Courtyard Gate – #3 Edge Trimming, a Twisted off Screw & Gluing up Rails

The boards are left to rest for a few days flat with spacers for air movement to see if any of them moved and all are smooth, flat and most have one true edge.  They then get sorted into stacks by my estimation of how wide they will be after the one rough edge gets cut parallel to the routed edge.  The photo shows them broken down in 1/16” steps from 5 3/8” wide on the left and 5” wide on the right. 

To rip the second long edge parallel to the routed edge the table saw is used.  As I said above most of the boards were fine but a few of the edges had bowed a tiny bit, less than 1/16” while they sat.  To help mitigate those inconsistencies in the routed edge the 8’ long level gets clamped to the fence and the routed edge is run against that.

With all the boards now having their two long edges straight and parallel I can finally start cutting blanks that will be face glued together to make the required 1 ½” thick pieces.  The first group are the top, bottom and middle rails shown highlighted in the top left drawing.  The top right photo shows a typical set of boards cut slightly oversize to allow for trimming.  The bottom photo shows the 12 pieces needed to make the top and bottom rails for both doors.  The center rail pieces are not shown.

To keep the three layers aligned while they get glued up a screw gets added at each end about ½” in from the edge.  A stop block and fence locates the hole so I don’t have to measure each one.  The top left photo show shows that setup and the lower left photo is a closer view.  The right photo is of the screw installed after countersinking the hole.

Because the gate will be outside a waterproof glue is used to prevent glue failure.  Here are the three pieces that make up one of the top or bottom rails.  The black thing next to the glue bottle is a toothed glue spreader that spreads the glue to a consistent thickness much faster than can be done otherwise.  Spreading the glue isn’t shown as it’s always a mad rush to get the glue on, pieces aligned and clamped within the glue’s working time.  It’s going to be more fun getting this done for the stiles when each of the boards are almost three times longer.

This is what two of the rails look like glued up.  First a 6-mil piece of plastic the glue does not stick to goes down so the assembly doesn’t glue itself to the work bench.  The glued three-layer assembly with the screws run in for alignment is next.  That’s followed by a thick flat plank to spread the clamp’s pressure evenly across the assembly.  Last four heavy duty clamps are added and tightened down until the boards cry uncle.

The first set of rails went fine however in the second batch one of the screws used for holding the boards in alignment twisted off when I went to remove it.  This leaves me with a real problem in that my planned saw cut for trimming to length goes right through the center of the hole now occupied by a broken off screw.  Removing the broken part of the screw was going to be a problem no matter how it got done.  After some thought I decided to work my way from the top down using a wood chisel until I could see the end of the screw then carefully remove the wood until the screw was exposed.  The top photo shows one of the screws that cooperated when removed and the other is the broken one.  The bottom photo is a closer view of the broken screw that now can be removed.  I believe the problem was when the screw was run in after the glue was applied the threads got coated and the screw got glued in place.  In the future the screw threads will get coated with wax and removed an hour after being clamped while the glue has not yet fully cured.

After an overnight cure the clamps are removed and the glue mostly cleaned off with a paint scraper.  The bottom photo shows the edge cleaned up (red arrow) so none of the remaining glue sticks out beyond the clean top board’s edge.  That edge will act as my true straight edge when it’s run through the table saw to trim the opposite edge.  The piece will then be flipped and the first reference edge trimmed so all the pieces are flush with the assembly and a little oversize.  There is one more set of rails to do and then it’s on to the stiles or vertical frame pieces.

First, step for the stiles is to cut them to rough length on the chop saw but before doing that I screwed a fence extension to the top of my workbench to the left of the saw to make sure that long pieces were square with the saw blade.  This had been on my to-do list for a long time and now seemed like a good time to add it.  The top photo shows the finished MDF piece (red arrow) screwed down.  To make sure it’s in-line with the fence attached to the saw I clamped my 8’ level to the saw’s fence then clamped the MDF extension to the level and lastly screwed the extension to the workbench’s top.

The new fence to the left of the saw’s blade is used when the right end is cut square. 

That’s followed by sliding the board to the right where a stop block (red arrow) is set so left end can be cut.  This two-step process gives me square cuts on both ends and makes all pieces the same length.

The table saw is then used to cut the boards to their oversize width trimming off knots, or other bad bits off the edges.  The red arrows point to the knot that gets cut away and the insert is a closer view.  Sometimes only one edge needs to be cut other times there are flaws on both sides that need to be removed.  When done almost all the pieces are clear wood with no defects at all.

