Arm Chair Sleeve

I was sitting at in one of my arm chairs in my living room drinking my morning cup of coffee and got tired of reaching for my cup of joe as there was no table near me, so I saw a project on Pinterest that basically made a table to fit around the arm of the chair and thought this was a great little project to use up some scraps and remedy my little problem.

HOW I MADE IT:

• Materials Used

• Panel Glue-Up

• Sanding the panel

• Cutting the Miters

• Shaping

• Another Glue-Up

• Apply the finish

MATERIALS USED

I recently had been given a bunch of scrap wood that varied in species and board size, I decided that this project would be perfect for making the sleeve. I used 3 species of wood of vary widths to make up the 9” width that I used looking for. So I used Walnut, Maple and Cherry to make up the panel I wanted.

Here is the boards that I choose to use before I did anything to do, I needed to rip them at my table saw to the dimensions that I wanted.

Here is the boards all ripped and crosscut to final dimensions, I used Cherry (2-1/2” wide), Maple(1” wide), Walnut(2” wide), Maple(1” wide) and Cherry 2-1/2” wide)

PANEL GLUE-UP

Now that I had my panel all dimensioned it was time to glue all the individual boards into one panel. I decided to use my panel glue up jig that I had made last year,

I used my pipe clamps and a few cauls in gluing up this panel, I left it overnight to set up.

Panel sitting the jig, I did a trial run of the glue up before actually adding the glue.

Here you can see the pipe clamps and the clamping cauls in my attempt at keeping the panel flat during the glue up.

Really need more clamps, lol. I never seem to have enough, it amazes me how many clamps you need when doing even a small glue up, this board is only 30” long x 9’ wide.

SANDING THE PANEL

The next day after the panel had all been glue up I needed to flatten the panel just a little, I really wish I had a planer to do this for me but I don’t so I used all my sanding equipment, which started with my belt sander and 100 grit paper, then I moved to my orbital sander and 120 grit paper and finally hand sanded it a little more to remove all the sanding marks left by the power tools and in the end I had a nice flat nd smooth panel for which to make my sleeve out of.

Here is my belt sander going to town on the panel, I drew pencil lines across all the edges of the mating pieces and when the pencil lines disappear I know the panel is flat.

CUTTING THE MITERS

So now that I have a nice flat panel next on the list was to cut the miters on the two mating ends of the panel. I did some research online on how to do this and also achieve the effect of wrapping the grain around the entire piece so I needed to cut the panels in sequence. I found a very useful YouTube video in doing this and I have placed a video below in how to achieve it.

Here is the video that I found on how to use a chop saw to cut a board so as that the grain continously wraps around the panel.

Below are some pictures of the Miter Saw Sled that I made to assist with cutting the panels for the sleeve.

Miter Saw sled that I through together to help cut the miters

Here is the mitered edge of the miter saw sled, I used this edge as a reference to line up my cuts.

SOME SHAPING

Now that I had my 3 mitered panels to form the 3 sides of the sleeve, I decided to add some decorative and visual interest to the panel, I decided to add rounded edges to the bottom of the side panels, to do that I used my circle template guide to mark round-overs with a 3/4” radius and then I used my jigsaw to cut the rounded edges off and then to finish up the process I took the 2 panels to the spindle sander to smooth the edges and remove the milling marks left from the jigsaw. Unfortunately I lost the picture I took of this process but below you can see the finished edges.

Here you can see the rounded edges on the bottom of one of the sides I did this to the other side as well but left the top piece alone.

GLUEING THE SLEEVE UP

Now it was time to glue up the 3 pieces and to match the 2 mitered edges to form the 3 sided sleeve. Miters can be very tricky to glue up especially when you don’t have biscuits or splines to keep the 3 panels alighned during the glue up but I didn’t have any biscuits and I have never done splines so I decided to just glue the panels up without them. But I did use the painters tape method where you place painters tape on both sides of the glue line and then also put tape on the joint itself to keep the joint aligned on both sides. Below you can see the panel with all the taped edges. This worked extremely well and in the end I had a very tight mitered edge.

Here is the 3 pieces laying flat and painters tape on both sides of the mitered edge that will be receiving glue.

Here is the visible side of the sleeve and again kept the painters tape on this side of the panel.

Next After the glue applied to the mitered corners I folded the 2 sides to firm the final shape and then used more paints tape to keep the 45° sides from moving during the glue-up.

So in theory when the panel was all glue up and dry all I needed to do was to peel off the painters tape where the glue had squeezed out and there was no need to sand or remove and glue as the tape remedied that, and it worked a charm.

ALL GLUED UP

After the glue had dried I returned to the panel to remove all the tape and see how the joint line looked and it looked great I was ready to finish sanding the panel and then it was ready to receive a finish.

Below you can see the sleeve in its final state and the glue all dried with no trace of any glue squeeze out.

Nice and tight mitered joints, and the grain wrapping all the way around the sides.

Here is a view of the top of the sleeve this is where the cup of coffee will sit.

