Coke Development

Goals for 2021

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 23:21:00 -0700

At the beginning of 2021, I set a couple of woodworking goals for myself:

Build 50 items out of wood.
Build 10 new, substantive items. These can’t be boxes, cutting boards, or anything that’s easy or repetitive. They have to be unique items that are newly designed.

Since it’s April and we’re now more than a third of the way done, I’m taking stock of the items that I’ve built thus far. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures for everything, but I will try to include pictures of the finished product where they exist.

Completed projects

Douglas fir console table
Cherry shoebench
Purple heart, cherry, and poplar cutting board (gifted to Bill)
Cherry coffee table
Simple bedside box (beech)
Magnetic knife block (beech)
Live edge coat hook made from California Bay Laurel
Maple, chherry, walnut cutting board (gifted to Peter and Patrice)
Outdoor couch (white oak)
Modern coak hook (beech)

I’m a little bit behind with only 10 completed items, but I do have a bunch of small projects queued up and ready for completion. Still, I have to finish some more pieces to get back on track.

Shoe bench

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 22:05:00 -0700

This cherry shoe bench has been in the making for quite a while. It’s made from cherry and walnut that I ordered online from Woodworker’s Source. The walnut was cut into strips and laminated together with the cherry. The top part of the shoe bench is a single continuous slab that was carefully dovetailed together.

The legs are tapered cherry and connected by mortise and tenons. It’s suprisingly strong and holds multiple people on it.

Tri-leg stool

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 11:14:00 -0800

I wanted to make a really quick stool that could be used at the pottery wheel. The main goals for this build was to build something quickly since I needed something in the next couple of hours. Also, the stool needed to be sturdy and able to sit on uneven ground.

Because of these constraints, I decide to build a quick angled tri-leg stool. The angles were done by using a forstner bit to drill into a jointer 2x6 (which had a natural curve in it). Then some tenons were created out a 2x4.

The overall cost of this stool was very low since it was made out of all scrap wood. I was also lucky to find a warped piece of 2x6 which naturally lent a curve to the base of the tool.

Douglas Fir Bathmat

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 22:57:00 -0700

After completing my workbench, I had a good bit of construction lumber leftover. So I decided to make a wooden bathmat with the scrap.

Why a bathmat?

I’ve been lacking a bathmat in my life for a couple of months since I moved into my new apartment. Bathmats are one of those things that can really make a difference in your everyday life. Having your warm feet hit the cold tiled surface of your bathroom floor right after a shower is one of the most oddly unpleasant feelings.

Don’t get me wrong: cold feet aren’t a big deal. But when I think of marginal happiness, keeping your feet warm is probably one of the highest bang for your buck things that you can do. It doesn’t cost much to have a bathmat and can make a big difference in the morning.

Design requirements

I knew a couple of things had to be true about the bathmat I was building.

Waterproof: This one is pretty obvious, you don’t want your bathmat to rot after a couple of uses.
Reasonable drainage: I didn’t want water to pool on top of my bath mat. I wanted to make sure that water would correctly run off onto the floor if there was too much of it.
Stability: You can’t have your bathmat sliding around on you. That’d be dangerous, especially in a place like a bathroom.

The build

So I decided to go with a pretty simple design for the bathmat based on my requirements. I’d have a number of stretchers in the middle of the mat with two rabbeted pieces at the ends that acted kind of like breadboards. The stretchers would be equally spaced apart: good for both wood movement and drainage. The rabbeted breadboard ends would be wide enough to provide stability.

Making this was pretty simple. I cut the stretchers first by milling a bunch of long rectangles, then cutting tenons on the ends with the table saw. It was pretty easy to set up a stop block on my crosscut sled and make a bunch of repeated cuts.

Then for the breadboard ends, I made a couple of rip cuts all the way down the board that were as deep as the tenons on the stretchers were long.

For the glueup, I made a bunch of little wedge spacers to keep the stretchers the same spacing throughout and just added a dab of glue on each tenon.

For finishing, I used Thompson’s Waterseal to ensure the mat would be waterproof.

Pair of beech mallets

Sat, 13 Jun 2020 23:33:00 -0700

I decided to make myself a mallet out of spare hardwood since my rubber mallet had been starting to see a lot of wear. In addition, I just received a pair of Gramercy holdfasts which can’t easily be struck with a rubber mallet (these holdfasts are fantastic by the way).

As soon as I started making one mallet, I realized I could just do the same thing twice and ensure I had enough mallets to last for a while. The whole process was pretty quick and I was done in a couple of hours (not including glue up time).

The build

Both mallets were made in a very similar way:

Glue three boards of beech together for the mallet head. I had 4/4 beech on hand so I ended up with a 2.25" x 2" x 5" head.
Glue two offcuts of white oak strips together for the handle.
Taper the handle slightly with a hand plane to allow for a friction fit with the head.
Cut the ends of the mallet head at about 10 degrees to make it easier for striking.
Mortise through the mallet head. I first used a drill to get most of the waste out and finished using a mortise chisel to ensure I got a tight fit. Make sure you make the bottom of the mortise a bit smaller than the top to allow for the taper of the handle (just measure the width directly from the handle).
Tap the handle all the through the mallet head. You shouldn’t need any glue if the taper is done correctly.

