulk to seal the joints to keep water out
• And build the roof to mimic the roofs in my neighborhood to shed water and snow.

Here are two photos of the basic materials and hardware:

The first thing I'll do is sand the sides of the plywood very smooth and paint the interior side with some yellow exterior paint to seal the surface to to make the interior a little less dark. Then I'll mark and cut out the sides, bottom, and roof panels on the table saw. I'll also mark out where some interior shelves are to be attached to the sides to make it easier to install them. Then I'll begin construction of the library and I'll put all of this online so you can see it.

If you have built a little library feel free to comment during the build.

I will finish the train table and then begin the library.

It's cold outside now and I'm going in to make some homemade cinnamon rolls with my grandson.

See you later this week,

VW

Making a Train Table for my Grandson

Hello All,

Well, time to make a train table for my grandson's wooden train set. Here's the background to that-

My grandson loves his little wooden train set. He carries the little wooden trains everywhere and he really needs a spot to set up his train tracks and other things that go with it. So I planned to make a very simple train table out of a pre-made IKEA table top and some plumbing pipe for legs. This project was just going to take about an hour to complete.

Famous last words.

IKEA was out of the table top I needed so I headed over to a big box home store and purchased a pre-made pine panel. So the panel will need to have a finish applied to it and the project will probably go on for most of this week. But my grandson is the best little guy in the world and he deserves a place to play.

So here we go-photos from today's efforts:

Here is a photo of the panel wrapped in plastic. It was 30"x 60" originally and I cut it down to 50" long. That should be large enough for the train set to be set up in circles. I sanded the top and sides and smoothed everything down and sealed the wood with Minwax sanding sealer:

Here is the table top after I stained it. This is a Minwax stain in honey. I applied the stain and rubbed off the excess and it's drying right now. Later on this afternoon I'll flip the top over and stain the underside:

After the finish is completely done, I'll attach the pipe legs with screws and the project will be done. I'll post some photos of that in a couple of days.

In the meantime, I found a tree that had been felled and took a branch for some spoon carving later this fall. Can't wait!

Stay tuned,
VW

Making a Walnut Cutting Board-finish photos

Hello All,

Well, I've been oiling the board all week and it has 4 coats of oil on it so I think it's time to oil one last time and then prepare to get it to it's new owner.

Here it is:

I'm going to put some rubber feet on the underside of it later this weekend and then it's time to deliver it to my buddy Rita.

I'm going to post again later today about the toy train table for my grandson. Stay tuned!

VW

Making a Walnut Board-done sanding and beginning to oil it

Hello Everyone,

Well here it is:

I got up early today and went downstairs and worked on the cutting board with my cabinet scrapers.

I scraped and I scraped and leveled the surface and got rid of minor scratches and some high spots in the wood. I did this to both sides and then sanded it with 320 grit sandpaper and took a good look at it and decided, yes, it's time to begin oiling. So I got out my bottle of flax seed oil and began oiling the board. I think oiled finishes are best when many very thin coats are applied instead of several thick coats. So here we go:

And here is the board from several different angles. I probably used 2 tablespoons worth of oil on all the sides and edges and then rubbed it in very well:

 I'm going to let the board sit for a couple of days before I put another coat of oil on it to make sure that the first coat of oil is absorbed into the wood and dries. I'll probably be done oiling it next week sometime.

As it's getting cold outside, I've brought the board inside and I'm letting it dry in here.

I'll be back next week with completion photos.

In the meantime, I'm going to build a quick table for my grandson's train set this weekend and I'll post about that.

Stay tuned,
VW

Making a Walnut Cutting Board-clamping done and beginning the finishing process

Hi Everyone,
I let the clamps and glue do their thing over night and this morning I removed the clamps. The cutting board is now one solid piece of wood and ready for finishing. Here's today's photos:

Ok, here is the board with the clamps removed. It's strong and heavy and in one piece so the assembly part of the build is finished. Now on to shaping and surface smoothing:

First I cut about 1/8" inch off of each end to get rid of squeezed out glue and uneven ends and I did this on the bandsaw. Next I nipped off the corners to get rid of those sharp edges:

Then I beveled the long edges of the board, again to get rid of any sharp edges. This I did with a block plane and a wood file:

Then I briefly sanded the long sides of the board smooth. A helper elf somewhere really tightened the clamps down hard after I set the block aside to dry last night and left a lot of dents on the wood. I got the dents out but I was rather annoyed at that:

Here's a photo of one of the corners:

Now for smoothing the faces of the board-for this I got out my set of cabinet scrapers and began scraping off dried glue and uneven areas. I'd much rather scrape the surface rather than sand it smooth at this point. Sanding is loud, messy, and the vibration hurts my hands.
I hate sanding.

And here it is after about 30 minutes of scraping. I need to sharpen my scrapers before I proceed. I should be able to get rid of the sawing marks on the surface with a sharp scraper:

I'm gong to spend the next several days gradually smoothing the surfaces of the board and I'll show you what that looks like in a day or two.

