An excellent recipe for cleaning brass

I bought a bunch of old post office lock box doors from a vendor in South Carolina and from an offer on eBay. They arrived in the same condition they were in when they were taken out of a post office being remodeled - dusty, dirty, and very tarnished. Along with the doors the South Carolina vendor sent a recipe for cleaning the brass - one portion of Coke to an equal portion of ammonia! I figured that this had to produce some kind of acidic liquid and took precautions: do the work outside, wear gloves, and prepare for really obnoxious fumes.
Well, most of my precautions were unnecessary. I could use my bare hands without any irritation and the fumes were certainly tolerable since I was outside. The impact on the brass was amazing. Although the directions said to let the doors soak for some time and to use a brass brush to clean the decorations, the brass brightened almost instantly and I used the brass brush sparingly. Dipping the doors in water after the Coke/ammonia soak produced an attractive door ready for my project. I applied a coat of spray lacquer as a finish.
I brought the recipe ingredients home to try on some brass house numbers that were so tarnished they were as brown as the painted wood post they were on. They took a little more scrubbing to get the brass to shine but the recipe worked much better than previous attempts.
I will be building some banks that use the post office box doors as a front door into the contents. I have also found a project to make large replicas of a post office truck where the post office box door is the back door of the truck. Right now I am gathering the cherry, walnut, and rosewood for those projects. More of this as the work starts.

Finally finished the cherry cabinet

I am finally finished with a project that I started several years ago. The cabinet is cherry with veneered plywood for the top, sides, and back. It has two dovetailed drawers with cherry drawer fronts. I have procrastinated in finishing this project. First, it was the finish - what to do to get the nicest finish. I finally ended up using a wipe-on polyurethane. It seems to be a nice choice for this piece. Overall I am really pleased with the outcome.

But the main reason that I have procrastinated for months is the poor workmanship on the top. Unfortunately, I planed through the cherry veneer to expose the very ugly plywood layers (try yellow) under the veneer. So there are, not one, but several places on the most viewed surface of the cabinet that look damaged.

I learned a lot with this project. I made my first dovetailed drawers. I used poplar for the drawer frames. This was my first experience planing and fitting the drawers into the cabinet frame. It now resides in my office at Wooster.

In addition to the fitting of the cabinet. I was able to complete a small project to make two letter openers - one from cocobola and one from acrylic. These kits were from Berea Hardwoods so I needed to purchase a drill bit and a bushing set in order to turn the blanks. The construction is simple but there may be an error in the instructions. There is a center band that has a recess on one end that is supposed to fit over a stub of the 1/16" of exposed brass tubing. The picture of the letter opener in the instructions suggests that the center band is reversed. So, I am not sure that my rendering matches the intended assembly. At least they seem to work.

I decided that I wanted to make a number of bowls - some to use up some ambrosia maple bowl blanks and several others to make a set of walnut salad bowls. I wanted to do these on a production line - first turn all the outsides, then turn the insides, and finally, apply the finish all at the same time.

With the time that I had I was able to finish the outsides of one of the ambrosia bowls and three of the salad bowls. When I return to the workshop next weekend, I would like to finish turning the inside and outside of those five bowls. I am able to easily use my sharpening station to keep the gouges nice and sharp.

So, I completed two and a half projects this weekend. A fun two days in the shop.

Epoxy inlaid gift boxes

This project came from the December, 2005 issue of Workbench magazine. It starts with separating a 3/4 inch lid blank from a 3" x 6" x6" turning blank. A decorative symbol or drawing (the article includes three: dragonfly, wheat, and love symbol) is adhered to the lid blank. The lid blank is scroll-sawn and then filled with colored epoxy. The lid and body pieces are then glued to waste blocks.
Using a faceplate the lid is turned to round and the design paper and excess epoxy are turned off the top face of the lid. The lid is finished and then parted off. The body is likewise rounded, hollowed out to match the lid, and parted from the waste block. I used black epoxy for the walnut and jatoba bowls and beige for the burl bowl.
I followed the process as outlined in the article and ended up with four small, attractive and interesting lidded boxes. I used a bowl gouge for most of the turning as opposed to the article's use of scrapers. I had some difficulty with a cloudy epoxy finish which took extensive polishing to remove. I used a sanding sealer and then polished the boxes using the Beall system.
I would like to try the project again using some different designs and unique woods. I would also try a different method for mounting the wood so that I can get a better appearance and form to the lid and box bottoms.

