I built a screen for our fireplace recently, and am fairly happy with the result. The screen is for times when we’re not using the fireplace, since it looks dirty, and when the wind gusts, sometimes the damper blows open, and then we get a cold wind into the living room. This also greatly reduces the noise from wind blowing across the top of the chimney.

Two years ago, we got the front of our fireplace painted by a local artist. It’s a very nice result, but especially with that fancy paint-job, we wanted something that would look better than the fire-stained firebox.

The screen has a few features that are unique.

The hearth sits a couple inches above the floor of the firebox, as is typical. This provides a lip which I use to keep the bottom of the screen from sliding forward.

I cut a lip and curved edges on a board to sit on the lip of the hearth, and then built the frame up from there.

The frame is walnut, and around the back edges of it, I’ve put a three-layer-thick roll of felt, which can lean against the painted front of the fireplace without damaging it. The felt is simply stapled in place, first the innermost layer, then the entire roll is stapled right next to the MDF backer, which should prevent the staples from damaging the paint on the fireplace.

The center of the frame is filled with a piece of MDF, which gave me a support for the juniper “rays” and the citrus-wood “sun.” They are simply glued to the MDF backer.

The juniper rays are all of different thicknesses. Rather than mill them all down to the same thickness, I intentionally left some of them thick so I would have more visual interest in the surface of the screen. The rays are all thinned down to roughly a quarter inch where the central sun sits, glued onto the rays.

And finally, the completed screen wanted to tip forward due to the distribution of weight in it and the uneven hearth, so I added a couple feet to the front, which I glued in place only after everything else was completed, adjusting the angle of the feet to hold the top of the screen tight against the fireplace.

The finish is tung oil, followed by a few coats of shellac (between four and nine, depending on which part of the screen), followed by three-five coats of Tried and True Varnish Oil. I thought about using a more traditional varnish, but the difficulty of keeping that dust-free in my shop convinced me to use the slower, but more friendly oil varnish.

That’s all. It was about a month from cutting the first frame section to setting the completed screen in place on the hearth, but I received the juniper from a friend almost three years ago, and have been thinking and sketching designs for most of the time since then.

#woodworking #project

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Got some Russian olive from a friend last Saturday. This bowl came out of one of the pieces. There are two cracks that wanted to come apart as I was turning it, and the shape was largely dictated by another crack that did come apart (and which put a dent in the ceiling of my shop).

The lid was part of the chunk that came off. It had a branch near the middle that had rotted, so I filled that with epoxy and stuck on a handle turned from another offcut.

Mostly turned with a bowl gouge, but I also used a few scrapers, a carbide turning tool, a skew, and a bedan. Finished with homemade friction finish plus some wax.

#project #bowl #woodturning

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I've been wanting to learn more about bookbinding for a while, so when a Surprise Swap came up on Craftisian, I decided part of the build would be a box built with some bookbinding techniques.

I started by making a faux spine, using a piece of spalted elm I had on hand, and rounding it to approximate the spine of a book. I cut rabbets in the front and back of it to accommodate covers (made of poplar, more on that later), and then cut some small pieces of hard maple to make the other three sides of the box, which would represent the edges of the pages.

I then drilled holes through the spine and wrapped some nylon string through them to look like bands. They seemed fairly thin, but I guessed they'd “read” ok through the leather, and that worked out pretty well, though I forgot to take a photo of that.

With the hard-maple pages glued into grooves in the back cover, I applied some cloth strips between the bands to work as hinges for the front cover. I used Titebond II diluted about 3:1 with water to apply these hinges, and that seemed to work pretty well.

I also had grooved the page-edges by using a slitting gauge on the hard maple, making small cuts along the length of it, spaced about 0.6mm apart (the smallest amount I could reliably adjust my gauge). Then I painted the edges with three coats of a thin (1 part milk paint, 4 parts water) wash of lemon yellow milk paint, which gave the pages a more paper-like look.

I put magnets into the page edges and the front cover to hold the cover closed, and then I applied the outer book paper. I remembered partway through that the leather was supposed to go on a half-bound book first, but it was too late, plus this gave me a look of how the book was going to look. Also, I hadn't received the leather I wanted yet, so at least I got comfortable gluing on the book paper on what would have otherwise been a wasted day.

Before applying the leather, I spent a morning carving away part of the spine of the faux book. I realized that it extended beyond the edges of the pages and that didn't look right, so I carefully pared it down so it was even with the edges of the pages. As the spalted elm was pretty soft, this meant hardening it up with some thin CA glue so that I could pare it with chisels and gouges without getting too much tear-out.

Once it arrived, I applied the leather. I didn't do a great job paring its edges down before applying it, but I figured this is my first book, so I'm allowed to make a mistake or two. Plus, with book paper yet to go on the outside, I could pare the leather down and then apply the book-paper and it would look ok.

With the outer book paper on, I was waiting on USPS again. I had ordered some nice book paper for the inside of the box, but it got held up in customs for over a week. When it finally arrived, I glued it to the inside of the box, and I think everything looked pretty darned good. The only problem was that the glue for the inner book paper swelled the wooden cover a bit, so the front cover wouldn't close for a couple days, but once the poplar dried out again, it worked fine. Also, I tore one of the creases in the inner book paper getting it pressed into the box.

And that's the project. When I do it again, I'll change a few things. I'll make the spine of good quality hardwood, rather than something soft like the spalted elm I used. The covers will be made of either good quality thin plywood, or I'll home-make some thin plywood from veneer I have around, rather than poplar, which moves too much with moisture changes. I'll remember to apply the leather first, and pare down its edges better before putting it on. And I'll be more careful applying the inner book paper. That's a tricky job you wouldn't have to do when binding a real book, though.

#woodworking #project #bookbinding

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After making a couple bedside lamps, I wanted to make a version more suitable as a nightlight. This is the result, a lamp in which the LEDs shine through the resin, illuminating it from within. The light is a yellow glow that turns red farther down into the resin. Not perfect, because the hole in the resin for the batteries is slightly (less than a millimeter) too small, so the battery case is protruding a bit, but it’s usable, and I can always fix it later.

Meanwhile, my sweetie isn’t sure which of the three lamps she’d like next to the bed now. This one is definitely the best as a nightlight, but doesn’t give off enough light to read by.

This was the most difficult to assemble of the lot, so I was thinking that if it wasn’t a hit, I probably wouldn’t make another, but it came out well enough that maybe I have to after all.

#project #lamp #nightlight #cholla #resin

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Recently, the remote fob for my truck cracked. The plastic case lasted about 14 years, and gave out pretty catastrophically. So I took it apart and looked at how the case was constructed and figured I could make one out of wood that would probably outlast the truck, which is getting some rust spots from its time in Minnesota.

I carved holes for the remote buttons, removing the “alarm now” button that has always annoyed me, and started to rough-shape the front of the outside.

The back got a hole where the battery goes, and I turned a cover, thinking maybe I would run a brad through it or something so I could lock in place.

After gluing the front to the back, I thought about how long batteries have lasted me, and since that’s been four years or more, I figured I’d just tack the battery cover in place with some glue, and if the battery dies before the truck does, I can probably pop it out. And if not, oh well, I’ll have another project for the list.

#woodworking #project

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