Stay tuned,
VW

Making a Walnut Cutting board-finally assembled and glued

Hi Everyone,

Well I spent the afternoon assembling, gluing and clamping the cutting board. Here are the photos from today:

Here is a photo of the board jumped clamped together-no glue. I wanted to see what it will look like when I'm done and to measure the threaded rods accurately:

Now for the challenging part-I needed to cut the threaded rod long enough so the nut and the washer would fit inside the holes I drilled in the end pieces but short enough to accommodate the wooden plugs. After some measuring, I settled on 10 1/8" long and that was long enough for all three rods:

So I got everything cut and ready to go. We have a box with a lot of socket wrenches and various handles and I got lucky to find the right sized socket and a small handle to fit it. If I ever do this again, I'm going to find the socket first:

Now for the irritating part of this: inserting the rods, the washers, the nuts, and gluing everything together all at once. I couldn't come up with a stupider way of doing this. Next time I'll just get some construction adhesive and use that instead of all this. What a headache:

I've got four bar clamps attached to the board at present and since it's turned much colder it's inside my house drying.

Ok, tomorrow I'll unclamp it and we'll see how it came out.

Stay tuned,
VW

Making a Walnut Cutting Board, continued

Hello Everyone,

Well, I had a good day in the wood shop today and I got the walnut pieces marked and drilled for the threaded rods I plan to insert inside. Here are some photos from today:


The first thing I did was line up all of the pieces carefully and then I drew a line across the faces. Then I turned them over once and placed each piece on it's side and carefully extended that line down the sides. I marked the each hole 22 mm from the edge of each piece. Here you can see a small hole from my awl:

Then I proceeded to drill each hole. I drilled it several sizes larger than the threaded rod so it would easily pass through the wood:

Here is what each piece looked like after I finished drilling. There are 3 center pieces and two end pieces. I drilled the center pieces first all the way through:

And what do you know-I got them drilled straight through! Yeah!!

Now the end pieces will have a 1/2" white oak dowel plug covering the holes with the rods, a washer, and a lock nut inside. So these pieces were drilled twice-once with a 1/2" Forstner bit and then with the drill bit I used to drill the holes in the center pieces:

I wasn't sure if the holes would line up properly but with some care they did:

And here you can see how the holes line up. I'll be able to insert a washer and that will help with tightening the rod and nut together:

Here is the threaded rod passing through one side:

And all the way through!! Success!

Ok the next step involves gluing, inserting the rod and the hardware into the holes, clamping the block tightly, and then tightening the nuts down on the rod and leaving it all to dry. Since it's getting cold outside, too cold for the glue to dry, I'll do this part of the build tomorrow.

Stay tuned and see you tomorrow,
VW

Making a Walnut Cutting Board

Hello All,
Well, it's been 9 weeks tomorrow since my knee replacement surgery and I can walk and move around perfectly so it's time to get back to the wood shop! I need to make a cutting board for a friend of mine and I have a large  block of walnut that is perfect for this. Here's the story:

Since the end of the recession, at least the end of it for me, I've been making things for folks who where kind to me during that terrible time. I can't count how many people bought spoons, cutting boards, bowls, etc, from me and helped to keep me afloat. And I think about those people a lot.

One friend bought an armful of cutting boards from me that I'm sure she didn't need and her purchase helped buy groceries that week. Sometime later she asked me for a walnut cutting board and since I couldn't afford that type of wood, I had to decline her request. Since that time I've looked and looked for some walnut that would work well for a project like this and earlier this year I finally found it. Since my knee was so bad, I couldn't work on making her a cutting board out of the wood-it would have to wait until after the surgery in August for me to be able to safely go out and work with power equipment.

And today is the day! Let's get down to the wood shop and take a look at some photos:

This is the block of walnut that I bought. It's a lovely piece of wood, brown with a lavender undertone.

The first thing I did was trim off the irregular ends and that big cracked knot at the left end:

Then I flipped it over and trimmed off a smaller knot:

There was a lovely fiddle back section that unfortunately was cracking so I removed that as well. The arrows point to the cracked area:

And this left me with a nice small chunk of walnut for turning later...

Here is the trimmed block. There are not defects left and the grain is straight. What a lovely sight. Now I know what you're thinking-why not leave this block as is and make the cutting board out of this and the answer is that it's too thick-it's 2 1/2 inches thick and it would make a large and clumsy to use board in someone's kitchen. It's also not a good size for chopping foods. Maybe in a restaurant kitchen that might work but not here.
At this point the block is 15 1/2 inches long and 9 1/4 inches wide and 2 1/2 inches thick.

Here is a side view of the block.

So instead of leaving it in one piece, I've cut it into 5 - 1 3/4 inch x 15 1/2 blocks. If I turn the block on their sides, I'll have an 11 inch x 15 1/2 inch wide cutting board when I'm through.

So my plan is to laminate these blocks and possibly add some detail by laminating in some mahogany or some hickory.

This is what the blocks look like stacked next to one another. This will be a nice size for a home kitchen.

I've taken the blocks inside and I'm going to let them settle down for a couple of days. In the mean time I'll think about laminating some color woods. One more thing I might do is drill the blocks so I can insert threaded rods inside of them to help pull the blocks together during the laminating process and to keep it from ever de-laminating. I'll think about that too.

Stay tuned,
VW