A Little Woodworking...

Well, that's me, I suppose.  

I've been puttering about in the garage recently due to a number of ... upcoming events.

Let's see.  Might as well start at the beginning.  Not that far back, which my kids would insist is just prior to the invention of "sand" which preceded dirt, because, ya know, before you have dirt, which includes organic compounds, first we had to turn large rocks into small rocks.  By the usual human-powered method, that is, you smack things that annoy you with rocks.  And while, back in the dark ages, that was typically another person, these days we're a bit more advanced, and rely on medication to reduce the overall annoyed gene.

But moving forward a few dozen steps, I was enjoying the possibility of coming into four years of employment history with my current employer this past spring when the freight train of "whoops, layoffs" came roaring through.  The division I work for in a rather large (as in Fortune 100, give or take a zero) organization sought to improve overall performance, and reduced our number of locations by a little over 60%.  Which meant the necessary staff supporting those locations was also over-populated.

Thus I, Mr. "I wanna avoid going back into IT because nearly every job I had there ended in a layoff, I'll stick in this industry" got the notice that I was on short time as of June 1.  I then made the choice to look for another position, and put my daytime energy into my daytime job - that is, that which you are expected to do as an employee.  Over the course of this summer, I managed to impress a number of my supervisors on a short-term project with my work ethic, my documentation, and my consistency.  They decided they wanted me to stay with the organization.  So then, after a few phone interviews, I was selected by another supervisor in our organization to join that team.

Me, being Mr. Practical On Occasion, observed that all of the vacation which I had managed to earn and hold on to, in anticipation of not having a job and wanting to insure I had some income while I sought to find one of those "we're desperately looking for intelligent people" positions that didn't require me to wear a name tag, work in unusual positions such as standing on my head, or my feet, and in other ways, do something to get paid, decided since I didn't need to keep that vacation, I'd burn off a week to get me under the "can carry over" limit of 80 hours.

So I used that week about two weeks ago, and came back to the training day to discover that my new job had been cut due to ... yeah, we don't know either.  But it was gone like the dodo.  Or the carrier pigeon.  Though where there was a world with a pigeon as big as an aircraft carrier, I dunno that I'd want to have to avoid the ... byproduct.  But as the universe did have a good day planned for dear old yours truly, two former coworkers of mine on the team I'd been removed from had also informed their supervisor that they wished to go elsewhere.  Or maybe it was something more along the lines of "hey, it's been fun, but I gotta do something else now."  So the team I'd left had two openings for people, my new job was gone, and my former supervisor was thrilled to find out I was at loose ends.

So to bring the story to a point, I was brought back aboard my original team, doing the job I already knew how to do having done it for over 3 1/2 years, and oh, by the way, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you mind a new computer, too?

My mother might have raised a few halfwits (look, I was the oldest, I saw them grow up, yes, the odds were high), but I wasn't one of them.  I jumped at the opportunity.

Which meant that my homemade work desk was going to need to undergo an evolution of sorts as I was going to go from 2 to 3 monitors.  Yeah, that's fun.  

But wait, you say, you were talking about woodworking, how'd we get to that where computers were involved?  Well, simple little side road here.  My present work-provided computer is about the size of a medium hard-back book.  Not War In Peace, but perhaps one of the Harry Potter books provided the font isn't too large.  The computer itself is about an inch thick, about eight inches long, and maybe almost six inches wide.  In other words no, there are no spinning drives in this thing, only one SSD, into which I've got plugged a keyboard, a mouse, and two monitors.  Also a power cord and a network cord.  And because I'm completely utterly paranoid about water and electricity, I also built a stand that holds my two monitors 6 1/4" above the desk.  That is, each side of the stand is made out of a leftover bit of 2x6 which is actually only about 8" long, 5 1/2" tall, and 1 1/2" thick.  On top of these two pieces standing on edge, I've attached a length of 3/4" plywood about 24" long.  That way the two 21" monitors on my desk can sit edge to edge.

But wait, I hear again, what about the computer"  Well, that 5 1/2" below the shelf where the monitors sit was a good spot, so what I did in the middle was mounted a small "floating shelf" - it's a piece of 3/4" plywood about 9" long, 8" wide, and it's hanging down below the shelf on 2 5" by 1/4" carriage bolts.  That is, there's a bolt in each corner, and they hold the plywood, the computer sits on it, with air flow above, a fan behind the computer, blowing away from me, towards and up the wall, to maintain airflow around the computer.  Should something spill on my desktop (hasn't happened so far), the computer is still about 2" above the desktop, so it should be safe.  

But the expected new computer is going to be a laptop.  I'm not going to use the laptop's keyboard, because I've gotten used to the ergonomic keyboards, so I use those.  So my wife has a laptop stand she found for her work laptop which permits her to have all three of her monitors at the same level, so it's a bit easier to use.

As to how the woodworking ties in, I'm going to need to create two new monitor stands to raise my monitor up off the desktop, and they need to be separate so my laptop will be able to stand between them.  Which is where I decided I wanted to do something challenging.  That's right, I've lost my fool mind.