A sneak preview

I spent several days at the lake wood shop working on a variety of projects. I turned several more bottle stoppers and packed up the remaining pieces and parts for another time. I used several of the yellow plastic stopper kits and used them as stoppers for vinegar/oil bottles.

I also worked on rough cutting the pieces for the post office box trucks. Poplar for the test pieces and cherry and walnut for the final products. I have to clean many of the post office box doors and I am sure there are several sizes, so I will clean and apply a finish to the doors before I start the final cut to size for the wood.
Finally, I couldn't wait any longer to use the sharpening station. So, I installed the casters and attached the top so that I could mount the grinder and sharpen a couple gouges. I'll have to disassemble the top so that I can install the case back and interior divider. It will be nice to have a permanent set up for the grinder.

Mahogany and Birds eye Maple box

I finally got around to putting the finish on the lidded box I started in a Woodcraft class and wrote about back in October [link]. I just didn't like the combination of mahogany with a walnut veneer top, so I built a new lid with a bird's eye maple top. The finished project is a combination of mahogany sides, veneered maple top, veneered mahogany/walnut bottom, and walnut dividers.
The mahogany/maple combination has turned out to be more attractive to me so I am glad I remade the top. I used a wipe on poly for the finish and installed two small hinges. I will probably add a small brass knob to the lid.

Sharpening Station starts to take shape

I saw a sharpening station in Issue 81 of Shop Notes that I thought came close to fitting my needs. I was looking for a place to house my grinder and Wolverine Sharpening system for my lathe tools. The station in the Shop Notes had everything I wanted but it had an expandable top with a built-in water basin for water stones. I was more interested in having a permanent site for my 8 inch slow speed grinder and also a place for sharpening with sandpaper and stones. I didn't think I wanted to have to move the grinder in order to access the water basin.

I did remember seeing a grinder mounted on T-track that slid to the back of the station when not in use. I think that approach gives me the multiple sharpening situations that I think I will encounter.

So this drawing indicates the physical structure and layout of the cabinet I am building. There are several changes from the Shop Notes station. I am putting it on casters so I can move it to the lathe or workbench depending on what type of sharpening I want to do. I made the top solid double layer of 3/4" MDF with melamine and hardwood edging. Two T-tracks are embedded in the top to allow the grinder platform to slide from the back to the front. The grinder itself is on a platform to accommodate the height necessary for the Wolverine sharpening jigs. I am adding a movable work light to help with fine honing.

I'll start adding pictures of my actual work station as it takes shape over the next weeks. Right now I have the cabinet shell and face frame assembled and I have the top completed and ready to attach.

Prairie tree ornaments become a future project

A recent article in The Daily Record opened up a new interest - scroll sawn prairie tree Christmas ornaments. The ornaments by Glenn Tschantz of Orrville, Ohio, are three dimensional and involve a lot of fret work. Most popular after the Civil War, they have a delicate and detailed Victorian look. I found a book at Border's, Holiday Ornaments for the Scroll Saw, by Rick and Karen Longabaugh, owners of The Berry Basket Collection. Full of over 300 patterns, it appears many are three dimensional and ornate like the ones produced by Mr. Tschantz. They certainly will be a step up from my present scroll saw work.

I made some simpler ornaments this year that were featured in a project article in Wood magazine, November, 2007. I stacked two pieces of thin plywood together with a layer of copper in between. I turned the metal picture into the front of a Christmas card to each of my relatives. They each got a matching wooden ornament. Four of the seven designs are included in this picture. They are cut from 1/4" baltic birch plywood and finished with a satin polyurethane spray finish.

