What's In The Newsletter?

• Presidents Report
• What Type Of Wood Is It?
• Cracking The Glue Code
• Ed "The Bomb Maker" Battery Project
• Guild Woodworking Projects

Presidents Report

Greeting.  Yes, the guild is still alive and well!  We may not be meeting on a monthly basis, but the lines of communication are open and providing a mechanism for all woodworkers to stay in touch.  We are definitely having to operate as an organization in a different way, but hopefully, this will change at some future date.  We will have to rely on the powers to be to provide how and when an organization like ours can safely get back together.  In the interim, you can use email and phones to communicate with the guild.  Stay safe.

home phone 757-495-0283

cell phone 757-342-8363

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Return to Top

What Type Of Wood Is It?

We all banter around the words like “I made it out of oak, walnut, cherry, etc.” but what are we really talking about with these generic names of wood?  I was looking at the walnut lumber stored in my garage after the March 30 harvest in Virginia Beach by Paul Garrity and members of the guild.  Well it turns out that there are 21 types of walnut trees.  Oak?  There are about 600 species worldwide with 90 of them being native to North America.  We generally separate these into red oaks and white oaks. Cherry?  There are over 100 different species of cherry trees in Japan alone! For this article I thought I would narrow down the walnut trees to just 6 different species.

English Walnut Wood

English walnut wood comes from the trees that are the most common source of edible walnuts! It goes around by a number of names including Circassian walnut, French walnut, Common walnut, and European walnut. English walnut trees are widely distributed throughout western Asia and Eastern Europe. They can grow up to 112 feet long and are usually around 6 feet wide. English walnut is rather expensive. This is one reason why it is frequently seen in veneer form only.

Black Walnut Wood

Black walnut wood is extremely popular among the woodworkers all around the US. It is not only strong and easy to work with but it also has excellent dimensional stability and shock resistance. Black walnut wood is obtained from trees that are widely distributed in the eastern United States. They can grow up to 120 feet in length. However, the trunk diameter is only about 18 to 36 inches thick.

Claro Walnut Wood

Also known as California Black walnut, Claro walnut wood is most closely related to Black walnut wood. It is generally found in California and Oregon. The trees are usually 29 – 58 feet tall and 36 – 54 inches wide. The color of the heartwood can fall anywhere between light brown to a darker shade of chocolate brown. However, grafting claro Walnut trees with English walnut can produce wood having multicolored colored streaks near the grafting point. This wood is sometimes referred to as Marble Claro Walnut.

White Walnut Wood

Also known as Butternut, as the name suggests, white walnut wood is generally lighter than Black walnut. However, that’s not the only difference. Butternut is also considerably soft as compared to other types. Butternut heartwood is usually tan (light to medium) with a hint of a reddish tint. While it is susceptible to insect attacks, White walnut wood is not as durable in terms of decay resistance as its cousins.

Bastogne Walnut Wood

Bastogne walnut is a result of cross-pollination of English walnut and claro walnut. The experiment resulted in a puzzling new breed, Bastogne.  It grows faster than both of its parent and provides stronger lumber, but the quality and quantity of its walnuts is nowhere near the once produced by Claro or English walnut. Hence, the name – Paradox! Bastogne walnut trees are distributed throughout California. They can grow up to 96 feet in height and have a trunk diameter of about 36 – 54 inches. The color of heartwood varies from light golden to reddish brown. Sometimes, the wood has evident streaks that are generally very dark, almost black, in color.

Peruvian Walnut Wood

It is called Peruvian walnut, but technically, it does not only come from Peru. In fact, the trees are distributed through southern Mexico and central and southern America. The trees are usually 29 -58 feet tall and 23 – 40 inches wide. Also known as Tropical walnut and Nogal, Peruvian walnut is fairly famous among hardwood dealers and woodworkers.

