 |
|
|
Mom’s Water Stand
by Ben Mullin Project Initiation As I’m sure many galoots can relate, Christmas time is a time of heightened stress around our house. Our already tight budget is stretched to try and buy presents for the family. My Mom understands this quite well. She also understands that I enjoy my time in the shop working with my hands. To keep from adding to our stress last Christmas, she had a proposal for me. She had a crockery water dispensing pot that she really liked, but found difficult to use. The problem was that in order to dispense the water, the pot needed to be placed perilously on the very edge of the counter. To increase the usefulness of her pot she requested that I make her a stand to elevate the spigot to a level that a cup could be placed beneath it. Never having enough projects on the list and having more time and scrap that Christmas money, I of course accepted the project.
Design The design of this project was left up to me. Mom is partial to the arts & crafts and mission styles. Thankfully I am as well and it suits my skill level a little better with its straight lines and uncomplicated joinery. I went through a few iterations before arriving at a design I liked and thought I could construct. The last two pictures in figure two show the design I settled on, though I dropped the pseudo Greene & Greene look because I wasn’t sure I could do it reasonably well (I’ll save that growth opportunity for next time). Since I sometimes have more time that I can spend planning than I can spend holed up in the shop I have a tendency to make detailed plans and drawings. I also find that I don’t get halfway through before finding the, “oh darn, that won’t work that way.” I know that there are folks that look down their noses at preplanning of a project and have the skill and experience to wing it. I’m not one of those people. Maybe someday, but not yet. For the material I chose to use the walnut left over from the crib my brother and I constructed for my first child (p*w3r t**l project before I found the Porch and hand tools). I felt that the dark wood would compliment the pot well. And, well, I had some.
Construction Unfortunately I took no pictures of the construction process, so you’ll have to suffer through a description of the process. Or you could just skip to the end for pictures of the finished product. Construction was all done with hand tools. As stated previously, the material was walnut left over from a previous project. This was S3S so a good portion of the dimensioning was already done. I used a marking gauge and an old Disston rip saw to rip the material to width. I then used my Stanley #5 to clean up the ripped edge and refine the width. The verticals were then cut to length on my el-cheapo yellow p@st!c miter box. The horizontals were all cut over long to allow the mitered tenons to be cut. Then began the challenge of cutting accurate joinery at a 60° miter. I set my bevel up to as close to the correct angle as I could manage. Using the bevel and a square I laid out the first tenon. The back saw from the miter box and some chisels were used to hack out the tenon. It’s a good thing you can’t see them. After measuring that first length and cutting the tenon on the opposite end, I then used that first cut length to define the length for the remaining horizontals. The other joints progressed similarly, though I think the last few were marginally better than the first few. To create the matching mortises I transferred the tenon widths to the inside of the verticals and then used a brace and bit and chisels clear out the mortise. Some joints came out nice and snug, some a little sloppy. At this point I also found that, as I had suspected, the shoulders of the tenons did not all match up quite as nice as I had hoped. Everything fit together, but there were some gaps, but as much as I’d like perfection, I’m still just learning, and Mom won’t mind. I used the #5 to create a chamfer on the outside edges of the verticals and all of the sides of the horizontals. I used a file to create matching chamfers on the top and bottom of the verticals. This was just to ease the edges and give it a little more feeling. I really would have liked to have done the cloud lift, but two things kept me from doing that. One, I had very little confidence it would turn out looking nearly as good as I hoped. Two, it was August of the following year by this time (remember this was a Christmas present). I proceeded with glue-up at this point. I set up on a decently flat surface so the legs would be reasonably flat and stable when the glue-up was complete. All of the joints were then glued in a single pass and assembled. To hold the works together while the glue set, I used a few brads…. wait no, that wasn’t me. I used a piece of string looped around the middle and then twisted with a stick. Cheap and effective. Finishing consisted of sanding to 220, a coat of straight BLO, and a coat of paste wax rubbed on. Conclusion The finished product was only 9 months late. Not too bad for a galoot (we won’t talk about the Christmas present from the year before that still isn’t done). It is my biggest project thus far using only hand tools. There are some obvious defects and my joinery and finishing need work, but Mom still liked it.
Ben Mullin |
||||||||
|
|
 |