I'll look forward to trying some of the more complicated designs to decorate our own tree next year.

Vase saved from the scrap pile becomes "Resurrected Vase"

I spent most of Thursday and all day Friday in the workshop. I had some clean-up work to do in the workshop after finishing all the screwdrivers and pens from earlier in the week. I also cut wood blanks for two letter openers and turned some additional bottle stoppers.

But I wanted first to try two bowl blanks, a cherry and a mahogany. And, I decided to try to save a turned vase that I thought I had messed up too badly. One bowl was turned and the vase repaired by a late lunch. After a short break I turned the mahogany bowl and then polished all three. For these three items I am applying a coat of SealCoat prior to the polishing.

I call this the "Resurrected Vase" since I actually pulled it from the firewood pile and was able to correct my previous turning mistakes. It is made from cherry and has an inlay band. It is called a "split vase" since the inlay strip hides the cut made to hollow out the vase. See my previous post on the Woodcraft class where I learned to make the vase.

This whole time is a gift from my wife, Mary Lou. She thinks I worked so hard getting the Christmas presents done that I should get some time for myself in the shop. While I admit that today I am feeling less pressure to get things done, the last two times in the shop have both been very enjoyable. What really made this time nice was that Mary Lou joined me on Thursday evening and Friday.

Friday I returned to the shop with several goals. First I wanted to turn one final screw driver to use the last 4-in-1 kit. Then I wanted to turn the additional bottle stoppers. So far, drilling larger holes and inserting the brass insert into the bottle stopper wood blank has worked well. I have several more pieces of cocobolo, bicote, thuya burl, and a glue-up of morado and curly maple. That let me clean up the pen turning supplies and clear of my work bench.

I’ve done a lot of turning in the space of one week. I am really learning to use the 1/2" SpindleMaster to almost eliminate the need for sanding.
I am beginning to get excited about the prospect of the turning class in North Carolina which comes up at the end of January. Right now I would like more guided practice, help on better tool control, and some design and project ideas.

My goals for the immediate future would be to complete the finish on the cherry cabinet, assemble the veneered lidded box, and assemble my sharpening center cabinet. That would clear up one section of the garage and almost allow two cars to actually park inside in the winter!

I won the "Battle of the Bottlestoppers"

Bottle stoppers and I have had a difficult relationship over the last months. While I had turned several stoppers several months ago, I have had nothing but trouble since then. I bought some stopper kits from a different source that turned out to have a different size thread. Then I purchased some brass inserts from Lowe's which turned out to be totally wrong for the task. I ended up with a small box of stoppers all with the wrong size or wrong type of insert in the wood.

Well this last trip to the wood shop was a positive one. I was able to use the style and size of insert that I needed for the Woodcraft kits. Essentially, in order to make things work I had to ignore the recommendations that come with the inserts. Because of the hardness of the wood I was using - Cocobolo, Jabota, Maple, etc - I had to increase the size of the hole for the insert - the recommended hole for the insert is 3/8" while the outside diameter of the threads on the insert is 1/2". So somewhere in that remaining 1/8" was a happy medium - large enough to not strip the threads off the insert yet small enough to allow the threads to bite into wood.

This is a picture of one of the successful stoppers. It is maple with an Ohio state quarter embedded in the top. I turned and polished three stoppers to send as Christmas gifts. The second used a blue plastic to which I added a clear jewel on the top. The third was a beautiful cocobolo wood with a dark stone insert. I still have several kits to try with other wood and decoration combinations. It's nice to find the correct methods to make these.

European pen kits

The latest trip to the wood shop was to work on making some pen kits. I had two Cigar pen kits to complete and ten European pen kits (pictured left) to start.

I used wood blanks that I had in my left-overs to do the two cigar pens. But for the European pens I used rosewood blanks and thuya burl blanks that I had purchased at Berea Hardwoods in Cleveland.