Gary Stephens

Return to Top

Cracking The Glue Code

This article was taken from an e-mail sent out by Wood E-Newsletter May 7, 2020.  For more on the article go to https://www.woodmagazine.com/materials-guide/adhesives/cracking-the-glue-code

The code on a bottle of Titebond glue that was manufactured in July 2002.

Q:When I buy glue, I can’t find a production or expiration date on the containers.  It could have been sitting in the store for years—how do I know how old it is? —Dave Starr, Zumbrota, Minn.

A: Dave, the answer is right there on the glue bottle—once you know the code. Here's how to interpret the line of numbers and letters stamped on the containers of white, yellow, and polyurethane glue produced by Franklin International, maker of Titebond and the biggest supplier of woodworking glue. In the typical code shown above, the first number represents the final digit of the year in which the glue was produced; it’s followed by a letter designating the month, with "A" standing for January, "B" for February, and so forth. (They skip "I" because it looks like the number 1.) You can ignore the rest of the code, which relates to the particular batch of glue.

Elmer's glue carries a similar code. In this case, however, the series starts with a letter corresponding to the year of manufacture, with "H" standing for 2005 and "I" signifying 2006. The two numbers following tell you the day of manufacture, and the next letter reveals the month, with "A" designating January, etc.

Now, what should you do with that information? According to Franklin spokesman Dale Zimmerman, white and yellow glue have a shelf life of two years; polyurethane and liquid hide glue have a one-year shelf life. Note: Franklin's hide glue carries an uncoded expiration date to make sure everybody can read it. That's because degradation is a greater problem with this type of glue. If your retailer removes the code, look elsewhere for that bottle of glue. When you take the glue home, write the date of purchase on a piece of masking tape and place it on the container as a clear reference to the glue's age. Then store it out of direct sunlight.

Wood E-Newsletter – May 7, 2020

Return to Top

Ed “The Bomb Maker” Battery Rebuild

Ed is attempting to rebuild the battery pack on a 1995 Craftsman drill driver 9.6 volt battery pack that he can no longer get parts for the unit.  He went to Amazon.com and bought 8 rechargeable batteries.  He disassembled the old battery pack for the miscellaneous parts he needed, used a lot of hot melt glue and a lot of patience.  His next challenge was getting the new battery pack into the old housing.  He may have to consider buying a replacement drill driver at some point in time but he is having problems parting ways with his 25 year old drill.  Sound familiar?  Thought you might like to see his “bomb” mess.

Gary Stephens

Return to Top

Guild Woodworking Projects

Since we have not been able to meet for a couple of months I thought I would take a new approach for the newsletter and feature projects completed by guild members during this sequestering period.

The first project is from Scott Fell who built this chest using hand tools except for surface planning of the wood.

I have been building a 6 board chest using traditional methods and tools.  (You can find an instruction video for sale at Lie-Nielsen.)  The only power tool that touched this was a thickness planer.   The molding was made with rabbet planes and a #6 round.

I used red milk paint, followed by purple milk paint.  I used steel wool on the corners to distress it so the red would show in select areas through the purple.  Then I put on linseed oil diluted with mineral spirits.  As the above picture on the right showed, the linseed oil really changed the color of the paint.  Afterwards, I realized the linseed oil moved the purple color in a yellow direction along the color wheel toward red.  The selected original red areas are now more orange tint.

These are Karl Bogot's projects.

.

The small cheese board is a third generation board. The wood glue-up was part of a sink board made from scraps of a kitchen cabinet project. The leftovers from the sink board became the blanks for the cheese boards. No matter how small, wood can be fashioned into something.

The trivets represent three different power tool efforts. The waffle trivet is made on a table saw. The curved trivet is made with a router and the circle trivet is a lathe project. All are simple once the jigs and templates are manufactured.  The waffle trivet took 3 minutes each. The router trivet took about 10 minutes and the round one the longest, about 30 minutes because of changes in set up.

These are table centerpiece boards made from more wood that was headed to the fire pit. They are made of Oak and Aromatic Cedar.