Here’s a picture of an unfinished mallet:

Finished mallets

Roubo workbench

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 11:41:15 -0700

I’ve been meaning to build a legitimate Roubo workbench for a while now. Once COVID-19 hit, I had a legitimate reason to stay inside and churn one out. I set out with a couple of goals:

It shouldn’t move. I was gifted a Pegasus Worx work table which has been really great. However, it’s not an ideal table for hand work since it moves quite easily.
It should have lots of clamping area. Another problem with the Pegasus Worx is that it’s not easy to clamp things onto it, since it’s underside has sort of a plastic webbing. I wanted to make sure my next workbench had ample area to clamp things down.
It should have a vise. Vises are really important for good work (and for safety), so this was a must.

I also thought about a lot of other features that I wanted: lots of storage area, work holding for both long boards and short boards, easy face planing. However, the three requirements above were my main constraints (other than price).

For lumber, I decided to use douglas fir 2x6s from Lowes, as well as a couple of redwood 2x6s to accent the outsides of the bench. Given that I live in the city and move around quite frequently, I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on a bench that I have a 50/50 chance of only using for a couple of years.

Dimensions

I really wanted a large workbench and was willing to take up my living room for this thing. There’s something fun and majestic about a large workbench. I also thought it was fitting to portion a large part of my apartment to the bench given that woodworking will likely be my main hobby going forward.

I decided to use the entire width of the 8 foot long 2x6s, panel gluing 17 of them together to get a table depth of roughly 25". Since I’m 5'10", I decided to go with a standard table height of 34".

Table top glue up

I didn’t put too much thought into the table top glue up, and I didn’t even joint the boards! I just grabbed some clamps and started gluing. I know some people would say this would be a mistake, but I really needed a bench quickly and wasn’t afraid to use my hand plane after the glue up finished (in fact during COVID I was quite excited for the exercise). The only potential problem would have been gaps in the wood. Luckily I had enough clamps and did the glue up in pieces so that this wasn’t a problem.

Base

For the base, I decided to go with the standard sliding dovetail tenon joint found on most Roubo benches. These turned out pretty well, although there were some gaps. If I were to do this again, I would have completed the entire base before cutting out the mortises on the table so that I could mark exactly where the tenons would sit. Unfortunately, I made the mortises for each leg before the entire leg assembly had been glued up. This caused the glue up to be incredibly stressful as I was frantically trying to push the tenon legs down and get them fully seated.

I added a small bench area to store tools and lumber. It was a simple design using rabbets and some spare 2x4s that I had bought.

Flattening

Flattening was quite the physical challenge. It was a lot of planing, and it was quite tiring. This was probably my favorite part of the whole project because I love a good workout, and because planing is such a meditative activity.

Total cost

Total cost for this bench was surprisingly low!

Lumber Total: $240

25 Douglas fir 2x6s: $125
8 Douglas fir 2x4s: $25
4 Redwood 2x6s: $90

Accessories Total: $170

9" Yost vise: $100
2 Gramercy holdfasts: $40
2 Veritas bench dogs: $30

Learnings

I probably should have jointed the 2x6s before gluing anything. Going straight to glue up saved a bunch of time, but the end product wasn’t quite as nice and neat as it could have been
Making a workbench out of construction lumber and with less than stellar joinery actually isn’t the worst thing. I’ve been able to chisel on the bench without fear because it’s not that nice after all. It’s a workbench: so it’s meant to get abuse.
Having a decent plane makes a gigantic difference. Previously I was using a $30 smoothing plane from Amazon and it was not the best to put it mildly. I got a #7 jointer plane from TayTools and it was a massive upgrade (even though it’s not a top of the line tool). Having a blade that can stay sharp is huge, as was the depth adjustment.
Make your own hardwood dowels. I bought some “hardwood” dowels from Amazon to use for my pegged mortise and tenons on the base. These were horrendous because as I was hammering them in they started splitting. I eventually got all of the mortises pegged, but it wasn’t pretty.
Mistakes can turn beautiful. On one set of legs, I chopped mortises on the wrong side of the leg. However, I plugged them up with some solid pieces of walnut and they are now my favorite part of the bench.

About

Sat, 16 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Coke Development is a collection of woodworking projects.

Background

Incredibly high in carbon content with few impurities, coke is used as a fuel to produce steel. The lack of impurities means that it generates incredibly high temperatures without much smoke.

There are a number of industrial processes that are used for creating coke, but they all revolve around baking off impurities from coal.

One of the main reasons why coke is interesting is because the coal industry in recently years has been very much maligned. I’m not saying the general large scale production of coal is good, but there are a number of very important industries that rely on the production of at least some coal. Steel production would be impossible without coke.

The interesting thing is that very few people know or understand why coke is important in the steel making process. Just like many things, coke is hidden in plain sight. It’s an absolutely essential part of the modern world that few people would be able to name. Many things come in this form of “plumbing”, where you don’t notice them until they stop operating normally.

Woodworking

So what does this have to do with woodworking? Just like coke, most things in woodworking are hidden from view. High quality mortise and tenon joints are invisible when looking at a piece of furniture, but absolutely crucial to the structural integrity of a piece.

The ethos of Coke Developmentis to create pieces of furniture that serve a practical purpose. Furniture should be of high quality and stand out to people who understand and appreciate this quality. However, for most people a piece should be practical enough that they don’t think twice about it as they go about their lives.