There have always been two times in the process of making the pens when disaster strikes. The first is when drilling the hole in the wood blank for the brass tube. Some woods and plastics tend to break in the last half inch. The other time is when turning. If the wood fragments or the glue is not coated over all the brass tubing, the wood will shatter while turning - again usually just as you are about to finish!

Well, I experienced these disasters a couple of times. But I had prepared more wood blanks than I would actually need so I was able to complete the turnings for all of the pens. Both pens seem to look better with darker woods; however, the burl and plastic samples are attractive.

Now will come the really fun part. I am going to finish each of the pens using the Beall wood buffing system. I have really enjoyed the feel and look of turnings when I use the tripoli, white diamond, and carnauba wax with the buffing wheels. Can't wait to see the pens with that smooth and gleaming finish.

My next turning time will turn some bottle stopper kits - some really nice chromed kits from Berea Hardwoods and some "cheapie" plastic ones from a craft store. In either case, the finish should be first class.

My grandson the woodturner

Friday my grandson, wife, and I went to our lake house and spent some time in the woodshop. I had previously written about the idea of making a spurtle as an introductory woodturning project for my grandson. He seemed interested and so we set up the mini-lathe and gave him his first lessons.
I was surprised and pleased to see how he enjoyed the project. He seemed to understand the mystery of seeing what finished project was hidden inside the raw stock. I was impressed with his ease at learning how to use the tools and his natural carefulness in following new methods.
His tasks were to round a square maple spindle with a roughing gouge, then to use calipers to determine the thickness at several points. Then he used a parting tool to set the depths at four places along the spindle. We were removing a lot of wood to reduce the spindle in size so, instead of just removing the waste quickly with a roughing gouge, he used a spindle gouge to practice making beads and coves.

The spurtle appears to have evolved into a straight dowel-shaped implement with a handle area and a stirring area. Other than that, there are numerous examples of spurtles that look quite different one from another. So, the tool that evolved was Dylan's unique design.
Once he was finished turning it, we polished the wood. It is now ready to make a trip to Colorado and stir some delicious oatmeal or soup.
We will have one more day at the lake house. If he is interested in more wood turning, I do have a couple 4-in-1 screw driver kits that might be another turning project for him to try.

Spurtle

My grandson, Dylan, from Colorado is arriving today to spend a week with us in Ohio. I had been working on several wood working projects that he and I might do while he was here. I even made one project that my son, Eric, and my grandson could do together -make race cars - but I think my son has other plans.
What I did find that I think might be a good introduction for Dylan to wood turning is a spurtle. It involves turning a maple spindle into a thin, foot-long kitchen utensil. Although most of the samples I have seen include a definite handle section and a slightly tapering stirring section, there really are no rules. If he can learn to use a roughing gouge to make the stock round and a spindle gouge to make some combination of beads and coves, he should be able to make a spurtle. I bought two three-foot lengths of maple so that we can try making a spurtle. We'll see if Dylan is interested in this kind of a project.
The utensil is said to come from Scottish and northern European cultures and evolved into its present shape as an effective tool to stir oatmeal, porridge, or soups. It is also popular today since the wooden utensil does not scratch the surfaces of the pans.

What's more fun than raking leaves?

This weekend, most of the trees in my yard decided to drop their leaves. Of course, this came just days after I had cleared all the leaves from the house and the yard. My neighbor and I were standing out in the yard talking when the maple tree decided to rain bright, yellow leaves down on us. It was like a yellow blizzard and covered the ground with leaves in seconds. It was a disheartening experience to say the least.

So, when "the dump" occurred, did I rush out to clean them up again? No, I retreated to the workshop to clean up several old planes. Seems perfectly sensible to me - let the leaves for another day.

Actually what turned out to be more fun than raking leaves was cleaning and adjusting a couple of planes. Over the last several years I have bought several old planes at auctions. My intention was to clean them up and learn to use them. They have set untouched for a long time and I decided to try working with one.