Next Up – Gluing up Stiles & Lower Panels, Making Latilla Sample

Courtyard Gate – #2 Surfacing & Truing One Edge

This is a view of the shop setup to be used for running the boards through the planer.  The red arrow points to the planer.  To its right is a red large shop vac that will be connected to the planer for chip collection.  The blue roller stand in the foreground will support the cedar on the infeed side and the yellow roller stand in the background will provide support as the cedar exits the planer.

Preparation before surfacing is to check the boards for a few things.  First, is to look for loose knots (just one found) and remove.  Second, is to check for any staples or metal.  Each of the boards had a plastic tag stapled on so all those get removed.  There was also one staple on the face of one board and it got removed.  Reason I am so careful is that planer knives spinning at 8,000 RPM’s hitting a nail or metal staple nicks the knife chipping the knife’s edge leaving a ridge on the surfaced board the size of the chip which is not desirable.  There are a few fixes but none quick or cheap so it pays to carefully check before running the boards through the planer.  Third, is to check and see if the board has a cup.  If it does the crown goes up as shown in the drawing below.  That way the outer edges will ride on the planer’s base keeping the board from rocking.  The bottom photo shows a board after the first pass through the planer with the original rough surface on the left and the fresh cut surface at the right.  Another pass or two through the planer will flatten this face getting rid of the rough surface.

Because you can always plane a board thinner but you can’t add material back on if too much it taken off very thin passes of about 1/64” get removed.  As I was working through the stack unknown to me there were four boards that had split as they had dried.  On the left are two of them and the others are similar.  Because most of the board is in good shape I just cut off the split part then ran them through the planer with no problems.  After making several passes getting the first face about 95% flat I flipped the boards over, made a couple of passes then called it a day.  All in all, it took about four hours of preparation and planer work to get to this point.  While doing some cleanup I checked the to see how full the 32-gallon shop-vac was since before starting it had been emptied and to my surprise it was completely full as shown in the right photo. 

Once all the boards have one rough surface flattened, smoothed and the second face nearly smoothed establishing one straight edge is next.  I could have continued surfacing but wanted a break from it.  All of the boards have slightly uneven rough sawn edges and most of them are slightly curved.  Usually, a straight edge is created on the jointer or by attaching my 8’ level to the table saw fence and running the board against that.  There is a common problem with either method in that the reference surface on the jointer or the 8’ level is too short to fully engage the 6’ board’s length both before and after the cutting point.  Ideally a 12’ long truly straight edge is needed.   My fix is to use a router and an 8’ long straight aluminum guide clamped to the board.  This works since the board is not moving and I’m matching the edge to the guide   I have two routers that would work but one has a plunge base with a flat side that will work very well for following the straight edge.  First, the clear base currently on the router has a large opening required for large diameter bits and here a small ½” diameter bit will be used.  Changing the base to one with a smaller opening gives me more contact surface between the router and the board making the router more stable.  When changing bases, I like to make sure the hole in the base is centered on the router’s drive shaft.  It’s not essential here but if a guide were mounted to the base, it would be.  Centering is done using a centering cone (red arrow) shown in the photo below.  Once the cone centers the base the screws holding it on are tightened.

Here are two views of the setup used to give me a good straight edge using the router.

Before clamping the board in place, the edge is checked and the edge’s crown or high point of the curve gets selected to be the cut face.  The red line in the drawing shows the desired straight edge on a very bowed board.  Here the photo shows a combination square (red arrow) set for the offset needed for the router to trim just a tiny bit off this edge.  The same offset is set at the other end.  Now any bow extending beyond the line in the drawing gets trimmed off resulting is a nice smooth straight edge.

Here everything is set to be routed with the router in position ready to go.  After a pass down the edge, it’s straight and ready to have the rest of the surfacing done so both faces are flat and smooth.  One down and 36 to go.

More surfacing is next where all the boards are surfaced down 1/64” per pass until all the defects are gone and the faces are smooth.  The two photos below show all the cedar pieces with both faces surfaced smooth and with one edge routed straight.  The material is sorted in stacks by thickness because some boards were slightly thicker, flatter or smoother that others and I quit surfacing when both sides were smooth.  On the far-left side the pieces are .55” thick and each stack is .01” thinner until you get to the far-right stack which is jumps by .02” and is .48” thick.  Having different thickness means I can mix and match them for gluing up the main pieces to hit my minimum 1½” thickness plus a little cushion in case a problem shows up when the three pieces get laminated together.