Or rather, it's been more than a few years since I've inherited some of my father's tools, and while I do enjoy woodworking, I also know there are some things I should probably figure out how to do.  And one of those things which has long baffled me are dovetails.  That is, it's the creation of a piece of wood which allows it to mate to another piece of wood in such a way that it's not going to come apart easily, if at all.  That's the simple version.  For the complex version, start thinking triangles.  Yeah, that's right.  Triangles.  I'm talking interlocking triangles.  If you were to fold your hands with fingers interlaced, you'd get a bit of the general idea.  What a true dovetail is makes two pieces of wood fit together with interlocking pieces so they are very strong.  Well done versions of dovetails fit so tightly that they're difficult to impossible to take apart.  The easiest way to explain it would be for you to take a look at a spot where two pieces of wood come together to form a 90 degree corner.  Most often, this would happen in a drawer, in the corner, often the back corner.  There would be one piece of wood with strange slots cut in it - the narrower part of the slot would be the initial opening of the slot, while it would grow wider as you traveled further into the wood.  In fact, you'd go as far in as the other piece of wood was thick.

Huh?  I lost you?  Well, dovetails allow you to connect two pieces of wood without using things like fasteners.  The wood interlocks, with fingers on one piece of wood being shaped, exactly, to fit into these slot-styled wedge channels cut into the other piece of wood.  The joint itself usually fits all the way through the other piece of wood, with what is called a "through-dovetail."  Should you get really fancy and cut your slots only partially into the wood, those are called "blind dovetails" - that's right, because you can't see what you're doing.  

So here we go.  I decided to make a couple of smaller monitor stands by using dovetails.  And yes, there are a number of tools that can allow you to create the dovetails with machinery.  But I'm a little bit old school.  I wanted to first understand how the whole damned thing works, and to do that, I wanted to do what we laughingly call "fun, hand-cut dovetails" - or in other words, "only crazy people or really good woodworkers do these."  I'm not in the second category, the final diagnosis from a professional for the first part may still be pending.  But I did it anyway.

First up, though, is that I did my tests with pine wood.  Dovetails can be done with any sort of wood, but they're best done with very hard woods - things like oak, cherry, maple, and walnut.  Hard woods that do not tend to deform when in contact with another piece of wood.  But pine, well, you can dent that with a knuckle, and it is a softwood.  So you need to be a bit more careful as you prepare your joints, but you also need to be aware that it is absolutely possible for you to break the wood simply by banging on it.

Then comes the truly depressing bit.  I'm normally a "good enough" woodworker.  That is, I often do not sweat anything under 1/8" of an inch.  Or in other words, I get "close enough" and let it go.  I learned a long time ago that my board stretcher just isn't good at unfixing things I've "fixed" enough.  So I tend to do most things "close enough" for it to work.  I have made cabinet-grade things, but they are extremely dependent on good measurements and accurate tools.  When it comes to dovetails, we're to a level of detail that the thickness of a pencil line can often screw things up.  Or in other words, dovetails can fit tightly or be sloppy depending on which side of the pencil line you put the saw.

Or in other words, just look at your tools.  Most power tools have thick blades.  I have two table saws in my garage.  One is a "contractor job site" table saw with a 10" blade - that means it's 10" from edge to edge when you measure through the middle.  And if you look at that blade, it's 1/8" thick.  Or if you're making something out of wood, you don't get 2 48" pieces when you cut an 8' long board in half.  If you're absolutely exact on the middle and "split the line" you end up with 2 pieces of wood which are 47 15/16" long.  You convert 1/8" of that board into sawdust.  

So as noted before, I try not to build projects where a 1/8" difference means things don't fit together well.  But I've been accounting for that 1/8" cut for years.  That cut is called a "kerf" - as in the amount of space the blade eats.  

So when I look around my shop at my hand saws, I have a few.  The first is the "back saw" I got with a miter box.  The saw has reinforcement on the back, that is, the edge of the saw that doesn't cut the wood, that keeps it flat and straight.  That saw blade is actually about 1/32" or I could make four cuts in the same kerf that my table saw would use.  But I have better.

I have a coping saw that has a blade slightly thinner than the back saw.  It's not as thick, but it can also bend, which means I can cut around corners.  Then I have a couple of Japanese-style razor saws.  I'll save that explanation for a later date, just let me tell you that those saws cut a kerf about half the thickness of my back saw.  So yeah, right around 1/64" wide.

And yes, if you're not careful, you can end up cutting on the wrong side and making a mess.

Which is what I did, once, in making my first pair of hand-cut dovetails.

That's right, only one dovetailed corner isn't worth much.  That is, only one 90 angle between two pieces of wood does not give you a reliable support mechanism.  You need something holding up each end, and as I need two monitor stands, about 7" wide each, that means I need to do four dovetails, or a total of 6 pieces of wood, four with one edge, and two with two edges.  In an ideal world, they might be close to identical, but I'd be thrilled with both of them being solid.

And so far, I've managed to make one stand.  I did "ruin" one end by cutting away the pieces of wood I wanted to keep, so there's that.  But in the end, I do have two solid ends on one shelf.   They're not pretty, but I know what I need to do to get better.  So there's that.  And if I can figure it out, some day I'll get some pictures up for you so this all makes sense.  But it's dinner time, so have a wonderful evening!