The Woodshop Shed

adventures in woodworking and home maintenance, from my shop in an oversized backyard shed

March 2022
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Mini Tetrahedral Tensegrity Table

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


Mini Tetrahedral Tensegrity TableI've been fascinated by tensegrity structures, particularly tables, since I first encountered them on the web. I've also seen tensegrity projects here on LumberJocks. At first glance, they look impossible, but they make sense after you study them for awhile. In a nutshell, tensegrity tables are composed of two structural assemblies. The top assembly hangs off the bottom assembly by a wire, and wires connecting the outer edges of the two keep the top assembly from tipping over. If the top starts to tip in one direction, the wires on the opposite side stabilize it. As a result, it can't tip over in any direction.Tensegrity stands for “tensional integrity.” I won't try to explain the concept further here, but the YouTube video Tensegrity Explained does a good job of describing it. (It also shows a commercially available table kit with a clever mechanism for attaching and adjusting the support wires. I got the idea of using nails to hold the support wires in my table from that video.)We don't need any more full-size tables right now, so I decided to build a miniature one. It serves no useful purpose, but it looks interesting and was a challenging project, incorporating elements of geometry, model building (because of some very small parts and joints), and jewelry making (beading wire and crimping) in addition to traditional woodworking.My table is about six inches wide and tall. The top and base disks are 3/8” thick walnut, finished with gloss Arm-R-Seal poly over amber shellac. The two tetrahedrons (which I'll just call pyramids) are made of maple, finished with matte General Finishes water-based poly. The faces of the pyramid segments are 1/4” wide.The pyramids are the centerpiece of the table, both literally and figuratively. I chose to use them because they're more interesting to me than the flat L-shapes, triangles, or circles I see in the centers of most tensegrity tables. I was inspired by another YouTube video that uses tetrahedrons. I didn't understand everything the guy did in his video, so I modeled my pyramids from scratch and used a different method to build them.One of my goals for this project was making the structure look light and delicate. Part of that involved keeping the disks and pyramid segments thin. The other part was keeping the wires and their connections as unobtrusive as possible. (I didn't want any noticeable eye bolts, for example.) The beading wire is very thin—0.024”, which is about 1/40” or 0.6 mm. Loops on the ends of the wires are secured by crimp tubes that are only 2 mm tall and 2 mm in diameter (before crimping); they're tiny.The loops on the outer wires are pinned inside circular pockets in the disks' undersides by 16-gauge brad nails. The pockets hide the wire loops and most of the crimp tubes. The nails are perpendicular to the disks' edges, with exposed heads. I like the look of the exposed nail heads, and they have one practical benefit. Theoretically, I could remove the nails and rewire the entire table if necessary for some reason.I wasn't quite as successful at hiding the connections for the wire connecting the two pyramids. The crimp tubes are visible, as are the J-hooks they connect to, but they're not too objectionable.For those who are interested in the construction details, I plan to write a series of blog posts. I also need to update my SketchUp model to reflect some as-built details. I'll update this post with links to those items when they're available. Until then, I've included some representative (and uncaptioned) construction photos below.Thanks for looking!



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posted at: 12:00am on 22-Mar-2022
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Tool Madness: Round 1, Part 4

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(from Popularwoodworking.com)


Final polls for round 1: Planer vs Jointer and Coping Saw vs Japanese Saw. Round 2 starts tomorrow! …Source

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posted at: 12:00am on 22-Mar-2022
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Designing and Building Curved Furniture Legs

Furnished content.
(from Popularwoodworking.com)


You needn't rely on ready-made patterns to design good-looking gams. Legs with engaging, flowing three-dimensional curves can add immeasurably to the aesthetic success of such pieces as tables, stands and chests. In this article, using the legs for a …Source

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posted at: 12:00am on 22-Mar-2022
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Tool cart

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


Tool cartOne of the first steps on my woodworking journey was to organize our garage. Otherwise, I had nowhere to work! We have a large two car garage, but it was stuffed with… stuff. I moved everything around, found space for a bench and got to work.Now that I've worked in the space for a year-plus, I realize it's not working. I also have realized that while I like the idea of putting all of my tools out and open on shelves, that's not a good solution for a space that is routinely covered with sawdust. I needed a tool cart or cabinet.I looked at dozens of plans and came up with a simple design. The biggest challenge was that I decided I wanted to use only supplies I already owned. I would save money for more interesting projects and make a dent on the scrap pile. That meant using a collection of plywood that ranged from “Good, if a little shopworn and slightly warped,” through “Eh, OK” to “Lordy what happened to this stuff?”I made So Many Mistakes. The worst was completely miscalculating the width of the drawers and cutting my very limited supply of plywood for the drawer bases too narrow. I realized this just AFTER gluing and nailing the cabinet carcase. I frantically pried out the nails before the glue dried and took it apart, thank goodness. Then I recut the back, base and top so the drawers would fit.I also realized, after two drawers were complete, that the sides were bowing out partly because they were already warped and partly from the weight. So I turned one drawer base into a part of the carcase and glued and nailed it in place.That means I'm short one drawer base and will have to break down and buy plywood! That's OK, I won't need a full sheet. And anyway I think I'm going to put some kind of thin plywood facing on the drawer fronts. I don't mind it looking functional, but the contrasting plywood is a bit much.I worked very hard on the dividers for the top drawer, and while it's in no way perfect, the tidy little spaces bring me great joy.In the next week or so, I'll buy drawer pulls and locking casters and finish the last drawer. It's not glamorous, but it will make my space much more functional.



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posted at: 12:00am on 22-Mar-2022
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