Next Up – Edge Trimming, a Twisted off Screw & Gluing up Rails

Courtyard Gate – #1 Design and Material Selection

In late summer I got an inquiry asking if I was interested in taking a look at repairing or making a replacement for an old wooden courtyard gate that had seen better days.  Since I had nothing planned, we set up a time to meet and do an evaluation of the existing gate shown below.  At first glance it looked like there was just a missing piece along with some rotted infill panels both of which could be repaired.  However, upon closer inspection the rot was not limited to the infill panels but had gotten into the structural elements.  There were also some cracked framing members that when all considered made the gate a candidate for replacement rather than repair.  Fortunately, the jambs attached to the courtyard wall were in good shape and could be reused.

After taking measurements I did some research sending them about 20 different images of potential styles and designs.  That list quickly got narrowed down to a handful and the decision was made to keep the same general style of the gate but add some ornamentation to the infill panels.  More discussion ensued with a decision to add the Zia sun symbol.  In pure form it is a circle with groups of rays pointing in four directions, representing the four seasons, four cardinal directions, or the four stages of life.  It’s from the Zia Pueblo people of New Mexico.  The symbol is featured on the New Mexico state flag and gets applied to all sorts of things.  Everything from clothes, to lights, jewelry and stained glass.

With the general parameters set I made a drawing or should I say several drawings exploring a bunch of different options for using the Zia.  As I say, “The good thing about a custom design is you can have anything you want and the bad thing is you can have anything you want.”  You just have to work through all the options and decide what that is.  Below are some of the options looked at.

The final design or mostly final design settled on is shown below on the left.  The X-ray drawing on the right shows an exploded view and in it the tenons and mortices can be seen.    My guess is that the drawing is about 95% done.  Now there may be some changes regarding the infill panel’s tenons and mortises.  I guess I should say constructions details will change as the build process evolves as they always do.  I also need to double check the gate height and more importantly its width before the cutting gets started.

Because we wanted the gates to be rot resistant that limited us to a few material choices.

• Pressure treated construction lumber is really wet.  For 1½” thick material to dry I would like to allow at least 9 months and that’s so short only because we live in an arid desert climate.  Additionally, when drying it can display all sorts of problems like warp, twist, cup split and kink plus it generally has flaws like knots that are really unacceptable in this application.
• White oak is a possibility but it costs quite a bit and it’s pretty heavy with a specific gravity of about .75.
• Cypress or Redwood are good choices with a specific gravity of about .4.  They are naturally rot resistant; light somewhat expensive and decent material is not available around here.  I could order some but who knows what it would look like which is why I insist on sorting through materials stacks and picking my own pieces out.
• Cedar is a good rot resistant choice with a specific gravity of about .35 but is not available locally in the thickness needed.  However, rough surface cedar fencing boards 5/8” thick by 5 ½” wide and 6’ long are locally available allowing us to sort through and pick good boards.  The down side is they are not dry and will have to set to dry out before using.  We went to the local big box store and spent a few hours sorting through their stock pulling out flat, straight grained material with minimal small defects.  We ended up with 37 pieces after sorting through about 450 boards.  Here they are stacked up to dry with spacers between each board to allow airflow around them to minimize uneven drying.

Right after stacking the boards their moisture content got checked and it registered 45.7% which is really wet with water making up much of the weight of the board.  Here are the moisture meter readings at initial testing on left, two weeks in the center and five weeks on the right with it down to less than 6% which is great.  One advantage to living in the desert where the humidity is frequently in the single digits.  The boards being relatively thin also helped speed the drying process.

After about a month the boards got moved from the wood storage area into the shop.  They then got restacked and checked for any problem children that were no longer flat, straight and true.  Surprisingly, there was only one board that had any real problems.  In the top photo the red arrows indicate how much its warped.  The inset measures it at a little over ¾”.  The bottom photo illustrates how I am trying to remove the warp.  It may work since the board is not completely dry and I am not real confident of success but nothing ventured nothing gained.

One drawback in using cedar fence boards is that they are not surfaced smooth.  The photo shows the roughness of the boards in their current state.  They aren’t as rough as regular rough sawn hardwood planks but not as smooth as needed for gluing or for a finished surface.  The first step will be to run them through a planer taking off the minimum needed to get a surface suitable for gluing.

Next Up – Surfacing & Truing One Edge