The history on the project in this blog series goes back
in time probably the farthest of anything I have done except for maybe the
Maloof rocking chair. I have been an
admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie style architecture since the late
1960’s. In the 1980’s I had a chance to
tour the Dana-Thomas house in Springfield, Illinois and fell in love with
stained glass it contained. Wright
designed approximately 450 art glass windows, skylights, door panels, sconces,
and light fixtures for the house and fortunately most of them survive in-place
in the house.
Fast forward to 1998 when I had completed building my
home in Illinois, a Wright inspired brick and limestone Prairie style house
that in a sun-room had a four panel 12’ wide sliding glass door whose two fixed
panels were the perfect place to put a couple of panels based on a series from
that house. Here is a photo
of the Dana-Thomas doors and windows that I based the design on.
After a whole lot of design, numerous iterations and a
full winter building the stained-glass panels they were installed and looked
like this.
When I retired and we moved from that house to New Mexico
I could not stand to leave them behind.
They were carefully removed from the doors, packed in padded custom boxes
and placed in a storage area in our home.
As I unpacked other stained-glass pieces and hung them around the house,
we could find no good place for them to reside.
Off and on over several years my wife and I discussed various uses and
just could not find the right one. In
2016 I finally decided to start working on a design for a Craftsman style
cabinet using the piece set in a frame as the door. After over two years in design with more
frustration than usual and more versions and variations than I care to think
about I got the design to a point where it looked pretty good.
Since the exact size of the glass is going to drive the
final dimensions it was time to open of the storage case to measure the
piece. Once opened there it was looking
just like it did when I packed it for moving almost nine years ago.
Using my almost done design a material list could be
generated and then it was off to the yard to sort through piles of material
finding the right pieces. Got to say
whenever I select wood, I am just like a kid in a candy store. The cut list below is for one of the two
cases.
Using that list I got the 6/4, 5/4, 4/4 red oak along
with two ¾” sheets and two ¼” sheets of plain sliced red oak plywood. Once I got it home the wood is bought in the
shop annex to acclimate. After letting
it set for a few weeks I thought I could do some very rough initial work. The 6/4 and 5/4 oak boards are rough sawn and
I mean rough. Here are the two 6/4
boards. They are 14’ long, about 10”
wide, 1 5/8” thick and weigh about 70 pounds each. They were a bit cupped and as it is obvious
in the photo, they had more than a little curve in them.
The 6/4 material is for the four outside legs. They are tapered but the rough size is about
81” long and 4” wide. My first step is
to set the plank on some risers at the workbench then using the circular saw
cut it in half. I can’t use my chop saw
as a 14' board is too long to fit on one side of the cutting table.
Next is to take the 7’ long half and take the curve
out. To do that I use a simple cutting
jig clamped to the plank. The right edge
shows where the saw will cut removing the outside curve.
However, before doing any cutting it’s always a good idea
to check for any metal like these staples and remove them.
A pass with the saw down the jig and presto a mostly
straight edge to work from. That’s
followed by a trim of the original uncut end to check for cracks or
splits. Since the plank is now 7’ long
it will fit on my cutting table for the chop saw. All I need to do is go through the same
process to straighten the other side and I will have one plank done and three
to go.
Well time has passed and now I have four planks with
straighter edges that are more or less parallel.
With the planks roughed out now seemed like a good time
to check the moisture content to see if the center of the plank was dry enough
to proceed or if I had to wait for it to dry.
A quick check and the meter showed the moisture content to be 5.7% which
is just fine. One advantage to living in
the desert where the humidity varies between not much and none is that things
do dry out pretty quick. Several times I
have gotten a meter reading of 0% but that’s only because the meter does not
register below 5%.
The next step is to rip the planks down to the rough
width for the outside legs. If the
planks were surfaced smooth with nice neat flat surfaces it would make that a
lot easier. However, these are rough
sawn and flat is not a word I would use to describe them. Sitting a straight edge across one of the
planks shows a fair size cup in the board.
I could take that out by running the plank through the planer several
times but that would reduce the thickness of the finished pieces more than I
want. Rather than proceeding that way
the plan is to rip the planks down to the rough width which will make the cup
much less of a problem and that’s where I will start in the next post. The big ole crack in this piece and in a
couple others will still be something to work around though.
Next up – A Straight Edge, Ripping, Surfacing & a Jig