Larry LaRue sent us this picture of Cherry night stands he made for his daughter.

.

Got the cherry from a good friend who brought it down from his hometown in upstate New York and I found the plans on woodsmithplans.com .   I prefer shaker/mission style for their clean lines. The stands took about 20 board feet of cherry plus a sheet of 3/4” cherry plywood. 

Got the plywood from Wurth.  In my opinion, cherry is one of the friendlier woods to work.  Straight grain and a reasonable hardness minimizes movement and allows it to respond well to cutting, jointing, planeing, etc. I actually flattened these boards with a hand plane which was a new thing for me.  Generates a lot more perspiration than the jointer! I have been using a mixture of varnish, Tung oil and turpentine for a finish.  Turns out WaterLox has a product which is essentially that mixture plus something that gives the wood more luster.  Easy to use.  Thanks to Brian Gold at Woodcraft for putting me on it.

As a side note, I was curious as to how much solid cherry night stands might retail for.  I found a website for a company in Maine that makes a nearly identical design.  $1,750.00 each!  Now I know theirs is probably in another class than mine when it comes to fit and finish, but wow!

Gary Stephens has also found a lot of quality time in the shop working on projects that have laid around for years.

This clock shell has been sitting in my shop for so many years that we no longer remember where or why it came into our possession.  I tore the clock down into all of its component pieces, stripped off the old finish and then finished it with an oil and urethane finish.  I had master wood carver, Dr. Jim Francis, help me with the carvings in the face plate because the sanding process reduced some of them to just fine lines.  I used a dental tool to apply stain to each one of the carvings to give it some pop.  Selecting a new antique face plate, clock movement and pendulum also proved challenging.

Nothing special about this flag case but the burial flag itself.  The case is made of Cherry wood.  What is interesting about this burial flag is that it only has 48 stars!  It has been sitting in my wife’s cedar chest for 30 to 40 years.  It came from her side of the family but no one knew who it belonged to.  With lots of time on her hand she began doing ancestry searching and found out that it belonged to one of her great great grandfathers, Wayne Hayden who served in WWI.  He died on June 22, 1955 with full military honors.  For the non-historians in the group, Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959 and Hawaii followed on August 21, 1959.

My router bit collection has grown steadily over the years and was becoming unmanageable until I came up with this solution.  I built these pull out trays to make selection of the router bits more manageable but to also identify what type of bit it was.  I found the plastic router bit holders on the Lee-Valley web page.  They offer both ¼” and ½” router bit holders in both plastic and brass.  I went with plastic because of cost.  I also used an Excel spread sheet to help with the naming of the bit and the placement of the bit holder.  I then had the sheet laminated to protect the wording.  I finished off the front of each pull out tray with a piece of cherry wood which also acts as a handle when carrying around the tray.  The shell holding the pull out trays is made of Baltic Birch plywood.

During this down time I decided to redo my wife’s laundry room.  It also houses the dog and bird feed.  The vinyl flooring came out and was replaced with ceramic tile.  The old upper and lower cabinets were torn out.  I constructed two new upper cabinets and one lower base cabinet and finished the upper cabinets off with crown molding.  I also took out the hinged door going into the laundry room and replaced it with a sliding barn door which really freed up a lot of space.

Ed Bunker shares his Adirondack chair project.

I built this Adirondack chair using 5/4 deck boards and "No Corode" screws.  I also made minor repairs to two other Adirondack chairs and a matching foot rest.  You must always consider the fasteners when working with pressure treated lumber.  Stainless is best, however expensive. We are ready for the spring / summer parties in the backyard. 

This is his Purple Heart pedestal bowl with four coats of General Finishes "Salad Bowl Finishes", rubbed down with 0000 steel wool between coats.  His son, James, created this flaming Carnelian stone that he carved into a flame.  They go pretty well together!

All the best .....  Ed Bunker Return to Top