I had just watched a Podcast from Woodsmith which reviewed how to recondition and maintain older wood planes. I learned a lot about dismantling the planes and cleaning the various parts. I had previously taken a class in sharpening plane blades. So with all this knowledge but no previous experience, I chose a Sargent plane to be my first. I took the plane completely apart, used several grades of sand paper to work to flatten the base of the plane, used the same sand paper to flatten the back of the plane and create the 25 degree bevel. I had some success in using WD40 to clean the parts. Since my workshop is in an unheated garage next to a lake, I have two sources of moisture to attack metal in my shop. The WD-40 will hopefully help prevent rust on the plane surfaces.

Putting the plane back together seemed simple enough and I was feeling rather smug until I realized I had installed the blade upside down. After making that correction and adjusting the plane, I was producing some nice, light shavings on a scrap of cherry. It was a nice learning experience and I am looking forward to working on a few of the other planes still waiting for attention.

I didn't spend the whole afternoon fixing one plane. I did move on to work on two different projects.

I drilled and set brass inserts in 11 bottle stopper blanks - four cocobolo, four bicote, and three acrylic. I also trimmed and sanded the box lid I have been working on. The picture shows the bird's eye maple veneer lid with mahogany edging and paduak splines.

Lidded box - version 2

I copied a spline jig that I found on the Internet. I did add two clamps to hold the frame in the jig and a miter slot key to keep the jig in line. All the pieces are 3/4 Baltic birch with the exception of two hardwood braces and the miter slot key. The changes that I made make it easier to use clamps to hold the frame thereby eliminating the dangerous practice of holding it with your hand. The cuts are also more accurate with the miter key (although the spline placement is limited to 3/8" from the edge).

I used the spline jig to add paduak splines to my box lid. The saw cuts are approximately 1/8" thick and set to almost the depth of the corner angle. The paduak grain runs across the miter giving the miter a lot of extra strength. The coloration of the paduak should be an orange/yellow hue to compliment both the darker mahogany and the lighter bird's eye maple.

At the same time I trimmed the dividers for the box interior and put the first coat of wipe on poly on the box bottom and dividers. Next visit I can trim the paduak splines and apply the first coat of finish.

More cleanup and progress on projects

I've been back to the work shop twice since my last post. The continuing cleanup and organization is helping me make some progress on several projects. Here's a view of the storage section that separates the workshop from the car parking area.

My first attempt at veneering was a bust! The veneer seemed to form into high ridges at the seam in the middle and all over each piece. I don't know why it happened. For my second attempt I decided to do one side at a time and to use a plywood caul to spread the pressure more evenly over the veneer. This seemed to work well as my second try was very nice looking. I have now glued the second side and have it in the vacuum press.

I used a model that a fellow wood worker posted on the web to build a spline jig for the table saw. I added a miter track runner and two clamps to the model to make it even more efficient. It is now ready to use whenever I have the box lid completed.

I have also made four holders for quilter's plastic rulers. One was specifically requested by a Tree City Quilter and the other three will be given to that organization to auction or sell. These were made of mahogany and ranged from 14" to 10" long.
While I was sanding these rulers, I decided to make some progress on a cherry chest that has been sitting half done for a year. I planed and sanded one drawer box and its door front in preparation for putting on the first coat of sealer.

Finally, I also put cherry edging around the sharpening station counter top. It is clamped and drying now. The next steps will be to chamfer the edges and add the miter track. I have the case work cut but not dadoed and have the face frame pieces cut to raw dimensions. I should make some substantial progress on that on my next visit.

Turning Cigar Pens

I bought ten Woodcraft #147158 cigar pen kits to make for Christmas presents. I have completed seven and have three to go. Each pen is from a different type of wood so the pens take on a very different look even though they are all the same shape.

I had one failure due to attaching the pen pieces in the wrong order. The first six successful pens are pictured at the left. The woods from left to right are walnut, yellowheart, purpleheart, koa, rosewood, and sugi.

The kits appear to be quality pieces with a gold finish. The instructions leave a little to be desired. Woodcraft encloses generic instructions for pen turning and then a sheet specifically for the cigar pen with instructions for mounting the bushings on the mandrel and then for assembling the various components. Some specific diagrams would be helpful since some of the generic diagrams are confusing.