APPLYING THE FINISH

I had some leftover General Finishes Arm N Seal from my assembly table project so I decided to use that, I applied a total of 3 coats to the Sleeve and in between each coat sanded with 150 grit sand paper.

The finish has just been applied and waiting for it to dry, I just love how the wood pops after applying it.

The top looks great

SITTING IN ITS NEW HOME

This was a fun little project and it had everything in it from panel glue-ups, mitered edges, a little shaping and finally a little finishing. This was a great weekend project and now I can enjoy my cup of coffee and not worry about where to put it.

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CRAFT BEER FLIGHT : PART 5

So today I got a little done, wasn’t a very busy day because of the glue-up.

TODAY’S ACTIVITIES INCLUDED :

• Finished putting the dadoes in the flights.

• The Glue-up

DADOES

I finally finished putting all the dadoes in the bottom sides of the flights. As I did previously I put a 1/2” dado stack into the table saw and raised it 1/4” high. Below is a picture of the finished flights, now that all joinery is cut so as that I glue in the sides and then its on to the glue up.

So all the flights are made all 9 of them.

THE GLUE-UP

The glue-up was a lot of fun trying to figure out how I was going to glue up 9 flights at the same time with only 13 clamps. The glue-up consisted of just attaching the two feet into the dadoes I just cut.

My solution was to use the jig that I had just made for the pipe clamps . I used a brace across the pipe clamps that way I could clamp 2 flights back to back and only use 4 clamps for the bottom feet of the flight, then I used the rest of the clamps to secure the tops of the flights, its very complicated but here are some pictures to clarify.

Here you can see the pipe clamp jig with the braces stretching across all the flights, this way I could save on clamps and 2 separate clamps across both feet instead of using individual clamps for each foot.

Here is a closer look at the top clamps securing the front feet and bottom brace can support the back feet

Another close up picture

This clamping jig is really versatile otherwise I would have needed to buy a boat load clamps, I could fit 4 flights this way and the other 5 were clamped elsewhere using the back to back method.

NEXT…

• I need to do one more finishing sanding and wipe them down

• Finally I need to apply a couple coats of oil based Polyurethane.

Room Divider : Day 2

Today was a very busy day in my day to day life so I didn't get too much accomplished in the shop, but I did make progress, just a little!!!

WHAT I DID TODAY

• Went to Woodcraft and availed myself of a great sale!!
• Inspected the painted panels
• Milled the parts that make up the legs of the divider
• Glued up the legs

WENT TO WOODCRAFT

I love going to this store as they have everything that I want as a woodworker but I would need to win the lottery to buy everything that I wanted. They did however have a sale on Japanese handsaws so I purchased 1 and got another one half off, I also got the Veritas flush trim saw which has been on my shopping list for a little time, but you can see some of the pictures I took below

The saw on the left and right are Japanese handsaws one of them has a blade stiffner and one without,These saws are on the espensive  side but they cut like a hot knife through butter.

You can see the blades here. The Gyokucho Cross cut blade is on the right, dovetail Gyokucho is on the left and the Veritas flush trim saw is in the mddle, 

The Japanese saw in action, this saw is so nice and every once in a while its nice to use hand tools to get the job done. I love the grip very comfortable on the hands.

INSPECTED THE PAINTED PANELS

The panels look awesome and the I can totally see the grain definition come though the paint which  is unusual, but the panels are ready to receive the face frames tomorrow.

Can totally see the grain come through the paint, the pictures don't do it justice. Anyway it doesn't really matter because the herringbone pattern will be covering the majority of this panel

MILLING THE LEGS

Tonight I used some 2x wood to make the legs of the divider, but because my divider thickness is 2 1/4" thick I needed to prepare 2 pieces of wood to make up that thickness, so I used my tablesaw with a feather-board to keep the board aligned as I milled the lumber. I needed to make 6 pieces as I am going to be gluing up the 3 legs out these in the next step.

Here you can see me pushing the board through the blade using a feather-board to keep the lumber straight as it going through the blade

LEG GLUE-UP

I milled up 6 pieces of lumber

• 3 @ 1.5"x1.5"
• 3@ 1.5" x .75" which will give me my 2 1/4" thickness so as that I can attach them to the plywood and face frames, but first I need to glue up the 3 sets of legs and you can see the pictures below of the glue-up and the multitude of clamps lol

Here re the 6 boards getting ready to be glued up, if you are one that does a lot of glue-ups you should get this Glue-bot container which is what I use to apply glue especially on glue-ups like this one. I made the boards longer so as that I can cut them to final size when the glue sets.

Here is another angle of the glue-ups.. glad I made those extra saw horses.

Here are the boards all clamped together for the night, instead of clamping each individual leg I organized all the legs into one assembly . I just made sure that I orientated the board faces so as that the boards wouldnt be all glued together. I used a lot of clamps lol... its true what they say you can never have enough clapmps

Well that's it for today, tomorrow I will be cleaning up the legs and attaching the face frames to the plywood panels...……. until then have a great day