I'll finish the last three pens and then return to bowl turning. My inventory of bowl blanks has mushroomed with the addition of the recent cherry green wood.

Cherry Logs to Bowl Blanks

Today Mary Lou and I transformed five pieces of cherry log into a bunch of various size bowl blanks. It took about an hour to process all the pieces with me cutting and Mary Lou packaging the bowl blanks in paper or plastic bags until I can get them to the wood shop.

My chain saw had a work out handling the size of these logs but we should have several large and medium size bowl blanks. Tomorrow we will take them to the wood shop and begin the next step in the process: cutting them round on the band saw and setting the center for turning. I will probably have to wait until this weekend to actually turn the bowl blanks to their rough shape.

Since this was my first attempt at converting green logs into bowl blanks I don't know exactly how to rate what I did today. It seemed like I had some trouble getting the chain saw cuts to line up with previous cuts. I will see how that impacts the turning process.

Check out all the photos of this step in my web album.

Tree to logs to bowls?

Yesterday we had the remnants of Hurricane Ike come raging through our area. It was an afternoon and evening of very high winds which caused a lot of electrical outages and tree damage. My neighbor lost a cherry tree that fell into another neighbor's yard and garden. Another neighbor helped cut the tree into pieces that could be moved around to the front of the house for disposal. I was fortunate enough to be offered several pieces of the trunk of the tree.

I got five log sections to be my first efforts at cutting bowl blanks. They are 10 to 16 inches long by 12 to 16 inches in diameter. Later this week I will make my first attempts at cutting them into bowl blanks.

Bottle Stoppers

I think I am making a regular, predictable journey through the beginning stages of being a wood turner. First came pens, then some spindle turning, a start at bowl turning, and now, bottle stoppers.


I started with a kit from Woodcraft that included a 1/4" X 20 mandrel and several chrome stopper bottoms. The first ones were simple efforts but inspired me to try some different brands of stoppers.


My initial designs came from an October, 1996 issue of Wood magazine but most of those designs had very pointed tops and would have caused injuries when used as a stopper. My second set of stopper supplies, including ornaments for the top of the stopper, came from The Woodturners Catalog.

There the confusion started since the new stoppers used a larger thread or a wooden dowel. Each required some changes from the original methods. I created a mandrel from a bolt and nut to hold the larger threaded stoppers.

When I look at the series of stoppers I can readily see the value of drawing a design on paper before starting to turn on wood. The turnings seem to have progressed from unbalanced and haphazard to a more unified design. My favorites are the two shown in the accompanying picture (at twelve o'clock and three o'clock). I like the ornamentation on the top of the stoppers.

From the beginning my wife and I have struggled while trying to figure the true usefulness of these stoppers. First, when we open a bottle of wine, we usually finish it -meaning no need for a stopper. Second, when we try to use one of the stoppers on a tall bottle of wine, we can't find a spot in the refrigerator to accommodate that tall of a bottle. So, these may be neat things to make and useful to give as gifts, but not likely to be an oft-used item

Tea Light Holders

One of the simpler projects we did at the wood turning week at Cedar Lakes was making tea lights. Using a 5 inch circle of 1 inch think walnut, I made a wooden holder for a tea light. Using the screw chuck, we mounted the wood and detailed the bottom of the light incorporating the foot and the tenon for the chuck jaws into the design. Turning the blank over and holding it with the jaws of the chuck, we drilled a 1 1/4 inch hole for the tea light. Then the top was tapered to the edge to create the appearance that the circle of wood was floating above the table surface. At the workshop we sealed the wood and put on several coats of Deft spray finish.

The walnut holder on the far left is the one that looks the best to my eye. The cherry holder on the right is a little too thick and appears heavier and less delicate.

When I got home a cut a number of 5" mahogany blanks to try to replicate the shape and appearance of the walnut holder. These might be one of the projects I have ready for my grandson to try when he visits this fall.